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Re: Conference on Conspiracy Theories

PostPosted: Thu Mar 19, 2015 1:49 pm
by elfismiles
Or Eric Wilson and Tim Lindsey or the authors featured in Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty

see list of contributors / table of contents below...

Image
http://us.macmillan.com/governmentoftheshadows
http://www.amazon.com/Government-Shadow ... 0745326242

Joao » 18 Mar 2015 23:24 wrote:Thanks. Good write-up, especially considering it came from the Randians over at Reason.

I'm slightly surprised by the absence of Prof. Lance deHaven-Smith and the other academics who contributed to the famous Feb. 2010 "SCAD" issue of American Behavioral Scientist. I wonder if they weren't invited, or if they didn't want to participate in something entitled "Conference on Conspiracy Theories". (Complete text of those ABS articles linked here.)


Introduction:Parapolitics, Shadow Governance and Criminal Sovereignty
Robert Cribb (Australian National University, Canberra) and Peter Dale Scott (University of California, Berkeley)
PART I: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
1. Deconstructing the Shadows
Eric Wilson (Monash University, Victoria, Australia)
2. Democratic State vs. Deep State: Approaching the Dual State of the West
Ola Tunander (International Peace Research Institute, Oslo)
3. Governing Through Globalised Crime
Mark Findlay (University of Sydney)
4. Prospering from Crime: Money Laundering and Financial Crises
Guilhem Fabre (Le Harve University, France)
5. The Shadow Economy: Markets, Crime and the State
Howard Dick (University of Melbourne)
6. Transnational Crime and Global Illicit Economies
Vincenzo Ruggiero (Middlesex University)
7. Redefining Statehood in the Global Periphery
William Reno (Northwestern University, Illinois)
PART II: CASE STUDIES
8. The Sicilian Mafia: Para-state and Adventure Capitalism
Henner Hess (University of Frankfurt)
9. Drugs, Parapolitics, and Mexico: The DFS, the Drug Traffic, and the United States
Peter Dale Scott (University of California, Berkeley)
10. Parapolitics and Afghanistan
Rensselaer W. Lee III (Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia)
11. From Drug Lords to Warlords: Illegal Drugs and the 'Unintended' Consequences of Drug Policies in Colombia
Francisco Thoumi (Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá)
12. Covert Netherworld: Clandestine Services and Criminal Syndicates in Shaping the Philippine State
Alfred W. McCoy (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
13 Beyond Democratic Checks and Balances: The Propaganda Due Masonic Lodge and the CIA in Italy's First
Republic
Daniele Ganser (Freelance historian, has taught at universities in Switzerland including Basel)


Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2015 10:08 am
by RocketMan
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/na ... y-theories

Why Our Brains Are Hardwired for Conspiracy Theories

On the fascinating psychology of conspiracy theories for Ebola, MH370 & Lady Di

Post published by Mark van Vugt Ph.D. on Dec 29, 2014 in Naturally Selected

This was another great year for conspiracy believers. The most popular conspiracy theory concerning the Ebola virus was that it was developed in a US laboratory as a bioweapon against the population explosion in Africa. When rapper Chris Brown tweeted to his 13 million followers: "I don't know..but I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control" it went viral. There were also conspiracy theories abound regarding the fates of Malaysian Airlines flights MH17 and MH370. Some even suggested these incidents involved the same aircraft.

When do we speak of a conspiracy theory, why are they so popular, and how can we resist them? According to Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, a conspiracy theory involves an event that is perceived as threatening — such as a mysterious disease, a terrorist attack, or the unexplained death of a high status figure — which is attributed to a secret conspiracy of individuals trying to achieve their goals through illegitimate means. Take for instance the death of Lady Di in 1997. According to a recent poll, conducted by YouGov UK, 38% of the British population still believe that her death was not accidental. The most popular conspiracy theory is that the car in which she was riding in Paris was sabotaged by the British Security Service on behalf of the royal family because of her affair with the Muslim playboy Dodi Fayed, son of the former Harrods and Fulham football club owner, Mohamed Fayed.

How can we explain the popularity and persistence of conspiracy thinking using an evolutionary perspective? The main cause lies in the way the human brain has evolved. In the multitude of data that reach us every day through our senses, our brains are constantly selecting, filtering, and organizing information. An important function of our mind is pattern recognition. Can we detect a pattern in the vast amount of stimuli that come to us from the environment? The evolutionary function of pattern recognition is evident. If it rained for a few days in a row then our ancestors knew that the rain-period had arrived, and so it was time was to move on. Or if our ancestors came across strangers on different hunting expeditions then you could surmise that a new tribe had settled in their territory.

The human urge for recognizing patterns is very strong. Psychologist Thomas Gilovich showed participants a series of two letters, e.g. OXOOOXXOXXOOXOO. Did they recognize a pattern? Most people did until Gilovich explained that the series was created by chance by throwing a coin (with an X for heads and 0 for tails). The same sensitivity to patterns explains why we recognize animals in the clouds or saints or pop stars in rocks and boulders. Diane Duyser took a bite from her sandwich one day and saw the image of Virgin Mary in what was left. She sold the sandwich on eBay for a whopping 28,000 dollar!*


Another evolved function of the mind is to respond swiftly to threats. The biggest threat facing humans throughout history has been other people, particularly when they teamed up against you. If you consider societies that still live as in ancestral times, such as the Yanomamo in the Amazon region or the Kung San in Botswana then the most common form of violence involves a conspiracy directed against a particular individual who has been accused of malice, adultery, or witchcraft.

So we have evolved to be hypersensitive to conspiracy threats especially when we are anxious. A recent study by my colleagues Jan Willem van Prooijen and Eric van Dijk found that when student participants read an article about an African leader who was involved in a car accident they were more inclined to believe in a conspiracy when he died than when he was wounded. Other research from the University of Amsterdam found that people tended to believe more strongly in conspiracies when they were uncertain. Participants were asked to write about a subject that they either had a clear position on or were ambivalent about. Then they responded to a scenario in which they missed out on a promotion at work. The day before they received the news they noticed that their boss was exchanging a lot of emails with a colleague sitting next to them. Did participants think that their failed promotion had something to do with those emails? People who were induced to feel ambivalent believed more strongly in a conspiracy.

There are also individual differences in conspiracy beliefs. A family member sends me regular links to web articles on all sorts of conspiracies such as (a) evidence for the existence of UFOs, (b) adding chemicals to drinking water to poison the population, (c) the alleged responsibility of the US government for 9/11. (Interestingly, almost 30% of Americans still believe in such a conspiracy). My relative has a high degree of openness to all that is new and strange, which is no surprise because he is an artist. Another personality factor predicting belief in conspiracy theories is how friendly you are. The less friendly the more you believe in conspiracies. From an evolutionary perspective this may be a highly functional adaptation!

A finally factor determining conspiracy thinking is power. On the one hand, if you feel powerless you are more inclined to believe that they are conspiring against you. On the other hand, people are also more likely to believe in conspiracies when their power base is being threatened. A dictator wields absolute power but obviously does not want to lose it. So some degree of paranoia — which is a component of conspiracy thinking — is not misplaced. We know from dictators around the world such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Kim Il Sung that they were extremely suspicious about conspiracies. Hitler, for instance, had women locked up who wrote them love letters for fear that they were out to do something to him.

So what should we do with this wisdom about conspiracy thinking given that it is probably hardwired? The first lesson is that you should operate as a scientist and always carefully consider the evidence for any conspiracy theory (which often turns out to be flimsy). When you do so you find that there really is something like climate change, and that it is not a conspiracy against the oil or car industry. And the burden of proof in the downing of MH17 points clearly in the direction of the pro-Russian rebels in the eastern Ukraine whatever the Russian media might otherwise suggest.

The second remedy for conspiracy thinking is to realize that there is really such a thing as a coincidence or a stroke of bad luck. If you think logically there is no design behind that cloud looking like an elephant or a tortilla with an image of Jesus. And whatever Oliver Stone and other filmmakers want you to believe, JFK was probably killed by a madman rather than a complex conspiracy involving the FBI, CIA and Lyndon B. Johnson.

To edit a famous saying: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're after you.

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2015 1:59 pm
by Twyla LaSarc
The second remedy for conspiracy thinking is to realize that there is really such a thing as a coincidence or a stroke of bad luck. If you think logically there is no design behind that cloud looking like an elephant or a tortilla with an image of Jesus. And whatever Oliver Stone and other filmmakers want you to believe, JFK was probably killed by a madman rather than a complex conspiracy involving the FBI, CIA and Lyndon B. Johnson.


And here, just take these a couple of these helpful drugs from big pharma twice a day. You'll eventually find your facination with CT just as dead as your libido, we promise. :wink

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2015 2:17 pm
by zangtang
You would think it'd be better if he tried talking out of his mouth -
but on 2nd reading (when it sinks in further, & the true horror emerges),
becomes apparent he doesn't have the intellectual horsepower.

Seriously - who gave this deluded cunt a Phd ?

Like many others here, I abhor violence, but often ponder if
a vigorous ,sustained bitchslapping might not effect some semblance of realism?.......

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 3:59 am
by RocketMan
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/17/courtne ... socialflow

Courtney didn’t kill Kurt: The twisted misogyny behind suicide conspiracy theories

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 6:42 am
by RocketMan
:deadhorse:

Short of a conspiracy theory? You can always blame the Jews
David Baddiel

Conspiracy theory, I said in my last standup show, is how idiots get to feel like intellectuals. I still believe this: conspiracy theory is primarily a way for people, mainly men, to appear in the know, to use their collection of assumptions, generalisations, straw men and false inferences to say, effectively: ah, the wool may have been pulled over your eyes, my friend, but not mine.

But there are other reasons why it’s so popular these days. It provides lonely men with an online community of like-minded lonely men. It’s comforting; it’s reassuring. It provides order in a disordered universe to imagine that shadowy forces organise horrific events, rather than to have to confront the terrible truth that death and destruction happen, all the time, apparently at random. And, as David Cameron pointed out this week in his speech on extremism, it creates a way into something else that’s becoming increasingly popular these days: antisemitism.

Why do so many conspiracy theories boil down to: it’s the Jews wot done it?

One simple reason is that Jews are quite hard to spot, compared with most minorities. This allows them to be unmasked, and unmasking – to be able to say, “I and no one else (apart from all my mates on abovetopsecret.com) have spotted something hidden” – is the principal drive of the conspiracy theorist. But more importantly, within racial stereotyping Jews occupy a somewhat unique position, with a two-pronged status – both low and high.

Although they can be described as stinking and dirty and vermin, and all the other unlovely appellations ascribed by racists to every ethnicity outside the mainstream, they are the only minority who are also secretly in control, pulling the strings behind the scenes, forever conspiring to promote their own hidden global agenda.

This doublethink, which has existed more or less since we made the silly mistake of preferring Barabbas, has in our own time been turbocharged by the existence of the state of Israel. Those who have always felt that Jews were powerful, controlling and out to destroy the world can now point in the direction of the Middle East and say: there you are.

But for the conspiracy theorists, even the most appalling political and military machinations of Binyamin Netanyahu and the Israel Defence Forces – of Israel itself – are far less important than the creation of what David Aaronovitch, in Voodoo Histories, describes as a new kind of super-Jew: the Zionist. This is not, for the conspiracy theorist, the straightforward hate figure of the left. Rather, it is a character, or more importantly a group, to which all western governments are secretly in hock: unbelievably rich and powerful, and dedicated unswervingly to its own project, which is nothing less than the complete control of the world. Yes: Zionists are basically Spectre.

Which makes the conspiracy theorist, to some extent, James Bond. So many conspiracy theories end up in some way to do with these particular imagined super-villains – even ones such as the “murder” of Princess Diana, which seem to have very little apparent benefit to the Zionists – that it’s clear some kind of antisemitism, even if unconsciously, is going on here. But that’s obscured by the self-image of the conspiracy theorist, who is, of course, the good guy, the lone hero, unmasking the secret powers of evil – even if unmasking the secret powers of evil in so many cases seems to involve saying: it’s the Jews.

If the conspiracy theorist is the good guy, this cannot be bad; therefore it cannot be racist. So we come to a position whereby for a lot of people, pointing at one small ethnic group and saying they’re responsible for all the worst things in the world is no longer racist. It’s fighting the good fight.

I’m talking mainly about how things are among the slightly absurd men on social media trading reasons for why the moon landings were actually faked (by the Zionists, I assume: Stanley Kubrick was Jewish – he probably filmed it). In the Middle East and much of east Asia, beliefs such as the idea that 4,000 notified-by-Israel Jews didn’t turn up for work in the World Trade Center on 9/11 (a fallacy: 9.25% of people who died in the Twin Towers were Jewish, roughly the Jewish population of New York City) are, for many people, facts.

Our culture moves very fast now. When complicated and troubling events happen, easy answers are quickly sought and provided. There is an American standup I once saw whose first line went: I blame the Jews – it’s quicker that way.

Having said this, I have no idea how, without intense curbs on free speech (which won’t work – conspiracy theorists love the martyrdom of being muzzled), David Cameron will change anything. And frankly, if he tried to convince me that the world wasn’t actually controlled by a rich and powerful network operating on behalf of their own secret political and economic interests, I wouldn’t believe him either.

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:42 pm
by Elvis
RocketMan wrote:Short of a conspiracy theory? You can always blame the Jews
David Baddiel


Credit due for that bit of twaddle...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -extremism


And you know what, it's the people who cite those arguments who are so "comforted" "to appear in the know" and "reassured" by their sickeningly smug belief that they have it all figured out. They read two or three Salon or Vanity Fair articles like this and they're just insufferable.

And JMFC, talk about "assumptions, generalisations, straw men and false inferences"! JMFC. It's just too much. Can you believe the guy actually wrote that in this article? OMG :lol:

:wallhead:

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 24, 2015 12:04 am
by zangtang
vey disappointing - he used to be quite funny....

- but oooooh hes on my shit list now boy, lemme tellya!

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:18 am
by RocketMan
"Science journalist" sounds to me pretty close to a "tech journalist"...and also "sports journalist".

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/books ... p=cur&_r=0

‘Suspicious Minds,’ by Rob Brotherton

For all the talk of Donald Trump’s unpresidential behavior, the Republican enfant terrible does share one notable trait with that paragon of presidentiality, George Washington: a fondness for conspiracy theories. Washington once wrote in a letter that he believed an Illuminati conspiracy was at work in America, while Trump is the figurehead of the birther movement, which claims Barack Obama is not a natural-born American citizen. The psychologist and science journalist Rob Brotherton’s new book, “Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy ­Theories,” helps explain why someone with such seemingly outlandish views can gain widespread public support. It turns out we are all conspiracy theorists.

Brotherton attacks the stereotype, which he says was popularized by the historian Richard Hofstadter in his influential essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” of conspiracy theorists as a small band of tinfoil-adorned loonies — the paranoid fringe. Brotherton’s main argument is that we all possess a conspiracy mind-set to some extent, because it is hard-wired into our brains. “Suspicious Minds” details the various psychological “quirks and shortcuts” that make us susceptible to conspiracy theories.

For example, psychologists have discovered that we possess an “intentionality bias,” which tricks us into assuming every incidental event that happens in the world is the result of someone’s intention. A “proportionality bias” convinces us that momentous events must have equally momentous causes, which is why some people vainly shake a die harder when they want to roll a large number as if it were a fairground strength tester. We are all predisposed to see patterns in coincidental events. Normally these biases help us navigate the world and stay out of danger, but left unchecked they can lead us astray.

Brotherton argues that conspiracy theories are so seductive because they hit many of these psychological biases at the same time. Paradoxically, the illusion of an evil, all-powerful conspiracy guiding events can be more comforting than the reality that humans are rarely in control. This impulse is not limited to rambling YouTube comments; it’s all over the mainstream media. For instance: While the most obvious explanation of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s disappearance was a freak accident, New York magazine ran a cover story suggesting it was hijacked by terrorists who landed it safely in Central Asia.

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:40 am
by semper occultus
Political paranoia v. political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics

JEFFREY M. BALE


http://www.miis.edu/media/view/18981/original/balePOPartconspire.pdf

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:44 am
by Elvis
RocketMan wrote:"Science journalist" sounds to me pretty close to a "tech journalist"...and also "sports journalist".

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/books ... p=cur&_r=0

‘Suspicious Minds,’ by Rob Brotherton



Wow, poo-pooing "conspiracy theories" is Rob Brotherton's full-time schtick! No wonder I felt like I'd read that article several times before.


About Rob Brotherton
Rob is a Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, and assistant editor of The Skeptic [www.skeptic.org.uk]. Follow Rob on Twitter: @rob_brotherton

Image



EDIT: It's even worse than I imagined:

Rob completed a doctoral degree on the psychology of conspiracy theories

http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/rob-brotherton

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:02 am
by RocketMan
How about we rename this thread "Conspiracy in the media"? Seems like a useful thread to have.

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:18 am
by Luther Blissett
RocketMan » Mon Jan 04, 2016 8:18 am wrote:"Science journalist" sounds to me pretty close to a "tech journalist"...and also "sports journalist".

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/books ... p=cur&_r=0

‘Suspicious Minds,’ by Rob Brotherton

For all the talk of Donald Trump’s unpresidential behavior, the Republican enfant terrible does share one notable trait with that paragon of presidentiality, George Washington: a fondness for conspiracy theories. Washington once wrote in a letter that he believed an Illuminati conspiracy was at work in America, while Trump is the figurehead of the birther movement, which claims Barack Obama is not a natural-born American citizen…


Ay yi yi, you've got to be kidding me.

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:06 am
by JackRiddler
Rob completed a doctoral degree on the psychology of conspiracy theories


It can be written by repeating the usual shit off the top of one's head, basically. Except you have to do it 30 times for each "case," and voila. I definitely went with the wrong discipline.

Re: [Poll] A sticky thread for "'CT' in the media"?

PostPosted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:24 am
by DrEvil
Rob completed a doctoral degree on the psychology of conspiracy theories

http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/rob-brotherton


This is a pretty interesting topic. Just take a look at World Net Daily or the Icke forums and you have to wonder what the hell is going on in some of those people's heads.

Would be interesting to know what makes people believe the obviously bat-shit theories, like "The Moon is a giant mind-control machine" or "Obama is a secret communist Muslim who wants to destroy America". Or TimeCube *shudder*.