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BBC: Conspiracy Theorists Are the Greatest Challenge to Democracy

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| October 29, 2013
Have you ever come across an imperialist who was keen on activists challenging the establishment? 

British establishment mouthpiece BBC leads the way again. This time it is about the biggest threat to democracy today. No, it is not terrorists. No, it is not Islamism. And, no, it is not the Western-Installed Dictator Regimes around the world. No, no, no, no, no. The new enemy is the conspiracy theorists. It is those who question their governments. It is those who find facts and confront the mainstream lies and liars such as BBC. Basically, it is you … and me.

Allow me to wade through all the fillers and present you with a few telling excerpts from this BBC report:

Are conspiracy theories destroying democracy?

The more information we have about what governments and corporations are up to the less we seem to trust them. Will conspiracy theories eventually destroy democracy?

Mr. Naughton is one of three lead investigators in a major new Cambridge University project to investigate the impact of conspiracy theories on democracy.

David Runciman, professor of politics at Cambridge University, the third principal investigator, is keen to explode the idea that most conspiracies are actually “cock-ups”.

“Actually the conspirators are often the paranoid and crazy conspiracy theorists, because in their attempt to cover up the cock-up they get drawn into a web in which their self-justification posits some giant conspiracy trying to expose their conspiracy. “And I think that’s consistently true through a lot of political scandals, Watergate included.”

He is also examining whether the push for greater openness and transparency in public life will fuel, rather than kill off, conspiracy theories… “It may be that one of the things conspiracy theories feed on as well as silence, is a surfeit of information. And when there is a mass of information out there, it becomes easier for people to find their way through to come to the conclusion they want to come to.

What are they really talking about? What are they really presenting? A few things.

1-Challenging official stories, no matter how the record and history proves them to be false or exaggerated, lowers trust in government and government officials. This is a threat to the establishment and their operations through states. Thus, this is a threat to democracy. That is, if you believe that the state, the government, represents democracy. It means government equals democracy, thus, you are challenging democracy every time you challenge your government and what your government is telling you.

2- These guys, these credible Cambridge professors, claim that openness, the internet, and greater information accessibility creates more conspiracies and conspiracy theorists.

3-Now, if you add item 2 to item 1, you get this: Openness and greater information accessibility leads to more conspiracies and increases the number of conspiracy theorists, and that my friend presents the greatest threat to our democracy today.

Wow. Oh, wow. I am not going to even bother with the logical fallacies imbedded in the points made by these distinguished professors. Of course I won’t bother with BBC and its reputation and consistency when it comes to representing the establishment. Instead, I am going to get down and check out the source of funding for these academic hit-men.

Now, that was easy. I checked out Cambridge and this conspiracy theorist oriented research program, and I found the source of its funding right away:

Professor David Runciman is part of a new Leverhulme-funded interdisciplinary, collaborative project on conspiracy theories at the University of Cambridge.

Here is a short canned background on Leverhulme Trust:

The Leverhulme Trust was established in 1925 under the will of the First Viscount Leverhulme, William Hesketh Lever, with the instruction that its resources should be used to support “scholarships for the purposes of research and education.”  Since that time, the Trust has provided funding for research projects, fellowships, studentships, bursaries and prizes; it operates across all the academic disciplines, the intention being to support talented individuals as they realize their personal vision in research and professional training. With annual funding of some £50 million, the Trust is amongst the largest all-subject providers of research funding in the UK.

From the canned background I moved to the fund’s founder, William Lever, and a few noteworthy points got my attention:

He began manufacturing Sunlight Soap and built a business empire with many well-known brands. He was an advocate for expansion of the British Empire, particularly in Africa and Asia, which supplied palm oil, a key ingredient in Lever’s product line.

Lever was involved with freemasonry and by 1902 was first initiate to a lodge bearing his name, William Hesketh Lever Lodge No. 2916, he later formed Leverhulme Lodge 4438. He saw freemasonry as a tool to reinforce the hierarchy within Lever Brothers…

In the early 1900s Lever was using palm oil produced in the British West African colonies. When he encountered difficulties in obtaining more palm plantation concessions, he started looking elsewhere in other colonies. In 1911, Lever visited the Belgian Congo to take advantage of cheap labour and palm oil concessions in that country. Lever’s attitudes towards the Congolese were paternalistic and by today’s standards, racist, and his negotiations with the Belgian coloniser to enforce the system known as travail forcé (forced labour) are well documented in the book ‘Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts,’ in which the author states: “Leverhulme set up a private kingdom reliant on the horrific Belgian system of forced labour, a program that reduced the population of Congo by half and accounted for more deaths than the Nazi holocaust.” As such, he participated in this system of formalised labour

You see, when you read about William Lever and Leverhulme Trust’s background things start making more sense. Don’t they?

William Lever was a high-level Freemason and very committed to the secret society. The kind of commitment Freemasonry demanded:

Regular Freemasonry has in its core ritual a formal obligation: to be quiet and peaceable citizens, true to the lawful government of the country in which they live, and not to countenance disloyalty or rebellion.[12] A Freemason makes a further obligation, before being made Master of his Lodge, to pay a proper respect to the civil magistrates

You see, those who challenge the establishment are also challenging the core of Freemasonry. No?

Lever was an avid advocate for expansion of the British Empire, particularly in Africa and Asia. Have you ever come across an imperialist who was keen on activists challenging the establishment, aka conspiracy theorists who challenge establishment-packaged information (propaganda)? I haven’t. Not one.

Lever was an enforcer of a system known as travail forcé, forced labour, in colonies where his business ripped the resources (Labor and agriculture). Back then, as it is today, moguls like Lever thrived based on their close partnerships with their imperial governments: colonization. What does that mean? It means, for imperialist business moguls like Lever, any challenge to the empires, challenging and questioning the imperial propaganda, equals a challenge to the empire’s business partners such as Lever.

Now, with all the above, do you see how a handful of Leverhulme funded pea-brain academics spend millions of dollars to paint those who challenge imperial governments’ misinformation as conspiracy theorists who present a great threat to democracy? Do you see how these conspirators easily grab spots under the spotlights of the imperial media machine-such as BBC?

Please take notice of another highly important fact about this entire operation: They, the establishment, must be getting extremely nervous and threatened to put on such a goofy show with even goofier players via the ultimately goofy outlet BBC. That, my friends, is really good news for the conspiracy theorists … you … and me.

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Sibel Edmonds is the Publisher & Editor of Boiling Frogs Post and the author of the Memoir Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story. She is the recipient of the 2006 PEN Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for her “commitment to preserving the free flow of information in the United States in a time of growing international isolation and increasing government secrecy” Ms. Edmonds has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University.

- See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/10/29/conspiracy-theorists-are-the-greatest-challenge-to-democracy-according-to-heres-who/#sthash.qcG9hbpN.dpuf

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If you are not a conspiracy theorist then you are an idiot

a) A conspiracy theory is a theory that explains some event or events as due in part to a conspiracy, that is, to a secret plan to influence events by partly secret means. b) Every historically and politically literate person employs the strategy of sometimes believing (and sometimes being prepared to believe) conspiracy theories. c) Every historically and politically literate person is a conspiracy theorist. d) The only way not to be a conspiracy theorist is to be historically and politically illiterate that is to be, in the Greek sense of the word, an idiot. f) Therefore if you are not a conspiracy theorist then you are an idiot.

http://www.otago.ac.nz/philosophy/Staff/charles_pigden.html

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BBC tweaks Hizballah statement, promotes its conspiracy theories

[...]Muir ends his report with a burst of pure Hizballah propaganda.

“It’s ironic that Hizballah’s involvement in Syria may have been something that stiffened European opinion against it because one of the main arguments it has for taking part in that struggle is to combat the Al Qaeda-type terrorists – as they see it – who are fighting alongside the rebels and they’re indeed taking the initiative in many areas. So for Hizballah the whole terrorist issue is highly politicized – that’s why it is undoubtedly going to dismiss this European move as highly politically motivated: part of an Israeli-backed plan to undermine resistance both by Hizballah, by Syria and by their strategic ally, Iran.” 

It is perfectly legitimate to attempt to explain to BBC audiences the outlook of a terrorist organization in order to enhance their understanding of a complicated issue, providing that the journalist balances that information with facts so as to avoid turning his report into propaganda. It is quite another thing to adopt a terrorist organisation’s language – as seen in Muir’s use of the term “resistance” – and to promote its conspiracy theories.

Muir’s failure to present any balance to the Hizballah party line, his promotion of the conspiracy theory-based notion of the EU designation as being a “politically motivated” cave-in to a mysterious Israeli master plan and his resulting relativist whitewashing of Hizballah’s very long history of terror and crime is not only inaccurate and partial, but deliberate misinformation.[...]

http://bbcwatch.org/2013/07/23/bbc-tweaks-hizballah-statement-promotes-its-conspiracy-theories/



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