One of the many good things about this week's silkmeet was that I got back my copy of _Radio Freefall_ by Matthew Jarpe (highly recommended, as evidenced by the fact that I am re-reading it).
Below is a snippet from the book, as a good example of a good conspiracy theory. Note the smooth, plausible commingling of fact and fiction. Can you share other *good* examples? The less spittle-flecked and wild-eyed, the better. Udhay __________________________________________________________________ A model for world takeover: In order to take over the world, the world itself first had to be transformed into one whole entity that could be held and controlled. So that was step one. Unification. A big part of it was convincing people in various positions, various walks of life, that Unification was a good thing. Big business was no problem. Where trade was free, money could be more easily made. The big transnational corporations had bitten and scratched to be the first on that hay truck. And with them came their uncanny ability to change the minds of the people, the ones they called the "consumers". Hell, if they could make a barely palatable beverage like cola the world's second most popular beverage (and closing in on water by the day), they could cram Unification down the throat of the world. The workers of the world, the Joe Six-Packs and their global equivalents, were a little tougher. Of course it was true that what was good for business was good for the workers, but that was a difficult concept for people who lived in a zero-sum world. If the fat cats are doing better, it must mean I'm doing worse. So you had to demonstrate the concept to them a little bit at a time. NAFTA, GATT, and the Pacific Rim Tariff Exclusion (PRTE, pronounced "party"). You hammer those agreements through, and let everyone make money. The politicians were the tough ones. Unification meant that everybody who had some power would automatically have less. More power equaled more to lose, and hence a reluctance to play the Unification game. So government had to become an instrument of business. A little soft money here a little stiff-arming there, you get the picture. Finally there were the leaders. Not politicians, but the few individuals who actually ruled others. Dictators, strong men, absolute despots. No way you could convince men such as these to give over to this idea of a new world order. What was that phrase? The dictators were eggs to Unification's omelet. The world fell into place one piece at a time. The Soviet Union had to be dismantled so the components would fit into the bigger picture. Hong Kong took over Mainland China; Europe was lured into homogeneity by the promise of a powerful currency. A common enemy polarized the Mid-East, while the political maelstrom of Africa crystallized around the new HIV vaccine. And who could have predicted that the secession of Quebec from Canada would lead to the annexation of western Canada by the United States, the subsequent annexation of Mexico and Central America, and finally the entire western hemisphere? -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
