Conspiracy

By Jim Fryar

This post is best read to the strains of the Tears for Fears song, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”.

An acquaintance asked me the other day, ”Do you think the US government destroyed the World Trade Centre so they could have an excuse to attack Afghanistan? I have a group of friends who say they did”.

As I felt that ridicule was in order I replied, “About as likely as the Port Arthur Massacre being carried out by the Australian Government to get gun control passed”.

“They say they can prove that too”.

“And the moon landing”?

“They say that they have evidence that it was definitely faked, what would you say to convince them they are wrong”.

“Nothing, I wouldn’t waste my time”.

I have heard this type of stuff all my life, and while the people promoting it seem genuine though deluded, I have long considered trying to convince them otherwise is like flogging a dead horse. The problem with conspiracy theories is that belief in them automatically confers a superior intelligence on the believer.

The logic is that the government, world leaders, business leaders, mafia, CIA, secret Zionist organizations, etc. are all out to get us, yet despite their incredible devilish cunning and deviousness, as well as the complicity of the press, not to forget “The Establishment”, they have been unmasked by people of higher intellect. No prizes for guessing who that might be.

This in turn creates the illusion that anyone disagreeing with them is a poor deluded fool, who has been taken in by the above and worthy at best, of only their sympathy and condescension. It must be great to be a higher form of life; I just have to get into that stuff.

Most of these theories are proposed by people who are analysing information from well outside their areas of expertise (if any), and so are vulnerable to suggestions that things aren’t as they seem. Take for example the WTC collapse. Two “facts” keep cropping up: - That the windows were blowing out ahead of the collapse, indicating that a controlled explosion was used, and that the buildings fell at terminal velocity, confirming this.

The buildings were weakened, first by very large aircraft crashing into them, then by the heat of the ensuing fires causing them to lose their structural integrity. In such circumstances the first parts to fail would be the horizontal structure (floors), unless the collision caused the walls to go first. It didn’t.

The floor that the aircraft ended up on would be carrying vastly more weight than it was ever intended to do, the heat weakening it and those above it, causing one to collapse into the other in a chain reaction, the resultant air blast appearing to the observer a series of explosions.

When an object falls it accelerates at 32 feet per second per second until it reaches terminal velosity, so it simply could not fall at terminal velocity all the way.

This also fails to take account of Osama and his mates slapping each other on the backs and congratulating each other on a job well done in a video, unless of course the CIA got Kubric to produce this like some claim he did for the moon landings, or if they did, why Bin Laden would be dumb enough to go along with it.

I am not sure why, if the government did it, that they did not get me to arrange it for them, I could have done it much better. Take for example the absence of the President. If you fake being attacked, intending to start a war, it is terribly important to have the leader on the spot, well, at least close by, so he can be seen calmly directing rescue efforts, and instilling confidence in the people.

I would have had George Bush coming out of the smoke and flames, covered in dust and supporting an injured fire fighter with each arm, then give an impromptu speech. (I hope this doesn’t start one that Rudy Giuliani set it up).

And as for the Pentagon, I wouldn't have fired a cruise missile into it and then do the impossible task of moving all that aircraft wreckage in, before anybody who was not in on it got there. Fair go! why not just get the co-operative terrorists to just crash a bloody plane into it.

The only good thing coming out of it, the way it is claimed it was done, is that the conspiracy theorists havent realised yet that this means that an aircraft and all of it's passengers have simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Oh I get it, the Pentagon attack was used by the CIA to cover up the fact that the plane went missing some where else.

The fact that governments get caught trying to cover up things, is seen by the theorists as clear proof that they do it, I see it as clear proof that they are not very good at it.

I mentioned this to Richard Nixon on the grassy knoll in 63, and he said “Don’t worry Jim, if anyone finds out they’ll blame LBJ”.

This is what Douglas Adams had to say, in The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

“You know”, said Arthur thoughtfully, “all of this explains a lot of things. All through my life I have had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, something sinister, and no one would tell me what it was”.

“No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe has that.”