What is your favourite conspiracy theory?

[Donna Ferentes]

Christ, yes. "I buried Paul" and the rest. A really good one. Hasn't The Book of Rock Lists got "twenty-five reasons why Paul McCartney is dead"?

Presumably there's a similar cult now around the theory that Richey Edwards is alive?

 

[Ich bin ein Mod]

For all those who deride people they call a 'conspiracy theorist', i'd remind you of the phrase 'there's no smoke without fire'...

Best loved phrase of those who make groundless accusations. If i said you had killed someone then covered it up, would "no smoke without fire" realy be a justification?

 

[pk]

Don't take the piss.

Oh, I'm not taking the piss out of Wolfie.

He's a righteous dude.

 

[Wolfie]

yeah but that use of the word "Spazz" breaks the posting rules on two counts - the word itself is not an acceptable term of abuse on these boards, and it's a hostile corruption of someone's username so you need to edit it ...

 

[shoddysolutions]

Just to lighten things up a bit.......
The best conspiracy theory i ever read about was that the spice girls were made from a plasma that was found at the scene of the u.f.o crash at Rosswell years before

Talking of the Spice girls ....

1. There were five SPICE GIRLS

2. Five letters in SPICE ... and in GIRLS

3. The SPICE GIRLS launched Channel FIVE

4. At FIVE pm on March 5th 1997

5. With a cover version of '5-4-3-2-1'

Law of Fives, anyone?

 

[Jazzz]

Shoddysolutions (in particular) -- I don't know whether you've looked at this long thread concerning Conpiracy Theories/Theorists in the Theory, Philosophy, History forum, but it's worth checking out.

Particularly Post 29 (by Donna Ferentes), Page 2 -- an excellent summary of how so many of the more committed CTers deeply undermine their own credibility at every turn.

If anyone can continue to promote an 'alternative version' without showing ANY of the 'Ten Characteristics of Conspiracy Theorists' that Donna highlights, and in such a way that erudite, rational, informed and knowledgeable sceptics like DF, Bernie Gunther and laptop** are able to give the 'Theory' the time of day, then I'd be the first to congratuate them.

**Neither of whom can with any validity at all, be described as 'gullible dupes of the establishment'

I'm not holding my breath though.

Listen to yourself WoW! Central to understanding how we are manipulated is to recognise that we are afraid to think for ourselves and simply follow others; i.e. we behave like sheep.

Not only do you reveal that you do this yourself, but you go as far as to name those that you think others should follow too!

When you are thinking for yourself I like reading your opinions, even when you are slagging something of mine off, but it's tiring to listen to a criticism which is just hanging behind someone else's coat-tails.

You are better than this WoW.

(incidentally, of the three you mention; they are all intelligent, however I respect only one as a free thinker, and of the others, one isn't nearly half as clever as he and the rest of the board seems to think he is)

 

[Jazzz]

Best loved phrase of those who make groundless accusations. If i said you had killed someone then covered it up, would "no smoke without fire" realy be a justification?

I confess I would wan't to be associated with this phrase fela. You can have an awful lot of smoke with maybe no fire at all.

(e.g. - Weapons of Mass Destruction)

 

[Donna Ferentes]

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Listen to yourself WoW! Central to understanding how we are manipulated is to recognise that we are afraid to think for ourselves and simply follow others; i.e. we behave like sheep.

Thing is, J, that's exactly what you do. Like a sheep. Any major incident happens, you assume that there's a conspiracy behind it. Any tosh that anybody publishes on a website, you hurry to reproduce it uncritically. You're the follower, J, not the freethinker.

 

[editor]

Listen to yourself WoW! Central to understanding how we are manipulated is to recognise that we are afraid to think for ourselves and simply follow others; i.e. we behave like sheep.

Aren't you going along to baa along to David Icke's bonkers wafflings at the Academy soon?

Imagine all those 'free thinkers' in one room!

I bet the government will be terrified.

Be sure to buy the shirt/DVD/book/CD on your way out.

Baaaa!

 

[shoddysolutions]

Aw c'mon ed, you gotta admire his chutzpah.

Only twenty-five snicks to watch a barmy shell-suited ex-sports commentator with a direct line to God?

Baaaaaaaaaaaagain! I'll take two please

 

[William of Walworth]

Thing is, J, that's exactly what you do. Like a sheep. Any major incident happens, you assume that there's a conspiracy behind it. Any tosh that anybody publishes on a website, you hurry to reproduce it uncritically. You're the follower, J, not the freethinker.

<slavishly agrees with DF! >

Jazzz, I don't invariably agree with the three people I named. OK so I may do more often than not, because I tend to agree with large parts of their political outlooks (not all of them by any means). But on their approach to conspiracies, I happen to have decided for myself that their approach (attempting healthy scepticism of ALL 'versions', and applying proper fact and evidence based rigour to analysing these things) to be pretty similar to what I would aim to myself, had I the time. And as I said, the indiscriminate, magpie-like grabbing at any CT going by so many CT fans, without applying any real scepticism to them , doesn't help their own credibility, irrespective of what the three Urbanites I mentioned say or don't say about it.

What you call 'slavish following' (of other posters) I'd call reticence -- I don't have the same amount of time and dedication as they do to analysing these theories and their credibility, but their methodology makes a lot more rational sense to me than does (for instance!) yours ....

Every time some CTist or other (eg you) insults me or other sceptics as being gullible dupes of the establishment, they confuse proper debunking of/sceptical enquiry into the 'official truth' (which would be a long, tedious, painstaking examination of facts and evidence, including objectivity, and avoiding seizing on some groundless, unresearched, often MADE UP theory because it superficially conforms with a pre-existing
eagerness to dissent from the establishment) with gullibly grabbing at ANY wild net based 'rumour', 'theory' etc. that AUTOMATICALLY MUST BE TRUE because it disagrees with the 'official version'.

 

[shoddysolutions]

I see a movie in the making ... Jazzz and Donna Ferentes are two of the same breed, but represent yin and yang. DF is a trained, disciplined black belt in critical evaluation, having spent years in mental training under the old masters to be found on the shelves, while Jazzz is the young pup thirsty for the same kind of knowledge but unwilling to put in the graft, who lazily reaches for his mouse and gets seduced by the dark side of internet fruitloopery. Things come to a head durign a screening of "9/11: The True Story" at the local library, where DF and Jazzz come face to face, one armed with the collected works of Aristotle, the other with a back issue of Bizzzarre Magazine ...

 

[William of Walworth]

I see a movie in the making ... Jazzz and Donna Ferentes are two of the same breed, but represent yin and yang. DF is a trained, disciplined black belt in critical evaluation, having spent years in mental training under the old masters to be found on the shelves, while Jazzz is the young pup thirsty for the same kind of knowledge but unwilling to put in the graft, who lazily reaches for his mouse and gets seduced by the dark side of internet fruitloopery. Things come to a head durign a screening of "9/11: The True Story" at the local library, where DF and Jazzz come face to face, one armed with the collected works of Aristotle, the other with a back issue of Bizzzarre Magazine ...

<books ticket >

 

[TeeJay]

My Favourite CT is one I made up myself - that Piers Morgan was set up by the British military: they faked up the shots of "prisoner abuse" and then got some squaddies who were about to retire to sell them to The Mirror.

This had a "triple whammy" effect - firstly to take some of the heat and attention off the Americans, since Abu Ghrab (sp?) was just breaking and there was a danger that even worse photos (as seen by the Senate) than the few seen in the press would be released. Secondly to tone down any 'rift' between US and UK forces - not wanting to see even more of the British public start wanting to bail out because of American abuses and not wanting to make the American military think that the Brits were taking a holier-than-thou attitude. Finally - to get back at Piers Morgan and neutralise him as a the leading mass-circulation/tabloid anti-war voice. After all, "they" don't care if the Independent supports a demo, but having The Mirror supporting one probably really put the shits up many people.

I don't have any evidence or proof for this - but I am proud of having invented at least one CT of my own (although noone seems to have been that interested). I suppose part of the "secret" lies with Piers Morgan himself in that presumably he knows the names of the squaddies who sold him the faked up photos (but as a journalist he can't disclose them!). IIRC their identities were never uncovered by the MOD investigation, and at worst they'd be dishonourably discharged - and then probably get a nice cushy private sector security job or massively well-paid private bodyguard contract in Iraq: an under-the-counter golden handshake as it were.

 

[Spymaster]

Deleted

 

[Stobart Stopper]

I quite like the phrase "cuntbubble" though. I shall use it when I am out and about, like if I see any pre-mentrual policewomen with road rage.

 

[TeeJay]

Just as a follow up to my "Piers Morgan" CT: It has obviously crossed some people's minds:

...Morgan was sacked, of course, because he ran hoax photographs purporting to show members of The Queen's Lancashire Regiment abusing Iraqi prisoners. Does he now accept that they were fakes? "For a number of reasons, not least of which was having my own brother serving in Basra, I believed they were genuine."

Does he now accept that they were fakes? "Look, we got approached about six weeks before publication by two guys serving in the regiment saying they had a lot of evidence of abuse. We did checks, they were who they said they were. They wanted to be paid by cheque, not in cash, and they wanted the money sent to their home address. They co-operated fully. I didn't think when I first saw those photographs - as everyone else now claims they did - that they were fakes."

Does he now accept, I ask for the third time, that they were fakes? "Only when the MoD said categorically that the van used in those pictures had not been in Iraq did I get a sick feeling in my stomach. But the British media was so deliriously happy that I was getting it in the arse that none of them thought to inspect the van for themselves. I refused to apologise at the time because we didn't have incontrovertible evidence that the photographs were fakes, and I don't accept that seeing a van from 50 yards is evidence."

So that's a no, then. Does he think he was set up? "Because the two soldiers were utterly convinced that the photographs were genuine, so was I. What I find bemusing is that we still don't know who took them, where they took them, or whether the incident happened or not. I don't want you to say I was set up, or even infer that I think it was a conspiracy, but it may be that someone thought they might suit the Mirror's agenda on Iraq."

Who? "There are obvious people who would benefit, but I'm not going to sit here like [Mohamed] Al Fayed and say, 'These bastard government ministers, or MI5, they got me in the end,' I'm not. All I'm saying is that I don't know the facts about these pictures, but they do seem to illustrate a wider truth about British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners."

Ah, the old Gilligan defence. "I think Gilligan was right. It is an absolute farce that the people who have lost their jobs over Iraq are me, Andrew Gilligan, Gavyn Davies and Greg Dyke. If it is MI5 that is behind it they should all get promotions and pay rises. They can't find weapons of mass destruction but, by God, they can get media people out of their jobs."

He has never confirmed the figure, but it is thought that he was paid £1.7 million by the Mirror as a leaving settlement, which was followed by a £1.2 million book deal...

http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/art...4.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/03/15/ixartright.html

I was surprising at the time that the MOD managed to do an in-depth rebuttal of the photographs within hours, with a whole checklist/analysis of the times errors and problems with the pictures. Normally you just get a few weeks of "we are investigating".

Edit: Not sure how this impacts on my theory: Jurisdiction doubt stops Mirror case court martial

 

[pk]

deleted

 

[Spymaster]

Deleted

 

[Jazzz]

WoW (post #132)

What you did WoW was to defer to other posters as gatekeepers to your beliefs, if they wouldn't give a theory 'the time of day' then you would consider it not worth thinking about. The implication being that other posters should do the same. It beatifully illustrates deference to authority and peer pressure. I would never argue against someone making up their own mind, nor would I ever suggest they should employ such 'gatekeepers'; certainly not me, nor David Icke, nor anyone.

This is the other thing noticeable about Badger Kitten's attempt at a light-hearted thread. I don't mind when people don't agree with me, where's the problem? I am here to exchange opinions, maybe to find out things, sometimes to test things by seeing what opposition comes up... I'd also like to think that maybe some people do the same back. But we don't have to agree. So why the personal abuse? The sneering? The worrying what people will think? ('reputation of the boards'). I confess I was defensive at the start of this thread, thinking that it comprised an assault in my direction given my past history with BK. But I needn't have been because free discussion which is not based around personal abuse is absolutely fine and that's what this thread was about. If we had a forum for conspiracy stuff it could be extremely entertaining; conspiracies vary from the ones we all agree on (Iraq War about Oil, for example) from ones we all think are hatstand with all manner of variety in between. Why do we get so uptight?

 

[Stobart Stopper]

If we had a forum for conspiracy stuff it could be extremely entertaining; conspiracies vary from the ones we all agree on (Iraq War about Oil, for example) from ones we all think are hatstand with all manner of variety in between. Why do we get so uptight?

But then it would attract all sorts of nutters as well. Google Sam Moser/Jerry Newport, he used to post in a forum I used years ago. He bought it down IMO. Biggest raving loonspud I have ever seen in cyberspace and as far as I know he's still going.Here's a snippet:

http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/hambone/stealth.html
I like conspiracy theories but there's no way I want Urban to get a forum just for that topic as it would be awful.
LOL! He's still going! The bloke is fucking barking!
http://www.stopshrinks.org/reading_room/antipsych/psych_drugs_shorten_life.html
Don't email him, Jazzz, whatever you do, he spammed all of us once with up to 300 emails each a day when I was on the US site.

 

[William of Walworth]

'Why so uptight'

1. Because I'm a historian by background
2. The people I named generally follow proper historical principles, preferring fact and evidence based analysis, and critical assessment of a source's credibility.
3. That approach, if followed properly, should include scepticism of and detachment both from 'alternative versions' and from 'official' versions.
4. Agreeing with that approach isn't 'deferentially deferring', it just means I prefer that approach to a less rational one.
5. In other words I'm far more likely to agree with their approach than with yours which I have decided for myself appears consistently less rigourous.
6. If I disagree with them (as I have with all three, on other subjects) I'll say
so.
7. I refer you to my post (no. 39) on page two of this thread -- largely a joke (about the CIA etc.) but a good underlying point to it which is : speculation-based CTs very often (IMO) severe to discredit, hinder and make more difficult a more professional type of investigation.

<edit to add> : perhaps I should have made my original point clearer/less rushed. In quite a few long and involved CT threads, the scepticism of the three posters I named conforms much more closely to historical principles and to rationality, facts and evidence.

That approach, to me, contrasts creditably with the prevailing unquestioning credulity/gullibility of so many CT fans towards any and every sensational-sounding, 'exclusive revealing of the exclusive, covered up truth' type-CT.

That's why I want common-sensiblists like them (I should have said 'for example) to give an implausible looking 'theory' the time of day before I take much notice of it.

 

[William of Walworth]

Oh and btw Jazzz, I'm not been abusive to you in this thread, and I think pk's resorting to it is both unnecessary and a distraction ...

 

[tobyjug]

My Favourite CT is one I made up myself - that Piers Morgan was set up by the British military: they faked up the shots of "prisoner abuse" and then got some squaddies who were about to retire to sell them to The Mirror.

.

If Piers Morgan could not spot those photos were fakes he was not fit to be a newspaper editor anyway. Any official nobbling of him would have been a tad more professional that those very obvious fakes.

 

[TeeJay]

Any official nobbling of him would have been a tad more professional that those very obvious fakes.

They had to be convincing enough for The Mirror to publish them, but not so good that they couldn't be disproved immediately (although Morgan is now saying that they haven't been disproved - see the last article I linked to). The timing of their original release is interesting as well.

 

[fela fan]

Oh please - it's the little ex-patriot living in a third world country who refuses to listen to mainstream media....

And you're a fucking hypocrite too.

A quick search of your posts garners such EXCESSIVELY VIOLENT quotes as this:



If you're going to be the token ex-British little twat who is the SOLE PERSON on these boards who believes anything the eternally shit-stirring DELUDED ANTI-SEMITIC PROPAGANDA PUSHING PURPLE CUNTBUBBLE has to say, at least stick to the script.

Take a look at yourself you disgusting person. Your insults towards jazzz make me have the need to call you for the verbal assaults you carry out. And of course, i've been around here long enough to see your language aimed at others who you don't agree with, including your frequent calls for death to others.

You are, quite simply, an obnoxious person. Thank fuck we only have to deal with you as a computer person. Anybody meetin you in real life has my sympathy.

I cannot fathom how others get banned, yet you and your bile continues to downgrade this site. You are one nasty motherfucker, to borrow an american phrase.

And to borrow your kind of language, why don't you cease to exist on these boards eh?

 

[tobyjug]

They had to be convincing enough for The Mirror to publish them, but not so good that they couldn't be disproved immediately (although Morgan is now saying that they haven't been disproved - see the last article I linked to). The timing of their original release is interesting as well.

Any professional journalist thinking those photos were genuine should have got the sack. I don't know if the thread on the subject is archived, but I suggested they were fake well before there were official suspicions about them. ( I really think the average Iraqui male wears iffy underpants like those in the pictures).

 

[editor]

You are one nasty motherfucker, to borrow an american phrase.

So remind me why you're joining in with the personal insults, Mr Pot McKettle Le Black?

<note to all: please wind down the abuse>

 

[fela fan]

So remind me why you're joining in with the personal insults, Mr Pot McKettle Le Black?

<note to all: please wind down the abuse>

I'll remind you alright. You tell me about it, yet ignore the massive abuse that pk has engaged in on this thread?

You ought to know very well by now that i don't really bother with personal abuse, regardless of our inability to agree on much.

But when i see the downright abusiveness that verbal bullies like pk get up to, sometimes i feel the need to return like for like.

And are you trying to paint me as a half scottish half french person eh...?

I'll not be abusing anyone else again. Just had to get my oar in over what pk's been up to. Yet again.