conspiraloons

[phildwyer]

Ok. I was making a (probably fairly arbitary) technical distinction there.

Witch = someone who is accused of causing harm magically. (e.g. Evans-Prichard's 'Witchcraft among the Azande")
Sorcerer = someone who claims or aspires to have magical powers.

I'd argue that the former is the basic case and the latter is parasitic on it.

What, you think that false accusations of witchcraft precede actual cases of it? That is simply not true. The distinction between witch and sorcerer is a matter of degree: basically a witch is a rubbish sorcerer. Either may be falsely accused, and either may be genuinely practicing magic. You may rest assured that there are plenty of genuine witches and sorcerers in every society, including our own--this is no comment, of course, on the efficacy or lack thereof of their art.

 

[SwizzleStiX]

I've got loads of theories, but i only discuss them with people who i really know, i would never dream of posting them on a discussion board. I'd get slated for a start.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

What, you think that false accusations of witchcraft precede actual cases of it? That is simply not true. The distinction between witch and sorcerer is a matter of degree: basically a witch is a rubbish sorcerer. Either may be falsely accused, and either may be genuinely practicing magic. You may rest assured that there are plenty of genuine witches and sorcerers in every society, including our own--this is no comment, of course, on the efficacy or lack thereof of their art.

I think the distinction is an arbitary one that suits the Azande people E-P was studying. I was just using it for clarity about the two cases I describe above. You seem to be using something more like the historical european distinction, in which the test is whether the magician controls the devil or the witch is controlled by the devil. What I was trying to use the (probably very out of date) Oxford anthopologists' distinction to do was talk about whether the person is accused or whether the person self-identifies.

The reason I wanted to do that is because I was trying to make a point about witch accusations sometimes being (sort of) functional, as a way of relieving social pressure in primitive societies, but tending to become dysfunctional if the social pressure gets too great and getting elaborated in various complicated ways, for example by people claiming to *be* witches.

Witch accusations are traditionally a public process for resolving moral pressures within a society (see e.g. Middleton and Winter: "Witchcraft in East Africa" 1963) For example, the accused is often a family member or the chief. ie someone in a position to exert unwelcome moral authority.

Sorcery on the other hand seems to be all about dirty tricks on the fringes of society, neither in action nor in defence is it something that gets tried in public, and it often mixed up with actual physical murders, ambushes etc.

So unlike the cases that I'm arbitarily defining as witchcraft, sorcery is about individuals taking symbolic (and often physical) action to defend their interests and/or their self-hood, using means patterned on those that their society has traditionally used for dealing symbolically with moral conflicts.

Now if we fast-forward that to modern conspiracy theorists, and post-colonial witch accusations (see e.g. Feasting on my Enemy ) we again see, I think, people trying to do a couple of different things. In some cases, particularly those among the New Guinea highlanders described in the link, we see societies trying to cope with enormous social pressure using social patterns for achieving a public resolution for such pressures.

In the conspiracy theorists case, I would argue, we're seeing old patterns of this general type popping up in defence against what it'd probably be fairly reasonable to call alienation. The social mechanisms for making the witch accusations functional though, are transformed beyond all recognition in our society because they've mostly been coopted by the capitalist propaganda machine, so the only effective real symbolic action that one can take along these lines is individual, a kind of sorcery, or at best based on small groups of true-believers, cults if you like.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Oh, just that capitalism is the earthly manifestation of a metaphysical evil power which is attempting to destroy all human souls and is succeeding in destroying the world. Nothing *important,* you know...

Now, I'd been leaving this to one side until I'd got the other stuff clear, but I think I can see what you're up to here. What I think you're trying to do is make a kind of uber-accusation of witchcraft against the whole capitalist system. Potentially, given the right social mechanisms to turn it into real symbolic action, this could be very powerful. With the crowd on Urban, it has very little traction because the symbolism you're invoking when you talk about 'satan' is risible for the sort of people who hang out here. I could imagine it becoming very powerful among snake-handling loons in the US or other predominantly Christian countries though. I could also imagine it getting a lot of people killed rather messily if you could ever get it working in society, but that's always a problem with this kind of approach whenever it's tried.

 

[DrRingDing]

Logical thought entails having evidence for your contentions.

I think you will find there is very good evidence (which, is not a matter of debate for this thread) that points the finger firmly at a small group of neocons. To the point of a having a signed document by these men stating their need for large attack on home soil.

Some how you have managed in your head to seperate 9/11 from the current Iraq war. To most people that would sound illogical.

 

[DrRingDing]

Well I don't

What 'news'paper do you love and trust?

For successful reduction of these dudes --> , please take three deep breaths and count to ten

 

[Azrael23]

9/11?

The govt. story is the whacko version. Theres a 101 ways it cannot be true but as per usual people don`t know anything about the event apart from what was said about it in the first 48 hours on TV.

Then if your really cutting edge you might side with michael moore whose only too quick to tell us....Bush is just a dummy, he was too busy taking holidays.... He doesnt mention NORAD standing down! He doesn`t mention that the towers had to have been a controlled demo excercise after the planes had hit. Watch the collapse...ITS PERFECT. Its not a collapse, its a controlled descent. The firefighters in the trade centre are saying the same thing...They heard explosives..."BAM BAM BAM BAM"...Buildings don`t fold in on themselves when they burn. We`re talking steel and concrete here not a wooden tower.

Its purely down to a criminal element within the systems of power. As we`ve seen throughout history.
Remember Hitler burnt down his own parliament to declare martial law.

The USA was two planes away from decapitation of government. Two planes went down.
Who knows what would have happened if those planes had hit and martial law had been declared that day.

 

[editor]

Who knows what would have happened if martial law had been declared that day.

Or if it turned out that two giant magical monsters has been sleeping under the Twin Towers and they were so angry at being woken up that they turned everyone's legs into pink marshmallow so people had to walk around quietly forever and ever and then we all went home to bed and then when we woke up it was all a dream.

 

[Azrael23]

Or if it turned out that two giant magical monsters has been sleeping under the Twin Towers and they were so angry at being woken up that they turned everyone's legs into pink marshmallow so people had to walk around quietly forever and ever and then we all went home to bed and then when we woke up it was all a dream.

Jog on....

 

[William of Walworth]

Well I don't

What 'news'paper do you love and trust?

Where is this 'love and trust' LYING SHITE come from? Can you kindly tell whoever's still propogating that LYING SHITE about my politics elsewhere, to stop continuing to slander me?

You've been listening to too many lying twats deliberately distorting and misrepresenting my politics on here in the past -- repeat LIES often enough, and people get to believe them. No doubt said twats with all their unhinged fulminating about 'liberals' being 'rascists' and all Guardian readers' having worse politics than Richard Littlejohn, are continuing to talk shite along those lines elsewhere. Tell them they can shove that lying 'all Guardian readers = rascists' shite up their stupid arses and set fire to it.

How many times do I have to post that just because I read the Guardian/Observer. and think certain aspects of them are less bad than other areas of the mainstream media, does NOT mean I agree with their predominant editorial politics, still less 'love and trust' those papers? Nor does it mean I don't have serious criticisms of some articles in those papers.

To assume that all Guardian readers are 'liberals' is pretty damned insulting to a lot of decent lefties who use that paper as just one of their many sources for information, and are quite capable of assessing for themselves the merits and demerits, what to read and what to be sceptical about, where else to get information from.

Sectarian so called 'lefties' drivelling on about 'liberals' need to get their fucked up priorities sorted out because they're losing themselves a lot of political allies and friends with this lying, bullying, insulting shite about the Guardian being the worst media enemy and its readers (all of them, undifferentiated! ) being the most threatening political force in society.

 

[phildwyer]

Now, I'd been leaving this to one side until I'd got the other stuff clear, but I think I can see what you're up to here. What I think you're trying to do is make a kind of uber-accusation of witchcraft against the whole capitalist system. Potentially, given the right social mechanisms to turn it into real symbolic action, this could be very powerful. With the crowd on Urban, it has very little traction because the symbolism you're invoking when you talk about 'satan' is risible for the sort of people who hang out here. I could imagine it becoming very powerful among snake-handling loons in the US or other predominantly Christian countries though. I could also imagine it getting a lot of people killed rather messily if you could ever get it working in society, but that's always a problem with this kind of approach whenever it's tried.

An admirable summary. Yes, I find the smug, self-satisfied secularism of the British Left utterly contemptible. Yes, I think that US Christians could very easily, and very quickly, be "flipped" into violent anti-capitalists. Yes, that would be very dangerous and could easily result in a bloody revolution. There is of course a school of thought that says bloody revolutions are necessary and even good in the long term, but I don´t really subscribe to it. Fortunately I´m too lazy to be the Robespierre of the Missisippi Delta. I can only just work up the motivation to go off in search of una cerveza y pollo con arroz, which is what I intend to do now.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Have one for me, it's a pretty interesting idea you have there, albeit a little bit 'evil genius for a better tomorrow' if you know what I mean.

It's sort of perversely brilliant though, and I congratulate you on it.

 

[Lock&Light]

Have one for me, it's a pretty interesting idea you have there, albeit crazy.

It's time, I think, for all stout gentlemen of this parish to declare, that there is nothing crazy about being against bloody revolution.

 

[vimto]

An admirable summary. Yes, I find the smug, self-satisfied secularism of the British Left utterly contemptible. Yes, I think that US Christians could very easily, and very quickly, be "flipped" into violent anti-capitalists. Yes, that would be very dangerous and could easily result in a bloody revolution. There is of course a school of thought that says bloody revolutions are necessary and even good in the long term, but I don´t really subscribe to it. Fortunately I´m too lazy to be the Robespierre of the Missisippi Delta. I can only just work up the motivation to go off in search of una cerveza y pollo con arroz, which is what I intend to do now.

Maybe some of us have a greater/lesser understanding of what 'god' really means to each and everyone of us phil

It's pretty subjective is it not?

 

[vimto]

It's time, I think, for all stout gentlemen of this parish to declare, that there is nothing crazy about being against bloody revolution.

Aye right smelly one

Take the bath option brown nose

 

[zArk]

originally posted by Continuity

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12137.htm

excerpts - my bold

Civil War by Design? - Robert Fisk

The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it’s Al Qaeda, it’s the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities.

I don’t know if al-Zarqawi is alive. You know, al-Zarqawi did exist before the American Anglo-American invasion. He was up in the Kurdish area, which was not actually properly controlled by Saddam. But after that he seems to have disappeared. We know there’s an identity card that pops up. We know the Americans say we think we’ve recognised him on a videotape. Who recognises him on a videotape? How many Americans have ever met al-Zarqawi?

I don’t know if al-Zarqawi is alive or exists at the moment. I don’t know if he isn’t a sort of creature invented in order to fill in the narrative gaps, so to speak. What is going on in Iraq at the moment is extremely mysterious.

The Sunnis are not fighting the Americans because they don’t have power and they’re not fighting the Americans just to get them out – and they will get them out eventually. They are fighting the Americans so that they will say, “We have a right to power because we fought the occupying forces and you, the Shiites, did not,” which is why it’s very important to discover now that Moqtada al-Sadr, who has an ever-increasing power base among the Shiite community, is himself threatening to fight the British and Americans. Now, if the Shiites and Sunnies come together, as they did in the 1920s in the insurgency against the British, then we are finished in Iraq. And that will mean that Iraq actually will be united.

What I’d like to know is who is running the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the Interior Ministry? Who is paying the gunmen who work for the Interior Ministry? I go into the Interior Ministry in Baghdad and I see lots and lots of armed men wearing black leather. Who is paying these guys? Well, we are, of course. The money isn’t falling out of the sky. It’s coming from the occupation powers and Iraqi’s Government, which we effectively run because, as we know, they can’t even create a constitution without the American and British ambassadors being present. We need to look at this story in a different light. That narrative that we’re getting – that there are death squads and that the Iraqis are all going to kill each other, the idea that the whole society is going to commit mass suicide – is not possible, it’s not logical. There is something else going on in Iraq.

Iraq is not Bosnia. We discovered here in Lebanon – and this city I’m talking to you from – that, during the civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990 and killed 150,000 people, that there were many outside powers involved in promoting death squads and militias here, and paying militias, not just Arab powers, but European powers were involved in stirring the pot in Lebanon. I think we’re being very naive.

Does this make Bob Fisk a conspiraloon?

 

[bluestreak]

this thread----------------------------------------------------------------------useful thinking

IMO, obv.

 

[Lock&Light]

Aye right smelly one

Take the bath option brown nose

Vimto. You are beneath contempt, but nevertheless I have to warn you, that if you continue with this way of describing me, I might well, once again, after all these years, have to report you to higher authorities. Please stop being such a pain in the fucking arse. There's a dear.

 

[editor]

Does this make Bob Fisk a conspiraloon?

Dunno. But you're a bona fide cut'n'paster!

 

[Azrael23]

Dunno. But you're a bona fide cut'n'paster!

editor never responds to real questions

 

[Derian]

Vimto. You are beneath contempt, but nevertheless I have to warn you, that if you continue with this way of describing me, I might well, once again, after all these years, have to report you to higher authorities. Please stop being such a pain in the fucking arse. There's a dear.

Vimto

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Vimto

Darrin Stephens

http://www2.odn.ne.jp/spring-field/web-images/bewitched/darrin1.jpg

 

[editor]

editor never responds to real questions

Dunno about that, but I certainly don't feel inclined to answer questions that:
(a) haven't been asked of me
(b) attempt to misrepresent my opinion
(c) are irrelevant to my stated position and
(d) comprise of a large slab of lazy cut and paste

 

[bluestreak]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12137.htm

excerpts - my bold


Does this make Bob Fisk a conspiraloon?

no but bob fisk isn't saying anything that most people on here would describe as conspiracy theory. that's just the politics of imperialism, power and greed. it's not a conspiracy if it's obvious who is doing something and why, no matter how many lies they tell to back it up. you seem to miss the point... just because the government lies about some things, it doesn't mean they lie about everything. or, to put it another way, just because they use 9/11 to their advantage and tell lies about it to gain sympathy and support does not automatically mean that they were directly responsible.

 

[Azrael23]

Dunno about that, but I certainly don't feel inclined to answer questions that:
(a) haven't been asked of me
(b) attempt to misrepresent my opinion
(c) are irrelevant to my stated position and
(d) comprise of a large slab of lazy cut and paste

 

[Firky]

 

[Lava]

That's just German for 'The thread! The!'

 

[Derian]

Die or der?

 

[pembrokestephen]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12137.htm

Does this make Bob Fisk a conspiraloon?

I think that the difference between Bob Fisk and a conspiraloon is that Fisk has a notion of journalistic integrity: when he makes a claim, he can tell you why he's making the claim, what it's based on, and cite credible sources to support his views. A typical conspiraloon response would be "go to <insert name of frothing website here>, read for yourself. It's all there. Buy the DVD off eBay, do some work for yourself to prove my ludicrous rantings".

It isn't hard to see why one gets believed, and the other ridiculed.

 

[DrRingDing]

Where is this 'love and trust' LYING SHITE come from? Can you kindly tell whoever's still propogating that LYING SHITE about my politics elsewhere, to stop continuing to slander me?

You've been listening to too many lying twats deliberately distorting and misrepresenting my politics on here in the past -- repeat LIES often enough, and people get to believe them. No doubt said twats with all their unhinged fulminating about 'liberals' being 'rascists' and all Guardian readers' having worse politics than Richard Littlejohn, are continuing to talk shite along those lines elsewhere. Tell them they can shove that lying 'all Guardian readers = rascists' shite up their stupid arses and set fire to it.

How many times do I have to post that just because I read the Guardian/Observer. and think certain aspects of them are less bad than other areas of the mainstream media, does NOT mean I agree with their predominant editorial politics, still less 'love and trust' those papers? Nor does it mean I don't have serious criticisms of some articles in those papers.

To assume that all Guardian readers are 'liberals' is pretty damned insulting to a lot of decent lefties who use that paper as just one of their many sources for information, and are quite capable of assessing for themselves the merits and demerits, what to read and what to be sceptical about, where else to get information from.

Sectarian so called 'lefties' drivelling on about 'liberals' need to get their fucked up priorities sorted out because they're losing themselves a lot of political allies and friends with this lying, bullying, insulting shite about the Guardian being the worst media enemy and its readers (all of them, undifferentiated! ) being the most threatening political force in society.

WOW!

Easy tiger!!