Conspiracies

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

I'm probably a good deal more neutral than you think. I've read endless nonsense about all manner of things from alien abductions to secret plots to overthrow the US Government.

{snip}

My only interest is simply the truth and when you start accepting everything you're told by the powers that be without question, democracy is soon on very wobbly ground.

I don't make any judgment about your intentions, was merely observing that the logical foundations of your prior statement are fundamentally in error

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

Rather like Jack the Ripper and Roswell, there are new claims every other month to explain this complex assassination and debunk the conspiracy theories. New ideas, often supported by computer graphics make good TV shows when presented as the final proof of what really happened and those who are opposed to any deep form of conspiracy immediately jump on them as final solid proof of the truth.

What you're doing there is akin to saying "I think that the planet Neptune has a hot dog stand on the surface and no one can prove that there isn't"

You're a skeptic about debunking conspiracy theories, but not about the conspiracy theories themselves.

That's a logical failure.

To make a case for any causality, you must have some evidence for it, which the conspiracy theorists don't have.

[CARLTON BROWN]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

I don't make any judgment about your intentions, was merely observing that the logical foundations of your prior statement are fundamentally in error

What you're doing there is akin to saying "I think that the planet Neptune has a hot dog stand on the surface and no one can prove that there isn't"

You're a skeptic about debunking conspiracy theories, but not about the conspiracy theories themselves. That's a logical failure.

To make a case for any causality, you must have some evidence for it, which the conspiracy theorists don't have. Simply saying "I don't believe you when you say there was no conspiracy" -- does not stand as evidence that there was one.

Only evidence of a conspiracy is evidence of a conspiracy; skepticism about "the official version" is not.

On 9/11, we have abundant evidence of a conspiracy by al Qaeda. In San Bernadino, by contrast, it appears that the only conspirators were the Farooks. Investigators are clearly looking very hard to see if they can tie the Farooks in some operational way to IS, but so far we don't have evidence of anything other than shared aspirations.

We have enough acts of mass violence that if you care to examine them, you can see the distinctions between conspiracies and individual bad acts.

Sometimes you can make perfectly reasonable deductions from obvious evidence. The chances of finding a hotdog stand on the surface of a gas giant (what surface?) is not just unlikely, but could be considered scientifically impossible with no difficulty whatsoever.

I think it might be fair to say that San Bernadino was a minor conspiracy as planning and obtaining the hardware were all considerations. I agree that the links to ISIL are rather thin, but so what? This sounds good on a TV news report - and that's what this is all about really.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

Sometimes you can make perfectly reasonable deductions from obvious evidence.

We have no "obvious evidence" that anyone other than LHO killed JFK and no "obvious evidence" that he did for any reason more rational than Sqeaky Fromme's attempt on Gerald Ford or Charles Guiteau's assasination of President Garfield, John Hinkley's shooting of President Reagan or Jared Loughner's shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tuscon. Disturbed people become obsessed with public figures.

All we have are a web of associations-- his time in Russia, for example; a person could make what might seem to them to be the "perfectly reasonable deductions from obvious evidence" that he was a Soviet agent . . .but in fact there's no evidence of that at all.

Only evidence is evidence. Associations can lead you to look for evidence . . . for example, the Farook's posting of allegiance to Islamic State-- makes you want to look to see if they were in communication with IS; but you have to then find some evidence of that.

Similarly, James Holmes appears to have been fixated on Batman; that does not prove that Bob Kane planned the Aurora shootings:

Association ≠ causation.

[CARLTON BROWN]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

We have no "obvious evidence" that anyone other than LHO killed JFK and no "obvious evidence" that he did for any reason more rational than Sqeaky Fromme's attempt on Gerald Ford or Charles Guiteau's assasination of President Garfield, John Hinkley's shooting of President Reagan or Jared Loughner's shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tuscon. Disturbed people become obsessed with public figures.

All we have are a web of associations-- his time in Russia, for example; a person could make what might seem to them to be the "perfectly reasonable deductions from obvious evidence" that he was a Soviet agent . . .but in fact there's no evidence of that at all.

Only evidence is evidence. Associations can lead you to look for evidence . . . for example, the Farook's posting of allegiance to Islamic State-- makes you want to look to see if they were in communication with IS; but you have to then find some evidence of that.

Similarly, James Holmes appears to have been fixated on Batman; that does not prove that Bob Kane planned the Aurora shootings:

Association ≠ causation.

I couldn't agree more. But there is still plenty of scope for conspiracy theories and isn't that pretty much the basis of this thread?

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

I couldn't agree more. But there is still plenty of scope for conspiracy theories and isn't that pretty much the basis of this thread?

Oh, yes, and there really are conspiracies, and fascinating ones.

John Wilkes Booth really is a conspiracy. The Gunpowder Plot really is a conspiracy. 9/11 really is a (al Qaeda) conspiracy. The Paris attack really is a conspiracy. The Rajneeshis who poisoned salad bars in The Dalles really were a conspiracy. The Aum Shinrikyo really were a conspiracy.

In recent times, the most fascinatingly odd and not-quite-resolved conspiracy is the 2001 anthrax attacks ("Amerithrax"). The scale and complexity of the investigation are essentially without parallel, because from the start there was no "official version"

Originally Posted by FBI

The ensuing investigation by the FBI and its partners—code-named “Amerithrax”—has been one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement.

In August 2008, Department of Justice and FBI officials announced a breakthrough in the case and released documents and information showing that charges were about to be brought against Dr. Bruce Ivins, who took his own life before those charges could be filed. On February 19, 2010, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service formally concluded the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks and issued an Investigative Summary.

The Amerithrax Task Force—which consisted of roughly 25 to 30 full-time investigators from the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and other law enforcement agencies, as well as federal prosecutors from the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s Counterterrorism Section—expended hundreds of thousands of investigator work hours on this case. Their efforts involved more than 10,000 witness interviews on six different continents, the execution of 80 searches, and the recovery of more than 6,000 items of potential evidence during the course of the investigation. The case involved the issuance of more than 5,750 grand jury subpoenas and the collection of 5,730 environmental samples from 60 site locations. In addition, new scientific methods were developed that ultimately led to the break in the case—methods that could have a far-reaching impact on future investigations.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history...-investigation

Amerithrax remains puzzling. We never had a trial of the chief suspect, Bruce Ivins (he committed suicide by the unique, but toxicologically adept device of a Tylenol overdose, no doubt pissing of Johnson & Johnson -- Tylenol/acetaminophen is remarkably toxic for an over the counter medication.)

Subsequent to Ivins death, the US National Academy of Sciences reviewed the genetic analysis linking Ivins to the anthrax-- they found it weaker than claimed.

About the best you can say is "Ivins probably did it, but we can't really be sure".

Oh, and here's another mystery:

Putin, Kadyrov, and the murder of Nemtsov: Putin's missing fortnight. You may remember the murder of a Kremlin critic in Moscow, unconvincingly linked to Putin's Chechen ally Kadyrov. What you probably don't remember is that Putin then went missing for an extended period.

Where was he? What was happening? Why was Nemtsov killed? By whom?

Any and all guesses are still fair game, because basically we know nothing.

[trailmaster]

I believe Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole person who killed President Kennedy. I believe our own American government( the Black-OPS) division did it and Oswald was the fall guy. Now why would the U.S. government want to kill Kennedy, because he prevented Russia from putting atomic missiles on Cuban soil. The Joint Chiefs wanted a conflict with Cuba, so they could attack and conquer Cuba and annex it to America.

So many of the members say that the moon landing were faked. I believe they were not. Why would the U.S. government spend billions of dollars on the early Mercury and Apollo missions just to fake the moon landings. This is ludicrous.
On one of the missions to the moon one of the astronauts dropped a geologists hammer and a feather and they hit the surface of the moon at exactly the same time proving what Galileo said about gravity on falling objects. Gravity affect all masses the same. If two objects are in a near vacuum, they will fall at the same rate no matter what their weight or mass. In the 1960's we did not have computers that could be used for making special visual effects like we do now, and animation which was mostly used on t.v. shows and movies could not show that scene from the moon.

There are questions about whether humans built the great pyramids of Egypt. Humans did build them. Humans from the past had just as much ingenuity as we do now, and they had architects, mathematicians, and engineers, just like we do now, and they did not need computers to do the calculations. Just brain power and parchment to write on.

[Norkles]

The only "conspiracy" that I believe in is TWA 800. Far too many eyewitnesses report seeing multiple "missiles" ascend to the 747. The Feds may have fooled with the evidence (placing some wreckage in different positions from where it actually landed), the Feds went out of their way to discredit the eyewitnesses, bogus CIA aircraft break-up animation. No explanation or analysis of damage to the upper surface of the port wing which shattered in flight precipitating TWA 800s roll to port and eventual break up.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Norkles

The only "conspiracy" that I believe in is TWA 800. Far too many eyewitnesses report seeing multiple "missiles" ascend to the 747.

Actually, there is no reliable source at all that identifies a missile strike on TWA 800. There were some folks on the ground who said they saw a "streak of light", which doesn't tell you anything at all. The plane had exploded, dropping flaming debris. . .presumably that's what folks saw.

The wreckage the plane was recovered and assembled-- we have %95 of it. There's zero sign of a missile strike; missiles strikes are not ambiguous things.

[Norkles]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Actually, there is no reliable source at all that identifies a missile strike on TWA 800. There were some folks on the ground who said they saw a "streak of light", which doesn't tell you anything at all. The plane had exploded, dropping flaming debris. . .presumably that's what folks saw.

The wreckage the plane was recovered and assembled-- we have %95 of it. There's zero sign of a missile strike; missiles strikes are not ambiguous things.

A guy named Tom Stalcup did a documentary that I watched a few months ago. Basically after seeing it I changed my mind to believe there was something to the missile theory.
I've studied airline accidents since 1984 and this documentary really opened my eyes. A fuel tank explosion in my view did not cause the crash. Something shattered the left wing which precipitated a general break-up of the airframe causing the tank to explode.
As I said earlier I'm not one to believe in conspiracy theories at all. This one however is the only one in which made me look twice.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Norkles

A guy named Tom Stalcup did a documentary that I watched a few months ago. Basically after seeing it I changed my mind to believe there was something to the missile theory.
I've studied airline accidents since 1984 and this documentary really opened my eyes. A fuel tank explosion in my view did not cause the crash. Something shattered the left wing which precipitated a general break-up of the airframe causing the tank to explode.
As I said earlier I'm not one to believe in conspiracy theories at all. This one however is the only one in which made me look twice.

You should beware of watching documentaries and YouTube videos for information about complex technical subjects. There's a reason that engineering school isn't a miniseries -- video may look good, but "looks good on tv" does not equal sold facts or logical reasoning.

The many failings of Stalcup's documentary have been gone over many times. It's junk for those who can't be bothered to read the work of experts. You might as well get your news from the X Files.