On conspiracies

Conspiracy theory is hot at the moment, though there's nothing new about it. The first one I heard about was in the 60s, following the Kennedy assassination. The "One Lone Nut" theory produced by the Warren Commission was roundly rejected by many, and its findings were widely labelled as a cover-up. Remember "the magic bullet", and "the 2nd shooter on the grassy knoll"? I have to say I was quite persuaded at the time, though more exhaustive research, including an incredibly detailed, computer assisted reconstruction showed there was nothing magic about the bullet' that struck both Kennedy and Governor Connolly. Kennedy was sitting in a higher seat than the governor who sat in front of him: the bullet behaved in a perfectly normal way.

Then, also relating to events I remember clearly from the 60s, is the perennially popular belief that the Moon landings were faked. Actually my favourite story about this is the one where Buzz Aldrin was confronted by one of these idiots, who actually went so far as to call him a coward to his face. Aldrin duly decked him, was sued by the punchee, who lost. Excellent. I came across one of these guys recently and put the following points to him: first, did he believe that the Russian Sputnik was real? Did Gagarin really go into space, or John Glenn? How about the Gemini programme, a preparation for Apollo, when the Americans sent two astronauts up at the same time? He nodded grudging ascent to all these.

OK, I continued, warming to my task, let's look at the Apollo programme itself. Manned flights in the Apollo programme began with Apollo 7, which was conducted in Earth orbit. Then Apollo 8, which orbited the Moon. Did that happen? Apollo 9, again conducted in Earth orbit but involved all the elements of the mission: command module, service module and the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). Are you still with me? My friend was starting to look a little worried. The next mission, Apollo10, saw the astronauts again going to the moon, but separating the LEM, taking it down to within 50,000 feet of the Lunar surface before re-docking with the command module, this to prove all the technology worked before the great Apollo 11 mission, where they simply went one stage further and landed on the surface. I asked my friend: at which point did NASA start making things up? You see what I mean? It's all crap, and terribly hurtful crap for people like me, who followed all these missions with infinite excitement, knowing we were witnessing history being made. Why don't people want to believe this? And why do they think dark forces in the US state engineered the 9/11 attacks for their own purposes, or that an organisation called the Bilderberg Group is running the World behind our backs?

It is instructive at this point to refer to David Arronovitch's views, a man with (I believe) no particular reason to act as an agent of the State. His take is that people would sooner believe in global conspiracy theories than face the fact that the World is actually an immensely complex organism where unpredictable and terrible things sometimes happen, as well as incomparably wonderful things too (like the Moon landings). Did you see him with Alex Jones on the Daily Politics Show with Andrew Neill? (you can catch on You Tube, as I did) Mr Jones ranted about Bilderberg, saying they would cut off the heads of anyone who tried to reveal their existence. Arronovitch responded:
"I'm here to testify, Mr Jones, that your head is still on your shoulders."

OK, you want a real conspiracy? Try this one for size. In the autumn of 2001, in the weeks following 9/11, letters containing anthrax bacteria began arriving on the desks of certain highly placed individuals within the government. One was even addressed to George W, who announced publicly he'd been immunised and that one of his agents kept a stock of ciproxin on hand for use in emergencies. Then the precise DNA profile of the bacteria was extracted and guess what? The DNA profile proved conclusively that the bacteria could only have come from the government's own bacteriological research facility. That's right. Someone very high up in that organisation apparently took it upon himself to send these contaminated letters, in the hope that it would be ascribed to Al Qaida (which it was) and provide an impetus to invade Afghanistan (which it did). All this is a matter of well documented fact, though oddly you don't hear much about it these days. You like? A word of warning though: don't tell the conspiracy theorists- it'll only encourage them...