Air travel and security

[Andy Hunt]

Yes indeed. Are we leading up to something, do you think?

A ceasefire in Lebanon to enable Israel to prepare their part in an attack or Iran?

[bigjim]

Liquid bins? That's a little silly. Most liquids are 'harmless' things like coca cola and the like, but what if someone pours something really dodgy in them? Like bleach?

[skeptik]

Fear Factor, downgraded to - severe.

"There may be other people out there who may be planning to attack against the United Kingdom"
John Reid. 14/8/06

"There may be Orcs in the woods who may be planning to attack the unwary traveller. Or maybe not."
skeptik.

"Merde de Taureau"
skeptik

[Bozzio]

Unlike Mr Jones who has liking for conspiracy theories I adhere to the "Cockup Theory of History" - that there's nobody in charge, no secret stringpullers behind the arras. Nobody, including our leaders (and myself) , has got a a clue what's going on (reality being too chaotic and complex to grasp en toto), and that history proceeds via missunderstandings, plans (including conspiracies) that go wrong, unexpected consequences, random events, chaos & accidents, intersecting with the slow inexorable grinding advance of science and technology.

Reality is not as simple as fiction which has to 'make sense' and have a beginning a middle and an end. I think this is where a lot of people go wrong. They get reality mixed up with the comforting structures of fiction.

I think my position is basically a varient of Sturgeon's Law - "90% of everything is crap"

I always wonder at statements such as this. The contradiction between stating there are no string pullers on the one hand and yet plans by conspirators do exist on the other is plain absurd.

Although I agree with the gist of this I disagree with the bit I have highlighted in bold. How do you explain the following examples for instance?

Bay of Pigs Invasion
Operation Northwoods
Operation Ajax
Operation Gladio
The Iran Contra Affair
The Lavon Affair
Operation PBSUCCESS

Why are the government so afraid of and wish to silence people like David Shayler and Richard Tomlinson?

I can go on.

None of the above look like cock ups to me. And as for 9/11.......anyone who adheres to the official story is clearly blind (sorry to be so blunt).

[MacG]

Bay of Pigs Invasion
Operation Northwoods
Operation Ajax
Operation Gladio
The Iran Contra Affair
The Lavon Affair
Operation PBSUCCESS

None of the above look like cock ups to me. And as for 9/11.......anyone who adheres to the official story is clearly blind (sorry to be so blunt).

I agree wholeheartedly with Skeptik here. Yes, there are a lot of conspiracies going on, but most of them screw up.

How could the Bay of Pigs invasion be characterised as a success? Or the Iran-Contra affair? Operation Northwoods was never even executed. And Gladio was a first class case of unintended consequences. Looking at the ME and specially Iran today, how successful was Operation Ajax really? If the people who planned and executed Ajax had been able to see the results, would they still have executed it? I dont think so.

Yes, the world is full of strings and stringpullers, it's just that the strings are tangled and the people who intend to pull one string often find that they have pulled some other strings also, and sometimes the wrong strings.

For example, my guess is that the Madrid bombings were intended to make people stick together and support the government, just as people in for example the US and Israel have a tendency to do when they perceive that they are attacked. Who would have guessed that Spanish psychology worked the opposite way?

[Bozzio]

MacG,

To say that cock-up theory is the only defining factor in history is plain daft. Just think of how many people believed the story of weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war or believed that the attack on Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 was about finding OBL. Neither proved to be a cock-up even though each plan has subsequently been bought into question.

And please be careful of mixing up time. The fact is, Operation Ajax was a success at that time since by definition an operation happens at a certain moment. The subsequent twists and turns of history cannot therefore be an excuse for claiming it to be a failure. The strings were successfully pulled and there's no escaping that fact. Operation Gladio worked very well as did the Iran-Contra affair until the story was exposed.

Perhaps you would care to look at the role of the US in the war in former Yugoslavia. Ever heard of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Law passed in 1990 and it's affect on that country, an affect the CIA calculated would happen? No cock-up there.

[MacG]

MacG,

To say that cock-up theory is the only defining factor in history is plain daft.

Well, I'm just as guilty as anyone else, but we are drifting a bit OT here. "Air travel and security". Hmm...

I suggest waiting a little. I think that Dmitry Orlov have a strong point. The US could very well end up as a trainwreck of epic proportions within just a few years, and future story-tellers will say that it started with a brave suicide attack on 11 Sep 2001...

For the record: I think that the official conspiracy theory around 9/11 have som big fat holes in it, and that "Al Q" look more and more like a black ops thing, but I think it will end just another cock-up. Epic proportions, but a cock-up nonetheless.

Got your alottment in order? Those tiny gardens saved many russians.

[biffvernon]

We are told that the police found a rifle at one of the addresses they have been searching in connection with the alledged aircraft attack.

Of course now that hand luggage goes in a clear plastic bag it will be a little harder to carry a rifle onto an airliner.

[skeptik]

MacG,

To say that cock-up theory is the only defining factor in history is plain daft.

Of course its not the ONLY defining factor.

[isenhand]

MacG,

To say that cock-up theory is the only defining factor in history is plain daft.

Of cause it isn?t!

You have a mixture of things going on including plot and counter plots, mistakes and random events that just happen to go your way. Opportunities that are missed and opportunities that are exploited and lots of cock ups along the way, to name but a few. But there is no one organisation or individual running the whole show and just because governments partake of conspiracies in the past does not mean everything is a conspiracy!

[biffvernon]

Seymour Hersh describes more cock ups over conspiracies in The New Yorker.

[isenhand]

This, I thought, was interesting.

[Bozzio]

But there is no one organisation or individual running the whole show and just because governments partake of conspiracies in the past does not mean everything is a conspiracy!

I do think we are arguing about the same differences here albeit with a shifting emaphasis on semantics.

We all agree that cock-ups occur and yet conspiracies happen. I guess my argument is that if you imagine going back in time and then returning to the present, will the present be different because of you actions during your time in the past? Very possibly the present will have changed, maybe on a big scale (Ever seen the Back To The Future films?). Now imagine going back in time and helping to prevent the attacks of 9/11. Would you return to the present time where there has been no war in Afghanistan or Iraq and tensions in the Middle East are no different than normal. I imagine you would. Seems to me that without the string pullers the world might be a lot more peaceful. OK, no one is really running the whole show because life is too complicated just as skeptic said but to dismiss the events of the past five years since 9/11 or to say that earlier conspiracies cocked-up and therefore had no relevance on the course of history and subsequently our lives is a bit naive. The truth is that world events are often triggered by men in a boardroom making plans and often those plans lead to death and destruction and hardship, not by cock-up but by stealth.

My argument above does however assume that you believe 9/11 to be a conspiracy. If you do not then it is unlikely you will believe that conspiracies can have such an affect on world history. Although I don't go as far as Alex Jones, I do believe that conspiracy theories play a greater part in shaping world events than we would care to think about.

[snow hope]

Not everything is a conspiracy - true.

I keep an open mind but a healthy scepticism of both the propaganda we are served on our 6 and 10 o'clock daily news and the conspiracy theories that abound on the internet.

But I must admit having watched world affairs since the eighties with increasing interest and I suppose in the last 6 or 7 years in quite a bit of detail, I am becoming more and more sceptical of what politicians in the West proclaim and spin at us and to a degree due to what has been seen to happen in the past - some of those events alluded to by the links posted above in Wikipedia.

It is becoming clearer to me that "the West" are attempting to reshape the Middle East for the purposes of access to oil and gas - their key resource. This is being done through the auspices of "the war on terror" and the fight for the spread of democracy and freedom through-out key countries - countries without oil can do what ever they want and will not be shackled.

Bush can take a bow - he is certainly spreading his demonocracy with the support of a number of other countries in "the West".

If we accept this view, this leads to the question, is this what we want? For life to continue as we know it, we have to have these resource wars to secure access to the black gold. I imagine a lot of us on here can accept what is coming and the fact that we will likely have to go back in time as far as out future living conditions. But over the last couple of centuries Britain rampaged all over the world building their Empire - our ancestors sure seemed to support that. Should we be supporting "the West" in its fight to keep access to oil so that our children can have another 20 or 30 years of what we have had? Or are we all pacifists on here and think any war is unacceptable? Our responses may/will be swayed (markedly) by how 'bad' the future may become and of course this is still hotly debated.

So as to not to appear to much off topic, last weeks terror alert was just anothor step on the terror ladder as far as I am concerned. Programmed control of the populace - getting them ready for the next step. All part of the game to continue the progress for the control the ME.

[isenhand]

The truth is that world events are often triggered by men in a boardroom making plans and often those plans lead to death and destruction and hardship, not by cock-up but by stealth.

My argument above does however assume that you believe 9/11 to be a conspiracy. If you do not then it is unlikely you will believe that conspiracies can have such an affect on world history. Although I don't go as far as Alex Jones, I do believe that conspiracy theories play a greater part in shaping world events than we would care to think about.

I think we might have a disagreement because we could have a different opinion of what the word ?conspiracy? means.

It appears to me that from your statement you consider any group, such as a government, conducting plans that they do not share with the public as formulating a conspiracy. Whereas I would only consider plans, conducted in secret, that attempt to bring about an end using illegal means a conspiracy.

I think many organisations, including governments, hatch plans in secret (or at least they do not make the public fully aware of) and those plan do have an effect on the events of the world. However, I think the making and execution of those plans form a normal part of the operation of such organisations and I would not consider them as being conspiracies.