Comments on: The Ultimate Insider

By: John Willson

John Willson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:32:03 +0000

I didn’t think that “conspiracy” was the central point of my argument, although I do appreciate the clarifications. Linking the neocons to the earlier liberal internationalists, one sees the same tactics and the same arrogance. Identify the few key institutions and the march through them need not be very long. And Clyde, being bald is perhaps the only thing I do better than you.

By: Kirt Higdon

Kirt Higdon — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:39:13 +0000

#3 and #4 – Secrecy is not essential to a conspiracy, merely tactical. In the criminal justice system, secrecy is not required to have a conviction for conspiracy, but at least one overt act to carry out the conspiracy is required. It is rather easy to see why secrecy is not a requirement for proof of a conspiracy. Were it a requirement, then conspiracies could never be proven. The very fact that enough was known of them to present as evidence would establish that they were not conspiracies.

By: Allen Wilson

Allen Wilson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:15:38 +0000

I think that what we are seeing is more a combination of what both Mr Higdon and Tobias and Mr Pinkerton are saying. There is the cimate of opinion, which will determine the outlook of the group in power, who will look after their own interests first and foremost regardless of that climate. Within this, there are those who engage in what Rockefeller and his cohorts and flunkies were up to. Then there are real, actual, secretive conspiracies, carried out either within the halls of government, or within government agencies, or by private cliques outside of the government, or within corporations. Sometimes (perhaps most of the time) the lines between the four are blurred, or they may disappear altogether.

Whether the Rockefeller bunch was or is guilty of a conspiracy even though they didn’t try to hide what they were doing may well be irrelevant, since there may be no difference between the evil effect of what they did and the evil effect of what a secret conspiracy might do.

By: Robert Pinkerton

Robert Pinkerton — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:22:40 +0000

Supporting Tobias, I submit we are not dealing so much with a conspiracy, as with a climate of opinion — unfortunately, one fostered by all too many socially-prominent social forces.

If one’s interlocutor’s opinions are embedded in social relationships that are important to him in any significant degree, reasoned argument might not be adequate to induce change of opinion. that goes squared if a large income depends upon one’s interlocutor’s support for an opinion you are trying to change.

Those hybristes in the Establishment will not change until their entire enterprise falls, unless the conditions of the prestige whereon they depend for their livings, change.

By: Tobias

Tobias — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:23:44 +0000

“A conspiracy is two or more people acting together to accomplish some evil or criminal end.”

Mr. Higdon, I think that by definition a conspiracy involves two or more people acting together *in secret* to accomplish some evil or criminal end. What the Rockefellers were up to was not exactly secret, as Dr. Willson observes.

By: Kirt Higdon

Kirt Higdon — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:20:44 +0000

Not exactly news, but it is helpful to review these historical matters every now and then just as a reminder of how we got to where we are today. What I don’t understand is the by now ritualistic denial that what we are dealing with is a conspiracy or conspiracies. A conspiracy is two or more people acting together to accomplish some evil or criminal end. National and international politics are mostly conspiracies on a massive scale. To deny this is either to deny the evil that is done or to assert that it is not planned, that it just happens by accident or due to “historical forces”. To deny conspiracy is to deny accountability, to refuse to hold these people responsible for their actions.

By: Clyde Wilson

Clyde Wilson — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:36:38 +0000

Fine piece, John. I am shocked to see that you are even balder than me.