Have you ever come across a major conspiracy?

[Kentucky Fried Panda]

I have worked for spooks from various countries at various times. The nature of dog work revolves around the overthrow of one government or the propping up of another.

[chrisc]

Just came across this, it's from 1993 but it's only just been posted to the internet:

Michael Parenti: CONSPIRACY & CLASS POWER
One of Parenti's most influential archival speeches

This is one of the most influential speeches by the noted scholar and author Michael Parenti. It is an in-depth analysis of the modern state and the exercise of power behind the scenes. This speech is also an important historic document. Given in 1993 it issues a warning of the use of deception to justify going to war. The speech also explains the expansion of the deregulated free market that would lead to a financial crisis as we see it today.

The speech on Conspiracy and Class Power was lost for several years and only recently discovered in the collection of a listener in Seattle. Michael Parenti spoke before an overflow audience in Berkeley, CA

Michael Parenti is an internationally known author and lecturer. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale in 1962 and is one of the nation's leading progressive political thinkers. His highly informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad. His books include Democracy for the Few, Superpatriotism, The Assassination of Julius Caesar, History as Mystery, and Contrary Notions.

Part ONE http://www.tucradio.org/081015_ConspiracyONE.mp3
Part TWO http://www.tucradio.org/081022_ConspiracyTWO.mp3

http://tucradio.org/new.html

It's good.

[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.

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?

firstly as a general point is the information useful, will knowing if something is true or not help me to make decisions, if not then life is too busy to get too passionate about the issue
Otherwise I would say that yes the more people potentially involved increases the chances of leaks etc. , so I'll let time sort out the issue, my ponderings arnt going to change a thing

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.

I'll stick by my view, anytime I read on the net that some "amateur" historian has proof that the holocaust didnt happen blah blah blah, I know I'm going down an intellectual cul de sac

[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.

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?

firstly as a general point is the information useful, will knowing if something is true or not help me to make decisions, if not then life is too busy to get too passionate about the issue

So you're saying that unless it has a direct impact on you, you really have no interest in how your government, or powerful allies of your government conduct themselves? They can fabricate wars, assassinate people they don't like, engage in any and every kind of illegality and malfeasance under the sun and until it impacts you directly, you don't care? I suppose it wouldn't matter to you if you woke up one morning in a stalinist dictatorship, provided they had the decency to leave you alone.

If, in fact I'm doing you a disservice and you do, in fact, care about such hypothetical wrongdoing, how might you expect to find out about it? Would you wait until it was announced on Sky News? Would you wait until someone brought it up at Prime Ministers Questions? Or would you stick to the intellectually rigourous approach of dismissing any allegation that falls into the ever-deepening oubliette of "conspiracy theory?"

[gug]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5rBX3iTzyh0

CNBC this morning. - Listen to who he blames. LOL