What's wrong with 'lenin'? Ask Francis Boyle.

'lenin' informs us that he's going to be presenting his thoughts at the Marxism 2007 conference, which starts tomorrow. Title of his paper: "'What's Wrong With Conspiracy Theories?"

What's wrong with 'lenin' is that he is still cheerfully deploying this thoughtstopper, without once stopping to ask himself who gave him it, or what it's actually for, and who else uses it, and why. No doubt 'lenin' has his reasons; it's just a little strange that he never explains them. Perhaps his next paper will be entitled "What's wrong with Islamofascism?", or "What's Wrong With Political Correctness?" No need to distance himself with quotemarks or anything. Words are innocent, after all. You can just pick them up and use them as you find them. Right, 'lenin'?

Francis Boyle would most certainly disagree. As would Jamey Hecht:

THE TERM ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.

So why is 'lenin' still riding that allegedly tireless workhorse? Everyone else can see that it's ripe for the knacker's yard.

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UPDATE THURSDAY: BREAKING NEWS -

Australia admits oil motive in Iraq

AlJazeera, THURSDAY, JULY 05, 2007

Australia has admitted for the first time that securing the supply of oil is a key motive for its involvement in the US-led war in Iraq.

Brendan Nelson, the defence minister, said "energy security" was one of the main priorities behind his country's support for the war, which is unpopular among Australians.

HISTORICAL NOTE:
Blair: Iraq oil claim is 'conspiracy theory'

Guardian, Wednesday January 15, 2003

Tony Blair today derided as "conspiracy theories" accusations that a war on Iraq would be in pursuit of oil, as he faced down growing discontent in parliament at a meeting of Labour backbenchers and at PMQs.

"Derided"? Aha. And note that Blair achieved that derision without using a single adjective. If he'd said (for example) "a ridiculous conspiracy theory", then it would have been a tautology. The compound noun itself is already a term of derision; a loaded term, not quite as innocent as 'lenin' pretends it is. Now, it's not surprising that the Vicar of Downing Street would reach for that trusty loaded weapon when under fire himself. But why is 'lenin' waving it around, like a three-year-old with a hand-grenade? Maybe he can tell us. He doesn't have to explain whose interests he serves in deploying it.

(Of course, it's always possible that Britain and Australia are in Iraq for different reasons: the Aussies for the oil, the Brits as humanitarians or archaeologists or sun-worshippers or something. Just as it's always possible, though sadly unlikely, that the left will finally, belatedly, grow up.)

The Testing of Lenin

Well, well: 'lenin' has now gone and banned me. Was that bravely done?

Whatever it was, it's certainly a very low comedy he's staging there. And brave or cowardly, it's all he can come up with. Having run out of evasive strategies on the Unwelcome Topic of 9/11, 'lenin' has now very quickly run out of arguments. This is not surprising, as the very best he had to offer in defence of the Bush Gang's cover-story was the 'evidence' tortured out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by the CIA and subsequently presented at the farcical 'trial' of Mounir al-Motassadeq in Hamburg.

Robbed of such shabby props, 'lenin' knows he doesn't have a leg to stand on. In mentioning his infirmity, I was committing the inexcusable crime of lèse majesté. Therefore, I had to go.

Lenin''s attitude is in fact more papal than kingly: urbi et orbi, from the heights of his Tomb, he can now spout endlessly dishonest fatuities about what he calls 'conspiracy theories', secure in the knowledge that he won't have to suffer any back-talk from me. He concludes his latest bull with this false but comforting thought:

"there is usually little we can do about any putative conspiracy beyond strengthening our class and making sure it is capable of minimising the effects of such activities."

"Our" class? Of course, he means his class: the chinrubbing, arse-covering clerical class. And presumably 'lenin''s class will "minimise the effects of such activities" in precisely the same way it is minimising them now: namely, not at all. On the contrary.

Low comedy. Still, not to worry; on the comments threads here and here, paul, milosevic, Peter Blapps, Tuppenceworth and many others (including a fellow-qlipoth) demonstrate that there will be back-talk enough. As 'lenin' huffs and puffs and blows his own house down, it's becoming ever more obvious that he and the rest of the 9/11Falsers are running out of steam. On the entire issue of 9/11, 'lenin''s performance (like Alexander Cockburn's and David Corn's) has been - and is - a moral and intellectual disgrace. No-one can take such stuff seriously anymore. Of course 'lenin' knows this too. His vanity is at stake, hence his viciousness.

In other news, the 'War' on 'Terror' proceeds apace, its major premise still unquestioned by the Prudently Harmless Left. (With an "antiwar movement" like lenin's, who needs a pro-war movement?)

- Here is the post he refused to print:

Steffaction, Good point. It's like having video footage of a fella murdering all of his neighbours, but spending all your time and energy wondering about whether he slapped his wife on his way out to do it.
ant 25 Nov, 16:30 #

No, ant; it's not. It's about having an underinformed and TV-addicted population that's traditionally indifferent to the low-cost killing of foreigners in Panama or Nicaragua - and then galvanising them by demonstrating that Evil Omnipresent Foreigners can actually kill them in their thousands, any time and without warning. ("The bastards snuck up and struck us in the Homeland!")

And the point of showing Americans that spectacle is so that they won't get too stroppy even if the War on Muslims costs them trillions, requires a load of dead "Boys", robs them of their civil liberties, and lasts forever.

As it is doing, more than five years on, with no end in sight.

- warszawa

The Stench from Lenin's Tomb

We are informed that 'Al Qaeda is misunderstood'.

Observe the comments under that post at Lenin's Tomb.

Observe lenin's helplessness. Observe his huffiness. Observe his increasingly incoherent rage. Observe his bloviating, de haut en bas (but not from a very great height). Observe how he resorts to playground namecalling. Observe how he evades and evades and evades. Observe how little support he gets, even from the regulars. Observe how he welcomes the foul-mouthed adulation of his notoriously stupid Pet Troll, one 'Patrick', aka a thousand imbecilic pseudonyms.

Observe what lenin eventually presents as his reply (finally, finally, at long last...) to the very simplest of questions:

Where is the evidence that 'Al Qaeda' dunnit? ('It' being The Crime That Made Us All Americans.)

His reluctant and belated response is utterly inexcusable. Here, for example, is the fifth piece of 'evidence' he adduces:

"Number five is the evidence presented in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, from KSM himself. This evidence cleared Moussaoui (precisely as bin Laden would later do in a video address), but it did acknowledge an AQ plot and identify a number of actors in it."

"Evidence"? Is lenin joking? This is how Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - if he is indeed even in American custody - came to give that "evidence". And Moussaoui's 'trial' was (is) one of the most shameful legal travesties to have taken place in Germany in the last 61 years.

What's really sickening is that lenin knows all this perfectly well. He certainly knows about KSM's 'waterboarding', because I told him all about it quite recently. But perhaps lenin has succeeding in forgetting. (It wouldn't be for want of trying.) At any rate, lenin is not the only person in the world who has to be tortured before he will cough up any 'evidence'.

And who extracted that 'evidence'? And how much is that 'evidence' worth?

These are lenin's trusted sources.

- I will complete this post tomorrow. It is nearly 2:00 a.m. here and I have to be up in five hours; so for now I'll leave it to others to point out the other egregious logical and factual errors in lenin's ignominious screed. It is, naturally, entirely unlinked. To put it politely: lenin got his 'evidence' from the White House, via the Guardian and the telly. In plain English: he is pulling that 'evidence' out of his arse. Five years on, there is simply no excuse for it.

Lenin's Tomb badly needs airing. The stench it emits is the stench of chronic dishonesty, wilful ignorance and profound moral cowardice. It is also the sweet stink of too many corpses to count.