most dangerous conspiracy is the one that doesn't exist

Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power are a husband-wife team of Obama's top aides and years-long closest confidantes. 


A beautiful piece of work. 


After being supposedly fired from the Obama campaign in May, 2008, for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster," Power moved into the White House with Obama, to a top aide's position, where she was largely responsible for the Libya war and the murder of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011; having shown then how comfortable she was with atrocities, she was just now placed in charge of Obama's so-called Atrocities Prevention Board on April 23, whose purpose is to wage wars like the Libya war whenever Obama's whim or pleasure dictates it.  


Although born in Ireland in 1970 and resident there until the age of ten, Power reveals who it is she really works for, in that she has little concern about British atrocities in her native land, according to a sympathetic profile in {The Nation}.


Power's husband is Obama's mentor, Harvard and Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein. A paper Sunstein co-wrote in 2008, deceptively titled "Conspiracy Theories," confirms his central role in leading attacks against those who may oppose Obama. See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585

Glenn Greenwald summed up the main drift of Sunstein's paper in 2010: "a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-independent advocates to `cognitively infiltrate' online groups and websites as well as other activist groups which advocate views that Sunstein deems `false conspiracy theories' about the Government.



This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.


"Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into `chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.'



He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called `independent' credible voices to bolster the Governments messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).  


This program would target those advocating false `conspiracy theories,' which they define to mean: `an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.'"


Greenwald continues, "Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for `cognitive infiltration of extremist groups,' as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:"

"What can government do about conspiracy theories? Among the things it can do, what should it do? We can readily imagine a series of possible responses.  


(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.  


(2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories; (perhaps a higher tax for those that are true)


(3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.  


(4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech.  


(5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.  


Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions.  


However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5)."

Back to Greenwald: "So Sunstein isn't calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) -- having Government ban conspiracy theorizing or impose some kind of tax on those who do it -- but he says each will have a place under imaginable conditions.  


I'd love to know the conditions under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will have a place. That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment.  


Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position." See http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/


"In 2004," Sunstein writes, "the U.S. administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, ordered troops to shut down a weekly newspaper in Baghdad that had propounded false conspiracy theories damaging to the U.S., such as a story that `an American missile, not a terrorist car bomb, had caused an explosion that killed more than 50 Iraqi police recruits.' 


Whether this sort of action does more harm than good, in similar environments, is a complicated question, depending on difficult judgments about the etiology of conspiracy theories, the consequences of censorship, and the efficacy of U.S. counterspeech."
But Sunstein could rationally be seen as a genuine, Nazi-style blood-drenched
fascist; in fact, Greenwald can't really fathom the depth of Sunstein's degeneracy.  


Read further: read what Sunstein plans for those whom he calls the "conspiracy entrepreneurs," giving Thierry Meyssan as an example.

"Imagine a government facing a population in which a particular conspiracy theory is becoming widespread. We will identify two basic dilemmas that recur, and consider how government should respond.  


The first dilemma is whether to ignore or rebut the theory;


the second is whether to address the supply side of conspiracy theorizing by attempting to debias or disable its purveyors, to address the demand side by attempting to immunize third-party audiences from the theory's effects, or


to do both (if resource constraints permit).  


In both cases, the underlying structure of the problem is that conspiracy theorizing is a multi-party game. Government is faced with suppliers of conspiracy theories, and might aim at least in part to persuade, debias, or silence those suppliers."

"Persuade, debias, disable or silence." Take your pick. But you can no longer pretend you didn't know. 


Take comfort that each day, that bilionaires have staff to make sure that their bosses keep their billions. You never know when a law needs changing, a police force that needs to look the other way, or a troublemaker who will not stop saying truthful things.