Pynchon name-checked by Michiko--this random world--in conspiracy debunking book

[Joseph Tracy]

conspiracy |kənˈspirəsē|
noun ( pl. -cies)
a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful : a  
conspiracy to destroy the government. See note at plot .
• the action of plotting or conspiring : they were cleared of  
conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

I don't see where  either criminality or successful  plots require  
malice.  Greed, egotism, lust for power, hunger or boredom can  serve  
equally well as motives, and plots succeed by skillful planning.  I  
don't see incompetence manifested in convincing 70 % of citizens, a  
large majority of both houses of Congress, and the US media  that  
Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and were an immediate threat to  
the US . Especially when all of these had  access to a great deal of  
contradictory evidence from expert sources.   Not much evidence of  
incompetence in the derivative fraud either, many billions in  fraud,  
nobody did jail time, and the big players got bailed out.  The Obama  
treasury department is now  full of people from Golden Sacks and Citi  
Bang. Incompetent ?


On Feb 16, 2010, at 6:13 PM, Humberto Torofuerte wrote:

> I think some of these examples touch upon a vital corollary of Occam's
> razor...which states that one should never attribute to malice that
> which can just as plausibly be attributed to incompetence.
>
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>  
> wrote:
>> Been hearing Aaronovitch on the radio.  His thesis has major flaws  
>> and is
>> built around straw men like 9-11as inside job  and the Elders of  
>> Zion. He
>> doesn't have the guts to explore instances when a handful of of  
>> voices spoke
>> out against a conspiracy and were marginalized , then proved right.
>> Examples: the progressive left said no weapons of Mass  
>> destruction , no to
>> Saddam involvement with 9-11. Danny Schechter, Nouriel Roubini,  
>> and Jim
>> Kunstler very accurately predicted the financial meltdown and  
>> described the
>> criminal fraud that led to this event. A handful of reporters, one  
>> from
>> Fortune questioned the reality of Enron's "success".