“The Project” ooh scary

“Even if a document is a genuine document, it doesn’t mean that it describes a genuine conspiracy. There actually is a Project for the New American Century; it has offices, a payroll and a website. And the Project for the New American Century does believe that the American system of government should be spread throughout the world, and that the United States of America specifically should be the supreme global power, and has written documents saying so. Furthermore, lots of people who either still are members of the PNAC or who were when some of its most important documents were written, are in positions of influence in the US Government today. Still doesn’t mean that there is a shadowy conspiracy working to create an American Empire.”

You are confusing this argument by using the words “shadowy” and “conspiracy”, surely. The argument that there are well organised groups – such as PNAC – in US politics working to create an American Empire, and aren’t always completely open about their motives and objectives, would seem to be highly defensible. How would you argue against it?

One way of disagreeing would be to claim that interest group analysis of politics is unreliable, but that would be a surprising claim to scholars of politics, especially US politics.

“Even if a document is a genuine document, it doesn’t mean that it describes a genuine conspiracy. . . ”

As the man said, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . .

The stuff about a “conspiracy to take over the world” is neither surprising nor particularly disturbing. After all, every proselytizing religion is, in a sense, a conspiracy to take over the world. Ditto for every global political movement, social philosophy, or strongly-held opinion.

The only question that needs to be asked about this document–apart, of course, from whether it’s genuine, and whether it represents any actual organization or body’s membership–is whether it advocates illegal activity, and in particular violence, in pursuit of its goals. Not having read the document, I don’t know the answer to this question. But if all it advocates is that believers in its creed try to win converts, persuade governments to see things their way, and generally advance their goals (however unpleasant) by political means, then the proper response–vigorous political activity in opposition to those same goals–would be no different if neither the document itself nor any organized “conspiracy” ever existed.

On the other hand, if the document espouses violence or other criminality, and if it is in fact the genuine charter of a real organization with a real membership, then it deserves serious attention–but not because it’s a “conspiracy to take over the world”. Rather, it would be evidence of a criminal conspiracy, one that should be treated like any other such.

One final thought: on occasions when Crooked Timber has dipped its collective toe into the murky waters of the Arab-Israeli dispute, there has more often than not surfaced a comment or two about alleged Israeli control of American foreign policy. It would be interesting to see how many of those fond of lobbing that particular charge, when they see the shoe on the other foot, are capable of recognizing just what it’s stepped in.

“a comment or two about alleged Israeli control of American foreign policy”

Again, there is a bit of confusion here between accusations of conspiracy and, quite different, plain-vanilla interest group analysis of US politics.

The argument that the best organised groups affecting US politics on the Israel-Palestine question are various Jewish and Christian Israeli lobbies, who use fundraising and grassroots organisation to push US policy towards policies favourable to Israel’s view of its own interests would again seem to be highly defensible, just as the claim that US policy towards Cuba is highly influenced by the Cuban exile lobby in and around Miami, or even the claim that pharmaceutical companies are highly influential in US healtcare policies.

In all these cases, lobbying is observable, the response to the lobbying is as expected (policies significantly influenced by the lobby, lobby officials appointed to high government positions etc), and the whole connection is entirely consistent with mainstream wider analysis of US politics, where parties are weak and small-group lobbies are strong.

A good and an important post. You’re wrong on one point, though:

… Aberystwyth must submit to sharia law. I’ve been there; it’s the most god-forsaken fucking town on Earth

Clearly you’ve not been to Ballaghdereen.

“Clearly you’ve not been to Ballaghdereen.”

Or Romford

Actually, Aberystwyth was close. You just need to go a few miles further up the Welsh coast to Borth.

Well, Otto, I’m not very familiar with European politics, but the two non-American democracies with which I’m somewhat familiar–Canada and Israel–both have a mix of broad-based and single-issue interest groups not entirely dissimilar to America’s, in terms of relative prominence and influence. Certainly industry lobbies are quite influential in both countries, as are, say, the civil liberties and environmentalist lobbies. And while religiously-based political activism is certainly far less prominent in Canada than in the US or Israel, regionalist movements seem to take up the slack.

I’m very curious to know how European nations have managed to immunize themselves against this particular brand of politics–and in what ways, if any, the alternative is really preferable.

PNAC are pretty open about their motives and objectives. The problem, as Krugman pointed out in The Great Unraveling, is that their stated aims and motives are so wacky (radical, if you prefer) nobody would believe them until it’s too late.

“Paranoia is the delusion that your enemies are competent.” Brad Hicks; http://www.livejournal.com/users/bradhicks/

Um, isn’t The Guardian, by your definition, as much a “compiler of blacklists” as Burgess? And let’s test your anti-“blacklisting” theory. Would you mind if, say, a university fired a strong Nazi sympathizer during WW2? Or if Howard University fired a professor who had written propaganda for some white supremacist organization that professed to be non-violent. Would anyone who raised questions about the white supremacist be considered a “compiler of blacklists”?

(in the interests of fairness, Aberystwyth can be quite nice on a sunny day, of which there are about two or three a year)

Formally speaking, a set isn’t guaranteed to have a least or greatest element if it isn’t linearly ordered. Specifically, the ordering must be transitive. Occasionally with individuals, but more generally with groups, it may be the case that A > B, B > C, but C > A. This is easily demonstrated in an indefinitely prolonged wine-tasting, for example.

Sudbury, Ontario is the most fucking godforsaken town on Earth. A couple of billion years ago Sudbury-to-be was hit by a nickel-rich meteor. The local plant life was just beginning to make inroads on the fused rock when along came the nickel miners who built Sudbury. They also built a chimney as high as the Empire State Building to carry the sulphur dioxide from the smelting works out of town. Result: acid rain for dozens of miles in every direction. I spent a weeek there once working for a chemical plant co. The local boast was that astronauts used to train there, it being the place on Earth most resembling the surface of the Moon. Borth, Lubbock, meet your master.

Hmmm yes. I suspect that even when the wails of the muezzin ring out above Borth and Sudbury, the Grand Council of Muslim Scholars will still be sitting around deciding to leave it until next year to have a go at Merthyr.

Yes that is indeed a good summary of Ian Mayles’ self-justification exercise but I say pshaw. The first one is exactly the same mealy-mouthed “our values are inconsistent with this organisation” crap that people trotted out as an excuse for blacklisting Communists in the 1950s. A blacklist is a blacklist and saying “we construct this blacklist on the basis of this statement of values” doesn’t change the fact.

The second is visible bollocks; are there really no Guardian journalists who are members of the Labour Party? What disclaimers about personal involvement should we expect from Andrew Rawnsley, who is always using his (excellent) column to help push along various factional struggles within New Labour? If there was a problem with the reporting of the Shabina Begum case, let’s hear what it was. In fact, Aslam’s piece was almost entirely an interview with Shabina Begum, who was a Hizb member herself so it is hardly surprising it reflects the Hizb point of view (and anyone who thinks that she was just a poor childish puppet of Hizb really doesn’t know much about teenage girls).

Most denominations who talk about the pope as the Anti-christ see it as the office of the papacy, not any particular pope, except possibly the last, I presume. That is standard doctrine of seventh-day adventists, and also similar denominations who take a full-history interpretation of Revelations, where events in Revelations are thought to describe events not only of the last days, but also of the past.

it would be exactly the same if he had reported on the Conservative leadership contest while being, unknown to the papers management or readers, a member of the campaign team of one of the candidates.

No it wouldn’t. As I commented above, the Westminster editors of nearly every British newspaper are quite deeply involved in the factional struggles of one or other political party, and this is not a bad thing unless it can be shown to have resulted in bad journalism.

Or if Howard University fired a professor who had written propaganda for some white supremacist organization that professed to be non-violent.

Well, CCNY has on its faculty a professor who is funded by the Pioneer Fund. And from this pro-eugencist site, they didn’t try to fire him for saying that black people are stupider than white people and so shouldn’t be brought into the educational mainstream. (I’m not going to take a position on whether what they did violates academic freedom.)

The arguments in the post aren’t of much interest, but the prose is entertaining. Like others, I was especially struck by this bit of vulgarity:

Glad you liked it. Here’s another bit of vulgarity for you to be struck by: fuck off.

My own view is that most uses of vulgarity are intended to disguise the weakness of the underlying argument.

Well, your own view is shit then.

I’ll let you decide whether this post serves as an example for that gneeralization

Thanks, you patronising twat. Me, Doctor Johnson, Leibniz, Nietsczhe, Socrates, Dean Swift and Winston Churchill are all on the same side of this one. I think Ann Landers might be on yours.

And I was charmed by his “no enemies to the left” standard for faculty retention. Communists are OK, but mere Nazi sympathizers are not. Some might wonder what universal principle underlies that rule.)

The principle that “war is different from peace”, you illiterate fuckbreath.

My own view is that their overreaction to swearing is an easy and fun way of spotting Americans, and can provide endless hours of mocking amusement. Hey Jim, you’d better start running now or I’ll drop the f-bomb on you!

“I don’t think that Communist professors should have been fired during the Cold War however.”

— How about during the Ukrainian famine, the Great Terror, the show trials, or the Molotov-Ribbentorp pact? Would it be okay to fire a member of the ACP then?

Aberystwyth “godforsaken”, huh? I lived there for three years (1995-8) and thoroughly enjoyed my time there. The town is in a marvellous setting and very convenient for trips to all kinds of very scenic places including southern Snowdonia, and the university has a reputation for being a very friendly community; my experience bears this out.

The arguments in the post aren’t of much interest, but the prose is entertaining. Like others, I was especially struck by this bit of vulgarity:

If the arguments in the post are ‘not of much interest’ then why did you read the three pages of text that come before the vulgarity?

It is one thing to complain about expletives when they are used in the manner of a rapper, when every fourth word is an expletive they lose all effect. In this case the author used a single vulgarity and did so very plainly for calculated effect which Jim Miller recognizes.

What we see here is the inner workings of the Republican brain: essentially a list processing algorithm that churns through text until it sees something that matches a pre-canned response. The arguments were recognized by the matching algorithm as the type of left wing propaganda that has to be rigorously excluded to avoid the risk of puncturing the world view. When the expletive comes along the pattern match picks it up and instructs the fingers to type in a response.

I knew a Jim Miller once, he was a total toss-pot.

“the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means”

It’s from _The Yankee and Cowboy War_, by Carl Oglesby, p.25.

“Clandestinism is not the usage of a handful of rogues, it is the formalized process of an entire class in which a thousand hands spontaneously join.” – Carl Oglesby, _The Yankee and Cowboy War_

Borth and Aberystwyth are beautiful places, an end of the world where the sky meets the sea and explodes in an invigorating crash of light and colour. It grows on you, eats you, saddens you, thinks of you.

True that around the corner sit lonesome souls staring out to sea but there’s a beauty in this melancholy. And the bbq’s on the beach and music strummed on the pier is a chance to breath in a hectic world.

Borth is trickier to defend but it’s still lovely.

As for the other more important comments I haven’t currently got time to dive in. The Influencing Machine and the air loom gang are an interesting take on early mind control conspiracy theories though:

His patient’s name was James Tilly Matthews, and his view of the world had by this point become one of the strangest ever recorded in the annals of psychiatry. Haslam’s account is still acknowledged as the first example in history of the now-familiar notion of mind control by an ‘influencing machine’. For everyone who has since had messages beamed at them through fillings, mysterious implants or TV sets, or via hi-tech surveillance, MI5, Masonic lodges or UFOs, James Tilly Matthews is Patient Zero.
Matthews was convinced that outside the grounds of Bedlam, in a basement cellar by London Wall, a gang of villains were controlling and tormenting his mind with diabolical rays. They were using a machine called an ‘Air Loom’, of which Matthews was able to draw immaculate technical diagrams, and which combined recent developments in gas chemistry with the strange force of animal magnetism, or mesmerism. It incorporated keys, levers, barrels, batteries, sails, brass retorts and magnetic fluid, and worked by directing and modulating magnetically charged air currents, rather as the stops of an organ modulate its tones. It ran on a mixture of foul substances, including ‘spermatic-animal-seminal rays’, ‘effluvia of dogs’ and ‘putrid human breath’, and its discharges of magnetic fluid were focused to deliver thoughts, feelings and sensations directly into Matthews’ brain. There were many of these mind-control settings, all classified by vivid names: ‘fluid locking’, ‘stone making’, ‘thigh talking’, ‘lobster-cracking’, ‘bomb-bursting’, and the dreaded ‘brain-saying’, whereby thoughts were forced into his brain against his will. To facilitate this process, the gang had implanted a magnet into his head. As a result of the Air Loom, Matthews was tormented constantly by delusions, physical agonies, fits of laughter and being forced to parrot whatever nonsense they chose to feed into his head. No wonder some people thought he was mad.
The Air Loom was being run by a gang of undercover Jacobin revolutionaries, bent on forcing Britain into a disastrous war with Revolutionary France. These characters, too, Matthews could describe with haunting precision. They were led by a puppet-master named ‘Bill the King’; all details were recorded by his second-in-command, ‘Jack the Schoolmaster’. The French liaison was accomplished by a woman called Charlotte, who seemed to Matthews to be as much a prisoner as himself, and was often chained up near-naked. ‘Sir Archy’ was a woman who dressed as a man and spoke in obscenities; the machine itself was operated by the sinister, pockmarked and nameless ‘Glove Woman’. If Matthews were to see any of these characters in the street, they would grasp batons of magnetic metal which would cause them to disappear.
But all this activity wasn’t directed solely at Matthews. There were many Air Loom gangs all over London, influencing the minds of politicians and public figures, and with a particularly firm grasp of the Prime Minister, William Pitt. They were lurking in streets, theatres and coffee-houses, where they tricked the unsuspecting into inhaling the magnetic fluid which would place them under the control of the Air Loom. By poisoning the minds of politicians on both sides of the Channel with paranoid ‘brain-sayings’, they were threatening national and international catastrophe.
Matthews had originally been committed to Bedlam after standing up in the public gallery of the House of Commons and accusing the Home Secretary, Lord Liverpool, of treason. When examined, he insisted that he had been involved in top secret peace negotiations between the British and French governments, but had been betrayed by the Pitt administration and left to rot in a Paris dungeon. At the time, his convoluted narrative of plot, counter-plot and conspiracy had been seen as a symptom of his grandiose madness. But a great deal of it was true.
Matthews had been a well-to-do tea broker, originally from Wales, who had strong Republican sympathies and, after the French Revolution, began travelling between London and Paris as a self-appointed peacemaker, trying to head off the looming war between France and England. Initially, he had spectacular success in persuading the moderate Republican faction that Britain would sooner be at peace than at war with a stable and constitutional French nation, and met several times with Pitt, Lord Liverpool and others to attempt to sell them on his secret proposal. But the moderate leaders with whom Matthews was negotiating had lost power to the hard-line Jacobins, and Matthews had been arrested on suspicion of being an English double agent. He was imprisoned for three years during the height of the Terror; when he was released and returned to England, and began accusing the cabinet of washing their hands of him, they denied all knowledge of his mission.
So Matthews may have been delusional, but his wild conspiracy theories held more than a grain of truth. Furthermore, when he wasn’t under assault from the Air Loom, he appears to have been extremely lucid and articulate. Certainly his family didn’t believe that he was mad; their view was that he was a good-natured man, a peacemaker, who had become eccentric as a result of his misfortunes and had developed cranky views on politics.

‘Brendan – with your obvious mastery of the state of science and your obvious total understanding of global warming would you please give us all a brief lesson in the complexities of climate change and show us the facts on both sides of the debate in a measured manner. I am confident you have read many papers on the subject. Enough to go around talking with authority anyway.’

I don’t understand relativity or quantum mechanics either, but I know that anyone without a degree in physics, preferably a post-graduate, and a tenured position at a respectable universit who claims to have gone ‘beyond Einstein’ or something like that is probably barking.

The fact is that to the best of my knowledge there is not one serious climate scientist (i.e. who meets the criteria of phd and tenured position at a renowned university) who doubts anthropogenic climate change. I also know from reading Scott Burgess that he is an imbecile. Not only do I know this: i also know that he is an extremist right winger with a taste for absurd conspiracy theories who takes for granted that truth should be subject to political expediency (and not just anyone’s political expediency either, but solely the expediencey of the rich and powerful). Given the other fact that Mr Burgess has no qualifications in climate science, or statistics, and in fact, no (so far as I know) qualifications of any sort, then the onus is on him to prove his case, not for me to prove mine.