Have you ever come across a major conspiracy?

[EmptyBee]

As for "do conspiracies exist ?"

Why not ask a US president (its that JFK again)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WSGwnz7XpY&NR=1

I'm afraid in this case, context is everything. The terrible international conspiracy theory JFK was promulgating in this speech was the threat of communism, a popular conspiracy theory at the time that found its exact mirror in Soviet Russia, whose citizens were repeatedly assured of the existence of capitalist sleeper cells, capitalist subversion and so on.

[Vortex]

I guess we all choose what kind of a world we want to live in: one where our entire picture of things is obtained purely from direct personal experience, or one in which we form judgements as to the reliability of third-party information.

I'm just arguing for a balanced view.

I have already admitted that conspiracies DO exist.

It's just that I get tired of the incessant stream of XXX is a conspiracy drivel that we see on the web.

Not everything bad or unusual that happen is a conspiracy - yet the web would have you believe that.

This poll was a very basic attempt to see if anyone has been exposed to any REAL evidence of this stuff.

As for the JFK incident, it could well be a conspiracy: I was just pointing out that the rifle (carbine) used was most likely the Carcano as advertised. Not a "Mauser firing an Italian bullet" whatever that is supposed to mean.

The death of Jörg Haider is an example of the web problem: it seems that he visited a gay club, got drunk and killed himself in his car. I doubt that even the Police have got all their evidence in yet ... but nevertheless his death is being discussed as being a conspiracy on the web.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't ... BUT ... already some who WANT or NEED to believe it was a suspicious death have already made up their minds ... with ZERO evidence.

How many of the Haider was murdered posters have visited the crash site, visted the gay bar, spoken to witnesses, spoken to the Police there or done anything whatsover to obtain some evidence?

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, may have it right:

"The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.

On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7613201.stm

[EmptyBee]

I have already admitted that conspiracies DO exist.

It's just that I get tired of the incessant stream of XXX is a conspiracy drivel that we see on the web.

Not everything bad or unusual that happen is a conspiracy - yet the web would have you believe that.

I think Sturgeon's Law most definitely applies to the internet.

That said, I don't see any way around this without regulation/censorship, which is probably impossible, or at least very difficult in the case of the web anyway (doesn't stop the chinese trying I know).

The Web merely reflects the minds of the people who create its contents. We live in a paranoid age, the only question seems to be which direction the paranoia is directed.

[gug]

As for "do conspiracies exist ?"

Why not ask a US president (its that JFK again)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WSGwnz7XpY&NR=1

I'm afraid in this case, context is everything. The terrible international conspiracy theory JFK was promulgating in this speech was the threat of communism, a popular conspiracy theory at the time that found its exact mirror in Soviet Russia, whose citizens were repeatedly assured of the existence of capitalist sleeper cells, capitalist subversion and so on.

So political conspiracies dont exist then ?!?

Why does the "context" alter them message ?

Did the western world not conspire to bring down the eastern world and likewise or is it only a conspiracy if we dont broadly agree with its aims ?

I think the fact that it was a JFK speech so soon after my post about his assassination may have tainted the message

[EmptyBee]

So political conspiracies dont exist then ?!?

I'm positive they do exist. Coups and subversion were very real in the Cold War as they are today, however I think in retrospect the threats posed to the USA by the USSR to the internal politics of the other was vastly exaggerated.

Efforts were directed toward expanding political influence across the globe in what would previously have been called imperialism, and in strengthening political control domestically than in attempts to infiltrate and subvert the other directly. The paranoia surrounding “sleeper cells” justified the domestic repression of McCarthyism and the Soviet gulags. The tarring of every nation that resisted western corporate influence as communist that justified coups and interventions was also largely propaganda and disinformation.

Why does the "context" alter the message ?

The context of that JFK speech, if you read it, is that he was not talking about the Illuminati, the New World Order or the Interstellar Lizard Conspiracy, but the arguably real but frequently fantastical International Communist Conspiracy that had served as the justification for every post-war American intervention to-date. JFK was making an argument in support of the continuation of this policy.
The given title of that youtube clip was "the speech that got JFK killed", which is transparent nonsense considering he was espousing the party line, unless of course he really was killed by a communist.

[gug]

Why does the "context" alter the message ?

The context of that JFK speech, if you read it, is that he was not talking about the Illuminati, the New World Order or the Interstellar Lizard Conspiracy, but the arguably real but frequently fantastical International Communist Conspiracy that had served as the justification for every post-war American intervention to-date. JFK was making an argument in support of the continuation of this policy.
The given title of that youtube clip was "the speech that got JFK killed", which is transparent nonsense considering he was espousing the party line, unless of course he really was killed by a communist.

Ahh, i see, thats the thing, i didnt say it was about the illuminati , i said "do conspiracies exist, ask a us president" - and there he is, talking about conspiricies

[SILVERHARP2]

Simple rule of thumb I have is , the bigger the conspiracy the less likely it is to be kept secret so the longer it goes on the odds are it isnt true and is just a mental timewasting exercise.

And an oberservation about conspiracies is that most seem to originate in the US and I think this is cultural and comes out of their religious bias, ie their simplistic religious ethos that everything happens for a reason

[EmptyBee]

Simple rule of thumb I have is , the bigger the conspiracy the less likely it is to be kept secret so the longer it goes on the odds are it isnt true and is just a mental timewasting exercise.

That rather assumes the grounds most people have for believing or disbelieving in anything have anything much to do with evidence or rationality. History and psychology argue otherwise.

[SILVERHARP2]

[quote="EmptyBee]
That rather assumes the grounds most people have for believing or disbelieving in anything have anything much to do with evidence or rationality. History and psychology argue otherwise.[/quote]

I didnt understand your point, maybe some examples? one obvious one that comes to mind is "did NASA land on the moon?" very contorted stuff and I guess a good undersatnding of astro physics would put one straight, however having little interest in the field I'll fall back on the logic that it simply couldnt be kept secret so have to interest in even looking at the "evidence"" for the conspiracy.

As for what States get up to, no quibble there, reading confessions of an econimc hitman by John Perkins would clearly show that major powers get up to all sort of dirty trcicks that may or may not get into public knowledge

[Andy_K]

That rather assumes the grounds most people have for believing or disbelieving in anything have anything much to do with evidence or rationality. History and psychology argue otherwise.

I didnt understand your point, maybe some examples?

Any religion

[Yves75]

I answered no to the poll, but for me the most impressive conspiracy (impressive in terms of consequences) is the overthrowing of Mossadegh in 1953 by the CIA and MI6, which Madeleine Allbright admitted to.

This due to his politics on oil in fact.

When you think it was to put the Shah state police in place that ended up in the 79 revolution ...

See for instance :

http://www.angelfire.com/home/iran/1953coup.html

[EmptyBee]

I didnt understand your point, maybe some examples? one obvious one that comes to mind is "did NASA land on the moon?" very contorted stuff and I guess a good undersatnding of astro physics would put one straight, however having little interest in the field I'll fall back on the logic that it simply couldnt be kept secret so have to interest in even looking at the "evidence"" for the conspiracy.

As for what States get up to, no quibble there, reading confessions of an econimc hitman by John Perkins would clearly show that major powers get up to all sort of dirty trcicks that may or may not get into public knowledge

My point was that relying on mainstream or consensus opinion is likely to be an unreliable gauge of whether or there are rational reasons or significant evidence for believing things are one way or another.

I concede that I too have spent no time on determining whether or not the moon landings were real. The idea that they weren't is sufficiently outlandish to reject without much thought. If I said I'd devoted much time thinking critically about the feasibility of creating a moon landing hoax I'd be lying. I'm relying on my own ability to judge the likelihood of such a thing on how incongruous it is to my world-view.

If we learn one thing from the history of the last century it's that group weltanshauung is unfortunately susceptible to manipulation by propaganda. Including such propaganda as "we have a free press that ensures accountability" which encourages reliance on other people to do our thinking for us, or lumping all allegations of deliberate corporate or governmental malfeasance as "conspiracy theory", roughly equivalent to Orwellian "crimethink."I think this reached it's extremity when Tony Blair asserted that anyone who thought the Iraq war was about oil was a conspiracy theorist. That now includes Alan Greenspan!

Of course that doesn't mean a lot of what gets classed as "conspiracy theory" isn't disinformation and fantasy. I would certainly agree that the current level of scepticism and second guessing of undeclared motivations in the business or government world is indicative of a real cultural malaise and disillusionment. Perversely I think it's this sort of environment that is most likely to bring about an idealistic, utopian backlash such as was seen in Nazi Germany or the Russian Revolution.

[chrisc]

I seem to remember Noam Chomsky never wants to spend time on conspiracy theories. He seems to usually reply something along the lines of "Who cares who killed Kennedy? Jealous lover, gangsters, CIA - what does it matter?".

You should listen to this talk by Parenti:

MICHAEL PARENTI: The JFK Assassination and the Gangster Nature of the State

When Oliver Stone’s movie JFK opened in December 1991 a huge PR campaign was mobilized against the film. Even progressives spoke out. Noam Chomsky wrote in support of the Warren Commission's findings – in contrast Michael Parenti gave one of his highly acclaimed talks criticizing the lone assassin theory. The bitter questions that haunted defenders and critics alike was whether government agencies of a democratic country would do such a thing as assassinate an elected President.

In this talk Michael Parenti turns to that question first – he examines, in part one, what he calls “the gangster nature of the state.” In part two he goes over details of the assassination and critiques The Nation, The Progressive, Chomsky and Cockburn. He spoke in Berkeley, CA, on the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

This is one of many "standing ovations" talks by Parenti. The master for this program was lost and this appears to be the only copy of the original recording.

Part ONE: http://www.tucradio.org/0314parentijfkone.mp3
Part TWO: http://www.tucradio.org/0321parentijfktwo.mp3

http://www.tucradio.org/parenti.html

See also Michael Parenti on Conspiracy Phobia on The Left: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/08/ ... on#c180031

Regarding the question, would it matter if it came out, somone wrote about this the other day on another forum:

Whether you are a 9/11 Truth activist - or you believe the official story - everyone would agree that 9/11 was the crime of the century.

The event itself may not have had the casualty 'head-count' of other monstrous events in our age - but - no one would argue that the geopolitical implications of 9/11 didn't lead to 1 million dead in Iraq - economic calamity - the destruction of the US Constitution - instability worldwide - etc etc.

It was a watershed event. A turning point in world history.

So - for this reason - the continued stonewalling and disruption of the 9/11 Truth movement is understandable. (if you think like a criminal)

Why?

Should a day arrive when Americans lay their hands on actionable incontrovertible evidence that they were betrayed on 9/11 (in whatever form that betrayal may have taken), it would be one of the most powerful events in modern history. It would be akin to the Nuremberg Trials. It would go down in the history books as one of the singular most despised acts of treachery in history. It would not just create a criminal case against those people responsible. It would be an indictment against the United States itself - and put a withering spotlight on a system of military industrial war profiteering so corrupt that it is literally beyond redemption. It would literally be an act of war against the american people and the world.

http://truthaction.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 2874#22874

[chrisc]

Tony Blair asserted that anyone who thought the Iraq war was about oil was a conspiracy theorist.

Indeed. He said:

the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it

And in the same Newsnight interview he answered the "does 9/11 matter" question:

I keep having this mental picture in my mind of August 2001 and coming along to people and saying there's this terrorist organisation in Afghanistan, they are evil people who will try and mount major terrorist attacks on our country, we've got to go into Afghanistan and deal with them.

I think people would have said to me, you know you must be crackers what on earth are you on about. I mean people wouldn't have even have heard of who al-Qaeda was but a month later it happened.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/ ... on#c163839

[Ludwig]

Simple rule of thumb I have is , the bigger the conspiracy the less likely it is to be kept secret so the longer it goes on the odds are it isnt true and is just a mental timewasting exercise.

What basis do you have for this "rule of thumb"? And how do you judge the "size" of a conspiracy? The number of people killed? The number of people in on it? How do you ever know?

Also how do you define "kept secret"? You could argue that anything short of an official admission by the people accused of a plot means it's "kept secret", regardless of how many holes are exposed in their story by third parties or how many witnesses come forward to challenge them.

And an oberservation about conspiracies is that most seem to originate in the US and I think this is cultural and comes out of their religious bias, ie their simplistic religious ethos that everything happens for a reason

Conspiracy theorists are, I suppose, people who make spurious connections based on limited evidence, and that's precisely what you're now doing. If there is a 9/11 conspiracy theory, the American religious right are certainly not the people buying into it.