Conspiracy Theory

Where's the Birth Certificate?
Originally uploaded by paparatti

I grabbed the picture from Flickr and then clicked "blog it" because it's the easiest way to get the attribution right. The funny thing is that people coming to the blog will see just the photo with the title: "Where's the Birth Certificate?"

I've never seriously doubted that Barack Obama was born in the USA. I'm not sure why he seems so foreign to so many Americans, but it's precisely that sort of belief I've been ruminating about for the last week or so.

Election seasons here in the USA are long and with elections in November the political ads are everywhere. The way that some Americans conceive of the world, well they believe in conspiracy theories! There's quite a bit of distance between what I think and some of these theories, but I don't feel smug about that. When I try to put a narrative together about what's really going on, I fall into my own versions of conspiracy theories.

Ruminating along these lines I remembered a point that Phil Jones made in his writing about Netocracy that conspiracy theory might "play the role for NetoCracy that religion did under feudalism?"

I went searching for "netocracy" and saw a bunch of links of which quite a few turned out to be me pointing to Phil Jones. I blushed as there seemed something sycophanitc about them. Sycophancy is surely relevant to the whole idea of NetoCracy. The Wikipedia article on syncophancy helpfully provides 15 alternative phrases: toady, lickspittle, bootlicker, etc., none of the descriptions I'd like to think of myself in re Mr. Jones, whom I hold in high esteem.

It is odd that not many others than Jones say much about Netocracy. I suspect that one reason for that has to do with the question Phil asks about conspiracy theories playing an epistemological role. I think that's a question that comes to mind even if nobody hears Jones explicitly ask it. Conspiracy theories are discredited, something only "they" believe in, so that makes a high hurdle to talking in terms of netocracy. Anyhow, Jones posted a link to a paper on Netocracy he delivered at the Wittgenstein Symposium which is a short primer on the construct.

Jones writes:

Central to their [Bard and Söderqvist] thinking is that the ruling class will arise through their aptitude for managing, trading and filtering information streams, while the underclass have little control over the streams to which they are connected, and are effectively bamboozled into subservience.

I added the link to Amazon's page for Bard and Söderqvist book. Oh, in this election cycle I'm feeling bamboozled and think too many of my fellow Americans are too.

My family name is Powers, which is a common name in the USA. I was rather angry about the recent news that a shadowy privately held organization was given a contract by Pennsylvania to collect information on citizen groups and their information forwarded to corporations, corporation lobbyists and law enforcement officials. The person who made the contract is named James F. Powers the head of Pennsylvania Homeland Security. There's no relation so far as I know, but his family name probably did preclude my screaming for his head on a platter.

The cost of this contract makes it small potatoes really, but the contract raises all sorts of issues, so I'm happy there's be some sustained attention to it. Powers made himself very scarce after the controversy erupted but he testified before a panel of the Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee looking into the matter yesterday.

The link to the story online doesn't include a picture of Powers, but the print edition did. He looks like he could be related to me ;-) One reason the whole affair made me so angry is that the exploitation of natural gas at depths of a mile or more is a very important issue facing Pennsylvanians now. ITRR the organization doing these reports is a shadowy group. The Governor released their product publicly. Working from those reporters were able to fill redacted parts of documents ITRR had released on their Web site. ITRR said that they redacted portions "to protect client privacy." Extrapolating from that Massey Energy and Koch Industries are probably clients of ITRR.

After testifying before the Senate panel Powers talked to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters and told them:

"As a private citizen, I'm actually against drilling, but my responsibility as a public official is to support the rights of people legitimately doing business. I have to protect them," he said. "As long as they're legally conducting business with permits to drill, my responsibility is to protect them."

There are 872 wells in reporting data given to the state so far. I don't imagine there are too many Pennsylvanians who think they can to anything to stop further drilling. But there are plenty who wish that the drilling goes on nowhere near them. So when Powers says he "against drilling" he probably means "not in my backyard" which I totally relate to. Anyhow the political decisions are much more to do with "how" and under what restrictions drilling proceeds than it is a pro and con issue. Matters of policy entail quite a lot of nuance and detail and that's why citizen meetings are so necessary.

For example as the drilling goes down a mile or so vertically to the ground surface the wells are then exploited by fracturing horizontal seams. So there's an issue depending on your point of view of "fair pooling" or "forced pooling" where if a sufficient number of your neighbors have sold their mineral rights and you retain them companies can still drill beneath your property. People in communities want to talk about things like this. And it's not surprising that companies would want to know who said what at such meetings, on the other hand it hardly seems the role of government to pay the tab for such surveillance and report production.

James F. Powers holds the rank of colonel. Powers's boss Robert French, director of Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency holds the rank of general. Both men in their civilian capacity were dressed in business suits when they testified. The point is that Powers has a great deal of experience, so his notion that his job is to protect drilling interests isn't a mistake.

Smedley Butler was a Major General in the US Marine Corps and one of the most revered officers ever. Butler went before a congressional committee (national) in 1934 and testified that a group of business leaders had contacted him to lead a military coup d'etat against then president Franklin Roosevelt. In 1935 he toured the country giving a speech War Is a Racket. A pamphlet of the same was also published and got wide circulation. Butler wrote:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Here are a couple of links from Phil Jones's wiki, the first NetoCracy and the second Conspiracy Theories The general outlines of conspiracy may not have changed that much since the 1930's but what has changed is the billions being created through commons based peer production. Military theorist John Robb wrote a piece recently entitled Cognitive Slaves. I chuckled when I read Robb say about himself: "an optimist (believe it or not)." The funny part is I do believe him. Whether or not Phil Jones would call himself an optimist, I don't know; I can't say I've seen him write that. Nonetheless, Phil is a very constructive fellow, I know that. And he sees some potential good in Netocracy.

Networks aren't all bad nor all good. To steer into the good and avoid the bad, it matters quite a lot the conspiracy theories one subscribes to. Despite his own personal views about gas drilling in Pennsylvania James Powers considered it his duty to report to lobbyist of energy companies; his duty is conceived as protecting their interests. Therefore the conspiracies he's concerned about are meetings like parents trying to get to the bottom of school administrators plans to open up drilling on school grounds. Two quite different conspiracy theories are operative in situations like that, but only one is named "conspiracy" by the state. Powers seems completely blind to the other one.

Things are going to hell in a hand basket here in the USA. I'm not alone in feeling a sense of doom about the up coming elections. But I don't think it altogether helpful to think in polarized left/right dichotomy when it comes to conspiracy theories simply because it seems to messy to try to cut them up that way. I sniff around at the Web site of The Smedley Butler Society and it's hard for me tell if it smells right or left. It seems to me that smelling a racket isn't something completely dependent on political persuasion. Left and right people are sensing conspiracies and there's more agreement about these theories that most of us seem to think.

Blog Conversations

I feel bad not having responded to recent blog comments.

Dave Winer and Jay Rosen have a Podcast called Rebooting the News. On a recent episode Winer made the observation that blogs aren't conversations, rather blogs are publishing. He's got a point, but comments still mean a lot to me.

First of all regarding computer talk, I'm about the last person who ought to be writing about it as I know so little.

A friend who commented uses a Mac. As he's an artist and illustrator that choice makes so much sense for him. Not that he mentioned it, but there is a subtext perhaps to his comment regarding free and open source software. Linux is not pirate software and in fact there are various business models for making money related to the operating system.

I don't know enough about Linux to be a fanboy. I love OSX from what little I've played around on it; heck I love XP. There seems to me much that's interesting about the Linux operating system, but I'm looking at what I've written below and it doesn't seem interesting, so I'll delete it. What I really want to say to my friend Pingting is I love that you create wonderful art using a Mac.

Daisy wrote:

"This is a very, very serious political moment right now. Fascism is the bull at the gate..."

The 27th Comrade in Uganda sees the seriousness of the present here in the USA too. How to respond to Daisy in particular gives me a mental block. Fascism is the word I think but out of habit do not say.

I don't know how to respond.

Today's top story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made me so agitated and angry I could barely sit still. Local radio station WDUQ offers additional reporting on the story. The gist of the story is that the Director of State Homeland Security Col. James F. Powers--no relation--contracted with an Israeli company ITRR to

"inform state police and homeland security about 'credible threats to critical infrastructure' around the state, meaning potential attempts by terrorist to destroy roads, bridges, buildings, power facilities or other important facilities."

What the company actually did was to disseminate "wrongful and improper reports" about "environmental groups, tax protesters, people at gay and lesbian rallies and even supporters of more funding for education."

We all know how dangerous people at gay and lesbian rallies are and those dastardly people concerned about education can be--rolls eyes. The part that's made me so angry has to do with the politics of the exploitation of Marcellus Shale Gas which is a huge political issue right now. ITRR was providing "wrongful and improper" reports to Gas companies. Our lame-duck Governor says he's embarrassed but will not discipline Col. Powers over the matter.

Jan Jarrett, President & CEO of PennFuture a civil society group which advocates on behalf of the environment said that she is satisfied with Governor Rendell's apology over the matter.

Her satisfaction sticks in my craw. The recently appointed State Department of Environmental Protection head is John Hanger and he was former head of PennFuture. The organization is lobbying in favor of passage of a severance tax on deep natural gas drilling by October 1st. I'm supportive of this effort. I'm less sure of my support for various options floating around the Legislature for what to do with the money, mostly because reporting on it has been weak.

National elections are coming in November and the Tea Party is well represented by candidates for the highest offices--yes Daisy I know it's not just a Southern thing! So I see the bind that Jarret is in: Governor Rendell is more or less aligned with PennFuture's position, and the organization has the ear of his administration. But on the other hand that the Governor has offered an apology to Jarrett means that "wrong and improper" reports have been disseminated concerning the thousands of PennFuture supporters to gas companies, who oppose this legislation. The Governor is clear that he intends to take no action to redress this horrendous violation of state power. Jan Jarrett may be satisfied with an empty apology, I am not.

The trouble with me is I'm not so good with conversations, I rant. I've been ranting about Newsweek Magazine to my father for years now. He finally let his subscription lapse, just at the time the magazine was sold. Newsweek International editor, Fareed Zakaria wrote an important piece for September 11th, which I didn't get to see in print, What America Has Lost: It is clear we overreacted to 9/11. This business in Pennsylvania is just a tiny piece of a overwhelming juggernaut. Here's another piece, The Surge in Defense Spending: What Did The Pentagon Do With That Extra Trillion Dollars?. Even as bad as the US media is, and it's plenty bad, there's no shortage of evidence that we're seriously lost as a nation.

My dad watches TV so in the background I hear political ads and they fill me with rage. But I know that my rage does more harm than good; people just think I'm nuts. I hear you Daisy, but not so clear as to what I ought to do with the bull at the gate.

I stepped outside for a moment and heard a coyote howl. I've been hearing coyotes for a couple of years around here, but hadn't seen one until this Sunday. The coyote was walking along the road along the field in front of the house. A friend told me they're in the corn fields because turkeys are feeding there, "Every day is Thanksgiving for the coyote." Once the corn is cut my friend assures me the coyotes will hide once again. I'm fond of coyotes because of the beautiful oeuvre of Native American coyote stories. The trouble is coyotes are known to kill cats.

The picture is of our cat Sam who is no longer alive. Pingting gave me a photo scanner and I tested it out with that photo of Sam. He was a cat of great distinction. One of the current resident cats here is Barney a black "tux" cat. When I'm outside Barney will call to me and make his way over for a pat. When Sam was around and our paths would cross he would glare at me as if to say, "Don't bug me when I'm working." Here's a Youtube of Little Village performing a song with just that title.

Blog Depression

I've already satisfied myself that blogging is not addictive. I reserve judgment about my Internet use in general. There are so many things that make me feel really good; especially when I see, read, listen to so many who create something good. But politics, in particular the politics of war can make me feel very bad.

I wasn't sure what image to accompany this post. I have a nice graphic that says: No War On Iran, after President Bush's speech this week that's surely been on my mind. But I chose a picture of General Smedley Butler's book. The reason is while obsessing over the implications of speech, looking high and low for opinions and commentary, I feel downright depressed.

Butler is one of the United States Marine Corps heroes. It seems strange from today's perspective that would be the case because General Butler articulated a severe critique of Eisenhower's famous Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex long before Eisenhower coined the term and the complex had consolidated its gains through the Cold War. Americans have long known there's something rotten at our core.

Gail Russel Chaddick of the Christian Science Monitor wrote a line that stopped me dead in my tracks in a report early in the week about Congressional hearings over Iraq:

That means a key aspect of the president's plan, expected to be unveiled this week, will run into a wall of words on Capitol Hill, but not much more.

Chaddick is a careful reporter. I've been reading her reports for years because while I was in school studying education she was the Monitor's education writer. "A wall of words and not much else" that's not spin, it's just the facts.

I've signed MoveOn's Petition urging Congress to block the president's plan to escalate the war in the Middle East. I've signed Care2's petition as well. I've written my senators and representative--you can find out how to contact Congress here. I haven't written my local paper as my letters no longer raise any response. I think all of those things are good to do and encourage you to do so too, if you're so inclined. But my depression persists because I know Chaddick is right: "A wall of words and not much else." She's right for reasons Butler laid out before World War II: "War Is a Racket."

I'm an avid gardener and one of my essential seed sources is J. L. Hudson Seedsman. Even if you don't buy many seeds the dollar for the catalog is well worth it because they sell only Public Domain seeds. So many plants, especially flowers to my mind are best as species, and there are many venerable old selections almost impossible to find elsewhere but very worth growing. D. Theodoropoulos, the owner of the business is also an anarchist and scatters pithy quotations throughout the catalog in order to make the page columns even. This year there are a couple new to me. The first from William Burroughs:

Migrants of ape in gasoline crack of history.

The second by R. Crumb:

Sooner of later you're gonna hafta face up to them...the fact is, you know too much already...you're no ignoramus...you know what they're doing all over the world is terribly, terribly wrong

Inconvenient truths I somehow ignore most of the time. The policies my country is perusing under my flag I oppose.

I certainly don't expect others to trust my views about American politics, I'm no expert. Digby at Hullabaloo is someone whose views about politics seem quite informed and Digby makes an observation about the political calculus and war in this piece that's really astute:

I thought long and hard about that since then, wondering how a politician can truly know the smart move in cases of war and I concluded that they probably can't. They simply have to do what they think is right. It's a different case than most legislation where you can horsetrade and think about positioning for the future and otherwise play politics. War is a wildcard --- you can't know in advance how things are going to go or what position taken today might benefit you tomorrow. The risks are so high and the moral questions so profound that you are better off just trying to make a reasoned decision and being open minded about changing your mind if things go differently than you expect

I believe strongly that my country's current policies in the Middle East are dangerously mistaken. My views aren't very significant, but ultimately what we all think is right is significant. Elected politicians have to wrestle with what is right as much as I do, and the outcome in their cases is far more important. I find Digby's observation somewhat encouraging, at least it's possible politicians could decide what's right. Of course, I'm not holding my breathe. It's sad to say most people are like me in not sufficiently valuing what we think is right. And maybe a wall of words isn't as insubstantial as we imagine. Alas, I'm still depressed.