Zahir Ebrahim: Anatomy of Conspiracy Theory

Some may rationally ponder that how is it, that such a long running global conspiracy for world government as outlined in Project Humanbeingsfirst's report “The Enduring Capitalist Conspiracy for World Government”, can be kept alive across centuries and acrossgeographies. This brief paper examines that question.

Noam Chomsky had once observed an insightful nature of such “conspiracies”, as the open shared natural goals stemming from the very nature of its definition, which could therefore, no more be termed a conspiracy than both GM and Ford endeavoring to maximize their profits at all cost be termed a 'global corporate conspiracy'.

I have always added to that, the equally un-remarkable observation that a hungry lion anywhere in the world pouncing upon a lamb is similarly no global conspiracy by the world's lions to eat up all the lambs on the planet. That is just the nature of the bestial predators when its “might defines right”. The higher cerebral concepts of “right”, “wrong”, “moral”, immoral”, etc., do not even exist among any primal predators, for these only behave according to their nature. Pious platitudes, if they could be argued by the lion or the snake for instance, would in fact only be disseminated to the lambs and the mice to make them an even easier morsel to acquire!

The only thing that occasionally deters such exercise of primacy is a collective natural response like the one observed in the “Battle at Kruger” park. Indeed, the quest for the holy grail of extracting voluntary servitude from the masses of mankind is the key idea of cultivating a willingly compliant public in order for the illuminated ones becoming their stewards for life. In Bertrand Russell's' timeless characterization, to extract voluntary servitude such that: “a revolt of the plebs will become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.”

Thus we observe that from Plato to Nietzsche, from the philosopher-king to the 'ubermensch', all have argued the necessity of ruling upon the sheepish masses as the 'divine' imperative of the “enlightened ones”. Indeed, Zbigniew Brzezinski even sub-titled his seminal book “The Grand Chessboard” with its egotistical subtitle “American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives”, merely extending that idea of 'ubermensch' rule from the most “enlightened ones”, to the most powerful sole-superpower!

The same theme exists among the “Chosen Peoples”, to deem their primacy upon the goyem their inherent nature, their divine destiny. The 'ubermensch' are suckled these lessons in their mothers milk to acquire those imperatives across generations in perhaps the same way as the generations of corporate executives and CEOs who inherently know that they need to continually enhance the valuation of their company's stock performance in a capitalist system.

So, when these 'divine' ubermensch creatures who are beyond good and evil, behave in their primal predatory natural manner across time and space, across evolution or creation, are they being “conspiratorial”?

In the Chomsky-Ebrahim nomenclature, perhaps not.

In the Ron Paul nomenclature, it is merely a shared “Conspiracy of Ideas” in which “CFR exists, the Trilateral Commission exists”, and that, it is only “an ideological battle” wherein:

“some people believe in Globalism, and others of us believe in national sovereignty; and there is a move on toward a North American Union just like early on there was a move on for a European Union and it eventually ended up. ...

These are real things, it's not somebody made these up, it's not a conspiracy, they don't talk about it, and they might not admit about it, but there has been money spent on it ...

So it's not so much a secretive conspiracy, it's a contest between ideologies; whether we believe in our institutions here, our national sovereignty, our Constitution, or are we going to further move in the direction of international government, more UN. You know, this country goes to war under UN Resolutions. I don't like big government in Washington. So I don't like this trend towards international government ...

But it's not so much it's a sinister conspiracy, it's just knowledge is out there, if we look for it, you'll realize our national sovereignty is under threat!”

In the United States' legalese nomenclature, breaking of a “federal statute” by at least two or more persons working in collusion (and when caught), is defined as “criminal conspiracy” and “federal crime”. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, it is criminal whether or not Congress imposed criminal sanctions on the activity itself. A conspiracy need only be proved by “circumstantial evidence” even “if it violates the rules against hearsay evidence”:

Conspiracy: “in law, agreement of two or more persons to commit a criminal or otherwise unlawful act. At common law, the crime of conspiracy was committed with the making of the agreement, but present-day statutes require an overt step by a conspirator to further the conspiracy. Other controversial aspects of conspiracy laws include the modification of the rules of evidence and the potential for a dragnet. A statement of a conspirator in furtherance of the conspiracy is admissible against all conspirators, even if the statement includes damaging references to another conspirator, and often even if it violates the rules against hearsay evidence. The conspiracy can be proved by circumstantial evidence. Any conspirator is guilty of any substantive crime committed by any other conspirator in furtherance of the enterprise. It is a federal crime to conspire to commit any activity prohibited by federal statute, whether or not Congress imposed criminal sanctions on the activity itself.”

According to such legalism, smart conspirators, if powerful enough, could affect the enaction of conducive federal statutes, or prevent the enaction of adverse ones, that would enable them to get away with many morally reprehensible systems and acts. The Federal Reserve System for instance, falls into this category. A legalized extortion racket to enslave the public in perpetual debt for the issue and supply of their own national currency. Similarly, bootlegging is a federal crime one decade, a respectable business the next! And internationally, it is the enaction of laws under WTO which defines what is criminal and what isn't – not the raping and harvesting of developing nations that goes on under its conspiratorial rubric!

Thus suffice it to say, the word “conspiracy” even has legal semantics, albeit rather limited. It is limited because it is easy to circumvent an abhorrence and call it legal when the king makes the laws.

But the multitudinous connotations of this word do not stop there. It also has a 'tin-hatted' or 'kookish' implication in furtherance of the devilish art of political science based state-craft. This was indeed implied by Congressman Ron Paul in his afore-quoted speech when he stated regarding the North American Union: “These are real things, it's not somebody made these up, it's not a conspiracy, ... So it's not so much a secretive conspiracy, ...”.

In fact, some of the best cloaking devices for clandestine covert-operations and hidden agendas have been invented by the most brilliant minds – here is one exposition for instance from Ezra Pound: “invent two lies and have the public keep arguing which one of them might be true”. Another is by Leo Strauss – the erudite teacher of the majority of the neo-cons – called “Noble Lies”. A third by the White House, often referred to as “plausible deniability”, okay may be it was invented by the DIA, the grand-daddy of all intelligence agencies. This thinly-veiled euphemism for deception to protect the leadership if things go badly in covert-operations became public knowledge during the Iran-Contra scandal, the televised coverage of which had gripped the American nation for months, including myself. And this wasn't just a rogue operation with ad hoc deniability cover by patriotic agents as most in the public are led to believe. Deniability is official government policy vis a vis any covert operation dating back to President Truman's signing of NSC 10/2. That directive made the introduction of “plausible deniability” a requirement for CIA’s clandestine operations in case they were ever blown while still active. Below is an excerpt from “Note on U.S. Covert Action Programs”:

'Management of Covert Actions in the Truman Presidency

The Truman administration’s concern over Soviet “psychological warfare” prompted the new National Security Council to authorize, in NSC 4-A of December 1947, the launching of peacetime covert action operations. NSC 4-A made the Director of Central Intelligence responsible for psychological warfare, establishing at the same time the principle that covert action was an exclusively Executive Branch function. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) certainly was a natural choice but it was assigned this function at least in part because the Agency controlled unvouchered funds, by which operations could be funded with minimal risk of exposure in Washington.1

ClA’s early use of its new covert action mandate dissatisfied officials at the Departments of State and Defense. The Department of State, believing this role too important to be left to the CIA alone and concerned that the military might create a new rival covert action office in the Pentagon, pressed to reopen the issue of where responsibility for covert action activities should reside. Consequently, on June 18, 1948, a new NSC directive, NSC 10/2, superseded NSC 4-A.

NSC 10/2 directed CIA to conduct “covert” rather than merely “psychological” operations, defining them as all activities “which are conducted or sponsored by this Government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.”

... The Special Group and the 303 Committee approved 163 covert actions during the Kennedy administration and 142 during the Johnson administration through February 1967. The 1976 Final Report of the Church Committee, however, estimated that of the several thousand projects undertaken by the CIA since 1961, only 14 percent were considered on a case-by-case basis by the 303 Committee and its predecessors (and successors). Those not reviewed by the 303 Committee were low-risk and low-cost operations. The Final Report also cited a February 1967 CIA memorandum that included a description of the mode of policy arbitration of decisions on covert actions within the 303 Committee system. CIA presentations were questioned, amended, and even on occasion denied, despite protests from the DCI. Department of State objections modified or nullified proposed operations, and the 303 Committee sometimes decided that some agency other than CIA should undertake an operation or that CIA actions requested by Ambassadors on the scene should be rejected.'

Lastly, we also have the “limited hangout” and “modified limited hangout” conspiracies to mislead the public in case “plausible deniability” for governmental wrong-doing doesn't work. This modus operandi of accepting partial mea culpa for something less consequential in order to mask the more egregious crimes was amply demonstrated by Richard Nixon during the waning years of his presidency. A good description of it with excerpts from the Nixon tapes planning the red herrings is on Wikipedia.

It should now be self-evident that while still active, or while mileage is being extracted from a clandestine operation recently concluded, or some egregious wrong-doing, all references to it must be squashed or dismissed, inter alia, by labeling them as kookish “conspiracy theories”. And when blown, to have the cover story ready for “plausible deniability”, and/or some version of “limited hangout”. What are these if not real conspiracies to mask real clandestine covert-operations and wrong-doings?

Thus, if it is axiomatically asserted that there is no such thing as a real conspiracy theory, then that really works wonderfully in the interest of the cloak-makers because it makes one forget the perspectives of history.

And this complex Machiavellian deception game behind alleging 'kookishness' bears exposing fully: invent two or more lies, not just one, and keep the good hearted well meaning peoples in the “populist democracy” occupied debating which one of them might be true, for it would hardly matter what conclusions they reached. And wherever they ended up, to perhaps yank one of the lies from underneath them by conclusively showing it to be false thus conveniently demonstrating a baseless “conspiracy theory” in order to keep that notion alive in the public imagination. This consequently delegitimizes in the public mind serious researchers' efforts in uncovering any covert-operation while its secrecy is of paramount necessity. Afterwards, after faits accomplis, after statute of limitations expiring, it makes little difference if historians and con-fessionartists make a pecuniary gain peddling what is inconsequential history to the newer evolving realpolitik du jour. The recognition of this self-evident truth of the matter and its utility to Machiavellian statecraft was boldly narrated even in the New York Times (Ron Suskind, Oct. 17, 2004):

'“That's not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” '

Cass R. Sunstein of Harvard Law School, the man who is today President Obama's Information Czar in the White House, in his 2008 paper titled“Conspiracy Theories”, called this process of the creation of diabolical red herrings, introducing “beneficial cognitive diversity” through“cognitive infiltration”. The paper has to be read in its entirety in order to be appreciated for its brazen and open appeal to Machiavelli.

So many complex semantics for the simple term “conspiracy theory” – it's not just mere nomenclature – that this overview of its usefulness to statecraft was necessary in order to situate anything with such a bombastic title as “The Capitalist Conspiracy”, in its proper social-political-legal-conspiratorial context.

And an equally insightful and rational response to this question of long enduring conspiracy for world domination, is added to the motivational mix by G. Edward Griffin in the video below:

“After a man has far more money than he possibly can spend for pleasures, what is left to excite him? For those with the ruling class mentality, the answer is power – raw power over other human beings. Money can buy such power only to a point, beyond that, politics is the sport, and world politics is the ultimate game.”

Thus, Griffin aptly noted: “The New World Order Is Not New”, but a common objective borne of natural inclination to primacy which apparently transcends time, space, geography and race. It naturally increases in its scope in proportion to the vistas of power it acquires. And it automatically attracts to its cause the coterie of sycophants and useful idiots essential in realizing its overarching agendas. It is helped along, as W. Cleon Skoussen uncannily observed in his commentary in “The Naked Capitalist”:

'The real value of Tragedy and Hope ... [is the] bold and boastful admission by Dr. Quigley that there actually exists a relatively small but powerful group which has succeeded in acquiring a choke-hold on the affairs of practically the entire human race. Of course we should be quick to recognize that no small group could wield such gigantic power unless millions of people in all walks of life were “in on the take” and were willing to knuckle down to the iron-clad regimentation of the ruthless bosses behind the scenes. As we shall see, the network has succeeded in building its power structure by using tremendous quantities of money (together with the vast influence it buys) to manipulate, intimidate, or corrupt millions of men and women and their institutions on a world-wide basis.' (pg. 6)

Subsequent manipulation of global events through statecraft machinations become trivial when one has already taken over the state's machineryand its many essential instruments of policy-making. The upshot of it all is that it becomes a moot point what label one might give to this empirical predatory behavior. Zbigniew Brzezinski even openly proclaimed its pertinence to statecraft in the very first sentence of his book mentioned earlier: “Hegemony is as old as mankind”. The undeniable fact remains that world-government has been a long historical passion of oligarchs! The quest for the hegemony of the entire world has been their natural enduring conspiracy for world government. And it is finally coming to its grand fruition in our own time as most useful idiots still mindlessly chatter on about “conspiracy theories”.

Further Study References:

[1] http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/09/capitalist-conspiracy-world-government.html

[2] http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/10/monetary-reform-bibliography.html

[3] http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/12/responseto-ft-gideon-rachman-worldgov.html

[4] http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/04/some-dare-call-it-conspiracy-garyallen.html

[5] http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/12/brilliant-world-order-bedtime-story.html

[6] http://fas.org/sgp/advisory/state/covert.html

[7] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585

[8] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8605813744843314322

This piece was cross-posted from Project Humanbeingsfirst.org. See the original at: http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2010/03/anatomy-of-conspiracy-theory.html

The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley (patents here), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 book was rejected by six publishers and can be read on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org. Verbatim reproduction license athttp://www.humanbeingsfirst.org#Copyright.

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