Conspiracy theories are all the rage. Conspiracy theorists are people who credit the political establishment with far more intelligence than it actually possesses. Some believe that the same U.S. government (Richard Nixon's), which got into such a mess when they spectacularly failed to cover up Watergate, somehow managed to, first, stage a fake moonlanding and, then, to get both the Soviet Union and China to go along with this. Many conspiracy theorists are just plain dumb. You might want to pause from reading this for a moment to watch a relevant clip from the film
Blazing Saddles. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHJbSvidohg
Others are not so dumb, just happy to give a platform to any idea, however batty, if doing so appears, in the short run, to further their general agenda. Which brings me to the latest escapade of the boys and girls of
Galway Alliance Against War.
According to today's Galway Advertiser:
"
Explosive Evidence - Experts Speak Out, a controversial new American documentary on the September 11 2001 attacks on New York, is to be screened in Galway.
The Galway Alliance Against War will screen the documentary on Monday at 8pm in Richardson’s, Eyre Square.
The documentary revisits 9/11 and questions the official explanation for the collapse of the Twin Towers. It has received public support from Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the US Treasury and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.
Some years ago, architect Richard Gage formed Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. They have studied the plans of the towers which were constructed to withstand airliner hits and fires. In this film however they argue that there is no credible explanation for the collapse of the towers except intentional demolition."
The implication here is that 9/11 was an inside job; that the only people who could have brought down the Twin Towers were the U.S. government.
The late Adolf Hitler and friends used to put it about that the Russian Revolution was brought about by a Jewish conspiracy involving an unlikely coalition of Bolsheviks and Wall Street bankers. It was an obvious lie. But tens of millions believed it.
The idea that the murder of almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001 was an inside job, carried out by elements withing the U.S. government, is a similarly obvious lie, which only the intellectually sick would give credence to.
The fact that
Galway Alliance Against War are happy to give such a film as this an apparently uncritical screening is proof, if it were needed, that they are indeed that intellectually sick.
I dedicate this poem, which first appeared in
The Galway Advertiser a couple of years back, to the idiocy of
Galway Alliance Against War, which no doubt someone considers useful.
My Inner Conspiracy Theorist
Doesn’t believe his own birth cert is genuine,
finds Charlie Sheen’s most recent
speech from the balcony strangely
plausible; knows – the way all those Israelis knew
not to come into work that day – that swine flu
was manufactured in a laboratory funded
by Donald Rumsfeld, today’s weather forecast
is a wicked lie, the dandelions exploding
up through his otherwise well kept lawn
were planted there by government agents
who lurk in the shrubbery at night,
that the Department of Agriculture laces
the sheep dip with weapons grade
plutonium to hide the fact
he himself is actually
dead, assassinated years ago
by US special forces
during an otherwise enjoyable meal
in a Chinese restaurant
no one wants to talk about.
