Coincidentally

It seems fair (or at least balanced) to offer up some ink, or pixels to the dominant perspective of our culture regarding the cataclysmic events which shape our society. While much snide snarkery has been directed at those derisively known as “conspiracy buffs”, these people occupy the minority perspective while receiving the majority of polite society’s dismissive disdain. Little attention is paid to the perception of the majority which would be accurately called ‘coincidence theorist’.

It is always prudent to define one’s terms when engaged in such distinctions; a conspiracy isn’t merely people talking about doing something, its people talking about doing something illegal; it’s a word crime. If you think about robbing a bank or hitting your landlady over her head and stealing her purse it is currently unprosecutable, repellant or justified as it might seem intellectually. But, if you express this intention to your buddy and perhaps ask him to hold your coat while you engage in such behaviors, then you engage in conspiracy.

Conspiracy is words between two or more people that lead to or promote the idea of the commission of a crime; whether buying some pot, negotiating for a blow job or planning a bank robbery. Conspiracy in a criminal context is a way for law enforcement to prosecute people for crimes that they may not have physically committed but who deserve a little justice none the less.

Coincidence is the apparent coming together of unrelated incidents in a fortuitous or serendipitous manner. Conspiracy is concerted effort, coincidence is mere chance. It is always wise to avoid the false dichotomy or suggestion there are only two ways to perceive reality. There are a multitude of variations and perceptions, coincidences occur all the time as do conspiracies, coincidences occur in conspiracies. How does one know?

While there is much historical precedent for conspiracies – the Mafia is an ongoing criminal conspiracy, not merely a theory, the US congress another example – coincidences of amazing depth and complexity have a low probability of occurrence, to borrow a phrase used by NIST – National Institute for Standards and Technology – regarding their own theory as to what caused Building 7 to collapse on 9/11.

An illustrative example can be found in the House Assassinations Committee conclusion that another gunman fired from the grassy knoll at the same time Oswald purportedly fired at Kennedy on 11/22/63. The notion that two men with rifles would show up at the same place and time and fire at the same moving target at the exact instant by coincidence is confounding to even the staunchest supporters of the fiction known as the Warren Commission Report. It defies statistical probability.

Coupled with some 40 material witnesses dying within years of the Warren Report and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s investigation and prosecution of Clay Shaw, the probabilities of such events occurring as coincidence are so minute as to be impossible.

Forty people materially involved in the killing of a world leader don’t just die within a few years coincidentally any more than independent gunmen show up at the same place for a little execucide. Especially if the killer is a ‘lone nut’.

Yet that is exactly what the majority accepts as true, based upon one of the oldest logical fallacies in the book: argument of authority. To accept the word of an authority because they are an authority, especially a self proclaimed authority, is illogical because authority doesn’t necessarily equate with correctness. Authorities make mistakes. All the time. Everything is individual interpretation and capacity to impose will. Authorities said the Earth was flat and at the center of the Universe. This is demonstrably false yet was accepted for millennia because of authoritarian dictate.

Human civilization accepted said authoritarian dictates and in the 21st Century there are millions if not billions of humans who believe without question that the Earth is but thousands of years old and that humans are superior to species that existed millions of years before we even appeared and shall exist long after we’ve returned to the Earth from which we are spawned.

Authorities have been wrong since humans declared themselves as such and are proven so to this day. The EPA declared the air in New York City safe to breathe right after 9/11 before they had even conducted tests. That proved to be untrue, to the suffering of thousands. Yet many still believe what the same authorities told them really had happened on that day.

The fact that we so readily accept their word is what allows charlatans into positions of authority in the first place. Little surprise they kill each other off when perceived as an impediment to profits or position. The people’s outrage can always be tempered with some improbable explanations and unnecessary violence: our thumbs turned downward the crime is ameliorated by the execution of someone, ideally the perpetrator; but not necessarily. The redemptive value of blood for blood isn’t defined by culpability.

During the 20th Century in the USA conspiracies started to disappear. At least in regard to people who worked for the government and industry: certain migrant groups, like the above mentioned fraternal organization were always portrayed as engaging in some nefarious scheme or another. Their ethnicity and all. But the big guys, the bankers, industrialists, presidents, the big conspiracies which plagued the 19th Century seemed to bypass the power elite in the 20th. With the assassination of William McKinley, the lone nut had arrived and would be trotted out more and more over the coming century.

One of the first conspiracies to disappear happened in 1934. Known as the Business Plot it was brought to the attention of the House of Representatives, by a fellow named Smedly Butler. Or, Major General Smedly Butler of the US Marine Corps, if that sort of thing impresses you. It certainly did Congress, as they awarded him 2 Congressional Medals of Honor, making him among the first to receive that distinction.

A couple years before, Smedly had addressed about 50 thousand soldiers who had converged on Washington D.C. offering his support to the men who had left their homes to fight in World War One but had not received the bonus they were promised by the government for their service. Desperate, out of work and struggling with the poverty pervasive through the Depression, the soldiers and their families set up an encampment across from the White House demanding a redress of their grievances. President Hoover had General MacArthur and the army burn them out and drive them off.

In 1933 Butler was approached by an emissary of a group with a plan which has come to be known as the Business Plot. With Butler at the head of 500 thousand troops, they would surround the White House, oust FDR and Smedly would be installed as the titular head of a new fascist regime. Butler, intrigued, began his own sting, indicating his support for the plot to the emissary. As he got deeper into it he realized that the people behind it were some of the richest and most powerful families in the nation.

During the McCormack – Dickstein Congressional Committee hearings in 1934, Butler detailed his meetings and the identity of some of those behind the plot. The House ruled that the evidence supported the testimony of Butler and concluded the hearings without any fanfare. Then, to punish the conspirators for their attempted fascist takeover of the nation, they promptly did: nothing. No one was charged; nothing alluded to the perpetrators in the media. The conspiracy disappeared.

Butler became portrayed as the lone nut.

At the onset of WWII, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy was relieved of his post and accused of being defeatist. He made this statement, released in the Boston Sunday Globe, in 1940:

“Democracy is finished in England. It may be here, too.”

His ‘defeatism’ cost him his title and his shot at the presidency. Kennedy’s political aspirations fell to his son Joe Jr. who was subsequently blown up in a plane loaded with high explosives remote controlled by his own forces. This left his tattered ambitions to his second oldest, John Fitzgerald whose boat was sunk in the Pacific, injuring his back but giving him the war hero status he would use to ascend to the presidency. Only to have his head blown off. Then leaving that lofty aspiration to his third son, Robert who was shot in the back of the head by a guy standing in front of him.

Perhaps Joseph Kennedy, an outcast of the powerful Boston Brahmins, who snubbed him for being not only Irish but Catholic, may have said more than prudence demanded in that simple declaration. He was rich, but his exclusion from the ranks of those who ruled society through lives of inherited wealth and gangster capitalism accorded him no loyalty to them. He could say what none of them would ever admit: fascism would become the dominant form of government of the world.

Mussolini said: “Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, because it is the merger of corporate and government power”.

As the inventor of said ethos, Benito would have known. Few industries pay the dividends of the war industry, making war the economic incentive of industry upon those who just aren’t spending enough. With prices to die for. Or from.

Did Joe tip us off that the corporatists/fascists had already won and the way it would be celebrated would be by throwing the best damned war this planet had ever seen? Did war hero Butler warn us, only to be marginalized and put out to pasture, to be followed by Kennedy whose political aspirations were crushed by a simple tip-off that nobody picked up on?

“Democracy is finished in England.” This before the shooting had started in earnest. Ambassador Kennedy couldn’t possibly know whether England could defend itself from Hitler, but he did know who pulled the strings in the upper echelons of power by inhabiting a position, albeit as an outsider, within those ranks. He could see the power of rich men with big companies who profited hugely from war among those in the corridors of government – in Germany and England as well as in the US.

Is it coincidence that subsequent to WWII conservative democrat Truman was replaced by conservative republican General Eisenhower, just as subsequent to WWI corporate interests tried to replace moderate democrat Roosevelt with conservative General Butler? By then the USA had been instrumental in usurping land in Palestine, assuring perpetual war in the Near East and had become militarily engaged in Korea, huge income generators for weapon manufacturers and war support industries.

Has the US been at war in some country or another since? Is it merely coincidence that Butler warned us of this perniciousness, with our silent (or boisterous) approbation only to be followed by another general made president warning us of the same thing in his farewell address to the nation? And that his successor, JFK son of another who warned us, was executed in broad daylight in Texas where LBJ, his successor hailed from?

Occam’s Razor is basically, don’t unnecessarily compound variables. Don’t add things which are superfluous, don’t complicate the issue. This is reasonable as the more you bring to the table, the more you have to sift through to find what you really want. What is more complicated: businessmen acting as they always have, or highly placed insiders with nothing to gain, independently repeating the same warning because of some deep seated hatred of the nation?

These men and others, many of whom were publicly murdered, made simple statements of their understanding of the world around them. They saw what was happening in the very government they had pledged to defend, and sent warnings. Their warnings went unheeded, their voices drowned out in the cacophony of confounding variables, the disturbing reality buried under increasingly improbable coincidences.

They had little benefit from making such statements and in some cases endured great suffering, yet they all warned of a conspiracy to subvert this nation into fascist rule.

Into a Corporatocracy.

And now, we are that very thing, tearing ourselves asunder clambering over each other for money, created out of thin air, or clamoring for justice in a place that only honors credit and manufactures debt.

General Butler wrote a pamphlet called War is a Racket. It’s a quick read, can be found online for free and outlines a simple and irrefutable means to end war: eliminate profit. The first part of the bookette outlines how much each of the companies he exemplifies made during WWI. Their profits went through the roof. War makes little companies into big companies. And big companies into Halliburton, who can put their CEO into executive power and then have him declare a war they can profit off of mightily, killing millions, making billions.

Consider the real world probability of some of these coincidences we have been instructed to ignore in our acceptance of the “official story”: Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) is a company which offers material support for among other things, combat situations. The Texas based company, a big supporter of LBJ, made billions of dollars during the Vietnam War providing that support. They have been involved in many of the wars we have started and have made further billions (through parent company Halliburton) in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Their CEO was for a time Dick Cheney, former secretary of defense and vice president, who while employed for them worked his first private sector job. And made untold millions (billions?) of dollars. As vice president, in contravention to law and any ethical standards, he still profited off of his investments with the company he gave multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to provide support and reconstruction in the nations he insisted the USA invade and occupy and destroy.

Is this a coincidence? Could this possibly just be an instance of everything working out for the little guy in spite of the incalculable odds in tension with it? Dick Cheney, while instrumental in fomenting war certainly wasn’t in a position to implement it. Was he?

The justification/sales pitch for the escalating wars of the 21st Century was 9/11. Over the course of nearly two hours on that day the man in charge of running the nation, the fellow who called the shots in mustering the defense of the nation was Dick Cheney. At least according to the majority of the witnesses and evidence. According to the final, mutually agreed upon scenario in the 9/11 Commission Report, VP Cheney didn’t wander into the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center) until nearly 10:00 AM, just in time to miss all the action.

“During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President…the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out… And when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!?"

Norman Mineta, testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton presiding.

Mineta testified publicly under oath, Cheney testified in private, no notes, recordings and not under oath. His story as to what he was up to on 9/11 changed several times. Mineta’s – as well as Counter Terrorism head Richard Clarke, who placed Cheney at the helm as well – remained consistent. Is it a coincidence a man who made millions (billions?) off of his investments in a company which profiteers from war, would have an instrumental involvement in hastening a war? Or two? Or three?

Is war a coincidence or the concerted act of many people? As appointed commander of US forces, Cheney’s single job was to use the multi-trillion dollar war machine to defend the nation. His failure led to millions of deaths, billions if not trillions in profits and to millions if not billions of dollars in personal gain. He either conspired with others to lead us into war, or his inspired incompetence somehow made him richer and more powerful through a series of unrelated coincidences these attacks precipitated.

The 9/11 attacks occurred during two, not one, but two major drills, Vigilant Warrior and Vigilant Guardian, part of the Global Guardian exercises to combat an attack which was utterly improbable and ridiculously unlikely: a Russian attack over the North Pole. Yep, any day now. These drills effectively took the bulk of the US civil air defense and placed it in Canadia. That’s right, Canadia. To compound the confusion, they had several other drills going on at the same time, false bogies on FAA radar screens, FEMA set up for a disaster in New York City on 9/10/01.

How convenient for those crazy, fundamentalist, Muslim, drunken, whoring terrorists that they chose to attack exactly when we would be most vulnerable. And prepared. Not only was FEMA set up in advance for an attack on NYC but the Pentagon was apparently running some drills in preparation for an attack in Washington when the Shiite hit the fan. Sunni side up. So, we were wholly unprepared for the repelling of the attack, but had all of our emergency response in place.

Quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you say?