Conspiracies, Plots and Other Anti-democratic Notions

By Peter Phillips

Special to The Putnam Pit

Paul Wellstone's plane crash wasn't an accident. The CIA bought stock

options on United Airlines before 9-11 making millions in profits. The

military sprays low-level bio-weapons on the public through airtanker

contrails. The tobacco industry plotted to deceive the public on the

negative health effects of smoking. Lee Harvey Oswald alone didn't

assassinate John Kennedy. The FBI deliberately caused the fire in the

Branch Davidian compound. Planted bombs from within the structure destroyed

the federal building in Oklahoma City. AIDs was created in a government

research lab. Mass inoculations are designed for citizen mind control.

General Motors and Firestone conspired to destroy public transit in the

U.S. The Bush White House interfered with FBI investigations into the bin

Laden family before 9-11.

Conspiracy theories abound in America and are directly related to the lack

of investigative reporting by the mainstream corporate media. The public

knows more about Winona Ryder's shop lifting trial then about the weather

conditions and circumstances of Paul Wellstone's air crash. The Los Angeles

Times printed 83 column feet on OJ Simpson during his trial, but has

ignored for decades the deliberate and successful plot before World War II

to dismantle LA's public transit system by General Motors and Firestone.

Oliver Stone's interpretation of the Kennedy assassination has been mostly

dismissed as "conspiracy theory" by corporate media. Questions regarding

the veracity or falseness of seemingly important conspiracies and plots

often go unreported by mainstream media.

The ten big corporations that now dominate media in America are principally

in the entertainment business. While the corporate media is narrowing its

content, with news reports often looking very much the same, the public's

access to the vastland of the internet is amplifying, and informational

snippets and unanswered questions leading to conspiracy beliefs are

increasingly available on-line.

The First Amendment provides for freedom of the press and was established

to protect our democratic process by guaranteeing an informed electorate.

Yet we just completed a national election with an all time low voter turn

out. Millions of voters refused to participate in the electoral process. We

denigrated and blamed non-voters for being uncaring citizens, yet the

corporate media has failed to address core issues affecting most people in

this country. Voter participation levels are directly related to issues

that the citizenry feels are important. Many people no longer trust the

corporate media to provide the full truth. This opens people's

susceptibilities to believing in conspiracies and plots to explain

unanswered questions. Cynicism has deterred voting for many.

How can we free ourselves from this dilemma? First off, We can think of

conspiracies as actions by small groups of individuals instead of massive

collective plots by governments and corporations. Small groups can be

dangerous, especially when the individuals have significant power in huge

public and private bureaucracies, but they can not possibly be interlinked

in a macro way bridging the gaps between thousand of corporations and

government bureaucracies. Micro-plots may well be the answer to some of the

conspiracies floating in our circles of cynicism. However, without accurate

through investigations we only stew in our distrust and experience widening

alienation from our democratic process.

Additionally, we can advocate strongly for mainstream media to invest in

democracy by supporting investigative reporting on key issues. The Director

of the Chicago Office of the FBI, Tom Kneir, admitted on August 17 at the

American Sociological meetings that the FBI conducted an investigation into

the pre-9-11 stock options, but he refused to disclose who bought the

stock. Mainstream media needs to pursue this issue using our freedom of

information laws to put the conspiracy questions to rest.

Finally, we can advocate for full and clear reporting on the policies and

plans emerging from the public and private policy circles of the American

corporate and governmental elites. Full analysis and disclosure of the

published plans of the Trilateral Commission, The Council on Foreign

Relations, The Hoover Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato

Institute, The World Bank, and the Project for the New American Century,

would go a long way in showing the roadmaps that the policy elites are

building for the world. We don't need macro-conspiracy theories to

understand that powerful people sit in rooms and plan for global change

with private advantage in mind.

If open debate on socio-political policies were offered nationwide it would

certainly draw widespread citizen voter participation. Imagine a computer

programmer thinking about social policies that would prevent outsourcing of

his job to foreign firms. Imagine his enthusiasm voting for representatives

that would work to protect his livelihood. Imagine millions of reawakened

citizens informed and active in a real democratic process.

Peter Phillips is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State

University and Director of Project Censored. This Op-ed may be republished.

Peter Phillips Ph.D.

Sociology Department/Project Censored

Sonoma State University

1801 East Cotati Ave.

Rohnert Park, CA 94928

707-664-2588

http://www.projectcensored.org/