An interesting question. by Fremdfirma

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

An interesting question.

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 12:26
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Monday, April 19, 2010 6:03 PM

Imma have to be short, but I got more to say later...

But in essence, in regard to "Conspiracy Theories".

At what point, does it STOP being a theory ?

When the Official Bullshit Story falls apart ?

When you have hard evidence ?
(OK bombing, bombs inside the buildings)

When the government plant admits it ?
(WTC 1993, emad salem)

When you have documentation ?
(NORTHWOODS)

When you have a confession ?
(MK ULTRA)

When you have documentation AND a confession ?
(COINTELPRO)

I mean, at what point is it no longer "Conspiracy Theory" ?
Cause I had a rather nasty discussion earlier with someone dismissing stuff as theory, despite actual internal documents from the agency in question, a full confession and actual prosecution...

So, at WHAT point is it not "Theory" at all ?

Something to think about.

-F

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Monday, April 19, 2010 6:54 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

That *IS* an interesting question.

There are some problems with it, though.

Northwoods, for instance. Was it a *PLAN*, a solid plan of action, or was it a scenario, a hypothetical, a blue-sky what-if session written down on paper? 'Cause I've done those, in some detail, outlining various ways that attacks on the U.S. might be carried out, and what to watch for and where. It certainly doesn't mean I'm *PLANNING* to do anything like the actions outlined in those files; just trying to show someone what COULD be done, with a modicum of knowledge by even an unskilled activist with an axe to grind. The intent was to alert some key people to a few things to look out for, things which maybe they hadn't considered yet. Or maybe they had. But such outlines were NEVER plans of action.

'Course, at this point, I'd likely make a great patsy, if I hadn't taken precautions against any blowback.

WTC '93 - It's not really a "theory" anymore if you've actually got the FBI "informant" admitting that he not only sold the stuff, but armed it and *didn't* make it inoperative when he had the chance, because he was ordered not to. So, not a theory, but a reality; FBI bombed the World Trade Center once, anyway.

Ruby Ridge - Not so much a conspiracy, as a cover-up, which is really no better. I took that one as a fuck-to-the-gills job gone tits-up from the get-go, and ATF trying to cover their asses and shade it their way in the aftermath. But it's not easy to put a positive spin on things when you have your best snipers putting holes in women and the babies they were holding, which were clearly not gun-shaped babies. I don't think they INTENDED to fuck it up that badly, but they sure as hell tried to cover it up nice and neat in the wake of it all going so horribly wrong.

WTC 9/11 - I've never been convinced of that conspiracy, except that there was a clear conspiracy in the aftermath to use a catastrophe to further a political agenda. But that isn't proof that such an agenda created the catastrophe. I think Bush had his head up his ass before and after. Before, he thought there were threats, but that America was this ultimate bad-ass, and no one would dare try to actually DO the shit they were threatening, so he didn't pay any mind to the intel that quite clearly said they WERE going to strike within the U.S., and even laid out HOW. Really, the only things they didn't have were the dates and flight numbers, and they still made no attempt at all to stop it, or even to forestall it.

So again, no real "conspiracy" that *I* have been convinced of, but lots of idiocy and evil in the before and after.

MKULTRA - Well, they've admitted as much, so no real conspiracy theory there. Reality theory is more like it. 'Course, that didn't stop 'em denying it for 40 years or so...

I tend to look at this stuff in more the light of a criminal trial, as opposed to a civil trial. In a civil trial, all you need to prove culpability is a PREPONDERANCE of evidence. 51% convinced is good enough, in other words. In a criminal trial, though, you must be convinced BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, though, in order to assign guilt. There might be lots of evidence, but I still have reasonable doubts in my mind about the "unofficial" stories. Doesn't stop me from having my doubts about the official versions either, though.

And when it all finally does get unraveled and come out, it's usually somewhere between the official story and the theorists' wildest claims, with neither side being totally right.

Plus, there's stuff like JFK. Sure, I've got questions. Am I going to spend my time hammering down into them, year after year after year? If someone can work a conspiracy well enough to kill a President AND cover it up for damn near 50 years, what am *I* going to find if I go looking? And what trouble do I borrow by trying? And what good would it do me if I knew the whole unvarnished truth and it were worse than anyone ever suspected? Either I'd die with that secret - probably earlier than expected, and in strange circumstances - or I'd be ignored as a crackpot.

The fact that PN is still around tells me he hasn't really found anything important out about... well, ANYTHING, or he'd have taken that long Silkwood drive to Hoffaville by now.

To sum up, there ARE conspiracies. The small ones, we can dig and uncover and actually (maybe) someday hold someone accountable for. The biggest ones, though, you either can't do jack about, or you can die trying, and be covered up along with the truth.

And then, sometimes bad shit just happens for no good goddam reason. My dad died riddled with liver, which the Army actually admits was caused by Agent Orange. 'Course, the whole time they were dousing him with the shit in 'Nam, they claimed it was completely harmless, with command even claiming that you could bathe in it with no ill effects. I think they were a bunch of fucknuts that weren't copping to the bad news they already knew about 2,4,5T at the time, but I don't think they invented the stuff with the intent to use it to kill American soldiers. So it started with negligence, then turned into people playing CYA (Cover Your Ass) with a political hot issue, and then finally, in slow stages, they started to admit that yes, they had indeed screwed up.

And you can count on them to not ever do it again. Er, not until the next time, anyway...

And with that, I'm off to bed.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 3:17 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Well, regarding NORTHWOODS...

Northwoods was an actual full-on *set* of plans to really do that shit, submitted to Kennedy for approval - to which his primary reaction was something along the lines of "You have got to be fucking kiddin me!" and not only a flat out rejection, but he told McNamra to fire Lemnitzer, which didn't exactly happen the way Kennedy meant it, but did result in his removal from the JCS chairman position.

Ironic that they appointed that bastard Lemnitzer to the Rockefeller Commission to investigate CIA abuses - especially when he was one of the prime movers behind them.

Anyhows, it was enough of a plan that one or more of those scenarios *would* have been carried out if Kennedy had approved it, and barring a certain incident that threw the nation into chaos soon after - damn well might have been carried out anyway, because our alphabet goons have a little problem with being told no, as you're well aware.

For myself, I too favor the criminal investigation manner of assessment, which tends to leave one knocking heads with those who wish to do so in a scientific manner, especially when they're basing their own findings on "iffy" science or skewing the results - which is a lot harder to do with the criminal investigation methodology.

The primary weakness with this method is that most folk do not understand, or do not take into account, the underlying psychology and methodology of the perpetrators, which leaves them unable to connect a motive - and there is always, always a motive, I don't buy into that "did it cause they're Eeeevil!" bullshit everyone seems so happy to jump on.

They *can* be broken though, just not in hollywood action movie fashion, more of the bit by bit, sweat and regrets kinda way, like the abuse within the Catholic Church, just hammer on it till you find a crack, and keep on prying till the daylight gets through.

Or, bit by bit, without admission, as you say - which is prettymuch what has happened with Aspartame.

And yes, some rabbit holes are so deep, so dark, the general public is honestly better off NOT knowing, cause it would wreck a lot of the assumptions that hold the social fabric together, and when that rips, you wind up with a worse problem, sure.

Where folks like PN get it wrong, as I have mentioned more than a few times, is lookin for one great, grand, all-encompassing conspiracy, and it just don't happen that way - people cooperate and conspire, but structures and organisations, not so much, they're too big, and you cannot conspire beyond your own monkeysphere due to the limitations of keeping track of it, and the impossibility of keeping it secret.

Mostly it starts with a small act of malice, negligence, and incompetence - followed by a little CYA, compounded by office politics, and it becomes a snowball from there, where anyone aware of the situation is afraid to say anything and implicate themselves cause everyone in the department now has dirty hands and speaking out means risking holding the bag - not to mention we have a pretty bad track record in how we treat whistleblowers.

Sooner or later, someone talks, they ALWAYS talk, but most of em that do, they know only a tiny part of the story, and not all of what they know, or think they know, is even true - beyond which they tend to inflate their own importance, people do that all the time, especially when office politics is involved.

Coming at it from a criminal investigation standpoint offers a tactic useful to that, which is to get more than one source and cross compare their stories while insinuating to each that the other is rolling them - at which point they sing like canaries on speed, as a general rule, though that still doesn't mean they *know* anything worth a damn.

And as you say, there's the standard of evidence - being able to put it all together doesn't mean you can prove it...

But sometimes, you can create enough social and political push to force the issue - not via commissions and committees, which are nothing more than an extension of the CYA mentality, but rather by enraging the populace as a whole, even if just a little, which is how the Catholic Church, inch by inch, got dragged out into the sunlight, cause folks decided not to remain silent, folks chose not to defend them, and all the petty little "they're a buncha jerks" ire, those tiny bits, multiplied on each other, caused a slow-tide change which has brought the matter to where it is now WITHOUT the tremendous social upheaval a full-on blowout might have caused.

And sometimes, you can crush them without ever really getting the political and legal systems, or the public, much involved just by having a few good folk attack the weak spots and remove all support for them, in one case, strangling the money supply.

So I think it's always worth handing out the hard questions, the little pesky ones that won't go away, cause sooner or later someone who knows the answer is likely to drop hints, or even spill, to someone else - and like a snowball rolling down a mountain....

But those questions *must* remain in the public consciousness for it to happen - which is one reason I am very reluctant to shinkick the conspiracy theory nutters, cause while they're for the most part batshit crazy, the fact that they are willing to press those questions, even if the whole world takes them as a joke (as they once took church abuse) eventually the mere presence of those kind of questions is, I think, important to preventing this crap.

Not to mention that often some asshat in power has a "plan" and while some people know what it is, they got no proof, and so those folks deliberately feed it to the fringe-looney crazies, who spice it up and go wild with it...

And then they can NOT do it, cause if they did they would feed credibility to that fringe, which would result in more people asking more questions, AND if they ignored that factor, the mere existence of such foreknowledge means they risk being directly implicated - and so, nothing happens, the fringers look as crazy as ever, and yet by their very existence, the plan in question was sabotaged and prevented without anyone, even them, being the wiser of it.

Just some stuff for you to think about, is all.

-Frem

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 5:10 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Summer Glau can simply walk into Mordor

Bones: "Don't 'rawr' her!"
Booth: "What? she'rawred' me first."

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 6:11 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
So, at WHAT point is it not "Theory" at all ?

When all the government authorities officially admit it, AND it gets broadcast on all mainstream media channels.

Government would never lie to us. And if it did, it has a good reason and would admit it when said secrets are no longer an issue of national security or public threat.

Seriously, most people are just THAT trusting of our government and its many branches. And media.

-----
"I was aiming for his head." -- Richard Castle, Season 2, Episode 18, "Boom"

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 6:37 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

When enough evidence is found to bring it out into the open. VALID evidence, not half-baked theories and "evidence" that doesn't make sense or people CHOOSE to believe.

SHOULD be when enough evidence comes to light, some government body investigates it and it's found to be true. But yes, I don't trust them to do that, either.

Or not. I'm sure some will continue to believe in conspiracies even where there are none; I'm sure some people will refuse to believe conspiracies when they've been proven. Humans...

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 10:30 AM

BYTEMITE

I think Niki would make for a valid control group out of the sample we have available. By her definition, she's willing to accept the existence of MK-Ultra, COINTELPRO, and the Family Jewels. Her reasoning appears to be "the government has told us these have happened, and the rest we must be skeptical of." Her viewpoint is that of a jury in a court of law. Her stance and opinion are likely consistent with and representative of the degree of willing belief we'd find in most other non-conspiracy theorists.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 10:55 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
the government has told us these have happened, and the rest we must be skeptical of

??? You missed where I said "SHOULD" and "But yes, I don't trust them to do that, either."

Ergo, I neither necessarily believe the government, nor do I believe that all conspiracies will be brought to light and/or admitted by the government.

Mostly I don't believe or disbelieve in conspiracy theories. I can't do anything about them anyway, and virtually all of them can never be proven or disproven completely. Ergo, I think I'd make a lousey control group for ANYTHING.

"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 11:24 AM

BYTEMITE

Maybe not then. Darn.

On the plus side, you don't have to get on the table.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 12:17 PM

LITTLEBIRD

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

So I think it's always worth handing out the hard questions, the little pesky ones that won't go away, cause sooner or later someone who knows the answer is likely to drop hints, or even spill, to someone else - and like a snowball rolling down a mountain....

But those questions *must* remain in the public consciousness for it to happen - which is one reason I am very reluctant to shinkick the conspiracy theory nutters, cause while they're for the most part batshit crazy, the fact that they are willing to press those questions, even if the whole world takes them as a joke (as they once took church abuse) eventually the mere presence of those kind of questions is, I think, important to preventing this crap.

-Frem

AMEN BROTHER! err.. I mean, thank you Frem and all those who keep throwing the questions out there. It's those pesky little questions that won't go away that are eventually able to bring things to light. Without those questions it would be a dark world indeed.

Feel the need to share a story from an acquaintance who testified at the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation and MK Experimentation back in 1995. After her speech, her husband called her to the back of the room. Standing there was a woman with a face so scarred she was practically faceless. She had only one eye. She thanked her for what she had said and told her that they had treated her like a nonhuman also. As she was speaking one tear left her eye -- "one tear, but within that one tear was the agony of humanity."

I applaud those who have the courage to keep putting the questions out there and for standing up for those who can't do it for themselves anymore.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2010 12:26 PM

CHRISISALL

If the Government says it (see: WMD), it's a fact, maybe even worth killin' over.
Otherwise it's ignorant conjecture at best.

You peeps have no lives.

The in-step Chrisisall

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