Tuesday 18 September 2012

Having it both ways?


I am reading a book describing a conspiracy surrounding the disaster in New York on 9/11.  The critics of the book call the author, and a huge number of persons that believe it, Conspiracy Theorists.  They call the people who critically analyze such events as Pearl Harbour and the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations - Conspiracy Theorists.  This moniker is designed to tar the analysts as nuts or at least delusional, blowing them off rather than addressing the issues they raise.

Let me say right here that I am not a Conspiracy Theorist, as defined by the right-leaning pundits.  I believe in empirical research and the right to pursue the truth.  However, if I am proved wrong by facts, not innuendo, then so be it.  But you cannot prove me wrong by just lumping me into a pile labeled "Conspiracy Theorists".

But let's look at the other side of the coin.  In November, Fred Litwin and his so called Free Thinkers are showing a movie that labels the Occupy movement in the US and, I assume by association, those in Canada as conspiracies by militant groups who want to destroy democracy, or at least destroy capitalism.  I am not naive enough to think that there are no radical elements in the "Occupy" camps, but the fact that conservatives tout this as a conspiracy seems to me to be a stretch.

But regardless of who is right and who is wrong, the makers of this film, a conservative non-profit organization whose goal, strangely, is citizen-action, and those who blindly believe it must be, by their own definition, Conspiracy Theorists.

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