Recent letter to NYT re Conspiracist bashing
John McAdams
Pease) wrote:
>Dear Editors and Senior Management of the Times:
>
>I was distressed to read Lisa Belkin's article in the 8/11/02 edition
>of the New York Times in which she mentioned there had been a spate of
>nearly a dozen deaths of scientists involved in the Anthrax
>investigation, and then brushed it off, with only desultory research
>into the bizarre deaths, by claiming that statistically, it was
>unimportant. Whoa. Wait a minute. That people die all the time and
>that because there are 280 million of us that means 280 "one in a
>million" strange occurrences a day is NOT news. That several
>scientists not only died, but were murdered in extremely violent ways
>IS news, and worthy of true investigative journalism. One scientist
>killed, half-naked, wedged under a chair? Another suffocated in a
>locker? Another shot dead while a pizza delivery man served as a
>decoy? All of them connected with the Anthrax investigation? I was
>hoping for serious investigative reporting on this issue. What I
>received was anything but.
>
[snip]
>
>There is nothing comforting about believing in conspiracy. I can't
>imagine why you allow a writer to propagandize in such a blatant
>fashion in an apparent effort to discourage further investigation into
>these deaths. Now, more than ever, we need the once proud New York
>Times to take a leadership role in ferreting out the truth of what
>happened in September of 2001, not serving as a mouthpiece for
>official pronouncements and mathematical irrelevancies.
>
The simple fact is that, for most Americans, it *is* comforting to
believe in a conspiracy.
I know that people like Lisa don't think that way. They believe (at
least this is their conscious belief) that a fascist dictatorship
pulled off a coup d'etat killing Kennedy and we should all be very
up-in-arms about it.
Joe Sixpack is likely to believe that conspiracies control everything
anyway. So coming to believe that a conspiracy is responsible for
this or that is very easy. It means you don't have to expend any
further effort to come up with an answer. It also means that you
don't have to accept the unsettling idea that things happen for no
larger reason.
.John
--
Kennedy Assassination Home Page
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm
John McAdams
Pease) wrote:
>Dear Editors and Senior Management of the Times:
>
>I was distressed to read Lisa Belkin's article in the 8/11/02 edition
>of the New York Times in which she mentioned there had been a spate of
>nearly a dozen deaths of scientists involved in the Anthrax
>investigation, and then brushed it off, with only desultory research
>into the bizarre deaths, by claiming that statistically, it was
>unimportant. Whoa. Wait a minute. That people die all the time and
>that because there are 280 million of us that means 280 "one in a
>million" strange occurrences a day is NOT news. That several
>scientists not only died, but were murdered in extremely violent ways
>IS news, and worthy of true investigative journalism. One scientist
>killed, half-naked, wedged under a chair? Another suffocated in a
>locker? Another shot dead while a pizza delivery man served as a
>decoy? All of them connected with the Anthrax investigation? I was
>hoping for serious investigative reporting on this issue. What I
>received was anything but.
>
>After her lead-off character, Benito Que, dies, Belkin sums it up with
>this:
>
>"In other words, this man just happened to be mugged when he was a
>stroke waiting to be triggered. That is a jarring coincidence, to be
>sure."
>
>For whatever reason, Belkin touts coincidence theory over any
>conspiratorial explanation. She can't be sure this is a coincidence.
>This is simply her theory, which she supports with only the barest of
>evidence. This pattern repeats itself throughout her piece. Consider
>this wrap-up, after talking about one of the deaths of a scientist
>very closely connected to the Anthrax investigation:
>
>"In the weeks before he died, Pasechnik had reportedly consulted with
>authorities about the growing anthrax scare. Despite all these
>intriguing details, there is nothing to suggest that his death was
>caused by anything other than a stroke."
>
>Could the stroke have been intentionally induced? Chemically
>generated? Belkin didn't ask, and didn't tell. What Belkin presented
>instead was simple propaganda:
>
I wonder if Lisa believes the stuff about Bill Clinton "mysterious
deaths."
There are perfectly good statistical ways to determine whether a
certain number of deaths is "unlikely." The people trained to do it
are called actuaries. A lot of them work for insurance companies.
When an insurance company sells a life insurance policy to (say) a
male aged 40-45 who smokes, they need to know the probability that
he's going to die within the term of the policy, because they have to
charge him enough to cover the expected payout and make a profit.
The problem with the JFK assassination "mystery deaths" is that the
number of people deemed "connected" to the assassination is very
large, and entirely undefined. The following is an HSCA staffer
testifying about this problem:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/hess.txt
Anybody who wants us to believe that there are a "suspicious" number
of Anthrax deaths is going to have to define the population of people
"connected" to the case.
If there have been five suspects, all under age 60, and three of the
five have died that does sound suspicious. But if the list of people
"connected" includes everybody investigators have talked to, and five
or ten of those have died, it's probably not surprising.
Another factor to consider is whether there is some self-selection
into the population of people considered "connected." For example,
maybe people who tend to engage in risky or bizarre behavior, or who
seem mentally unstable, are particularly likely to be "connected" to
the case. This might be true if "connected" means being questioned by
authorities, and people are getting questioned *because* they seem to
be the kind of people who engage in risky or bizarre behavior.
Thus it might be that the proper "baseline" group for determining the
"expected" number of deaths is not all persons aged 30-60 with science
educations, but all persons aged 30-60 with science educations who
have been involved in any criminal investigation.
Dave Reitzes
It also provides the false hope of an easy solution to complex problems,
e.g., a conspiracy controls the government, therefore cracking the
conspiracy will put all problems with government right.
Dave
Perpetual Starlight: Original fiction, music and more
http://www.reitzes.com
JFK Online: John F. Kennedy assassination
http://www.jfk-online.com
John McAdams
Excellent point, and of course it follows that everybody blames the
people with whom they have political disagreements.
See:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/context4.htm
.John
The Kennedy Assassination Home Page
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm
twalsh
John,
I think she's using "connected" in a far broader sense than even you
have suggested. Seems to me these theorists are using "connected" to
mean anyone who has ever worked with anthrax in any capacity, not only
those the authorities have looked at. This can cover anyone from a
veteranarian to an infectious disease scientist to a menial worker in
a military lab. I also vaguely recall at least one of the scientists
mentioned in one story didn't work with anthrax at all, but did work
with some sort of infectious diseases. They also seem to be not only
including everyone investigators have talked to, but likely the
investigators themselves.
It's also odd that though the conspirators could only manage to kill a
handful of people with the anthrax attacks, mostly postal workers and
elderly people, they have managed to kill a dozen or so to cover
something up. They should have just started killing people with their
"stroke inducer" in the first place and they would have been more
prolific.
twalsh
John McAdams
LOL! That's a good point. Perhaps Evil Minions, like the people we
all know, sometimes adopt very bad strategies.
It's probably important to add that the anthrax attacks -- given their
rather limited scope -- appear to be the work of one person. Are we
to believe that the conspirators could only recruit one person to
actually make the attacks, but then recruited an entire squad to kill
people off?
.John
--
The Kennedy Assassination Home Page
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm
Gary Aguilar
This reminds me of some of the stuff Max Holland has written: "To
understand the JFK phenomenon," he's said, "it helps to revisit
[Richard Hofstadter's] classic lecture 'The Paranoid Style in American
Politics.'" Holland notes that, "the most prominent qualities of the
paranoid style, according to Hofstadter, are 'heated exaggeration,
suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.' Propagators don't see
conspiracies or plots here and there in history; they regard 'a vast
or gigantic conspiracy as the motive force in historical events.'"
But since Hofstadter delivered his famous lecture in 1963, "paranoia"
has been beating a steady retreat. Had Hofstadter read in 1963 that
the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had unanimously approved a plan the
year before to commit acts of terrorism against U. S. citizens on
American soil, he might have reconsidered holding forth about the
foolhardiness of paranoia. ABC recently publicized the story that was
first disclosed in a new book, Body of Secrets, written by
investigative reporter James Bamford. In a once-secret operation
codenamed Operation Northwoods, ABC.com reported that, "America's top
military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and
commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a
war … to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro."
Luckily, the plans (which can be read in the original on the web at
George Washington University's National Security Archive ) "apparently
were rejected by the civilian leadership" of the Kennedy
administration, and never carried out.
In the year Hofstadter spoke, it would have been considered pure
paranoia to believe - especially after the Nuremberg convictions of
Nazis for grotesque human experiments - that our government was then
conducting and covering-up ongoing dangerous and secret drug, LSD,
radiation and syphilis experiments on unwitting, law-abiding, American
citizens.
Had the documents themselves not been declassified, Hofstadter would
likely have called crackpot a recent AP report, based on declassified
FBI memos, that tied the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover to appalling crimes. On
July 28, 2002, AP reported, "For more than 20 years, FBI headquarters
in Washington knew that its Boston agents were using hit men and mob
leaders as informants and shielding them from prosecution for serious
crimes including murder." And that a known murderer was allowed by the
FBI to go free, "as four innocent men were sent to prison in his
place."
In terms of what we've since learned, Hofstadter's reassuring
admonitions read like the quaint Polyanna. But unfortunately it has
long since ceased being "paranoid" to believe that the government has
lied to the public about its secret wars abroad; that it has lied
about its illegal support of murderers at home and murderous
totalitarian dictatorships abroad in Central America and elsewhere;
that it has lied about the immoral and illegal assaults on citizens
who took lawful exception to its misguided policy in Vietnam.
Whereas in 1963 Hofstadter would have howled, today no one calls The
Nation paranoid when it reports, "[Once secret] 'archives of terror'
(sic)… demonstrate that a US military official helped to draw up the
apparatus of the Paraguayan police state while he was ostensibly
merely training its officers. They also conclusively prove an official
US connection to crimes of state committed in Brazil, Argentina,
Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia, under Operation Condor … The
moral callousness exhibited in the US response to these disclosures is
shocking."
So who has a right to be paranoid today, those who charge the govt. of
outrageous acts, or government loyalists who fume at the "wild and
irresponsible" accusations?
Gary
Gary Aguilar
"To understand the JFK phenomenon," he observes, "it helps to revisit
[Richard Hofstadter's] classic lecture 'The Paranoid Style in American
Politics.'" Holland says that, "the most prominent qualities of the
paranoid style, according to Hofstadter, are 'heated exaggeration,
suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.' Propagators don't see
conspiracies or plots here and there in history; they regard 'a vast
or gigantic conspiracy as the motive force in historical events.'"
For since Hofstadter delivered his famous lecture in 1963, "paranoia"
Haven't declassified documents given the public ample reason to be
"paranoid" about the US government? Who's crazier now: those who
charge the government with wild illegalities and conspiracies, or
government loyalists who fume at the "reckless and irresponsible"
charges?
In other words, what would Hofstadter say today, if he didn't want to
sound naively foolish?
Gary
John McAdams
wrote:
OIC. It was those evil military leaders who were responsible, and
civilians in the Kennedy administration quashed the plans.
But it couldn't be that the planning was the result of the Kennedy
brothers' obsession with "getting rid" of Castro, could it?
Gary, I don't think you are willing to admit that they *were* obsessed
with getting rid of Castro.
John McAdams
wrote:
>john.m...@marquette.edu (John McAdams) wrote in message news:<3d601bb4...@news.newsguy.com>...
>> On 18 Aug 2002 11:04:54 -0700, lpe...@gte.net (The original Lisa
>> Pease) wrote:
>>
>
>Had the documents themselves not been declassified, Hofstadter would
>likely have called crackpot a recent AP report, based on declassified
>FBI memos, that tied the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover to appalling crimes. On
>July 28, 2002, AP reported, "For more than 20 years, FBI headquarters
>in Washington knew that its Boston agents were using hit men and mob
>leaders as informants and shielding them from prosecution for serious
>crimes including murder." And that a known murderer was allowed by the
>FBI to go free, "as four innocent men were sent to prison in his
>place."
>
I haven't studied this closely, but I don't automatically accept what
AP says. They have been burned badly with recent cases of
irresponsible journalism, the most recent one about a supposed
atrocity of U.S. soldiers at No Gun Ri in Korea.
http://wire.ap.org/APpackages/nogunri/
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/korea/main.htm
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/06/03/nogunri/?x
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811717631/102-6957718-5326537
Unlike *certain* people I don't assume that charges against the Evil
Gum'mint are automatically true.
Peter Fokes
"John McAdams" <john.m...@marquette.edu> wrote in message
news:3d61a8ef...@news.newsguy.com...
More so than Eisenhower?
What percentage of policy making time was spent on Cuba during JFK's
Presidency: 5%, 25%, 52%, 99%.
What level would constitute "obsession"?
Peter F
Michael McHugh
As for conspiracy, I think of it more as a tool used by powerful
elites, rather than being synonimous with the elite itself. After
all, rule by an elite has been the rule in history; democracy has been
the exception. For most of history, ruling elites didn't even put on
a pretense of worrying about what the masses thought or what we call
public opinion. It's only in the last century or so that they had to
start developing mass propaganada techniques to manipulate it, i.e.
tools to maufacture consent, as Noam Chomsky puts it. But conspiracy,
coups, assassinations, have been fairly routine in history, especially
in societies with no real tradition of democracy--which is to say most
places at most times!
When Richard Hofstadter wrote The Paranoid Style, he was mainly
writing about the far Right in America, the McCarthyites, Klansmen and
John Birchers, who thought that Communists had taken over the U.S.
government, and that even Eisenhower and Kennedy were Communists.
That really is paranoia. He compared these to other Right wing
populist movements throughout American history, that thought some evil
conspiracy or another had taken over--or was about to take over. In
the past, they usually thought it was the Jews or the Vatican who were
about to take over.
But as I said, elite rule is the norm in history, and even paranoids
who look at the world around them could see that. Democracy is
relatively new in history and is often fragile, in danger of being
overthrown. For example, the power of big business, sometimes called
oligarchy or plutocracy, has been a danger to democratic institutions
for the last century. And since 1945, another danger has been the
National Security State, the military and intelligence agencies, often
allies with sectors of big business.
I think Hofstadter's paranoids were correct in being paranoid, but
most of them were looking in the wrong place and didn't see the main
threat. Some paranoids have more accurate information than others.
Mike McHugh
Dave Reitzes
>
>
>Just like the old days here on the Nuthouse!
Yup. What some people don't seem to consider is that when I speculate about the
psychology that drives conspiracy believers, I do so from the standpoint of
having been one myself for most of a decade. I'm not nearly so interested in
psychoanalyzing Nuthouse folks (particularly those so lame that they would
actually flee the Nuthouse for several years rather than confront the evidence
about their fruitcake hero, Jim Garrison) as I am in understanding why I let
myself be so badly misled for so long.
Gary Aguilar
Well said, Mike.
I quite agree with you.
Gary
John McAdams
Yes.
>What percentage of policy making time was spent on Cuba during JFK's
>Presidency: 5%, 25%, 52%, 99%.
>What level would constitute "obsession"?
>
There is no way in the world to put a percentage on it, and Bobby was
the point man, so JFK's policy-making time wouldn't be relevant.
But "obsession" might be defined as JFK and RFK elevating what was a
minor annoyance to the U.S. into a policy problem that justified
rather radical, dangerous, but entirely ineffective action.
You might see, for example:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/mongoose.htm