The Group W Theory

[octoman]

Turns out, a good conspiracy is pretty hard to put together. I thought "heck, even I can do better than moonman." I figured with even a smidgen of work I could come up with my own. Found the Group W post, thought "yeah, I can belive that." Starting with a start of an idea.

Well, I'm just gonna get it going.

[octoman]

This is rocketdad's original post about Group W. I am presenting it here un altered to start the thread.

As this was put forth in a public manner, I consider it to be public-domain information until told otherwise.
The origininal poster has not come forward to claim it, so I consider it surplus intellectual property until told otherwise.

Sept 8, 2005, 1:43am, Dead Hoosiers wrote:
Please tell me about group W.


Please google "Alice's restaurant." The name Group W refers to that, plus the middle initial of the president.

The Group W theory is not based on religious preconceptions, fear of the Masons, or belief in the all-encompassing "Illuminati" conspiracy, or belief in aliens. The Group W theory is based on pragmatism instead of superstition and religious ideology. The Group W theory is based on belief in other people's greed.

Group W started during the Ford administration. Ford was inexperienced, clueless, and didn't have time to get up to speed on the job, so other people had to do a lot of the complicated work for him. Cheney and Rumsfeld were two of them.

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove are the most public faces. Group W is probably very small. Large conspiracies are harder to sustain.

Group W did not stage the 9/11 attack, but took advantage of the situation to get military action going. Group W planned on invading Iraq one way or the other.

Group W learns from history to avoid making the mistakes of others. Nixon was brought down by stupid people executing a stupid idea. The "shadow government" of North and company was easy to discover, and the people in power-positions were threatened by it.

Group W knows how much power lies in middle-management. Assistants and deputies to the official leaders of departments have more influence on day-to-day decision making. Group W is not about personal ego-gratification power, but has a group agenda.

Group W read "1984" and "Animal Farm" as case-studies in political theory and manipulation of the masses.

Kooky ideas keep people from talking about real problems. Group W has manipulated the 9/11 conspiracy theories, especially regarding the Pentagon attack, to keep people busy looking in the wrong direction.

Bart Sibrel's video came out in February of 2001. Bart Sibrel claims "patriots" gave him $500,000 to make it.

Group W knows what killed the dinosaurs. Group W wants to develop "anti-ballistic missile technology." Group W wants to throw money at "the moon, mars, and beyond."

Group W knows how much petroleum is left in the world. Group W wants you to believe the Iranians want nuclear weapons.

[octoman]

I will now undertake to analyze the Group W Theory and see if anything interesting is inside. It's kind of a messy "essay" so I'll probably have to re-arrange it. That's why I've posted the original first, just to be clear.

I'll post this large, general analysis, then get into specific points individually so you all can tell me where I'm wrong. That's what this is about, right? Peer-review publishing for the rest of us!

Sept 8, 2005, 1:43am, Dead Hoosiers wrote:
Please tell me about group W.

Rocketdad dangled a bit of bait at Dead Hoosiers about beliveable and unbelieveable conspiracies. DH nibbled the hook enough to dip the bobber.

Please google "Alice's restaurant." The name Group W refers to that, plus the middle initial of the president.

The song "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie:
www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml

Group W Reference:
"And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me!"


Bolding added for emphasis..
So from the start we have a strange pun, Group W, originally meaning people with low morals, and referring to the President of the United States, George W. Bush, commonly known as "W" or "Dubya."

This suggests a group of people, surrounding "W," some of whom avoided war services for personal reasons as opposed to the needs of the Nation.

The morality of the individuals surrounding George W. Bush seems ripe for exploration.

hnn.us/roundup/entries/4983.html
The above link is an article discussing Vice President Dick Cheney's 5 draft deferrments, for "subpar academic performance," and because he had "other priorities."

I'm sure ALL draftees had other priorities, especially the ones who never came back.

The Group W theory is not based on religious preconceptions, fear of the Masons, or belief in the all-encompassing "Illuminati" conspiracy, or belief in aliens. The Group W theory is based on pragmatism instead of superstition and religious ideology. The Group W theory is based on belief in other people's greed.

This is what got me. I don't belive the Satanists, Freemasons and Jewish Bankers are in cahoots, and have been for centuries. That doesn't make any sense. The world is not run by 100 evil men. But a million evil men each THINK they're part of 100 men running something important. Like Russia, or the US congress, or Enron.
So this conspiracy is small and based on greed.

I also don't think they core group of conspirators give a rat's ass about church doctrine of any kind, but they need the votes and support of those that do.

Group W started during the Ford administration. Ford was inexperienced, clueless, and didn't have time to get up to speed on the job, so other people had to do a lot of the complicated work for him. Cheney and Rumsfeld were two of them.

dickcheneyfanclub.com/photos/Rumsfeld-cheney1975.jpg
Here's a picture of Cheney and Rumsfeld together in the Ford administration.

www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1020-01.htm
Here's what they're up to these days.

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove are the most public faces. Group W is probably very small. Large conspiracies are harder to sustain.

One thing to do is determine who is in and who is out. I'm going to use the term "illuminated," small i, to mean those who are in-the-know at the deepest levels.
Like Rove, and Rumsfeld.
I will use the term "unilluminated" to refer to those who may be close to the group but are not in the innermost confidences.
Like Powell. And Rice. Or maybe not Rice.

Group W did not stage the 9/11 attack, but took advantage of the situation to get military action going. Group W planned on invading Iraq one way or the other.

The PNAC thing talks about the need for a new pearl harbor. Look how soon after we 86'd the Taliban we started in on Iraq.

Group W learns from history to avoid making the mistakes of others. Nixon was brought down by stupid people executing a stupid idea. The "shadow government" of North and company was easy to discover, and the people in power-positions were threatened by it.

We're starting to get mistakes now, and some of the crooks are being discovered. Current events.

Group W knows how much power lies in middle-management. Assistants and deputies to the official leaders of departments have more influence on day-to-day decision making. Group W is not about personal ego-gratification power, but has a group agenda.

When a new administration comes in they throw out as many people from the previous administration as they can and replace them with their own.

Rumsfeld rearranged the management structure of the pentagon or something.

I'll be looking into that.

Group W read "1984" and "Animal Farm" as case-studies in political theory and manipulation of the masses.

Difficult but not unworkable. How about an if-then? IF Group W is using Orwellian techniques to manipute the masses, THEN the effects should be detectable. I guess I'll be rereading Orwell to find specific "Orwellian" techniques, then look to see if the actions of Group W meet the description of Orwellian techniques.

Kooky ideas keep people from talking about real problems. Group W has manipulated the 9/11 conspiracy theories, especially regarding the Pentagon attack, to keep people busy looking in the wrong direction.

Disinformation campaign.

Bart Sibrel's video came out in February of 2001. Bart Sibrel claims "patriots" gave him $500,000 to make it.

Group W knows what killed the dinosaurs. Group W wants to develop "anti-ballistic missile technology." Group W wants to throw money at "the moon, mars, and beyond."

Group W knows how much petroleum is left in the world. Group W wants you to believe the Iranians want nuclear weapons.

Now we're getting somewhere. Here's some things that need some research.

Re: Rex 84
« Reply #124 on Sept 10, 2005, 3:52pm »

Sept 10, 2005, 2:40pm, Dead Hoosiers wrote:
Are you going to give me a Group W link?

There is no link to the Group W Theory, because it does not exist on the web. It is not somebody else's pre-chewed idea. It's my idea, sparked by something I read in a book, hashed out with people I know, and developed over the years of the Bush presidency.

Yeah, I can verify that there's no data out there on this idea by this name. But I think most of what's believed by the Group W Theory exists in pieces out there, without a unifying name. Most liberals and moderates belive Bush is a nitwit.

We use it as a hypothesis, and as an analytical tool to discuss current events: "If Group W exists, why do they want to throw money at the moon?" and "... why do they want me to believe the Iranians want nuclear weapons?"

Okay . . .

Does this invalidate the theory? If so, why?
If I provided a link to a site with flashy HTML and a video or book to sell, would you believe it? Why or why not?

Here, the original poster was simply trying to make a point about the origin of information. The point, I guess, is that DH is dismissing the theory as it lacks easily-googled validation. What I will be doing is trying to find out what can be found out.

Just because this theory has no name on the web does not mean that the theory is invalid. Just unexplored. Perhaps unnamed but already an idea.

In the case of the Iranians, I have been researching oil-field subsidence earthquakes, and also researching the "peak oil" theory. When the current administration starts talking about Iranian nuclear technology, I look back at my files on earthquakes in Iran, and overlap it with oilfield maps.

I'll try to duplicate this research, and I'll report on it.

I also have been researching the Chicxulub crater currently thought to be the impact point of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. ABM technology on Mars would be helpful in deflecting any future large bolides from earth-collision trajectories. A space probe recently fired an impactor at a comet, an experiment with many possible results.

Nuclear weapons, I've read in ScienceNEWS, are the first choice of Hollywood and the last choice of practicality and sensibility.
www.sciencenews.org/articles/20051112/fob8.asp

I make a few assumptions for the Group W theory. I assume that some power-hungry people are capable of getting what they want. I assume there is not one big "Illuminati" but many people wanting power and wealth, some of whom cooperate but most of whom are in competition with one another. I assume that George W. Bush is as stupid as he seems. I assume that Cheney's
office has more paperwork than Bush's. I assume that they are not telling us everything they know.

This is just NPR's version of the story. Perhaps the conspiracy is just how stupid he really is.

The Group W theory predicts that Democrats will win the next election, but that administration will be forced by circumstances to do things that Group W wants, like a chess player trapping an opponent into giving up a piece.

Here's the Beef.
We'll be spending some time with this.

rocketdad
Guest

Re: Rex 84
« Reply #138 on Sept 11, 2005, 3:58pm »
Conspiracies can be thought of as "giant spiders." If I tell you America is about to be overrun by giant spiders, I need to describe them and give some amount of proof, of some quality of other. You read the notion and imagine "giant spiders" in your own way, unless I tell you otherwise. Are they as big as a Greyhound bus? As big as a Volkswagen? As big as a puppy? As big as a golf-ball?

This is core to the theory about Group W. Instead of a conspiracy involving secret demolitions ninjas, magic energy weapons and holographically cloaked cruise missiles (a la 911) . . .

What freaks most people out is a spider the size of a puppy or less, as they are plausible.

. . . I'm arguing for a small conspiracy to abuse the middle-management layer of the american government bureaucracy, get the nation involved in a war for (some damn thing or another), and get a toe-hold on a major oil reserve that the US can milk for regional influence for the next 50 years, or whenever the "peak-oil" starts to run out.

Many of the conspiracy theories we discuss here fall into the ten-foot spider category -- so big as to be absurd. Rex 84 seems like a ten-foot-spider, and every mysterious dimple in the ground is being pointed to as a footprint of the ten-foot-spider. Even more problematic, the ten-foot-spider of Rex-84 is supposed to just a baby of the hundred-foot-spider.

The Group W theory is not of the ten-foot spider variety, but of a more plauable size. Like the size of a nickle. But there's HUNDREDS of them.

--edit to fix "notepad" formatting issues--

[twinstead]

Interesting. You've hit on something here.

I've always thought there are two kinds of woo woos: smart woo woos and dumb woo woos.

Even while both totally wrong, dumb woo woos invent unlikely conspiracies that are easy to debunk, and smart woo woos invent unlikely conspiracies that are difficult to debunk.

You've managed to create in the lab an exact duplicate of what a smart woo woo would create in the wild, and a pretty good case study of how the myriad of pieces of theories like this come together. Nice.

[octoman]

twinstead
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[octoman]

Since I am approaching this as a laboratory experiment in belief I'm going to continue thinking out loud about it. I don't care who responds to my thread or not. If all I wanted was the attention of a response I could go start a new "its all fake" thread and inflame the "passions" of the engineers, or at least a sense of moral outrage.

I read all the books I could about the Loch Ness Monster as a kid. Also UFO's, Bermuda Triangle, all those things. The more I read the less I belived, because the more I read the more contradictions I found. As a teen I gave up christianity for lent in 1985 and never went back.

I can believe in anything for fifteen minutes, but the more a salesman has to work to sell me, the more I question the product or service being shove down my throat.

At this point I know little enough to belive in Group W.

The longer I try to wrap my head around the premis of the Group W Theory, the more I realize the futility of my own actions. If true, then there needs to be a Special Prosecutor investigatiing the actions of the current administration, rather than a single Random Angry Housewife, informed by NPR, annoyed by Amy Goodman, and inflamed by a sense of "something not quite correct." I suppose I'll forge on for now. Perhaps I can turn up enough evidence that the current administration is not criminal, just stupid, to defeat my belief system.

Or is that believing the disinformation?

There have been increasing noises from conservative columnists and such that the president isn't acting very Republican. The core Group W agenda does not seem to match the Republican core agenda. Cheney has been described as having "too much" influence on the president.

What if Cheney is in charge? Does Bush know, or is he just figuring it out, or will he realize it years from now?

Unlike the usual Conspiracy Theorist, I know I'm begging certain questions, but I don't know how else to start.

Part of the underlying assumtion of the Theory is that this administration is NOT just "business as usual." From the disputed first election on, this administration has acted strangely, and the President (large P to indicate the man sworn in) has acted very un-presidential. So who's doing the job of president (small p) meaning all the paperwork and decisions?

On NPR this week (wednesday, I think) there was a story about changing the name of our current war to "the Long War" vs. "the war on Terror." This seems to be another of Rummy's Orwellian moments of changing our perceptions by changing the words we use. He's tried it before, but I don't feel like tracking down all the examples right now. Other questions loom larger, and I'll be back for those.

Who's going to fight the Long War? Our all-volunteer army? Eventually, if you prune a tree faster than it grows, you need a new tree.

Who is going to start a draft? The GOP-led congress is too internally combative at the moment, and they know the citizens won't go for it yet. We have mid-term elections coming up, and Group W needs to either
a: Plan for loss of control of congress
b; plan for increased control of congress
c: take steps to encourage whichever will help them most.


I expect voter dissatisfaction will lead to a slight edging over back to a democratic majority. I expect the democrats to win the presidency next. So we trade in our graft-and-spend conservatives for tax-and-spend liberals, they boost the nation's coffers full again, and they will do stupid stuff to try to avoid being "soft" on terror. Like institute a draft.

Boys Are Dumb.

Also in the news this week, our fearless leader visited an official government R&D office (NREL) and gave them back $5million of the $28million recently taken away. This money was specifically to hire back 32 layed-off researchers. Divided out they're valued at $156,250, actual employer cost, with benefits, social security, unemployment insurance and related costs. Call it half that for payroll. So we save less than 3 dozen $60k to $80k jobs, all the while job after job is going elsewhere. Only 150 $8/hour jobs cost that same 5 milion. How many Chinese workers make $8 an hour? Does it take a family of workers to bring home $8/hour?

$5million chump change in a national economy. He probably had it laying around in a bribes-and-pr fund just for things like this.

The real significance is that he's starting to beat a different drum, touting renewable energy (specifially ethanol from American corn) and referring to "oil addiction" in the state of the union.

The word addiction means a different thing coming from a recovering addict.

One final comment for this entry: I recently took part in a telephone poll. From the content it seemed to be a poll by John McCain (or supporters) looking to see who would make him a good running mate. Other questions were in there, and it was weeks ago so I don't remember the details. Names questioned about, though, were

hillary clinton
george pataki
rudi giulianni
arnold schwarzenegger

Are these people likable? Trustworthy? Strong leaders?

I don't know who sponsored the poll. It makes just as much sense for a future opponent of a McCain/Anybody ticket to ask questions like these as it does for McCain or Clinton to pay for theresearch.

[Apollo Gnomon]

Group W knows how much petroleum is left in the world. Group W wants you to believe the Iranians want nuclear weapons.

Uh-oh!

www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/25/iran.oil.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
.