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Install Windows posted:If the CIA wanted to kill JFK they would have been able to come up with a better story for their shooter, including waiting for him to die suddenly years after imprisonment, rather than at a prison transfer. Just saying. And not used a hitman who was calmly waiting in line to wire one of his strippers some money minutes before transfer.
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Jan 10, 2014 00:50
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So legitimate conspiracies include the bad intel the Bush administration gave to Congress to justify the Iraq War, and The NSA dragnet surveilling the entire US. Also Iran Contra, Watergate, and, what else? Wasn't the CIA well known for shipping drugs into the country at some point?
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Jan 10, 2014 02:36
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Cheekio posted:So legitimate conspiracies include the bad intel the Bush administration gave to Congress to justify the Iraq War, and The NSA dragnet surveilling the entire US. Also Iran Contra, Watergate, and, what else? Wasn't the CIA well known for shipping drugs into the country at some point? I think the Gulf of Tonkin is an actual false flag or something.
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Jan 10, 2014 02:40
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I don't think Mudd was complicit in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln but that he probably had dealings with Booth prior to the assassination.
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Jan 10, 2014 03:44
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MKULTRA sounds out there even by conspiracy theory standards and it happened. The only thing about MKULTRA that would be out of place on a schizophrenic's typed up leaflet is that rather than being hyper-competent and world controlling, it was dumb and pointless. Also the Tuskegee experiments, radiation experiments on unwitting subjects, and god knows what else that was successfully covered up in the cold war.
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Jan 10, 2014 04:14
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I'm not totally sold on James Earl Ray working alone. The ballistics tests were inconclusive. Also, how the gently caress does an escape felon buy a '66 mustang, get a driver's license, cross a border multiple times, set up an unsuccessful porn ring, get rhinoplasty, get a rifle and ammunition, acquire a foreign passport and escape again? He apparently never committed any robberies or any other crime for financial gain since '59. He's ex army, and he spent a shitload of time volunteering for George Wallace but then never kept in contact with anyone? Can't wait til 2027.
SlipUp fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 04:43
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Speaking of conspiracies that have odd bits and pieces, anybody know anything about the odder bits of the Oklahoma City Bombing? This seems like the best place to ask. The stuff about the alleged extra bomber, or McVeigh's much changed account of September 1994. Granted, I don't think anything crazy happened or anything. McVeigh and his cohorts were defiantly the culprits, for reasons we already know. I'm just curious if those odd bits ever amounted to anything.
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Jan 10, 2014 07:08
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SlipUp posted:I'm not totally sold on James Earl Ray working alone. The ballistics tests were inconclusive. Also, how the gently caress does an escape felon buy a '66 mustang, get a driver's license, cross a border multiple times, set up an unsuccessful porn ring, get rhinoplasty, get a rifle and ammunition, acquire a foreign passport and escape again? He apparently never committed any robberies or any other crime for financial gain since '59. He's ex army, and he spent a shitload of time volunteering for George Wallace but then never kept in contact with anyone? Can't wait til 2027. Those sound like the activities of approximately one million shitkickers in the 1960s. Seriously if you minutely scrutinize a person's life, a lot of them are pretty weird!
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Jan 10, 2014 08:01
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SlipUp posted:I'm not totally sold on James Earl Ray working alone. The ballistics tests were inconclusive. Also, how the gently caress does an escape felon buy a '66 mustang, get a driver's license, cross a border multiple times, set up an unsuccessful porn ring, get rhinoplasty, get a rifle and ammunition, acquire a foreign passport and escape again? He apparently never committed any robberies or any other crime for financial gain since '59. He's ex army, and he spent a shitload of time volunteering for George Wallace but then never kept in contact with anyone? Can't wait til 2027. Honestly, considering the "kill yourself" letter MLK received from the FBI and MLK's socialist leanings, I consider the idea that James Earl Ray was not backed by somebody to be more outlandish than the idea that he was. I'd bet on Hoover. I know this is a conspiracy theory and all but harsh treatment of dissent was kind of a thing in the 1960s!
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Jan 10, 2014 08:05
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Jazerus posted:Honestly, considering the "kill yourself" letter MLK received from the FBI and MLK's socialist leanings, I consider the idea that James Earl Ray was not backed by somebody to be more outlandish than the idea that he was. I'd bet on Hoover. I know this is a conspiracy theory and all but harsh treatment of dissent was kind of a thing in the 1960s! Hmm, a racist in the 1960s American south taking a shot at a powerful and outspoken black guy? That does sound unlikely....
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Jan 10, 2014 08:37
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What about all that other stuff? Was he saving pennies working at the prison cafeteria for the mustang he always wanted when he broke out?
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Jan 10, 2014 08:50
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SlipUp posted:What about all that other stuff? Was he saving pennies working at the prison cafeteria for the mustang he always wanted when he broke out? I know little about the MLK assassination, but a quick search gave this: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/31/mlk.ray.money/index.html?_s=PM%3AUS quote:While Ray was on the run as a prison escapee from Missouri that summer, two men walked into the Bank of Alton with a pistol and a sawed-off shotgun. Both wore stocking masks. The leaner man went behind the counter, scooped up the cash and fled with close to $30,000. I don't know the evidence well, I'm just saying that it seems funny to require an FBI conspiracy to get a southern racist to shoot MLK. You do know that black civil rights leaders and activists were getting the ever loving poo poo kicked, shot, and beaten out of them, right? Mr. Funny Pants fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 09:03
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What would they gain by killing MLK? If it was to stop the civil rights act (and I'm not denying in the 1960s the government wouldn't want this) they didn't exactly do a stellar job at that, and I figure if the FBI is as powerful as you claim they would know making a martyr out of the guy would have backfired horribly.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:11
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I don't think the fbi or the cia has to be involved but it takes a lot of cash to live buy a car, gun, fake documents, and plastic surgery. Or cross like 5 international borders and have his picture taken at a government office without being recognized. It could very well be a couple good 'ole boys he served with kicking him a couple grand and giving him some advice but I'd consider them complicit. Loyd Jawers is selling bullshit and James would've said anything to protect himself.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:14
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Dude it was the 1960s. Borders are porous now, back then they were a total joke. Gun laws were totally different because James Earl Ray hadn't shot Martin Luther King yet. The security state as we know it today did not exist. The money question was answered in an earlier post. But if you have the conspiracy mindset, nothing will satisfy you.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:24
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I guess so.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:27
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Butts McGee posted:Speaking of conspiracies that have odd bits and pieces, anybody know anything about the odder bits of the Oklahoma City Bombing? This seems like the best place to ask. The stuff about the alleged extra bomber, or McVeigh's much changed account of September 1994. McVeigh is a drat liar so that safely accounts for any discrepancy in his stories. There's been a lot of speculation about the second bomber. People said that his description matched a neo-nazi named Michael Brescia. There was also some speculation that it was Jose Padilla, as it actually does look like him. There was also a weird freak connection between Terry Nichols and Islamic terrorists. He was in Cebu City at the same time as Ramzi Yousef the 1st WTC bomber. Ramzi Yousef's phone records indicate he made calls to the neighbor and close friend of Terry Nichols' in-laws who lived in Queens, NY. It's possible that, at some point, either at gun shows or through extremist anti-government ties that Terry Nichols made contact with Islamic terrorist networks who were looking to recruit US veterans. He may have even consulted with them but he certainly didn't need them. Short of the mythical, unproven 2nd bomber, it doesn't appear as though he or Tim McVeigh had any help from Islamic extremists.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:41
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RagnarokAngel posted:What would they gain by killing MLK? If it was to stop the civil rights act (and I'm not denying in the 1960s the government wouldn't want this) they didn't exactly do a stellar job at that, and I figure if the FBI is as powerful as you claim they would know making a martyr out of the guy would have backfired horribly. While I do think that Ray killed King without any special help from the FBI/CIA/Whatever it's not hard to think of reasons why they would want King dead. King had some communist leanings and the feds were deathly afraid of anyone with power or a social movement behind them with those sorts of ideas. They feared that King could foment a communist uprising, looking back they were pretty crazy for fearing that but it's exactly the sort of thing the FBI/CIA had watch lists and task forces to prevent. They were very, very paranoid about anything that had a connection with communism or communists, frequently to the point of irrationality.
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Jan 10, 2014 10:07
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All right, thanks for answering that. Basically reconfirmed what I knew was still accurate.
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Jan 10, 2014 10:14
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Red Warrior posted:Any thread on the discussion of conspiracy theories inevitably turns into a thread where conspiracy theorists try to justify why their conspiracy is the true conspiracy. It's great. I had a great thread on how conspiracy theories where loving the left a couple of years ago, and it was awesome until about 5 pages in and some truther fuckhead came in and derailed the holy poo poo out of it. I ended up breaking the rules and closeing that sorry rear end thread because letting it live was just cruel.
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Jan 10, 2014 11:07
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How are conspiracy theories loving the left?
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Jan 10, 2014 11:11
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RandomPauI posted:How are conspiracy theories loving the left? Spend time on facebook. You'll see. In a nutshell the intellectual power of the left was that it understood bad poo poo in society was emergent from the conditions of the various class and caste relationships in a society, the social relationships. This has been the case since Marx demonstrated the roots of poverty in the material arangements of how different classes of people in society owned capital. In other words it wasn't a nefarious plan that causes this poo poo by a conspiracy of illuminati/jews/reptiles/whatever, but the natural outcome of capitalism a system that itself formed naturally from the explosive collapse of the feudal system. Conspiracy theories posit the opposite, that bad things are caused by the will of individual schemers or groups of schemers independent of the material conditions of society, and that all we have to do is whack those bad people and the bad things stop. Confusion about this sort of thing has had historically catastrophic effects, the worst being the use of conspiracy theories about Jews/communists/etc to deflect anger in the working class in 1930s europe away from a bourgoise whos wealth had been increasingly sucking the life out of europe. The end result was fascism (There were other forces at play, but I'd argue that it was the confusion of the working class that focused revolutionary forces towards the right wing fascists rather than the left wing communists). Increasingly I'm seeing leftists ranting about "bankster criminals", pharma conspiracies,and so on and so forth, and its draining people away from traditional and effective left wing activism towards increasingly crazy bollocks. Its really harmful. Back during Occupy, Occupy perth was loving wrecked by conspiracy theorists coming down to the encampment and plastering signs about a "pedophile-banker-police" conspiracy and abnout how the reserve bank was behind all the problems , and then it drew in drooling idiots, one of which started a "hot protest babes" blog about perth activists which pretty much loving ended the involvement of the entire female gender in it. Then they invaded the facebook groups and started ranting about how "communists" where controling the bank and now had "taken over" occupy, and this was all fortold by ron paul. I was ready to start bashing people.
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Jan 10, 2014 11:44
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duck monster posted:Spend time on facebook. You'll see. So what the conspiracy angle about ranting about bankers being evil? Bankers being the typical embodiment of capitalism, which if you are a leftist and at least put some stock in the notion that, "all property is theft." Or are we talking about when they say "Bankster criminals," we should be reading evil Jew Lizardmen Rothschild End the Fed type stuff. Sorry Just I always hear Libertarians rant about the Rothschilds and it confuses me to no end. (well it doesn't really it's pretty blatant anti semitism. Also I think I remember that conspiracy thread from a few years back, it was quite enlightening.
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Jan 10, 2014 12:22
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That sounds more like the far right loving the left as usual.
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Jan 10, 2014 12:25
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Cheekio posted:I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet: Since no-one has picked this up, unless this chap knows how to calibrate his geiger counter properly, any readings like that are hard to contextualise. You can make any counter scream by boosting the voltage till the dielectric starts to break down. Typically you can also set the alarm level yourself too. Five minutes and a screwdriver and I could probably make that gegier counter read anything at all I wanted. How a particular cpm level relates to actual radiation exposure will depend strongly on the properties of the counter and how its set up. In short, if he's reporting cpm rather than an absorbed dose level (so Sieverts or similar) the chances are he has no idea of what he's doing.
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Jan 10, 2014 12:59
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SedanChair posted:That sounds more like the far right loving the left as usual. Partly, but the right doesn't have a monopoly on stupid.
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Jan 10, 2014 17:52
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SedanChair posted:That sounds more like the far right loving the left as usual. Well if I remember back during the mid-oughts Chomsky tales about the dangers of 9/11 Truth bullshit by talking about a seduction of left by the right using conspiracy, just look at the Alex Jones Infowars set. Or every video I've seen of those 9/11 "truth" convenes theres always banners or booths about the Amero and the American Union and all that other right wing xenophobic crap.
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Jan 10, 2014 18:33
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Honestly, when you're that far gone, I'm not sure left and right apply any more. You know the horseshoe theory? I'm pretty sure conspiracy theories fall into that.
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Jan 10, 2014 18:39
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I've known quite a few people who were fairly middle of the road socialists but then got turned into crazy alex-jones libertarians after getting all into conspiracy poo poo. The funny thing is they still see them selves as "left" as they ramble on about how we need to do away with government and get government out of healthcare and education and people shouldn't have to pay taxes. That or just simple more insidious ideas like "capitalism would work fine if it just wasn't for the jewish banking conspiracy!" Then again I've also heard that soviet communism would have worked fine if it wasn't for the jewish conspiracy to sabotage it and turn it into a violent clusterfuck, all to discredit communism to protect their jew-banks. This is why the soviets purged so many jews, it was for their own survival. Also the jews were not purged, it's all just a smear campaign against the early soviet government. Jews, something the left and right can really come together on! Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 18:40
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Anyone who's ever been to a leftist demonstration knew that Occupy was going down in flames the moment it got any press and the typical liberal loons got involved.
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Jan 10, 2014 19:40
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Amused to Death posted:Your move Morphix. So, I'm curious now. Nothing strikes anyone as weird that Oswald was allowed re-entry back into the States after defecting to Russia? Granted I'll be honest, my main source on this is JFK, the Stone film, which seems to have been 'debunked' but the Tommy Lee Jones character did later reveal he worked for the CIA. Unless Stone is an absolute liar, which from the interviews he's done, he at least seems to stand by it. I mean, it's not like it's the first time there has been a conspiracy within the government to take out a president. Other question is, did Stone fabricate the fact that many of the witness statements in the Warren commission were fabricated? Why was there no autopsy done? And in regards to the MLK thing. Hoover was fine with MLK until he started talking about poverty and the war in Vietnam, that's where he hosed up. He linked civil rights to income equality, which has always been the case but divide and conquer and all that. Morphix fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 19:59
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Morphix posted:
Tons of people were back then. You just weren't going to get readmitted back to high level security/military/diplomatic positions if you did it.
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Jan 10, 2014 20:18
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Morphix posted:Granted I'll be honest, my main source on this is JFK, the Stone film, which seems to have been 'debunked' but the Tommy Lee Jones character did later reveal he worked for the CIA. Unless Stone is an absolute liar, which from the interviews he's done, he at least seems to stand by it. Stone has flat admitted that his movie is a "counter myth". Characters are constructed out of whole cloth, represent multiple real figures, etc. For the love of god, don't let JFK be your go to source for the assassination. The fact that he lionized that evil prick Garrison is enough to boycott Stone for life. quote:Other question is, did Stone fabricate the fact that many of the witness statements in the Warren commission were fabricated? Why was there no autopsy done? Witness statements are tricky. You typically want to go with testimony given as soon after the event as possible, and many of the witnesses who end up telling conspiracy tales gave completely mundane statements immediately after the shooting. And there was an autopsy, one that has added fuel to the conspiracy fire (as everything does). It was done at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. By law it should have been done in Texas, but the White House people more or less bullied the local officials to give up the body. Here's the wiki on the autopsy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_autopsy You can also GIS JFK autopsy and see lots of awful, graphic pictures taken of Kennedy during the autopsy.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:04
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I think it is extremely possible the CIA had made some contact with Oswald at some point. He is an American who had a background in the Marines and had some ability to move through socialist circles and even go to the USSR. Going from there to "therefore everything Oswald did ever was because of the CIA" does not make any sense. Especially because there is no evidence Oswald would be even slightly receptive to the CIA on any level. Like most CIA conspiracy theories, it relies on the CIA being epically competent, rather than bumbling if amoral idiots. Oh, the CIA met a guy once, maybe? Obviously that guy was ran by them for the rest of his life.
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Jan 10, 2014 21:54
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Pook Good Mook posted:Anyone who's ever been to a leftist demonstration knew that Occupy was going down in flames the moment it got any press and the typical liberal loons got involved. If you're in a group that's on the radical left, then I'd reckon there's a good chance a few of the members are comfortable with it because it's radical and not because of the specific policies. If the radical left was the status quo, they'd promptly jettison it for something more subversive. This means they would conceivably be comfortable on the radical right as well. They might leave for it, come from it, or try to pollinate your group with ideas they learned from it. There are also platforms that share both views. Antiwar.com has both Pat Buchanan and Justin Raimondo writing alongside John Pilger and Dahr Jamail. Why a left-wing journalist would write for a site that publishes the former--I don't know.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:06
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I was more referring to how it started with a very accessible message that most people could rally behind but it was then taken over by the 5% of liberals who make moderates and conservatives hate liberals and then everyone had a boogeyman.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:08
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Kurt_Cobain posted:Has the idea that there have been paid boosters posting on this forum been accepted? That's another one of those conspiracy type things that got people marginalized for suggesting.  about all sorts of social media, which conversely I'm forced to pull the reins in on.For instance, I pretty much assume any highly uneducated post on a live stream's twitter or facebook feed is a paid throwaway account. Americans can't remember what happened last week, who the hell spams "Benghazi" on facebook when Christie is trying to throw his staff under the bus over a bridge closing? And how could that not be a high ROI way for a superPAC to keep the Overton window firmly right of center? Pook Good Mook posted:Anyone who's ever been to a leftist demonstration knew that Occupy was going down in flames the moment it got any press and the typical liberal loons got involved.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:21
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duck monster posted:Spend time on facebook. You'll see. I think it would probably just be more accurate to say that conspiracy theories are anathema to rational discussion. A conspiracy theory is essentially an idea which would be a scandal if only there were even vaguely compelling evidence that it actually was a thing. When people are permitted to introduce notions without including evidence actual discussion is hampered because making outrageous claims requires very little effort whereas checking to see whether the claims are outrageous requires actual effort. This doesn't just affect the left, although in proportion it probably does hurt the left more than the right. That having been said, to the extent that that is true, I don't think that the left is blameless. The religiosity of many on the right may predispose them to a vulnerability towards notions that which are stupid, but the excessive devotion to 'democracy' as a value makes the left especially vulnerable to being disrupted by such antics. To clarify, I don't mean 'democracy' in the sense of voting, I mean it in the sense that everyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's. Democracy is a useful tool, but it isn't actually a useful value, and the example you gave of the Occupy protests is a pretty good example of why it isn't. There’s this fine line between believing that everyone has a right to their opinion and the belief that everyone should get equal attention no matter how stupid their ideas are which many on left fail completely in grasping. (edit: "'democracy' Qublai Qhan fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 11, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 23:11
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That and the media certainly didn't give "equal time". They zeroed in on the dudes rambling about how whole-milk is the only way to stop the banks. Which of course could have been solved by having occupy actually have a proper RP and media relations team with actual message control and strategy rather than just "what ever talk to anyone we're all equals here and air the most crazy one you find"
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Jan 10, 2014 23:22
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Baronjutter posted:That and the media certainly didn't give "equal time". They zeroed in on the dudes rambling about how whole-milk is the only way to stop the banks. Again, I blame the 5% of liberals who always show up to demonstrations and the rest of the group being too idealistic to say, "Shut the gently caress up about 9/11, flouride, and vaccinations. We're running this like a campaign and if you want to volunteer great otherwise stop being the embodiment of what the right thinks we're all like." In other words: Qublai Qhan posted:
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Jan 11, 2014 00:09
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