Cracked: Conspiracy Theories (That Actually Happened)

[sjw]

http://www.cracked.com/article_18955_6-crackpot-conspiracy-theories-that-actually-happened.html

Yep, it happens. And for every one we know about, how many are there that we don't? This is part of why whistleblowers should be supported and defended.

Shayne

[william.scherk]

Yep, it happens. And for every one we know about, how many are there that we don't? This is part of why whistleblowers should be supported and defended.

The Government Is Spraying Us With Biological Warfare Agents!

The Government Is Poisoning What We Eat and Drink!

Government Agents Are Like, Everywhere, Man!

The Government Is Transmitting Thoughts Into Our Brains!

The Census Is a Tool for Government Oppression!

The Government Controls the Media!

Yep. It happens. So, blow that whistle, Whistler. Blow and blow and blow. We will support and defend your right to read Cracked, and stand by you as you gibber and twitch and emit beeping sounds.

[sjw]

Also relevant:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?_r=1

Shayne

[sjw]

Yep. It happens. So, blow that whistle, Whistler. Blow and blow and blow. We will support and defend your right to read Cracked, and stand by you as you gibber and twitch and emit beeping sounds.

What are you foaming about? Was something there a bit too much for your pea-brain?

Shayne

[kiaer.ts]

Yep, it happens. And for every one we know about, how many are there that we don't? This is part of why whistleblowers should be supported and defended.

The Government Is Spraying Us With Biological Warfare Agents!

The Government Is Poisoning What We Eat and Drink!

Government Agents Are Like, Everywhere, Man!

The Government Is Transmitting Thoughts Into Our Brains!

The Census Is a Tool for Government Oppression!

The Government Controls the Media!

Yep. It happens. So, blow that whistle, Whistler. Blow and blow and blow. We will support and defend your right to read Cracked, and stand by you as you gibber and twitch and emit beeping sounds.

Kind of like one of those paranoid cannibalistic typewriters in Naked Lunch?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMhqygKNI3E

[sjw]

Kind of like one of those paranoid cannibalistic typewriters in Naked Lunch?

Just in case your neurotic hatred of me has blinded you, you do know that Scherk is only here to mock Objectivists, right? I have my criticism of Objectivism, but his purpose in life is to make fun of you. That's how he derives meaning in his wretched life -- to mock others. The enemy of your enemy isn't necessarily your friend.

Anyway, everything in the Cracked article is factual, this twitchy response to it is revealing of psychosis.

Shayne

[PDS]

Those with a penchant for conspiracy theories would do well to read Vincent Bugliosi's Four Days In November. The Grandaddy of All Conspiracy Theories are those involving the JFK assassination, and VB pimp slaps every one in sight. And also does a pretty good job of showing how conspiracies of any kind rarely succeed.

[sjw]

Those with a penchant for conspiracy theories would do well to read Vincent Bugliosi's Four Days In November. The Grandaddy of All Conspiracy Theories are those involving the JFK assassination, and VB pimp slaps every one in sight. And also does a pretty good job of showing how conspiracies of any kind rarely succeed.

VB got "pimp slapped" by Jesse Ventura on the latter's JFK episode.

But unproven conspiracy theories are beside the point of this thread. The point of this thread is that people who have a knee-jerk rejection of conspiracy theories are themselves deranged. They do happen, and evidence concerning them should be dealt with, not ignorantly dismissed.

Shayne

[syrakusos]

Apparently "33 Conspiracies that turned out to be real" is a popular topic.

Given what a "conspiracy" is by definition, conspiracies exist as the opposite of advertising. Among my favorite:

63 BC The second Catiline conspiracy

44 BC Caesar assassination plot

1605 The Gunpowder Plot

1810 to 1850 the Underground Railroad

1894 The Dreyfus affair

1894 Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii

1919 Black Sox Scandal

1932 General Motors streetcar conspiracy

1932 to 1972 Tuskegee Syphilis Study

1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident

1967 Attack on USS Liberty

1972 to 1974 Watergate scandal

1981 to 1986 Iran-Contra

The Business Plot: In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included Senator Prescott Bush [Wikipedia biography here- MEM] tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. Smedley spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. Everyone he accused of being a conspirator vehemently denied it. Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy.

In 1936, William Dodd, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in which he stated,

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime.... A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies. Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there. Propagandists for fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions."

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/240707fascistcoup.htm

Testimony of Nayirah: A 15-year-old girl testified before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators, causing them to die. The testimony helped gain public support for the 1991 Gulf War. The public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which was in the employ of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, had arranged the testimony. Daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA, Nayirah had taken acting lessons on request of the CIA. Congressman Tom Lantos was hosting Nayirah and popularizing her allegations.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=_nayirah__1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_Nayirah

Edited January 13, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[BaalChatzaf]

Testimony of Nayirah: A 15-year-old girl testified before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators, causing them to die. The testimony helped gain public support for the 1991 Gulf War. The public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which was in the employ of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, had arranged the testimony. Daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA, Nayirah had taken acting lessons on request of the CIA. Congressman Tom Lantos was hosting Nayirah and popularizing her allegations.

You forgot the Reichstag Fire.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

You forgot the Reichstag Fire.

Good catch! Oddly enough, that is not in the Top 33, though the obscure Catilline Conspiracy is.

[Selene]

Jackie Onassis tapes spoken to Arthur Schlesinger within months of the assassination have been sealed in the Kennedy library in Boston. Caroline has agreed to release them here UK Mail Story.

Seems that she thought ole LBJ was behind it according to her.

[Brant Gaede]

Jackie Onassis tapes spoken to Arthur Schlesinger within months of the assassination have been sealed in the Kennedy library in Boston. Caroline has agreed to release them here UK Mail Story.

Seems that she thought ole LBJ was behind it according to her.

I can understand the "behind" as he was a complete ass. There is only one reason I care about the Kennedy power-lusting cabal: the assassination grossly distorted American politics and gave us the Vietnam War full-time and The Great Society. As for her, she always knew how to latch onto the guy with the mostest so she could be his hostess. What was really funny was how she and Onassis used each other: he got a prime show-off property (shafting Callas) and she got a man who had more than enough to protect her and her children. I once saw his yacht in the Hudson River, identified by the helicopter pad on the aft deck. I don't remember if I was afoot walking across the George Washington Bridge or flying a small airplane.

--Brant

edit: it must have been afoot, for the guy died in 1975 and I soloed in 1979. I suppose I could have been driving.

Edited August 9, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[Reidy]

Mme KO was never known for her good judgement.

Great Society, yes. Kennedy was not good at dealing with Congress and never could have gotten that much legislation out of them.

Vietnam war, not so sure. I suspect that if Kennedy had lived the war would have gone just as it did and he would have ended up as unpopular as Johnson.

[Brant Gaede]

Mme KO was never known for her good judgement.

Great Society, yes. Kennedy was not good at dealing with Congress and never could have gotten that much legislation out of them.

Vietnam war, not so sure. I suspect that if Kennedy had lived the war would have gone just as it did and he would have ended up as unpopular as Johnson.

If Kennedy chickened out at the Bay of Pigs, he would have chickened out of Vietnam--by not committing large American ground forces. A lot of that conflict was action-reaction escalation. The more we got involved the bigger it got as North Vietnam accelerated its direct involvement and China and the USSR sent in war material and associated war goods.

--Brant

[Selene]

Jackie Onassis tapes spoken to Arthur Schlesinger within months of the assassination have been sealed in the Kennedy library in Boston. Caroline has agreed to release them here UK Mail Story.

Seems that she thought ole LBJ was behind it according to her.

I can understand the "behind" as he was a complete ass. There is only one reason I care about the Kennedy power-lusting cabal: the assassination grossly distorted American politics and gave us the Vietnam War full-time and The Great Society. As for her, she always knew how to latch onto the guy with the mostest so she could be his hostess. What was really funny was how she and Onassis used each other: he got a prime show-off property (shafting Callas) and she got a man who had more than enough to protect her and her children. I once saw his yacht in the Hudson River, identified by the helicopter pad on the aft deck. I don't remember if I was afoot walking across the George Washington Bridge or flying a small airplane.

--Brant

edit: it must have been afoot, for the guy died in 1975 and I soloed in 1979. I suppose I could have been driving.

CBS I believe has the tapes and they are denying that the tapes contain any statements by Jackie that she had an affair with Holden, or, that she thought LBJ was involved in the conspiracy to kill her husband.

[syrakusos]

Castro, the CIA, the Mafia, LBJ, the Money Masters... Jacqueline Bouvier is the one person no one seems to suspect and she was the woman scorned, like whom hell hath no fury.

I like the Illuminatus! theory: they were all there that day.

We were big fans of the series NUMB3Rs. In one, Alan Epps has a model of the Kennedy Assassination at Dealy Plaza. That starts an argument between two FBI guys, partners David and Colby. Colby isn't buying it: "... the CIA, the FBI... a cover up like that would require hundreds of people. You couldn't keep it quiet." To which, David replied, "That's why everyone knows about it."

[Reidy]

Actually LBJ and Holden were boinking each other, and Jackie killed them both. The story she gave to Schlesinger shows that the coverup was in place as early as 1964, though she didn't get around to Holden for another 17 years.

[Mark]

Then there’s the assassination of James Forrestal in 1949 soon after he’d retired as Secretary of Defense. See the

Willcutts Report

produced by the Naval Medical Corps' investigation into his death, and the

Nurse’s Notes

made during the round-the-clock watch kept on Forrestal from the time he was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital to the time he disappeared. (He went out a 16th floor window.)

Any list of true conspiracies should mention

CIA cocaine trafficking

For more information on that government conspiracy and many others see

Government Corruption

[caroljane]

Jackie had an affair with William Holden? All the years I've been reading the National Enquirer, how did I miss that one?

[Selene]

Jackie had an affair with William Holden? All the years I've been reading the National Enquirer, how did I miss that one?

Carol:

There is also a somewhat solid suspicion that she and Bobby had a "comforting affair" for almost a year after the assassination. I find that quite believable knowing how close they were. Death brings folks closer in ways that permit this type of relationship. Hospitals, surrounded by suffering and death trigger these life affirming relationships quite frequently.

As for the Forrestal "suicide," I have major doubts that he committed suicide. In fact, the trajectory of his fall and the distance from the right angle of the building that he hit appears to have required some assistance in exiting the window.

As to Kennedy, I am certain that there was more than one shooter in Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1963.

Adam

[9thdoctor]

We mustn’t leave out the ultimate conspiracy theory. I don’t think I’ve heard of a juicier one than this: News of a 1775 patent for a steam engine in Britain made it’s way to Königsberg, East Prussia. A philosophy professor there recognizes the implications for the future, that the Industrial Revolution has begun, and it will bring unprecedented prosperity to the world. He hates that idea, so he’s sets out to stop it. He does this by writing a nearly unreadable book on epistemology, a book which pretends to defend the work of Newton from the skepticism of Hume, but which really serves to undermine all of human knowledge. By processes too complex to explain here (see The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff) this results in mass murder, bad art, and the philosophic corruption of physics, among many, many other ills.

Here’s the bad boy himself:

T!!!!!

[BaalChatzaf]

We mustn't leave out the ultimate conspiracy theory. I don't think I've heard of a juicier one than this: News of a 1775 patent for a steam engine in Britain made it's way to Königsberg, East Prussia. A philosophy professor there recognizes the implications for the future, that the Industrial Revolution has begun, and it will bring unprecedented prosperity to the world. He hates that idea, so he's sets out to stop it. He does this by writing a nearly unreadable book on epistemology, a book which pretends to defend the work of Newton from the skepticism of Hume, but which really serves to undermine all of human knowledge. By processes too complex to explain here (see The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff) this results in mass murder, bad art, and the philosophic corruption of physics, among many, many other ills.

A barking mad Conspiracy Theorist could not have come up with a more implausible scenario.

The only thing left out was the International Jewish Conspiracy by the Learned Elders of Zion.

Kant is not only responsible for the Nazi horrors but he is to blame for the rain that spoiled your picnic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited August 10, 2011 by BaalChatzaf

[Mark]

As for the Forrestal "suicide," I have major doubts that he committed suicide. In fact, the trajectory of his fall and the distance from the right angle of the building that he hit appears to have required some assistance in exiting the window.

There are no reputable descriptions of the trajectory of Forrestal’s fall, specifically how far from the building he landed.

Except that just maybe in one of the photographs in the appendix to the Willcutts Report (Princeton’s Seeley Mudd library PDF “second half” page 214) you can discern the chalk outline of a body. If so, then he landed two feet or so from the wall. And keep in mind that he bounced off a projecting ledge before landing there.

It makes little difference. Even a strong man could not throw very far a large, ungainly and struggling (weakly, having been garroted) 150 pounds out a window hole about two feet deep.

However there are at least half a dozen good reasons to believe Forrestal did not kill himself. See

Why Suicide / Why Murder

[Brant Gaede]

We mustn't leave out the ultimate conspiracy theory. I don't think I've heard of a juicier one than this: News of a 1775 patent for a steam engine in Britain made it's way to Königsberg, East Prussia. A philosophy professor there recognizes the implications for the future, that the Industrial Revolution has begun, and it will bring unprecedented prosperity to the world. He hates that idea, so he's sets out to stop it. He does this by writing a nearly unreadable book on epistemology, a book which pretends to defend the work of Newton from the skepticism of Hume, but which really serves to undermine all of human knowledge. By processes too complex to explain here (see The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff) this results in mass murder, bad art, and the philosophic corruption of physics, among many, many other ills.

A barking mad Conspiracy Theorist could not have come up with a more implausible scenario.

The only thing left out was the International Jewish Conspiracy by the Learned Elders of Zion.

Kant is not only responsible for the Nazi horrors but he is to blame for the rain that spoiled your picnic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It hardly matters how evil Kant was or wasn't, Rand merely exponentially overstated the power of (formal) philosophy in human affairs and history. Hence, the worse Kant was the greater she was. This can be called pulling yourself up with Kant's bootstraps. That aside, in the pantheon of philosophers, she seems to have mostly got him wrong. To properly ID the most evil man by profession in history would require a lifetime of legitimate study, research and writing. The problem with this is you are still starting with your conclusion (or you wouldn't start) and you'll end up being labelled a nutcase, something she wasn't. She just blew her evaluation off the top of her head with little to back it up.

--Brant