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NY_NAG

                                                    November 26, 2013     
                                                                          
The New York Magazine recently ran a strange,                            
very superficial collection of sneers and
eyerolls at various conspiracy theories:
 
   http://nymag.com/news/features/conspiracy-theories/
 
This is the type of deal where you lump everything
that's contrary to Mainstream Serious Opinion into     PARANOIA_GRADE
one bucket, using guilt-by-association to try to
discredit all of it.
 
                          (To my eye, there's a something-to-offend-everyone
                          quality to this, and I wouldn't be suprised if it
                          doesn't work at all...  for me it calls into question
                          the integrity of New York Magazine.  Couldn't they
                          do a better job than this?)
 
 
The trouble is that *some* of these
wild and crazy conspiracy ideas
just aren't all that crazy-- I'd
listen to argument that they're        E.g. a majority of Americans
wrong, but they're just not that       really do believe that JFK
far out, in fact some of them are      was assassinated not by a
closer to being actual                 lone nut, but by a
conventional wisdom (which often       conspiracy, so this is one of
differs from the corporate media       those situations where The
take).                                 Mainstream has split-off from
                                       what people actually believe.
 
                                            A later congressional
                                            investigation concluded
                                            that there actually had
                                            been a conspiracy.  So
       "The House Select Committee on       why would the Warren
       Assassinations, headed by            Commision's conclusions
       Robert Blakey, a former Justice      even count as the one
       Department prosecutor, was a         official story?
       two-year probe that included
       hundreds of interviews, the               (I would really love to
       discovery of new evidence,                find someone willing to
       scientific tests on new and old           argue that this second
       evidence, plus the most                   report was the result of
       extensive review of available             a conspiracy to frame the
       FBI, CIA, Secret Service and              Warren commission.)
       Warren Commission files. The
       HSCA final report stated
       bluntly that President Kennedy
       'probably was assassinated as a
       result of a conspiracy.'"
 
          Bob Katz, Chicago Tribune,
          November 21, 2013
 
 
The lead article in the series kicks things
off with a rather murky attack on the
CIA-cocaine connection:
 
http://nymag.com/news/features/conspiracy-theories/50-years-of-conspiracy-theories/
 
    "The Truly Paranoid Style in American Politics"
    By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
    Published Nov 17, 2013
 
They're still fighting the bad fight
against Gary Webb (conspicuous by his
absence in this article, but mentioned
briefly in one of the others, i.e. they
buried him on page 27).


It's not entirely clear to me
what they think they're debunking:

   "The wider the aperture around this theory, the harder
   its proponents work to implicate Washington, the
   shakier it seems: After several trials and a great deal
   of inquiry, no one has been able to show that anyone in
   the CIA condoned what Blandon was doing, and it has
   never been clear exactly how strong Blandon’s ties to
   the contra leadership really were, anyway."

Ha, ha, these paranoid people are so silly and irrational...
except there's also things like this out there:

 "The CIA-Contra Cocaine Connection"
 Monday, July 20, 1998:

    "Last week, the New York Times reported the CIA’s
    own investigation of its activities revealed that
    agency officials knew that the Nicaraguan contras
    they were working with were running drugs."

 http://www.democracynow.org/1998/7/20/the_cia_contra_cocaine_connection_b#


And just in case you've forgotten about the kind of
conspiracies (not just theories) that were going
down around then, please do look up the phrase
"Iran-Contra".  Allow me to quote Uncle Wikipedia:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

    "...  charges were brought against five individuals for
    their support of the Contras. Those charges, however,
    were later dropped because the administration refused to
    declassify certain documents. The indicted conspirators
    faced various lesser charges instead. In the end,
    fourteen administration officials were indicted,
    including then-- Secretary of Defense Caspar
    Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which
    were vacated on appeal.[12] The rest of those indicted
    or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the
    presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been
    vice-president at the time of the affair.[13]"





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