All Embracing (But Underwhelming)

Paris is burning (again)

There is much that could be said about the Paris event, the role France plays globally, and so forth. Whilst I have opinions; some considered, some not so much, I will keep my judgements to myself and, instead, look at some of the cries of "False flag!" that are currently making the rounds in the conspirasphere. After all, within hours of the news of the attack at Bataclan, a lot of the (un)usual sources were asking "Is this another false flag event?" and presenting their arguments in support of such a notion in the following kinds of way:

The analogy: The terrorist attack in Paris looks awfully similar to the Boston Marathon Bombing (or the Sandy Hook Massacre, or some other example of a putative false flag), and as that was likely a false flag event, the Paris event must be a false flag event as well!
The first worry is that by drawing the analogy, the arguer is either forcing their audience to agree to bold claims about another event ("The Boston Marathon Bombing was a false flag!") or they are assuming their audience agrees with them (and so are "preaching to the choir"). So, if you are the kind of person who thinks it is by no means clear that, say, the Boston Marathon Bombing was actually a false flag event, then argument is already in trouble.

It doesn't help that some sources are claiming, for example, the Charlie Hebdo attacks were proven to be a false flag. Amplifying your case by saying "X looks similar to Y, and we suspect Y was a false flag" is one thing. Stating that Y was definitely a false flag when that's not widely believed or accepted does not strengthen the analogy but, rather, weakens it. You cannot keep saying "But it was a false flag!" repeatedly, in the hope people will begin to believe you (although many such suspects try this and only this). You have to go to some lengths to prove it.

Indeed, much of the rationale for thinking that the Bataclan attack was a false flag event is a direct comparison to its similarity to the Boston Marathon Bombing, the Sandy Hook Massacre, and so forth. If the argument really just boils down to a string of analogies, then we have a problem because people can point to important dissimilarities and, in the words of Gerald Posner, declare "Case Closed".

The claim "False flags are common" is a constant refrain amongst those who would argue that events like the attack at Bataclan is yet another example of the State blaming others for crimes it has committed. On The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy Josh and myself discussed how many of the putative examples of "proven false flags" turn out to be anything but. That being said, there are plenty of examples of governments engaging in false flag activities (Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?), and given my career has been built on arguing conspiracies are more common than most of us think, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the claim we underestimate the incidence of false flag-style events in contemporary politics. I just think that some people are so into crying "False flag!" they sometimes include examples which in no way seem to be cases of flagging falsely.
It's convenient for the status quo: The cui bono hypothesis – the idea you can easily get to who is responsible for some event by asking who benefits from it – is one of those notions which seems nice and cute until you unpack it. Not everyone benefits from events they cause, and many people opportunistically profit from the misfortune of others. So, whilst an event like that we saw in Paris last week certainly could be seen as aiding and abetting the West in its endless "War on Terror", that may well be a by-product (a predictable one, even) of such an event; it certainly does not tell us that the real perpetrators must be elements in the French Government.

A variation on this: Some have argued that it's awfully convenient that a climate change summit is happening in Paris at around about the same time. The idea is that it's convenient timing: France will use the attack to impose curfews (which will stop people protesting the summit), or it's all a smokescreen to allow the NWO to pass increasingly draconian laws in order to "save the planet".
Yet, if we are serious about running the "Who benefits line?", then surely the obvious beneficiaries are the terrorists? We don't need to posit the French government in this this when we have obvious perpetrators and organisations willing to take responsibility. If we want to claim this is a false flag then, like the events of 9/11, we have to ask "Why is another group trying to claim all the glory here?"

Although, of course, suitably filled out, the story of who to blame does reflect badly on the West. The West are the ones who have been interfering in Middle-Eastern politics for over a century, and thus created the volatile conditions that lead to the formation of Daesh and the Taliban. However, I don't think that is what people talking about false flag events are trying to get at…
Why would refugees want to make themselves unwelcome by committing acts of terror? Well, they wouldn't. Let's not conflate refugees with terrorists, especially since, let's face it, it's probably the kind of conflation Daesh would quite like the West to adopt. After all, the attack at Bataclan was presumably designed to foment discord and terror. If we assume that the attack was the product of either Daesh or the Taliban (at this stage we still do not know), then we can point at explicit statements by both organisations that show they think such acts of terror will encourage new adherents, and also turn non-Muslims against Muslims.

Now, it's possible some terrorists will make their way into a society by posing as refugees (although at this stage we have no proof of that in Paris; thus far the identified suspects are French citizens, aka homegrown terrorists), but that is no reason to conflate all refugees with the small subset of terrorists. The vast majority of refugees (if we assume there are some terrorists among them…) are refugees precisely because of terrorist activity back home. They are fleeing terrorisms, rather than exporting it.

So, no, the refugees aren't committing acts of terror. Terrorists are committing acts of terror.
Isn't Daesh/the Taliban financed by the West? It's true that the West has a fairly complex and mostly hypocritical relationship with many of the groups we deem "terrorist". Sometimes we have treated them as friends, only to decide one day that their enemies were our real friends all along, and sometimes we have continued to trade with them even after declaring them our worst enemies. The West really knows how to do hypocrisy well. ((For example, both the U.K. and the U.S.A. are against the use of chemical weapons, and yet quite happily sell said weapons to nations who they have previously criticised for daring to use them. Say, like Syria.)) But this doesn't tell us that, say, France was the real perpetrator. It just tells us that the story of who is really ultimately responsible for the tragedy is a lot more complex than the claim "Them terrorists…"
The story keeps changing! How many attackers were there? How many people were killed? How many were injured? Was a passport found or not? What weapons were used? The story keeps changing!

As the people at "Before It's News" write:

This might seem inconsequential to many readers, but, in informed researching circles, it is well-known that the information that comes out shortly after the event is usually the most reliable. This is not to discount the existence of confusion related to panicked reports coming from eyewitnesses and the like.

Except, when you think about that, what they've just claimed is nonsense; they admit witnesses can be confused, but initial reports are still apparently the most reliable. Yet that's a contentious, and thus controversial, position. Eye-witness testimony is the kind of thing psychologists have been studying in laboratory conditions for years now, and the results indicate that witnesses suffer from reliability problems within minutes of an event occurring. We like to think that our short term memories are good, and we only suffer problems as memories pass into long term storage, but that just isn't the case. Human memory is unreliable from the get go, which is why – in events like the attacks in Paris – we tend to generate the story of what happened not on the basis of individual testimony but, rather, the points of agreement amongst most witnesses. ((Even that can be a problem, because witnesses will start to agree with one another the more they share information and reinforce each other's memories. It's a harder job than anyone thought, the process nailing down the details of what happens.))

So, it's to be expected that, in the immediate aftermath of an event like this details of the story will take a while to become clear, and that the first reports might seem anomalous in the long run. For example, not every witness is an expert in weapon identification, and some witnesses will think that a bystander holding a phone is yet another attacker. This stuff will get reported without being checked, and by the time people are sure of the details, the unchecked reports will be out there as "news". A changing story doesn't tell us much on its own…

Now, individually these arguments don't point towards the Bataclan attack being a false flag event, but some potent combination of them might. For example, an argument which draws upon points 1 (the analogy) & 2 (who benefits), backed up with 5 (what exactly happened) could be a good argument for inferring that a conspiracy exists. But then you would need to contrast that putative conspiratorial hypothesis with whatever rival explanatory hypotheses are available, and decide – on the balance of the probabilities – which is the best available explanation. It's this latter step that seems to be missing from these analyses; we're told "It's a false flag!" rather than persuaded that a false flag analysis is worth considering.

Now, on some level the idea that many – or even most – of these events might turn out to be false flags is reassuring; it would mean there is little actual terrorism (at least in the West; I'm not sure whether the people who cry "False flag!" say the same kind of thing about events in Syria or Lebanon…). Rather, the problem is the State, and its coercive and duplicitous practices. And maybe it is. Perhaps the real perpetrators of the attack at the Bataclan was the French State. I guess I'm as of yet unconvinced about this particular false flag, but I'll have more to say on this later this week, when Josh and I cover this story for the podcast.

Oh, and then there's this: the attack occurred on Black Friday (Friday the 13th), in November! In Paris! Historically, that's when and where the Templars were crushed by King Philip. Must be a templar connection! (Except, of course, that happened in October. Still, points for trying to make a connection…)

11/16/2015

A failure to communicate

Earlier this year I set myself a task: write a Monday blogpost each week without fail. For the last three weeks I have failed utterly to post anything on a Monday, but it’s not because I didn’t try. Over the last three weeks I have drafted posts on social media bullying, the dreaded ‘New Zealand “Twitterati”‘ problem and the like, only to sigh come Monday afternoon, close my MMD editor and go on with my week feeling slightly let down by myself and the world.

But no more! By admitting to my stumbling block, I hope to move on and get back to regular blogging. Those posts will likely stay in the draft folder until such time the issues they pertain to reoccur. Instead, let’s talk about Ben Carson, you know, the neurosurgeon?

Ben Carson is running to be the Republican nominee for President of the U.S.A. Carson’s campaign has come a cropper over the last few days for two somewhat unrelated reasons. The first is that some of the details of his well-publicised life story of a murderous-thug-turned-Christian-brain-surgeon cannot be verified/might be false. The second is that Carson believes the pyramids are not royal tombs but, rather, grain silos built by Joseph (of “Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat” fame). Not just that, but Carson has position his sensible belief in triangular grain repositories in opposition to the scientific consensus that aliens built the pyramids.

Let’s just unpack that for a second. Ben Carson thinks scientists and historians and the like believe in some version of the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis – the claim ancient gods were visitors from space (cue the theme to “Stargate”) – and we all know that can’t be true. As such, Carson has gone with the authoritative words of the Old Testament, which apparently tells us the true purpose of the pyramids. I mean, why not; if scientists are going to believe such weird things, you might as well turn to the gods for answers…

Except, of course – as most of you are screaming internally – scientists, historians and archaeologists believe no such thing. The history of Egypt is well attested to, at least these days. ((Just over a century ago this was not the case. Thank the non-existent gods for the Rosetta Stone.)) Just about everyone believes that the pyramids are not just royal tombs, but we’re fairly sure hoe they were built, why they were built and the like. Whilst there is still a fair amount of debate as to, say, whether there are hidden chambers within certain pyramids and the like, no one really believes they are spacecraft landing platforms, or radio telescopes…

So, where does Carson get his ideas from? Well, the fringe. Authors like Erich von Däniken, Graham Hancock and the like have all advanced radically different versions of prehistory in popular texts. Not just that, but they often present their theories as being the “real” history, and orthodox history as being the product of a conspiracy.

It’s interesting that Carson gets his ideas of the academic consensus from the fringes. It’s not surprising, however; the Republicans seem to get all their ideas of orthodoxy from the fringes. The climate is not changing; a fringe scientist proved it! We can’t really offset climate change even if it is occurring; Bjørn Lomborg wrote a book! People believe weird things about the pyramids; look at historian Erich von Däniken’s views!

Yet Carson – who thinks himself very sensible and very clever – is also getting his sensible views from the fringe, because, despite what he claims, the Old Testament makes no claims about the pyramids being grain silos. Whilst some historical figures associated the pyramids with the (probably apocryphal) story of Joseph setting up grain silos for the seven years of famine in Egypt, not even modern Christian historians believe that to be the case now. Carson is getting his views on Ancient Egypt from somewhere, but it’s not the Bible.

Where we get our information from is important; I’m of the belief that almost all knowledge is social – we very rarely learn the truth of something from solitary inspection or introspection – and so situating someone’s belief in their social context is important for an understanding of that belief. Ben Carson believes scientists think the pyramids were built by aliens. Ben Carson, then, believes weird things about science. Not just that, but Ben Carson tells people the Bible claims things it does not. Ben Carson, then, believes a bunch of fringe beliefs but seems to think these beliefs aren’t attested to be orthodox academics because of some conspiracy.

Yet, you know what’s truly disturbing about all of this? Trump doesn’t seem to be any better. Oh, his fringe beliefs are much more mainstream, but equally as unjustified. ((It’s worth pointing out that their fringe beliefs are not necessarily telling factors against them as candidates. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of U.S. citizens are purported to believe in the “Ancient Astronaut” thesis. A larger number believe that the Great Flood out of Genesis actually occurred.)) Either man could be the Republican nominee for President. We just have to hope that the academic consensus that neither man will garner a plurality of votes across all the important demographics in the U.S.A. isn’t the kind of belief Carson (or Trump) would endorse.

11/09/2015

Episode 73 – The Conspiracy behind Kathryn S. Olmsted

In which Josh kills Matthew (once again) before Matthew discusses a century of conspiracies with Kathryn S. Olmsted…

11/01/2015

UFOs and their Spiritual Mission

Given I’m a hip young thing ((I am neither hip, nor young; this is a lie.)), I spend my Saturday evenings like many a person attending talks in my local town hall. That’s why last Saturday I found myself at the Leys Institute library listening for two hours to two earnest figures, Gordon and Megan, tell a “crowd” of about twenty people about UFOs and the spiritual mission of the World Teacher, Maitreya.

The talk was broken into two parts; Gordon talked about UFOs and our “space brothers”, whilst Megan focussed on the spiritual aspect of Maitreya’s mission on Earth. It was almost the definition of bait-and-switch; get people in to hear a fantastical story about UFOs and then sell them on some patented “transmission meditation”. It would have helped their cause if there had been anything approaching to a hard sell, however; as it stands the talk was a curious low key affair where it was suggested that if you wanted to know more, there was a meditation group near you, but at no point did anyone literally or figuratively lock the doors and turn on their mesmer stare.

“This is an esoteric fact which cannot be proven scientifically”

Gordon’s slideshow presentation was all about the evidence for our “space brothers”, the occupants of sighted UFOs who definitely come from our solar system and not Pleiades, Draco or any of those other solar systems you might have heard about. Those, Gordon assured us, are claims either born of disinformation or “space movies”. As are any claims that our space brothers go around abducting people or cattle mutilation; that’s all part of a sinister U.S. plot, designed to make us think our space brothers are malevolent, not friendly.

Gordon’s talk, littered as it was with photos of dubious provenance, was al;l about the esoteric, not scientific evidence, for the existence of our space brother. “Run it pass your commonsense and world experience”, he kept saying. Indeed, he made a point of claiming that he did not expect us to believe him outright, but if we used our intuition, we would come to know what he was saying was the truth.

Despite claiming that the story he was telling was esoteric, he could not help but make an awful lot of digs at scientists, particularly those at NASA. Gordon, himself admittedly perplexing by what he was saying, told us about the various planes of the physical; the known and admitted to by the Sciences planes of the solid, liquid, gaseous, which are just but a part of the grand nature of the physical. Science, it seems, is either blithely unaware – or hiding the existence – of the four etheric planes. These etheric planes are important for our knowledge of cosmology, because whilst Mars, for example, might look like a dead world, that is only because the space brothers who live there exist in the etheric. Indeed, Earth is the only planet in the solar system where humans like ourselves exist purely in the dense, non-etheric physical planes. That’s also where we will stay until such time we stop using nuclear power.

The story Gordon told about UFOs is one which dates back to the nuclear scares of the 50s and 60s, and how certain elements of the UFOlogical community (presumably unwittingly) tapped into those fears. The worries about both nuclear power and nuclear weaponry lead many of the proponents of the “UFOs are friendly” brigade to claim that UFOs were either avoiding us because of our use of nuclear weapons, or warning us of the dangers of nuclear energy. It turns out our space brothers are cleaning up most of the damaging radiation pollution we are pumping into the unseen or unacknowledged etheric planes, using “implosion devices”. However, because of the law of karma and the law of consequences, along with the doctrine of free will, we have to do our part.

“Jesus is living incognito on the outskirts of Rome.”

Megan’s half of the presentation was much more about Maitreya, the World Teacher, and his disciple, Benjamin Creme. Maitreya, brother of the Buddha, was born sometime in the Atlantean age (which ran for 12 million years) and is one of a few Earth humans to have ascended to the etheric. The Maitreya and Benjamin Creme, a now 92-year old white man who lives in London, have been in telepathic communication since the 1970s. In order to get us ready for the “Day of Declaration”, where we, the people, will insist on hearing the Maitreya’s wisdom broadcast to all, the Maitreya has taken on physical form once again (with about forty of his mates) to walk the world and share his wisdom.

The vast majority of the Maitreya’s wisdom comes from messages he “telepathically sent” to Creme in the late 20th Century, along with purported claims about the public appearance of the Maitreya at various points prior to 2002ACE. The Maitreya’s main gig now seems to be making appearances on public TV, either in debates or as an interviewed man on the street. None of these appearances can be confirmed by Creme, nor will he tell people where they might see the Maitreya be interviewed next; the only way to know that you are watching the Maitreya is to intuit that it is him. Let’s just say that evidentially, this is more than a little troubling.

The spiritual aspect of Megan’s talk was not just to introduce the idea of the World Teacher, but also to tell people that everything is going to be all right. The Maitreya has seen the future and the Day of Declaration (which will be followed by an age of limitless and free energy for all) is close, so all we need to do is meditate and let the eternal masters get on with making/prepping the world to be a better place. All we need to do is engage in a little, light transmission meditation, and let the masters channel our energies to where they need to be.

There’s no doubt to my mind that Gordon and Megan are very sincere and believe in the Maitreya and the space brothers. At one point I thought a lot of this was very similar to Scientology, but the big difference is this: Gordon and Megan’s “Share International” organisation was not pleading for us to join, not requesting money from us, or locking us in and forcing us to undergo any form of testing. They were just engaged in a spot of public outreach. Now, there is an argument this is still on the spectrum of “bad things” if you think their public outreach will result in people joining their cause and coming to believe weird things, but, let’s face it, it’s no worse (or even weirder) than Christian proselytising.

This is, in the end, a soothing (and, let’s face it, white, middle-class) spirituality which says “As long as you are positive about things, all you need to do is live a nice, healthy life and the world will continue to change for the better.” It’s a view which is incredibly comforting, especially if you already are fairly well-off and comfortable. You don’t have to do much at all to effect positive change; some meditation here and there, basically. Therein lies the rub; this is a spirituality which says real change is only possible if you believe in the Maitreya. For those of us who don’t, the challenge of making a better world isn’t going to consist of giving lectures to twenty people and sharing photos of alleged UFOs, or meditating. The work requires getting out there and actually doing things to make that change happen.

Still, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night. I know; I went and engaged in precisely that kind of behaviour afterwards.

10/12/2015

The new “Volkswagen Scandal”

There is a thesis about conspiracies (and their associated conspiracy theories) I am somewhat sympathetic to, even though I know of numerous counterexample which undermine it: the bigger the alleged conspiracy, the less likely the conspiracy theory. The thought is this: it is hard to keep secrets, so the more people who know and the longer they are expected to stay silent, the more likely someone will spill the beans.

It is, when you think about it, either an odd thing to believe, or a laudable sentiment; either humans suck at keeping secrets or we’re basically good people who will blow the whistle given time and opportunity. The problem is, there are numerous examples where, if this really were the case, people managed to keep shtum nonetheless. The Moscow Trials, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and, now, the “fine” people at Volkswagen.

Let me fill you in, in case you’ve been avoiding automobile news over the last few weeks; Volkswagen sell a number of diesel-powered cars throughout the world. Testing in Europe showed that Volkswagen’s new, developed in house, pollution-reduction system – found in their small to mid-sized diesel cars – was nowhere near as effective as Volkswagen’s claims. On the basis of this, Californian regulators decided to test a series of diesel cars – not just Volkswagen’s ones – in order to show that the US’s tougher regulations worked; the expected result would be that diesel cars on the American market emitted less dangerous pollutants then their European equivalents.

The testing, which was undertaken at West Virginia University, ended up producing a very vexing result. In the lab the Volkswagen vehicles performed to spec, but when near identical tests were undertaken on the road, the same vehicles produced 30 to 40 times more pollutants than the legal maximum. Testers were stumped, and called in technicians from Volkswagen to explain the difference between real world tests, and what they were finding in the labs. Those technicians made a whole bunch of claims about how the tests weren’t being done properly, how the measurements were faulty; basically, they blamed the people in the laboratory for not doing their jobs properly. That was until the people in the lab came up with the idea of fooling the car in the lab to thinking it was out on the open road. Suddenly, the test results lined up, and it became obvious Volkswagen had, once again, used a sophisticated cheat/defeat device in order to get their cars past the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A little history: in the 1970s a whole bunch of automobile manufacturers – including Volkswagen – were caught using defeat devices in order to get past environmental protection regulations in the U.S. So, there’s form. Meanwhile, in the late 2000s Volkswagen decided to bet on diesel-powered cars, rather than hybrid vehicles, in the move to turn towards a kinder, more environmentally friendly can manufacturer. Diesel vehicles produce significant amounts of pollutants, and the usual way in which such pollutants are dealt with is to either treat them with urea before they leave the vehicle via the exhaust, or just trap them. Volkswagen decided that in their small to mid-sized vehicles getting customers to change or refill urea tanks would be a burden, so they settled on trapping the pollutants. Then new CEO, Martin Winterkorn, elected to work with or develop an in-house solution.

The drive (sorry… not sorry) towards producing environmentally friendly cars was not just about kindness, or avoiding fines; by promising that their cars would be environmentally friendly, Volkswagen also were entitled to claim environmental funding and tax credits. As such, there was a significant financial motive to ensure that the cars would pass muster if and when tested.

Not just that, but there were also the customers to think about. Cars which trap or treat pollutants use more fuel; basically, to make a car environmentally friendly, you sacrifice fuel efficiency. Whilst car owners presumably want their cars to not pollute excessively (although some owners seem to revel in that kind of thing), most car owners also want to spend as little on fuel as possible (I don’t know of any exceptions to that rule). So, it was in the interest of Volkswagen to produce fuel efficient cars buyers would want, whilst simply claiming – albeit falsely – that the cars were environmentally friendly to boot. That itself is another motive.

Herein lies the rub: why did Volkswagen cheat? Was their technology simply not up to the challenge, or did they intend to cheat their way through testing from the very start? Whatever the case, Volkswagen engaged in a prolonged period of deceptive practices, which involved a number of people. This is, my friends, an example of a conspiracy. It also seems to be one in which a lot of people kept secret their malfeasance for quite some time.

Let us deal with the easy issue first: between 2009 and 2015, Volkswagen enabled a defeat device on small to mid-sized diesel cars sold around the world which made them environmentally friendly in lab, but only in the lab. Once out on the open road, these vehicles polluted like cars that just don’t care.

Six years might not seem like a long time, but given the suspicion which automobile manufacturers routinely “suffer”, along with the fact that someone tried to blow the whistle on this back in 2011, means this was a significant amount of time for Volkswagen to get away with their scheme.

It was also a fairly big scheme. Whilst the American market for diesel cars is quite small – and Volkswagen’s share of it smaller – Volkswagen has admitted the cheat device is found in 11 million cars worldwide (a number which seems to increase day-by-day). This is no small and trifling matter of conspiracy; we have a good idea of why Volkswagen would desire to cheat, and an even better idea of the scale of the problem. Which leaves us with the big question: who knew about it?

This is the part of the story which fascinates me the most. The senior management of Volkswagen claims the whole problem can be blamed upon just a few malcontents in their company. That is, of course, precisely what you would expect senior management to say. Although Martin Winterkorn eventually resigned as CEO over this matter, and was instrumental in Volkswagen developing their own pollutant-trapping system, he claims he was just as flummoxed by revelations as everyone else. As you would expect him to say.

So, what can we say. Well, the conspirators who developed the cheat device were engineers who worked for Volkswagen. We also know that the electronics supplier, Bosch, warned Volkswagen to only use the “test mode” setting internally, which means managers were aware of the issue. Given that this cheat device was installed in numerous vehicles, either multiple sets of engineers were complicit, or the engineers did not sufficiently test the vehicles they were helping to develop.

Side note: A few commentators online have suggested that the cheat device is not a cheat device, but that Volkswagen produced a test mode and then forgot to disable it. As such, when challenged on the anomalous test results, the Volkswagen technicians would have been confused by the anomalous results and really would have believed that the lab techs at Western Virginia University were mistaken. Whilst we can’t completely rule this hypothesis out of contention, it certainly seems like a weak defence; if this problem was isolated to, say, one model of car sold at one point in time, sure. Six years and multiple models? To believe this requires too much charity, I reckon.

Our set of conspirators, then, is quite a few people, and that’s only if we think the pool is restricted to engineers who work at Volkswagen. I think we can safely add to that number elements of middle and upper management, given that Volkswagen is reportedly a very hierarchical organisation, with a lot of control exercised by senior management. The idea this was all the work of a few rascals seems unlikely… Well, unless those rascals were upper management, who ordered unwilling subordinates to do their work.

If this is true, then it would soothe the consciences of people who think big conspiracies are unlikely (and thus theories about such conspiracies are the kind of thing we can pooh-pooh). If it really was just a few bad eggs/apples/whatever, then, sure, it’s a big scandal, but it’s not big in that special way which would challenge our assumptions about the likelihood of certain kinds of conspiracy theories.

Which leads to another question; why did it take so long for this to come out? If we assume there were quite a few engineers involved, and that multiple teams were aware their vehicles weren’t quite the epitome of environment design, why didn’t someone leak this to the regulators or the media? Well, someone did try in 2011, but that was quickly buried by Volkswagen (thus giving us more evidence that quite a few people had to be in the know). The Software Engineering Code of Ethics, agreed to by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). the Institute of Electrical and the Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is pretty clear that engineers are ethically obliged to report such cheating devices. However, the personal cost of doing so means such whistleblowing ends up being rare. For one, you will likely stop being employed as your claims are being rigorously denied and then hesitantly investigated. You might also be sued for brining your (past) employer into disrepute. Also, not many companies employ whistleblowers, either, since they are a bit of a known liability. Thus, you might well have had a culture at Volkswagen were a lot of people knew what was going on, but nobody spoke out about it.

That is what really fascinates me. I think there is a goodly chance a lot of people at Volkswagen knew about the cheat devices, and it wasn’t just the actions of a malfeasant few. I think this might well be an example of a big conspiracy. It’s not at all unreasonable to think large chunks elements of Volkswagen’s management – from the engineering teams to the CEO’s office – knew exactly what they were getting away with, and yet the culture ensured news did not get out. If that turns out to be the case (and we might never know, because it’s in the interest of Volkswagen to minimise any claims about who knew what and when), then this is just more evidence that you really can get away, with a lot of your friends, with conspiring to be truly awful for quite some time.