Voodoo History - Conspiracy Theories

[Michael Hogan]

Both of these reviews insist that David Aaronovitch successfully showed there was no conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy.

Michael Moynihan: "Aaronovitch revisits and debunks, with wit and in meticulous detail, some of the 20th century’s most stubbornly persistent conspiracies—the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Soviet purge trials, the various theories regarding American complicity in the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 'conspiracy so immense,' the murders of JFK and RFK, the death of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, and the obscure-to-American-readers anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell."

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/19/a-co...racy-so-immense

Edward Cuddihy: "He (Aaronovitch) not only demolishes the usual suspects like the NASA moon landing conspiracy and the JFK assassination plot, but he takes on the Roosevelt Pearl Harbor conspiracy, the Marilyn Monroe murder conspiracy, the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church conspiracy to hide the bloodline of Jesus, the government demolition of the World Trade Center, the royal family’s murder of Princess Diana, and just about any other conspiracy theory you might propose....

....Keep in mind, as Aaronovitch relates, that if the JFK conspiracy theorists are right, that act was carried out with the cooperation of hundreds of bureaucratic types of the same ilk as those who couldn’t break into a Washington office building without bungling it, who couldn’t keep a White House tryst a secret, and who were incapable of planting a few weapons of mass destruction in a huge Iraqi desert."

http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/02/21/9639...conspiracy.html

[Guest]

Comments:

Only those can comment who have read the book...and who would buy and read a"trashy" book?

Those who quote "Occam's Razor" usually do not understand it and usually misuse it...and try to create a cloak of being "educated".

Jack

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.

[Ron Ecker]

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.

Un hombre que no tiene tiempo para este hilo viene aqui sin embargo para escribir en una idioma extranjera. Que falta de respeto para otros!

[Guest]

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.

Un hombre que no tiene tiempo para este hilo viene aqui sin embargo para escribir en una idioma extranjera. Que falta de respeto para otros!

Yo estaba citando a Guillermo de Ockham - el hombre con la navaja! El hilo se tomó en este sentido por el viejo loco.

[William Kelly]

Both of these reviews insist that David Aaronovitch successfully showed there was no conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy.

Michael Moynihan: "Aaronovitch revisits and debunks, with wit and in meticulous detail, some of the 20th century's most stubbornly persistent conspiracies—the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Soviet purge trials, the various theories regarding American complicity in the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy's 'conspiracy so immense,' the murders of JFK and RFK, the death of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, and the obscure-to-American-readers anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell."

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/19/a-co...racy-so-immense

Edward Cuddihy: "He (Aaronovitch) not only demolishes the usual suspects like the NASA moon landing conspiracy and the JFK assassination plot, but he takes on the Roosevelt Pearl Harbor conspiracy, the Marilyn Monroe murder conspiracy, the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church conspiracy to hide the bloodline of Jesus, the government demolition of the World Trade Center, the royal family's murder of Princess Diana, and just about any other conspiracy theory you might propose....

....Keep in mind, as Aaronovitch relates, that if the JFK conspiracy theorists are right, that act was carried out with the cooperation of hundreds of bureaucratic types of the same ilk as those who couldn't break into a Washington office building without bungling it, who couldn't keep a White House tryst a secret, and who were incapable of planting a few weapons of mass destruction in a huge Iraqi desert."

http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/02/21/9639...conspiracy.html

Of course, because some conspiracies are exposed doesn't mean that others aren't kept under raps. All the wit, detail and debunking in the world is not going to change the fact that 80% of the people recognize that what happened at Dealey Plaza was a conspiracy. And it is an historical fact that the Protocols, though fake, was a conspiracy to fake and fool people, just like the Warren Commission Report.

The recent assassination of the Hamas commander in Dubai was supposed to have been a clean cut job and made to appear as a heart attack, but the bungled job has exposed how such covert ops are carried out, and how many people were on the hit team - over a dozen.

It is also similar to the CIA radical rendition of the Egypitan cleric in Italy for which a half dozen CIA officers and diplomats were convicted in abstencia, and how their operaton was exposed by examining their credit cards.

It seems okay for "historians" to poo poo conspiracy theorists, but when law inforcement officials take that approach it can be catastrophic, as was the case in the assassination of Rabbi Meier Kahane in New York City by El Sayyid Nosair, who shot a cop before escaping in a cab. (sound familiar?) The police detective in charge of the investigation quickly branded the assassin a 'lone nut' but when two others were identified as accomplaces, and their apartment in New Jersey was searched, they found TOP SECRET Special Forces documents that were traced to Ali Mohamid, an Al Quada double agent who was training US soldiers at Quantico. They were then tied to the cell that was responsible for the first bombing of the WTC.

And the problem with not officially recognizing the assassination of President Kennedy for what it was - a coup d'etat, does not lay with idiots like Aaronovich, but with those who are responsible for our national security.

Now we can call them Voodoo Patsies.

And I can't wait to read the book so I can write an honest review of it.

BK

[John Dolva]

And it's a historical fact that Henry Ford brought the Protocols to the US and that his photo hung on Hitlers wall and that Ford was significant among the Isolationist America First/German Bund/KKK groupings. (if anyone knows what happened to Mrs DeWitt, please tell)

[John Simkin]

Still waiting if there's anyone out there who has actually read the dreadful Aaronovitch's book who'd like to discuss it - believe it or not this is the thread for you

After reading the reviews, I object to spending good money on Aaronovitch's book, however, I have ordered it via my library and will be willing to discuss it when it arrives.

[William Kelly]

Both of these reviews insist that David Aaronovitch successfully showed there was no conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy.

Michael Moynihan: "Aaronovitch revisits and debunks, with wit and in meticulous detail, some of the 20th century's most stubbornly persistent conspiracies—the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Soviet purge trials, the various theories regarding American complicity in the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy's 'conspiracy so immense,' the murders of JFK and RFK, the death of Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, and the obscure-to-American-readers anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell."

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/19/a-co...racy-so-immense

Edward Cuddihy: "He (Aaronovitch) not only demolishes the usual suspects like the NASA moon landing conspiracy and the JFK assassination plot, but he takes on the Roosevelt Pearl Harbor conspiracy, the Marilyn Monroe murder conspiracy, the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church conspiracy to hide the bloodline of Jesus, the government demolition of the World Trade Center, the royal family's murder of Princess Diana, and just about any other conspiracy theory you might propose....

....Keep in mind, as Aaronovitch relates, that if the JFK conspiracy theorists are right, that act was carried out with the cooperation of hundreds of bureaucratic types of the same ilk as those who couldn't break into a Washington office building without bungling it, who couldn't keep a White House tryst a secret, and who were incapable of planting a few weapons of mass destruction in a huge Iraqi desert."

http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/02/21/9639...conspiracy.html

Of course, because some conspiracies are exposed doesn't mean that others aren't kept under raps. All the wit, detail and debunking in the world is not going to change the fact that 80% of the people recognize that what happened at Dealey Plaza was a conspiracy. And it is an historical fact that the Protocols, though fake, was a conspiracy to fake and fool people, just like the Warren Commission Report.

The recent assassination of the Hamas commander in Dubai was supposed to have been a clean cut job and made to appear as a heart attack, but the bungled job has exposed how such covert ops are carried out, and how many people were on the hit team - over a dozen.

It is also similar to the CIA radical rendition of the Egypitan cleric in Italy for which a half dozen CIA officers and diplomats were convicted in abstencia, and how their operaton was exposed by examining their credit cards.

It seems okay for "historians" to poo poo conspiracy theorists, but when law inforcement officials take that approach it can be catastrophic, as was the case in the assassination of Rabbi Meier Kahane in New York City by El Sayyid Nosair, who shot a cop before escaping in a cab. (sound familiar?) The police detective in charge of the investigation quickly branded the assassin a 'lone nut' but when two others were identified as accomplaces, and their apartment in New Jersey was searched, they found TOP SECRET Special Forces documents that were traced to Ali Mohamid, an Al Quada double agent who was training US soldiers at Quantico. They were then tied to the cell that was responsible for the first bombing of the WTC.

And the problem with not officially recognizing the assassination of President Kennedy for what it was - a coup d'etat, does not lay with idiots like Aaronovich, but with those who are responsible for our national security.

Now we can call them Voodoo Patsies.

And I can't wait to read the book so I can write an honest review of it.

BK

Voodoobai Assassins -

You know I didn't think about the Jewish angle until Andrew mentioned it, but I'd like to know what Aronovich's take is on the Dubai hit, and how many Mossad agents it takes to kill a Hamas commander?

Of course, under Aronovich's thesis, you can't get eighteen people to keep a secret, so it can't possibly be a conspiracy.

It that the way the thinking goes?

BK

[William Kelly]

Aaronovitch on National Public Radio

Debunking Conspiracy Theories In 'Voodoo Histories'

Now we can talk about it having heard it from the horse's ass, err mouth.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...oryId=123127032

Listen to the Story

All Things Considered

[7 min 4 sec]

[David Aaronovitch writes a column for The Times newspaper in London. In 2001 he won the George Orwell Prize for political journalism.]

(Soundbite of laughter - BK finds Aaronovitch writing for The Times and winning the Orwell Prize worth a chuckle).

When a co-worker told him that he believed Neil Armstrong's 1969 moon walk actually took place on a Hollywood soundstage, journalist David Aaronovitch was appalled. Aaronovitch had seen the moon landing on TV when he was a kid, and he couldn't believe anyone would think it was a hoax. "He told me about the photographs that don't make sense, and the stars that aren't there, and the flag flapping in the nonexistent breeze, and so on," Aaronovitch tells Guy Raz.

At the time, Aaronovitch wasn't prepared with evidence to counter his co-worker's claim, but today he is. Aaronovitch spent six years looking into the details behind top conspiracy theories such as the faked Apollo moon landing and has come out with a new book to forensically debunk each of them.

Aaronovitch's rebuttal is called Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History. In the book, Aaronovitch tackles the intriguing question of why well-educated, reasonable people sometimes believe "perfectly ridiculous things." (Read a list, from Aaronovitch's book, of a few of the common characteristics shared by many conspiracy theories.)

"The notion that a large number of people that believe in conspiracy theories are just wackos just simply doesn't fit," he says.

His personal favorite? Aaronovitch says he always liked the conspiracy that Hitler himself set fire to Berlin's Reichstag building in 1933 so that he would have an excuse to suspend civil liberties in Germany.

Aaronovitch says that while researching the book, he discovered "that the Reichstag was set on fire by the single man who said he did it, said all the way through the trial that he was the only person who did it, and went to his execution saying that he didn't understand why everyone was trying to say it was the Nazis or the Communists."

Aaronovitch points out that this is a classic example of Occam's razor — the simplest explanation was actually true.

Aaronovitch says conspiracy theories are fashionable across the globe. And while the one your neighbor insists upon — that the fluoride in the drinking water is actually a mind-control experiment by the government — might be a harmless variation, some have serious consequences.

"If you are to travel in Pakistan, for instance, you will find that a significant proportion of the educated Pakistanis believe that George Bush brought down the twin towers," says Aaronovitch. "And that makes dealing with the [Pakistani] Taliban difficult because they actually don't believe the fundamental premise on which the war against terror was waged."

The conspiracy that Sept. 11 was an inside job is just one example of a theory that has molded our view of history. In his book, Aaronovitch explores almost a dozen other popular conspiracies, such as the secret Zionist world empire, the assassination of Princess Diana, and the Priory of Scion's mission to safeguard the bloodline of Jesus.

TRANSCRIPT

January 30, 2010 - GUY RAZ, host:

Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

If you believe 9/11 was an inside job, or that Neil Armstrong's moon walk actually took place on a Hollywood set, or that a bunch of Jewish elders gathered in Europe at the end of the 19th century to plot the takeover of the world, well, this next story's for you. Because if you do, David Aaronovitch, a columnist for the Times of London, thinks you're, at best, deluded and, at worst, dangerous.

He spent six years looking into the details behind some of the best-known conspiracy theories and he set out to debunk all of them. The result is a book called "Voodoo Histories." And David Aaronovitch says he got the idea while working on a BBC program in Tunisia.

Mr. DAVID AARONOVITCH (Author, "Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History"): I had a very, very good young producer/director with me, a guy in his early 30s, very sensible. And we were having to drive down from Tunis to an amphitheater. And on the drive, he just turned around to me and said, I've prepared nothing really. You know the moon landings? And I said, yes, I'd seen them as a kid on television. He said, well, you didn't.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. AARONOVITCH: I said, what do you mean I didn't? He said, well, didn't happen.

And he then told me the thing, which everybody gets told, you know, about the photographs that don't make any sense, and the stars that aren't there, and the flag flapping in the nonexistent breeze, and so on - all of which was conclusive evidence, he said, that this moon landing hadn't taken place.

RAZ: And this was an otherwise reasonable guy. I mean, he wasn't sort of a wacko. He wasn't out there.

Mr. AARONOVITCH: Absolutely not a wacko at all. And the notion that a large number of people who believe in conspiracy theories are just wackos, I think, just simply doesn't fit. I mean, really what this book is about is why perfectly intelligent people can believe perfectly ridiculous things.

RAZ: Let me ask you about the famous document known as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." This is supposedly is of a meeting of Jewish bankers and other powerful figures in Europe at the end of the 19th century. They're planning to take over the world. People believe this then. And in many parts of the world, people still do, right?

Mr. AARONOVITCH: Absolutely. I mean, we now kind of would regard such a theory, I think most of us, as being utterly ludicrous. But in 1920, my own newspaper, the Times of London - I mean, and what more prestigious paper could you get? At least it wasn't till I worked for it - had an editorial, which said look at this pamphlet. It raises these incredibly disturbing questions and then said about the First World War, have we fallen out of the pasture escape to pasture moniker? In other words, it was the prospect of a German victory - only to find ourselves in a Pax Judaica.

Now, it's about a year later that the Times redeems itself a bit because its correspondent in Constantinople that discovers that the original book for the Protocols is, in fact, a French book from the 1860s. And this has just been lifted, key passages taken out, the words Jews - you know, we Jews and this is what we're going to do - put in and then circulated around Europe in the period after the First World War. And we know the consequences that that lead to in terms of it being so widely believed, particularly in Germany.

And as you quite correctly say, the Protocols are still now widely cited in the Middle East.

RAZ: And you describe how in some of your travels in the Middle East, you see it all over the place in bookstores and book shops, and it's just sort of regarded as a normal historical document.

Mr. AARONOVITCH: Totally normal, and it has had a parallel with 9/11 theory. If you were to travel in Pakistan, for instance, you will find that the significant proportion of the educated Pakistanis, including the military class, believe fundamentally that George Bush brought down the Twin Towers; that it was an inside job.

And that makes dealing with, let's say, the Pakistani Taliban quite difficult for them because they actually fundamentally don't believe the premise upon which the battle against terror was waged. And quite often, what they will cite in these circumstances in support of their theories - journalists, academics and others - are theories that have been come up within America, in Europe and so on, and they cite them as authority.

RAZ: And I want to ask you about that, because the former Malaysian leader, Mahathir Mohamad, recently said this publicly that 9/11 was carried out by Zionist elements and so on. There are many people in this country, in the United States, who believe that 9/11 was an inside job. How did you go about debunking those claims?

Mr. AARONOVITCH: Mahathir Mohamad incidentally also said that one of the key signs that it could be done was the making of the movie "Avatar," if you remember.

RAZ: Hmm.

Mr. AARONOVITCH: In other words, if you're clever enough to make the movie "Avatar," then you were clever enough to do 9/11.

RAZ: Mm-hmm.

Mr. AARONOVITCH: And he also effectively said something really kind of rather insulting, which he said the Arabs in a sense weren't well-organized enough to do something like that.

The thing about dealing with conspiracy theories is you can't just assume right from the beginning that any conspiracy theory is automatically wrong because it seems to violate common sense. I mean, you're absolutely right. You have to go back to first principles and say, what is the evidence for this?

RAZ: David Aaronovitch, I'm wondering if the belief in conspiracies today have real world consequences. I mean, why should we take them seriously?

Mr. AARONOVITCH: I talk about quite a lot of conspiracy theories in the book and some of them are actually not that damaging. It's really not so terrible if people look at the front of "The Da Vinci Code" where Dan Brown tells you that the Priory of the Sion is real, which of course it isn't. It was invented in 1956.

Nobody's going to die as a result of that. Although I gather it has been fairly irritating for people in some French cathedrals and so on as a consequence of tourists coming up and asking them about it.

But when you get something like the 9/11 story, the protocols, or its latter version, which is that the Zionists or a kind of super version of the Jewish lobby is continuously operating. These things actually do have real world consequences. I mean, it allows the people who are - who may have bear some responsibility for some of these events to evade that responsibility by suggesting that it's conspiracy.

Look, for instance, of the way in which the Iranian government deployed the notion that it was the British and the Americans behind their demonstrations. Now, this just in the last couple of weeks, they have begun executing people who were involved in the demonstrations in Tehran. And one of the elements that allows them to do that is this if you like this conspiracy theory element.

RAZ: Before I let you go, I have a question for you. Aren't are you part of the conspiracy, you know, given that you work for the establishment media?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. AARONOVITCH: I've had this said to me on a number of occasions. Like after a discussion in London about the book, this guy came up to me afterwards, one of the 9/11 truth people. He looked me in the eyes and he said, why are you doing this?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. AARONOVITCH: I had to say, look, you know, I've done the work on this. This is what I think to be true. But of course, it's exactly what a lot of people in the conspiracy movements are going to say is he's just one of them. I mean, look at his name.

RAZ: David Aaronovitch is a journalist and author. His new book is called "Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History."

David Aaronovitch, thank you so much.

Mr. AARONOVITCH: Thank you.

RAZ: And you can find more conspiracy theories and David Aaronovitch's list of the characteristics that help them spread. That's in our Web site, npr.org.

Five Standout Conspiracy Theories — And How David Aaronovitch Says They Changed History

1. Princess Diana's Death

Shortly after a car accident killed Princess Diana in 1997, rumors began that she was actually assassinated by Britain's secret intelligence services. One of the people who bought into the theory was Mohammed Fayed, whose son also died in the wreck. Books, TV shows and documentaries centered on Princess Diana's death still reel in large audiences — and healthy profits for media outlets

2. Jesus' Bloodline

If you haven't seen The Da Vinci Code, the conspiracy goes something like this: The Roman Catholic Church doesn't want you to know it, but Jesus and Mary Magdalene were actually lovers whose descendants live on today. Dan Brown's mega-best-seller and other books have brought tourists to centuries-old historical sites, such as the French cathedrals that may have been built to honor Mary Magdalene.

3. Sept. 11

Some members of the 9/11 Truth movement claim the United States government was actually responsible for the terrorist attacks. The conspiracy that then-President George W. Bush helped take down the twin towers is also popular outside the United States. In Pakistan, for instance, the belief is so widespread that a large section of Pakistani society takes it as fact

4. The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion

These texts are often cited as proof that Jewish leaders were planning to take over the world in the early 20th century. The Protocols were at the core of the anti-Jewish fervor that sprang up between the world wars, and the rumors are still alive. Aaronovitch cites an Iranian professor who claimed the movie Meet the Fockers was related, in part, to the Protocols — even though the Protocols have been proven to be a hoax numerous times.

5. The Apollo Moon Landing

Some people still believe that Neil Armstrong's moon walk didn't take place in outer space but on a Hollywood soundstage. A 1999 Gallup Poll found that 6 percent of Americans believed it was staged and 5 percent were undecided. In 2002, the Apollo moon landing conspiracy prompted NASA to grant James Oberg, a Mission Control veteran and well-known space-travel author, $15,000 to work on a book to debunk the faked landing conspiracy. Later in the year NASA pulled the funding, and Oberg has not released a book.

Edited February 25, 2010 by William Kelly

[Michael Hogan]

State Crimes Against Democracy

by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff

March 3rd, 2010

New research in the journal American Behavioral Scientist (Sage publications, February 2010) addresses the concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCAD). Professor Lance deHaven-Smith from Florida State University writes that SCADs involve highlevel government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism (fabrication of evidence of a communist infiltration), Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (President Johnson and Robert McNamara falsely claimed North Vietnam attacked a US ship), burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on WMDs to justify the Iraq War.

Other suspected SCADs include the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooting of George Wallace, the October Surprise near the end of the Carter presidency, military grade anthrax mailed to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11, 2001. The proven SCADs have a long trail of congressional hearings, public records, and academic research establishing the truth of the activities. The suspected SCADs listed above have substantial evidence of covert actions with countervailing deniability that tend to leave the facts in dispute.

The term “conspiracy theory” is often used to denigrate and discredit inquiry into the veracity of suspected SCADs. Labeling SCAD research as “conspiracy theory” is an effective method of preventing ongoing investigations from being reported in the corporate media and keep them outside of broader public scrutiny.....

Full story: http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/03/state-cr...inst-democracy/

[Guest]

“... a jew who supports Tony Blair?”

Refer to post 7 in this thread and read it carefully (i.e. not like a conspiracy theorist).

I am not a public school boy - always have been delightfully and reassuringly working class. This could also make me unique here.

I struggle to find a point in your post aside form the insults which I am sure gave you pleasure, other than the obvious one that you too would like to avoid discussing the book in question – have you read it?

[Guest]

IMO a deep look into who and what A.W. fronts for is needed and all those of good faith to Truth and Justice need to reconsider their participation on this Forum. J. Simkin is blameless to my knowledge, but somehow secretly [to us] silent to A.W. influence and silencing of any mention of conspiracy and the promotion of coincidence theory and those few [5-6] coincidence cognitive infiltrators on this forum...or dying forum.

Who or what on earth do you think I 'front' for Peter?

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

“... a jew who supports Tony Blair?”

Refer to post 7 in this thread and read it carefully (i.e. not like a conspiracy theorist).

I am not a public school boy - always have been delightfully and reassuringly working class. This could also make me unique here.

I struggle to find a point in your post aside form the insults which I am sure gave you pleasure, other than the obvious one that you too would like to avoid discussing the book in question – have you read it?

Oh, Andrew, what is to be done with you?

It took only three weeks for you to read and reply to my post, yet you have the temerity to instruct others on how they should read (“not like a conspiracy theorist.”)

Having read John Simkin’s post #7 herein “carefully,” I do not detect any anti-Jewish sentiment whatsoever, though you seem to do so. Please itemize which of John’s statements qualifies for such a characterization:

“David Aaronovitch, a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (not an unusual background for NeoCons), became a cheerleader for Tony Blair after he received £6.5 million from the group of Jewish businessmen to help him in his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party.”

Did Blair not receive the money? Or did it not come from Jewish businessmen? Or was Aaronovitch not a Blair cheerleader?

“From that point on, along with Melanie Phillips, another left-winger who has moved sharply to the right over the last few years, Aaronovitch became the leading apologist for Israel's foreign policy.”

Is Aaronovitch not a “leading apologist for Israel’s foreign policy?”

If you have a problem with Mr. Simkin’s observation, please do spell it out, rather than leave the taint of an implied charge of anti-Semitism. It’s as unseemly as it is unwarranted, from where I sit. Or to find such a gross sin in Simkin’s prose must one read it “like a conspiracy theorist?”

I am sorry to hear that you “struggle” to find a point to my prior missive. Surely they have remedial courses for such cognitive disability, no? It is remarkable that someone who feels free to hurl insults and invective at those here takes such offense when the favour is returned.

Finally, to your point regarding the egregiously awful book in question, yes, I did toil through too many pages of tendentious codswallop, presented as though it were divinely inspired revelations, or even common sense "logic." It is, of course, no such thing, as you might have gathered had you bothered to read the review to which I linked. But you don't wish to read the opinions of others; only to instruct others on what they should read. The fact that arrogant people parade their twaddle as though it were holy writ doesn’t make it so.

However, like Mr. Simkin intends to do, I borrowed a copy from the local library because, to paraphrase Elvis Costello, I don’t “stand to be insulted and pay for the privilege.” I recommend that others do likewise, because this sub-standard door-stop is an environmentally criminal waste of paper.

It could certainly appeal to the congenitally incurious. If nothing else, it will reassure them that they need not think about things they might find troubling. And then they can recommend that everyone read it. As Andy Walker seems to do.

[William Kelly]

Five Standout Conspiracy Theories — And How David Aaronovitch Says They Changed History

1. Princess Diana's Death

Shortly after a car accident killed Princess Diana in 1997, rumors began that she was actually assassinated by Britain's secret intelligence services. One of the people who bought into the theory was Mohammed Fayed, whose son also died in the wreck. Books, TV shows and documentaries centered on Princess Diana's death still reel in large audiences — and healthy profits for media outlets

2. Jesus' Bloodline

If you haven't seen The Da Vinci Code, the conspiracy goes something like this: The Roman Catholic Church doesn't want you to know it, but Jesus and Mary Magdalene were actually lovers whose descendants live on today. Dan Brown's mega-best-seller and other books have brought tourists to centuries-old historical sites, such as the French cathedrals that may have been built to honor Mary Magdalene.

3. Sept. 11

Some members of the 9/11 Truth movement claim the United States government was actually responsible for the terrorist attacks. The conspiracy that then-President George W. Bush helped take down the twin towers is also popular outside the United States. In Pakistan, for instance, the belief is so widespread that a large section of Pakistani society takes it as fact

4. The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion

These texts are often cited as proof that Jewish leaders were planning to take over the world in the early 20th century. The Protocols were at the core of the anti-Jewish fervor that sprang up between the world wars, and the rumors are still alive. Aaronovitch cites an Iranian professor who claimed the movie Meet the Fockers was related, in part, to the Protocols — even though the Protocols have been proven to be a hoax numerous times.

5. The Apollo Moon Landing

Some people still believe that Neil Armstrong's moon walk didn't take place in outer space but on a Hollywood soundstage. A 1999 Gallup Poll found that 6 percent of Americans believed it was staged and 5 percent were undecided. In 2002, the Apollo moon landing conspiracy prompted NASA to grant James Oberg, a Mission Control veteran and well-known space-travel author, $15,000 to work on a book to debunk the faked landing conspiracy. Later in the year NASA pulled the funding, and Oberg has not released a book.

[Michael Hogan]

As far as I can gather, the following comments represent the sum total of Andy Walker's contributions

to the topic of this thread. He spends considerably more of his time railing against other Forum members.

Voodoo Histories is

must

reading for all members of this section.

Well that's that book rubbished without a word being read

Returning to the topic of the thread: Would anyone who has actually read Voodoo Histories like to discuss its contents?

Or are we all content to condemn it on the broad minded grounds aired earlier that it was written by a jew who supports Tony Blair??

Aaronovitch attempts to analyse the 'evidence' of several fashionable conspiracies and for this reason I would commend the book to you.

Still waiting if there's anyone out there who has actually read the dreadful Aaronovitch's book who'd like to discuss it - believe it or not this is the thread for you

Despite his exhortations, Andy provides not the slightest evidence that he has read Voodoo History.

Sparky Satori's punishing article, linked by Robert Charles-Dunne at the beginning of this thread, perfectly details

the major shortcomings of Voodoo History. David Aaronovitch's chapter on the JFK conspiracy contains so many failures

of logic and accuracy, it becomes nothing more than a one-sided and misleading portrayal of same. Aaronovitch's presentation

of the subject is so abjectly weak, it is an insult to anyone who has studied President Kennedy's murder in any detail.

Finally, I must confess that I derive vicarious pleasure from seeing Robert Charles-Dunne take Andy Walker to the intellectual woodshed.

Edited March 6, 2010 by Michael Hogan