Oh no that pesky Bush has sent his henchmen to the Midwest to blow up bridges now. It couldn't be that the old bridge failed due to structural problems. The Star Chamber conspiracy is a far more logical solution to the why. Just like 911, or the moon landing, or the Kennedy assassination.
“ entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.”
“entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.”
-William of Ockham 1288-1348
This 14th century bit to logic is as solid today as back then. It is often paraphrased, “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.” How does this relate to conspiracies? First let us look at what a conspiracy is.
Conspiracy’s are premeditative actions of multiple persons, each performing a task in secret, to bring about an event.
By their nature conspiracies get progressively harder to keep secret when the number of people involved becomes large. I am not trying to say that conspiracies do not work. They do especially if they are of a short nature. The conspiracy by the 911 attackers to take down the WTC is a good example. The conspiracy was able to pull it off because there was no light being shed on them. Or the burning of the Reichstag building in Berlin by the Nazi’s who blamed the communists. Once the conspiracy is out of the bag, however, it is out and it is a losing game trying to hide it.
What make me personally skeptical of the conspiracies listed in paragraph one is that the conspiracy is supposedly kept going, even after the event that the conspiracy brought about has occurred. Once the spot light is on, if there is a conspiracy, it will be discovered. We like conspiracies though. We love a good James Bond movie about forces unknown who wish to rule the world. I would posit that the desire to see conspiracies is directly proportional to the level of national paranoia. I will get to this in a moment. But first let us look at to cases:
On the old Kennedy assassination modern forensics has pretty much determined that all the paths of the bullets that struck the President and Connelly all came from the 6th floor of the schoolbook depository building. There were no magic bullets. The people that end up having to do gymnastics to have their “evidence” fit are the conspiracy freaks. Autopsy photos that have trickled out of the national archives also clearly show a wound caused from a bullet from behind, as does the readily available x-rays. Furthermore with the access to the hi-res Zepruder images it is pretty clear where the bullets were coming from.
If there was a conspiracy then Oswald had to be the shooter. But conspiracy freaks almost always wish to exonerate Oswald, as if a nut with a gun could possibly have killed the President. And the so-called “hit” done by Jack Ruby on Oswald is another big problem for the conspiracy people. If anything would make a conspiracy to kill the President fall apart it would be to kill off the assassin in the Police building in front of cameras. That is unless you wanted it to appear to be a conspiracy. Then by all means do that.
Lets look at another attempted assassination. John Hinckley is in love with the movie star Jodi Foster, whom he has never met, and to prove his love to her he decides to kill Regan. He gets a gun and is able to get within easy pistol-shot of the President despite Secret Service all around. Sounds pretty far fetched. But some how there is not conspiracy circle here. Even though the facts around Hinckley sound so absurd.
Getting back to my point. The time of the assassination attempt on Regan was a different from 1963. Back in 1963 the public was neurotic and on edge, deep in the cold war and with growing civil unrest at home. Minds could more easily see the fictitious bogyman instead of the idiot Oswald. With real spies around each corner, nukes on high alert, and national guardsmen escorting kids to school, it was easy to let the paranoia get the better of us.
Likewise on 911. The stumbling mediocrity of the Bush Administration lead to much the same kind of paranoia. Then we had the Anthrax letters and all too soon we ended up in Iraq. So again events easily mold thought to the point where the fictitious bogyman appears again. And we waste time with the fake instead of the real demons. There are real demons with the killing of JFK and 911. Forces took advantage of both events to advance agendas.
I guess you have to ask yourself what was the point of the conspiracy? In the movie JFK it was supposed to be a war in Vietnam. But the truth of course is that JFK but the troops in there, and helped the nationalists kill President Diem. And LBJ was not really interested in world affairs anyway. He did use the Kennedy assassination to good effect thought. It is doubtful that the Civil Rights act or the Moonlanding would have happened with such speed had JFK not been killed.
911 was the result of a conspiracy, a conspiracy that ended on 911 when all the conspirators died in the attack. Once the attack was over, Bin Laden took full responsibility, or credit, for helping get the attacks going, in a distantly removed way. You would think that it would be to Alqueda’s benefit to sow the seeds of conspiracy around Israel or the Bush Administration. But they are accepting of their culpability and warn of worse to come.
A conspiracy involving demolitions experts, the CIA, Bush, the government of NYC, the owner of the WTC site, the FAA, the Pentagon, and god knows who else, is false, in my opinion since it fails the simple test of Ockham’s Razzor. It simply makes too many assumptions.
