What websites are you claiming I refer people to? be specific. You refer to Sy Hersh. Name some websites I have 'referred people to' and let's debate their merits.
Joe W.
>From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Democracy Now 5/26
>Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 00:44:01 -0400
>
>On Sunday, May 30, 2004, at 10:05 PM, Joseph Wanzala wrote:
>
>>The idea is to go after them with all the means at your disposal, if the
>>courts help, use the courts, if investigative journalism ('conspiracism'
>>in Berletlandia) works, use that, all the while you try to build
>>alternative institutions (not spend all your spare time flirting with the
>>captains of industry at the CFR).
>>
>>You also create a false dichotomy between institutional analysis and
>>investigative journalism. In fact there is rich complimentarity between
>>both apporaches - because the political process is a function of both
>>individual and institutional agency, which are somtimes in sync, sometimes
>>not.
>
>I wouldn't characterize the web sites and books you refer people to as
>"investigative journalism," exactly. Almost without exception, as Chip and
>others have tried to point out, they are riddled with elementary errors in
>logic and empirical investigative methodology, which is not true of *real*
>investigative journalists such as Sy Hersh. When challenged on some of
>their more outlandish theories, they retreat to the position: "Oh, we don't
>have answers, we're only suggesting questions." But professionals like
>Hersh don't toss out vague questions; they actually dig up answers, that
>is, facts.
>
>Your "questioners" resemble no one so much as they do those amateur
>Einsteins who draw up one manifesto after another proclaiming that old Al
>was wrong about relativity or quantum theory and pester university physics
>departments with them. The problem is, these geniuses have never bothered
>to study even elementary physics. (The would-be biological geniuses who can
>"prove" that Genesis is right and evolutionary theory is wrong are another
>example.)
>
>>What you call my 'conspiracy theories' in fact help people understand
>>better the nature of capitalist or fascist power, by analysisng how their
>>instutions operate, as well as analyzing the actions of the agents of
>>these institutions.
>
>That would be the case if in fact (a) your stable of experts on what really
>happened on 9/11/01 had come up with a true explanation, which they
>haven't, as far as I can tell and (b) the whole nature of capitalist power
>(or the most important part of it) consisted of conspiracies of this kind.
>But again, as Chip and others have patiently tried to explain, although it
>is true that powerful people do meet in boardrooms and government offices
>to plan stuff they don't want the public to find out about, the capitalist
>system is much more complex than that.
>
>It's just like the amateur Einsteins vs. Big Al. The idea that everything
>that happens in the world economic/political system can be explained by a
>handful of people hatching plots to pull off big, splashy events like the
>Kennedy assassination or 9/11 is incorrect on the face of it. The
>capitalist system, in concrete terms, involves millions of events every day
>all over the world. Who has time to plot all of them? In fact, the reason
>we call it a *system* is that these events occur routinely, according to
>something like a mechanism (not exactly, but in rough metaphorical terms).
>
>>Are you suggesting that institutions act of their own volition, like in
>>'The Matrix' without any role of actual human agency. What you are
>>suggesting leads people to hopelessness, to the idea that the insitutions
>>we are up against are merely abstractions and do not manifest themselves
>>in the form of human actors.
>
>Nope. There *are* actors working within the institutions, of course. But
>they are almost never the actors you and your fellow conspiracists point
>to, and they almost never operate the way you allege those actors operate.
>
>It's a bit hard to explain all this without outlining the whole theory of
>social institutions in general and capitalism in particular, about which
>books and books have been written, and which others on this list are much
>better qualified to expound on than I am. I would just say that the actors
>in the system form a complex hierarchy, ranging from all the workers
>employed by the system through their bosses and their bosses' bosses, as
>well as government officials and politicians, the media, etc. All of their
>activities, in all of their manifold dynamic interrelationships, constitute
>the agencies which cause the system to function. Even if your hypothetical
>plotters cooking up 9/11 existed, they would account for only a small part
>of this whole complex of actions.
>
>Let's assume, hypothetically, that you and your "investigative reporters"
>are right: someone in the U.S. government either generated the whole 9/11
>thing themselves, or learned that it was being plotted by someone else and
>sat by allowing it to go forward (grounding the Air Force fighters, etc.).
>To what end? Presumably, to produce a very shocking event that would cause
>the American people to acquiesce in getting the Patriot Act passed, support
>attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, etc.
>
>OK. Now suppose this whole plot is uncovered in a very convincing way by
>your "investigative reporters." Now what happens? The masses march on
>Washington and Wall Street and other centers of capitalist power, crying
>"The jig is up!" and instituting the United Socialist Republic of States of
>America? Well, I don't know what would happen, but I doubt it would be
>anything like that.
>
>Think back to November 22, 1963. I believe you stated the other day that
>hardly anyone thinks that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot JFK on that date.
>I'm not sure you're right about what almost no one thinks :-), but suppose
>you are. Suppose it has now been conclusively demonstrated, and everyone
>now knows, that LBJ actually put together a conspiracy to make him
>President by whacking Jack. Is that going to enlighten everyone about the
>nature of the capitalist system? No, it will just convince them that LBJ
>was indeed a very rotten politician, and cause them to scratch their heads
>in wonder that, somehow or other, an awful lot of folks in the federal,
>state, and local Dallas governments as well as many, many media companies,
>the hospital staffs involved in trying to resuscitate and then in
>autopsying JFK, etc., were persuaded to conspire with him to pull it off
>and then cover up that conspiracy almost perfectly, producing the whole
>Warren Report and the whole historical record of the last 40 years.
>Amazing!
>
>In other words, most people, if all of this were true, would be really
>pissed off at everyone involved in this plot, and would sadly conclude that
>politicians like LBJ are even more crooked than they thought. But would
>they have learned anything more about the capitalist system than they could
>learn right now from reading the collected works of Henwood, Chomsky, et
>al.? I submit that they would have learned much, much less.
>
>I think that that is more or less what Cde Cox and others are trying to
>tell you.
>
>
>Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
>__________________________________
>A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was
>equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the
>London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne
>Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt
>
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