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9/11 conspiracy theories
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
i have been watching every night the documetaries on 9/11 including the conspiracy theory one
can anyone explain to me how on earth anyone in a sane state of mind can actually think that this was not just a terrorist attack but a great conspiracy
st -
Message 2
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
stalti
I must agree with you.. Staging this as a film simulation would be hard enough.. and film makers can have re-takes, rehearsals, editing etc.. You have to ask yourself whether some people have ever done more than turn buttons on and off etc.. In the real world there is usually a hitch somewhere along the line, which is why the British Army has always left it to the men on the ground to make final decisions as to just how best to tailor the planning to the actual goals.
But I was writing recently about the World Economic Chaos of the late-twenties early Thirties when all the laws of economics and finance no longer seemed to apply.. The panic on Wall Street on Black Friday in 1929 was just one major episode when literally the bottom fell out of people's reality and they no longer had points of reference.
My wife did lots of ballet and she has often tried to explain to me that trick of not getting dizzy when you are spinning around.. I think that conspiracy theorists are people who have lost touch with reality and assume that we are in some strange place like the "Wonderland " that Alice landed in when she fell down the rabbit hole..
Cass -
Message 3
Posted by glen berro (U8860283) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
I always find conspiracy theories very amusing, stalti, especially the Ancient Alien and Moon Landings Were Faked variety. I do sometimes wonder whether the people who ascribe to them really believe in them or simply like an argument.
It is more than a little worrying, though, when politicians with far too much influence promote weird theories such as Creationism, and seek to undermine proper scientific and historical research by interfering with the education systems of their peoples.
glen -
Message 4
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
Some combination of wishful thinking, only looking at individual facts in isolation or not understanding how things work.
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Message 5
Posted by Minette Minor (U14272111) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
I know one thing....In 1941 the Blitz came down upon London and many, many thousands were killed. Ten years later we celebrated the Festival of Britian when rationing was still here and people lived in dug-outs! Yet New York keeps picking at the scab of 9/11!
Yes we all know that the USA is special, God's own country, etc, etc, but when will you give your suffering a rest? It's boring me to death!
The USA is the spoiled! A country where the only war it has ever known was the American civil - not about slaves but about a divide and money. Pearl Harbour when attacked by the Japanese only hurt a few. But the endless films about the suffering! Then Roosevelt declared war upon Japan and the Nazis declared war upon the USA!
9/11 was the first time in over 100 years when it actually came under fire. God knows it has happened to almost everyone else more recently! As I saw the Towers combust I was consumed with sadness. I'd grown up with bombings from the IRA backed by Noraid from the USA, used to un-packing luggage etc. and what bombs did. The USA was like a toddler. Immune in a far away country to what its power and money did. I hoped that after the bombings in the USA the nation would come of age! The only "good" thing to come of it.
All I heard was messages of Revenge and death and destruction. It reminded me of when a Roman soldier was killed and so 10 of those who did the killing must die. Decimation. It shocked me. I thought that the USA was civilized. -
Message 6
Posted by Daniel-K (U2684833) on Friday, 9th September 2011
The United States loves to play the victim. During the period when that country was engaged in the long extermination of the indigenous inhabitants of the lands it now occupies, the stories Americans liked to tell themselves were not of their armies triumphing over the red man and the westward march of civilisation but of the lonely settler family besieged in their log cabin or the wagon train attacked on the plain by marauding braves. To justify genocide they insisted they were the victims, not the aggressor. The same strategy has been repeated many times down the decades with only trivial variations: the Alamo, the Little Bighorn, the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, 9/11. Always the US claims to be the victim to justify imperial aggression and expansion.
Perhaps this is why some people are ready to believe the conspiracy theories: 9/11 fits so well into the pre-existing narrative traditions of American political and imperial self-justification it could seem like it had been designed exactly for that purpose. But the truth is that events are shaped in the retelling to fit the old narratives. Americans reshaped 9/11 to fit their old stories of American victimhood and how that sanctifies American military aggression and makes it noble and good and holy. In the UK, the stories we have traditionally told ourselves, from the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Britain, are of the quiet defiance of impossible odds and communities pulling together and thus we fitted the events of 7/7 more into that narrative than an American-style one of victimhood. -
Message 7
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 9th September 2011
I know one thing....In 1941 the Blitz came down upon London and many, many thousands were killed. Ten years later we celebrated the Festival of Britian when rationing was still here and people lived in dug-outs! Yet New York keeps picking at the scab of 9/11!
Yes we all know that the USA is special, God's own country, etc, etc, but when will you give your suffering a rest? It's boring me to death!
Ìý
Oh, the irony of complaining about the US still talking about 9/11 in one breath then banging on about how we suffered during the blitz (yet again) in another.
A country where the only war it has ever known was the American civil - not about slavesÌý
The US civil war was very much about slaves. It was the only issue which drove the south to seccession. Extension of slavery was fundamental to southern politicians of all parties prior to 1860 and underpinned the entire southern economy and way of life and the issue which (in popular imagination) undermined the economy of the north - slavery was the "divide and money" of which you speak.
Pearl Harbour when attacked by the Japanese only hurt a few. But the endless films about the suffering! Ìý
Endless? You could just as easily accuse Britain of having endless films about the Battle of Britain, or documentaries about the Somme. All countries make films about their past, why shouldn't the Americans be allowed the same freedom as us?
9/11 was the first time in over 100 years when it actually came under fire.Ìý
Come now Minette, you've already named one other time. The US had its sailors attacked during both world wars and acts of terrorism were carried out during both backed by the German government. It's also suffered home grown terrorist attacks. And the Japanese also occupied parts of Alaska. Yes the US bleat on about them, but pick up any vaguely right wing newspaper in this country talking about NI and watch them bleating about IRA attrocities. Again, why shouldn't the US have the same intersts in themselves that we give to ourselves?
I'd grown up with bombings from the IRA backed by Noraid from the USA,Ìý
Yes, Noraid raised money in the US, but lots of money was raised in Ireland and within the UK too. There was a pub in your home town of Cardiff where people were asked regularly to contribute to "the cause": should we blame the Welsh for arming the IRA? -
Message 8
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Always the US claims to be the victim to justify imperial aggression and expansion.
Perhaps this is why some people are ready to believe the conspiracy theories: 9/11 fits so well into the pre-existing narrative traditions of American political and imperial self-justification it could seem like it had been designed exactly for that purpose.Ìý
Agreed, people want to believe conspiracy theories about 9/11 because they want to believe the US is at fault.
But the truth is that events are shaped in the retelling to fit the old narratives. Americans reshaped 9/11 to fit their old stories of American victimhood and how that sanctifies American military aggression and makes it noble and good and holy. In the UK, the stories we have traditionally told ourselves, from the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Britain, are of the quiet defiance of impossible odds and communities pulling together and thus we fitted the events of 7/7 more into that narrative than an American-style one of victimhood.
Ìý
Blimey, that's impressive. The Spanish Armada fits into exactly the same mould as you accuse the Americans of inventing about 9/11. England backed blatant piracy in the West Indies and financed rebels in the Low Countries - that "quiet defiance" was against retribution brought about by an aggressive and covert war fought by our proxies against Spain.
I don't know about you, but at school (as recently as the 80s) I was taught that Germany in 1914 was bad for wanting an Empire and a large navy. Yet Britain having the world's largest navy and largest empire made her the victim of Germany wanting to emulate her. -
Message 9
Posted by Daniel-K (U2684833) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Blimey, that's impressive. The Spanish Armada fits into exactly the same mould as you accuse the Americans of inventing about 9/11. England backed blatant piracy in the West Indies and financed rebels in the Low Countries - that "quiet defiance" was against retribution brought about by an aggressive and covert war fought by our proxies against Spain. Ìý
What really brought about the Spanish Armada, what the events leading up to 1588 really were, are irrelevant questions to our discussion here. What matters is what stories we have told ourselves about the Armada since 1588. And those stories are of the vast Armada suddenly appearing off the coast, of Drake calmly finishing his game of bowls, of the lonely hilltop beacons spreading the news across the country, of the aging Queen coming to Tilbury resolved to live or die among her troops, of the English navy just managing to hold off the Spanish with fireboats, and of the miraculous storms that finished off the ships as they tried to sneak home. That (for example) the battle was already over when the Queen arrived at Tilbury makes no difference to the importance of these stories to English self-understanding/self-mythologising. -
Message 10
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Friday, 9th September 2011
The stories are so much part of our view of history. For example, the Armada flagship, El Gran Grifón, was wrecked in a cove on the Fair isle, south of Shetland, on 27th September 1588. The sailors, who spent several weeks on the island, are said to have taught the women of the island how to use natural dyes for their knitting wool. The wreck was found by archaeologists in 1970.
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Message 11
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 9th September 2011
What really brought about the Spanish Armada, what the events leading up to 1588 really were, are irrelevant questions to our discussion here. Ìý
The events are very relevant to your point attempting to contrast the American narratives of attacks and British narratives. The Armada fits perfectly into the American style of innocent victim which you outlined. -
Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
A couple of points come to mind from various posts:
(a) As Boris Johnson discovered accusing people and places of a culture of victimisation can often produce a backlash.. But it may be no accident that both Liverpool (to which he was referring) and New York both have very significant populations with Irish roots.. And many Irish people would say that one only needs to look at history to see why they have often felt victimised.. Yet I was recently reading some John Steinbeck- including some briiliantly expressive, and effusive letters to Jackie Kennedy after the assassination of JFK.. Another 'Irishman' martyred . Having earlier compared JFK to men who had been the light in darkness of previous ages like King Arthur, Jesus and Buddha, he commented that his Irish mother had second-sight and some of it seemed to be mingled in his own blood.. Well "Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men" are brilliant books but provide few grounds for optimism.. Life is a struggle up out of Hell that calls for Heroism and sacrifice.. I notice that "Saint" Bob is performing here soon.. And no-one can deny that some of the greatest use of the English language has come from Irish men with a tale to tell.
(b) 9/11 was not really an attack on the USA but an attack on the modern world.. In what I am writing at the moment- hence looking at Steinbeck- I have just copied out the first paragraph of Naomi Klein's 'afterword' in her second edition of 'No Logo' (2002).. She says that her book was at the publishers with a closing reference to people quietly talking about launching a campaign against global capitalism when the whole world got a wake up call by masses on the streets of Seattle on 30 November 1999 demonstrating against the World Trade Organisation... Dust bin of history.
When the attacks of 9/11 occurred such childish things were set aside, as Ms Klein went on to note with some anger, for it deviated from her path.
9/11 was an attack upon an unsatisfactory emerging global system and we are still very much threatened by its impact.. and the possible over-reactions that resulted as we were all threatened with the abyss.
(a) Ms. Klein noted just how quickly the attack reconected the "Anglo-Saxon world" with very old instincts of sticking together to fight back, believing that we are the inheritors and custodians of a Christian Civilization. Now as we approach the tenth anniversary we have had the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, as we attempt to establish some kind of democracy and human rights within those Islamic States we have had the Arab Spring and the current campaign in Libya.. But as recent news has highligted we face accusations that there has been very little "Christian" or "Civilized".. Certainly a great deal of force, sometimes proudly "overwhelming force" . We certainly can destroy but can we make and build.
(b) Within days of 9/11 the measurable value of the whole world fell by 20% threatening the whole system underpinning our way of life, and the hopes of most people that they might one day share it.. The Western Consumer was called to go out and spend,spend spend in order to keep the world economy going. Everything could go on the credit cards, for history taught that was is crucial is to keep people believing that it is worth spending and/or trusting the financial institutions. During the thirties people did neither. They stuffed their money and valuables in mattresses. And for seven years after 9/11 this make-shift measure seemed to sufice, in spite of the fact that the capacity of the big spending West to make and build things that would reflect the value of their debts and allow individuals and governments to service them and/or pay them off. Ten years later the weight of personal and national debt combined with this inability to make and build anything of value to anyone but ourselves is till leaving us very much on the brink.
(I have wondered in recent years whether there is not a bit of Irish in me somewhere.. My mother had something like second sight)
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Americans cry victim at anything, despite their own vacuous foreign policies or arrogance about Britian's IRA bombings for the previous three decades, backed (as someone stated above) by Noraid.
It was terrible what happened on 9th September 2001, but did the US Govt reallty expect anything else? NOW, with selfish and immature US shouting, no-one else in history has ever been bombed!
As for conspiracies, YES they exist, i personally don't believe the 9/11 ones, but many other high profile deaths etc definately must have some unexplained background to them, and it's not insane to believe/explore them. -
Message 14
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Friday, 9th September 2011
It was terrible what happened on 9th September 2001, but did the US Govt reallty expect anything else? NOW, with selfish and immature US shouting, no-one else in history has ever been bombed!Ìý What on earth is this supposed to mean? I was in the states on September ELEVEN, by the way, and ever since, I never heard or saw anybody claim that it was the first ever terrorist act in the history of mankind. I'm reading some of these posts, and, what really amazes me most, is not even poorly concealed gloating - after all the Great Satan finally got what it asked for, right? - but the sheer, hardly beliveable idiocy. History MB? Really?
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Message 15
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Suvorovetz
I well recall the intense concern of so many of my London pupils who had relatives working in the Trade Centre.. One "Asian" girl said that she thought that her uncle actually had offices that took up most of the floor that was hit.. He phoned the UK family later to let them know he was OK.
As David Cameron points out it was the biggest single British loss of life in peactime.
On a personal note.. Our daughter flew to NY for the week-end yesterday.. The high state of alert will be one more reason to feel better when she is back in the UK..
Cass -
Message 16
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Friday, 9th September 2011
we seem to have diverted from my OP
whether the us deserved 9/11 is irrelevant
the fact is that there are actually people out there who are experts/intelligent people who actually believe that
the buildings structural girders had been rigged with explosives during an update of the lifts - because it was impossible that the impact of an airliner could cause the damage needed to cause the buildings to collapse
the pentagon was hit by a cruise missile NOT an airliner etc etc
so thousands of people involved in the conspiracy have kept quiet (and not sold their story to the sun - note the lower case)
and why was it done - so the us could attack afghanistan ?? they are powerful enough to do what they want when they want for good reasons a long time before (WTC and us cole)
they have since been embroiled in unwinnable wars causing 4000 + deaths since and will soon leave afghanistan with their tails between their legs - good reasons or not ??
i would love to hear from someone who believes this c--p to explain to me
what an insult to 3000 people who died this is
st -
Message 17
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
stalti
I am interested in this idea that the TT could not have been brought down by the aeroplanes, as in the official story..
In programmes that I saw in the aftermath it was made clear that the architects had designed the buidlings to specifications that covered hurricanes and also the possibility of an airliner trying to get to one of the airports in bad conditions losing its way and crashing into the building by mistake.. So those parameters set the design and construction limits, and I think few of us believe that these days things are actually build to a higher specification and standard than the budget provides for.
In many ways I would prefer to believe the conspiracy theories- because I had very good reason to pay close attention to the details about the planning that had not covered the possibility of airliners with full tanks of aviation fuel being flown directly and deliberately into the TT..
Unfortunately some years before when discussing a previous tragedy- when allegedly a terrorist pilot had crashed his airliner with all the passengers into the Atlantic off Newfoundland, having I think taken off from JFK, I had advised a class with whom this had come up not to prejudge the pilot, who his family in Egypt insisted was not an Islamic fundamentalist..
It was possible, I explained, that he had been hi-jacked and that someone had put a gun to his head and ordered him to turn his plane around and fly it into one of the NY skyscapers. Perhaps he made the choice to limit the death toll in the only possible way by plunging his plane into the sea.. [After all initial speculation was that the normal daily "population " of the TT was about 20,000.]
I am not sure whether this was before or after my neighour, who was an engineer at Heathrow ,told me after a visit to see the Airbus getting close to service that if it crashed anywhere near us with full tanks its would desolate the city for square miles.
Anyway I was furious that professionals paid to give security advice had not built this into the TT specification.. And really worried when "the shoe bomber" , Richard Reid, was arrested revealing connection to the Brixton Mosque not too far away from our school. I remember teaching some Reids ...
Cass -
Message 18
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Friday, 9th September 2011
can anyone explain to me how on earth anyone in a sane state of mind can actually think that this was not just a terrorist attack but a great conspiracy Ìý
I think the basic background here is that any event that can be seen as an "unexpected defeat" generates its own conspiracy theory. When David beat Goliath, I am sure there were people in the crowd who started saying that Goliath's wine had been poisoned. This was the biggest attack against an US target since Pearl Harbor -- and the sophisticated defenses of the USA turned out to be valueless against a low-tech approach.
There is nothing inherently illogical in that, of course. Before 9/11, if the US government thought about homeland security at all, it thought about ballistic missile defense. That particular political holy cow probably had the effect of discouraging people in government from thinking about the dangers of low-tech attacks: How can you justify spending billions on high-tech projects, if the most serious real danger is presented by a group of fanatics armed only with knives and a willingness to die? So the result was that the US was poorly defended against such an attack, despite having a massive defense apparatus. But that apparent contradiction can be hard for people to resolve. For some people, it seems easier to believe that it was all a conspiracy, because then the contradiction suddenly becomes non-existent.
Probably many of the conspiracy theorists are good patriots, but a bit weird. They can't accept that Arabs could inflict this kind of damage to Americans on 9/11 (or Japanese to Americans on 7 Dec). In a way, it is more comforting for these people to believe that Americans did this to themselves: Such beliefs are more in line with the American exceptionalism, and in many cases, feelings of white racial superiority. On the far left, it may be the reverse: Some people probably have difficulties to admit that foreigners can be genuinely evil, while they have no such doubts about the flaws of their own countrymen...
IMHO there may be something similar with the practice of declaring that 9/11 was an attack on the American Way of Life, or Democracy, or Western Civilization, or even Civilization itself. There is a need, in many people, to believe that such a dramatic and deadly event must also have a cause of grand historical significance. But it doesn't have to. It was perfectly possible for Bin Laden and his followers to orchestrate all this for relatively petty reasons, such as anger about the presence of US troops in Saudi-Arabia, or personal ambition to become the recognized global leader of jihad. Terrorists tend to be unimaginative and often ill-informed. Many a fatal shot was fired for painfully irrelevant reasons. -
Message 19
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
I never believed in conspiracy theories until a woman waited at a roundabout, in her car,pursued me and ran me down, I on bike. Whether she was the loss adjuster's wife I don't know, but it certainly seemed like it, since he seemed to have got there before the ambulance.
However when is a political Power vacuum not a conspiracy, in such 09/11 circumstances? Everything outside the bottle is working, with the force of gravity,
to defeat the vacuum. It might be incitement OR conspiracy! Pulling from within or pushing from without!!
Perhaps we can prove it by means of higher mathematics, like the existence of god!
Boing! the vacuum collapses! Hey! that was all one big conspiracy! -
Message 20
Posted by Grasshopper (U3605803) on Sunday, 11th September 2011
What happened on that awful day will never be forgotten.
it was a crime, a crime so hideous it almost defies belief. How could anyone with even half an ounce of sanity have so casually ordered such an attack?
However, what REALLY gets my goat up is those who bleat about a conspiracy - often without any real evidence to back up their claims. Even if someone managed to fish HIM out of the sea, bring him back to life & get a full and detailed confession out of him, the CTs would STILL stick to their fantasies!!!!! And why? Because they don't want to believe anything but their theories & choose to turn a deaf ear to truth!
Same goes for every other conspiracy claim too!
KOTR -
Message 21
Posted by Mckay1402 (U5278290) on Thursday, 15th September 2011
Absolutely. Governments never lie and definitely can't falsify evidence. I'm not suggesting that the conspiracy theories are true but to dismiss them so easily is just as ridiculous as the theories themselves.
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Message 22
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Thursday, 15th September 2011
We have not had as many movies on the subject, as we did before, have we?
It was more of a public incitement the way I saw it, with all those Fantasy movies. -
Message 23
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Thursday, 15th September 2011
hi mutatis
good post
you are the first reply to actually suggest a reason for the conspiracy theories - still absolute fantasy - but at least a reason
st -
Message 24
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 15th September 2011
It may be that people are just not comfortable with the idea that things just happen as "an act of no god"..
In religious ages people could rationalise things that happened out of the ordinary as "acts of God" for purposes "which passeth human understanding"..
There are people who like to believe that science can now explain everything, and that people control both Man and Nature, so- just as people who believed in God looked for God-explanations- people who believe in Man- in particular scientists and technologists whose ideas "passeth their understanding"- apply their own faith system.
Nature abhors a vacuum.. And mankind always seems to want to project life and some "familiars" into the darkness.
Cass -
Message 25
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 16th September 2011
people who believe in Man- in particular scientists and technologists whose ideas "passeth their understanding"- apply their own faith system.
Ìý
In my personal experience as a scientist I'd say that it's definitely the non-scientists who fail to understand the limitations of science.
But then again I'm not part of the generation of scientists of the 50s and 60s who perhaps thought they could control more than they can. -
Message 26
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Friday, 16th September 2011
How can something which a good many people had premonitions of, or anticipated in film, ever be considered a conspiracy?
It is INCITEMENT. It is not that nobody knew. it was that everybody had an idea of it; employees of Morgan Stanley, airline trainees, all sorts.
And at a time when there was NO clearly elected God in the USA., until that moment. -
Message 27
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Friday, 16th September 2011
I'd agree totally, Mutatis (msg 18) - an excellent summing up.
I think that Americans were so sure of their techical superiority, and their moral superiority (Guardians of 'World Peace', etc) that they just could not handle the idea that some 'not-allowed-to-say-what-they-would-call-them's could inflict such a humilitation on the greatest country in the world all by themselves. (Remember them wee fellas in the black pyjamas with the AK47s?)
After a few generations as the 'Biggest Guy In The Pub', they just could not handle being punched in the g**lies by the local Person-Of-Restricted-Growth! Especially as their Government reacted the way it did - treating the event as a chance to boost Enron's profits with a nice little war or two, and bombing plenty of things that the Good 'Ol Boys would make a fortune rebuilding.
The same principle would explain Man Utd and Liverpool fans referee complex, etc.
Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it 'In for me' . . . -
Message 28
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 16th September 2011
cloudyj
I believe that is the case..that is why I added that those who believe are usually unable to understand the science and technology and just assume "I know a man who can".
And I often refer to that scene in Ascent of Man when Jacob Bronowski kneels in the ashes at Auschwitz and - as came out in the recent film by his daughter about "My Father and the Bomb"- was persuaded to give the image of him picking up a handful of ashes from the bottom of a puddle. He says that he owes it to his friends Leo Slizard more the inventor of the A Bomb perhaps than anyone else and to his extended Polish family that died there to affirm that these horrors were not the work of science but what happens when people aspire to the knowledge of Gods.
I think that it is a tragedy across the Ages that people who think right at the cutting edge of thought appreciate just how volatile such frontiers are.. The exception proves the rule.. But ignorant people often assume that the exceptional can be made normal and a new rule imposed.
Strangely Physics was my best O Level .. and it may surprise nobody that I failed history.. But our daughter who is a Physics MA and now an Actuary always insists that she does not foretell the Future.. The trouble is, however, that so much of what is now imposed upon the world comes from such forecasts returning us to a kind of dark Calvinistic world of predestination.
Cass -
Message 29
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 16th September 2011
Conspiracy theories seem to have certain things in common:
'They' are not telling us the truth
There's no smoke etc
We didn't just mess up, there's more to it than that
The 'real' story is much more complex and exotic than the official version
There is a group of 'faceless men' manipulating the truth for their own ends.
The technology involved in providing the evidence has been manipulated or misrepresented to fit in with the official line.
They seem to have features in common with urban myths.
The first widespread conspiracy theories that I can recall were around UFOs and the Kennedy assassination. What is the first manifestation of a conspiracy theory in the terms we understand it now that people can suggest? -
Message 30
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 16th September 2011
ferval
I believe that the Venetian ambassador was very quick to come up with a conspiracy theory about the Gunpowder Plot.. And it has some credibility in the light of the Walsingham entrapment of Mary Queen of Scots..
The theory argues that Cecil wished to cement his position in the affairs of State lest James Stuart should trust too much in his Scottish favourites.. In that age of assassination, and in view of things he must have been told about like the murder of Rizzio and the assassination of Darnley- James was allegedly terrified of the danger. So Cecil arranged the whole thing so that James in his wisdom might decipher the message and order that the cellars of Parliament be searched.. After the success of all this teamwork Cecil could feel indispensable.
Cass -
Message 31
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 16th September 2011
That's interesting Cass, thanks. Was this known to and taken up by, say, the Roman Catholics in England as a feasible idea? However, unlike most conspiracy theories it has an internal and consistent logic. In my view the difference between current conspiracy theories and alternative if rather sceptical explanations of events is the way they gain common currency, largely amongst the not-too-well informed, and engender a mood of paranoid suspicion and any attempt to counter them is seen as further evidence of their truth.
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Message 32
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 16th September 2011
ferval
I am not sure just how widely disseminated the Venetian ambassador's views were.. Subsequently historians have come up with lots of interesting detail.. Like gunpowder was a State monopoly. No-one else was allowed to get hold of it. But crucially key pages from the official record of just who took out gunpowder in the build up to the plot had been torn out.. People just happened to die in prison just at a convenient moment etc.
But one has to wonder just how many English Roman Catholics wanted England to be plunged into the kind of religious wars that were raging elsewhere. Thomas B made some comments recently about Catholicism in Britain, but for some time in England during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Roman Catholicism was associated with rich landowning aristocracy. Queen Elizabeth had commanded that those who refused the oath of allegiance once should not be asked again, when Puritans in Parliament made a second refusal a treasonable offence..
Basically as long as they were discreet about it in their big houses RC's could carry on almost like Princess Mary Tudor during the reign of her father and brother... even though she was contrary.
Mary. Mary. Quite contrary
How does your garden grow
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row.
A rhyme full of RC symbolism.
Even Charles II got away with being a secret RC until he got to his death bed.. They can't really touch you for it then.
Cass -
Message 33
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 16th September 2011
Like gunpowder was a State monopoly. No-one else was allowed to get hold of it.Ìý
Only in theory. According to Antonia Fraser: "The government in theory had the monopoly but it meant little in practical terms when gunpowder was part of the equipment of every soldier, including the militia and trained bands, and every merchant vessel had a substantial stock. Proclamations from the government forbidding the selling-off of ordnance and munitions, including gunpowder , show how common the practice was." -
Message 34
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Friday, 16th September 2011
if anyone believes in premonition about 9/11
google ricky rescora
this has to be one of the most amazing tales of the whole episode
st -
Message 35
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Saturday, 17th September 2011
Yes cass but is that likely?
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Message 36
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Saturday, 17th September 2011
Yes cass but is that likely?
I've missed the point about ricky riscorla, not having much time for warmongers like that. He may have had some foresight, based on his experience of man's murderous capabilities towards other men..Living by the sword, he died by it, and knew what he had to do. -
Message 37
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 17th September 2011
Papa Nopsis
I am not sure which of my posts you were addressing..
Assuming the last - the Gunpowder Plot- I did put it forward as an example of conspiracy theories, which I think in general terms so far on this thread I have tended to discount. I think that ferval's point about the gunpowder highlights the fact that conspiracy theories are often based upon the idea that people can consistently achieve 100% efficiency and effectiveness.. This runs I believe contrary to the experience of most of us.
Nevertheless I think that this one is not lacking in credibility..
(a) As a recent TV programme highlighted England gradually caught up with the Italian Renaissance- and the Venetian ambassador would have been very familiar with the Machiavelliian nature of the public affairs in an Italy that was plagued by constant conflicts. Remember that Machiavelli praised his hero for calling his enemy to talks under a flag of truce- and then having him murdered as pre-arranged. And the time of the Borgias was famous for dead bodies being found floating in rivers- no questions asked.
(b) I recall Hugh Trevor Roper coming to guest-lecture us when I was at uni and he chose as his theme the way that assassination became a preferred method of "conflict resolution" in the ten-twenty years or so before 1605.. But as I have inferred not too many English Roman Catholics really seemed to feel bound by the Pope's proclamation that it was their duty to kill Elizabeth.. From hundreds of years before there was a tradition in England that we did not burn heretics or murder people for their faith.
I think that this helped Walsingham's agents to keep an effective check on any attempts- that were being made- and the tell-tale letter that disclosed the plot, coming from a Catholic to another Catholic, was probably not the first time that English RC's had put country before Church.
But the whole reign of James I was characterised by an English struggle to get the King to accept the advisability to do things "their way".
And certainly "agents provocateurs" were used during those difficult years after 1815 when there was so much government repression.. It was only then that the use of "agents provocateurs" was made illegal in Britain.
Hence the recent eco-warriors case.
Cass -
Message 38
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Saturday, 17th September 2011
No Cass I was just thinking of your Daughter with bombs and probability up her sleeve!
We are all dead in the long run, but hopefully not all at the same time!
Gardda SGHD -
Message 39
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Saturday, 17th September 2011
My airline flying brother used to laugh when I said
"Some people use their cars as weapons!"
I was acquainted with a man who had killed three people by aiming at them head on, in his reinforced vehicle, on the main road. It was not until the third death that the judge realized what the punishment should be.
Saying that my bo attended the flying school in dallas where they were trained, and there was plenty of talk in the Airline press as to why they wanted such training. were they going to start an airline and wanted a core crew?
His C.A. sleeping partner did Bin Liner's accounts for some years and there was no doubt that he was the paymaster.
It was not until four days before the twin towers that he rushed in to see me in entirely unfamiliar mood saying, having put two and two together, abnd made four.
"You are right Gar! People do use passenger cars as weapons, but what if i tell you that some people are going to use passenger aircraft as weapons? I Know what they are going to do! I know what they are going to do!"
"well!" I said if you are so sure i can give you the phone number of the Secretary of the cabinet office or even put you in touch with the Primem minster, but what if you are wrong? Where will you be, and if I phone 'em up and tell 'em where oh where will I be, assuming it does not happen and it is merely your conjecture?!"
"All you can do is wait and watch!"
I did and he did.
They advertized the Grand hotel bombing on the front page of the times 6 weeks before it happened. I went to watch. I was invited to stay the night and declined the kind offer.
I don't see how you can describe these things as conspiracy when so many people know about it, or have a fairly clear idea of what is going to happen. -
Message 40
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 17th September 2011
Papa Nopsis
Well I am not sure that I was more worried about our daughter than I had been for all of my pupils during IRA bomb campaigns that targetted London..
And probabilities..
The father of one of the girls in our junior department was the only person killed in I think the Baltic Exchange blast.. She finally came to the senior school and I met her mother, who pointed to the irony of having lived in Beirut until she came to England and married an Englishman, only to be widowed by a bomb here.
Truth is stranger...
Cass -
Message 41
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Saturday, 17th September 2011
hi pn
yes ricky rescorla was indeed a man who had experienced - and enjoyed the violence of the vietnam war
but he had a good guess at what would happen and saved hundreds of peoples lives - dying in the process
what a star
st -
Message 42
Posted by Grasshopper (U3605803) on Sunday, 18th September 2011
Bin Liner's Ìý
KOTR -
Message 43
Posted by Papa Nopsis (U14479902) on Monday, 19th September 2011
He's dead innee''?
KOTR? King of the road?
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