Bilderberg conspiracy theories

* from glenn's place re curveball:

"This seems to be a recurring theme for this administration. It just doesn't seem to hear objections until it's too late. It has an uncanny ability to not hear information that discredits its beliefs. The intelligence used to back the mobile biological labs claims came from Curveball, an Iraqi informant housed in Germany, with German intelligence acting as a middle man for the United States. There were widespread doubts about Curveball's credibility, and he has been discredited as a fabricator, but again, the administration conveniently managed to not find out about that until after the invasion had occurred."

* maha:

"Where did the finger-wagging campaign originate? Why is the MSM suddenly piling on Kos this week? Is attacking Kos a back-door way of derailing candidates associated with Kos? Like Mark Warner? Or Sherrod Brown? Or Ned Lamont? Who is orchestrating this?"

* xymphora:

Fascination with the likes of the Bilderbergers is a manifestation of one of the two main types of conspiracy theory. It has long been the most common form of conspiracy theory, the idea that the whole world is run by an identifiable cabal – aristocrats, Jews, Freemasons, Illuminati, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers. The idea arose at the same time that democracy started to take over politics, and it was based on the assumption that the elite groups would conspire behind the scenes to regain control of lost power. The Big Conspiracy helped to explain why power in the people seemed not to make things any better, and seemed not to reduce the power and wealth of the aristocracy.

This type of conspiracy theory is largely nonsense, and obviously nonsense, and does a lot of harm to what I consider to be real conspiracy theory, which is the simple idea that political crimes are the same as any other crime, and should be investigated using normal forensic methods, and punished using the regular justice system. Real conspiracy theory might not lead to a new utopia, but it would go a long way to ensuring that democratic political systems work the way they are supposed to, and that the interests of the average person aren’t lost behind the interests of the corporadoes and warmongers. Focusing on the likes of the Bilderbergers distracts our attention from the real task at hand, and gives ammunition to those who would try to stop us from using methods available to us now to improve the world.