Conspiracies

[CARLTON BROWN]

Originally Posted by knobby109

I cannot imagine any agency member, sworn to protect the USA , would have stood aside and allowed 911 to happen.But it wouldn't have been just one person but quite a group of them thus rendering it totally unfeasible that none of them would have acted.

I'm smiling a bit reading this.

It's increasingly likely that Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK were both major conspiracies and the idea that someone sworn to protect the USA might not have a different interpretation of their actions should never be overlooked by anyone on this thread. There are many indications that there was advanced knowledge of the proposed 911 attack. As for the possibility of a Flight 93 shootdown (mentioned earlier), I seem to recall that the last 3 minutes of the voice recording was intentionally removed for unexplained reasons and there is always the possibility that much of the audio was tampered with.

Anyway, so what? Conspiracies are engineered all the time by governments who rely on Joe Public to believe that things like that never happen in the real world, only in the movies and Freedom of Information requests always show the truth.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

There are many indications that there was advanced knowledge of the proposed 911 attack..

There's a fascinating discord between what we understand retrospectively and what we understand prospectively.

"advanced knowledge" = after the fact, you can put together the information that would have identified the plot.

We have "ground truth" that even with massive amounts of data and massive investment in analysis, predicting the future is far harder than explaining the past: the stock market.

While "The Big Short" celebrates the very small number of people who saw a financial crisis coming, what it doesn't observe is that the stock market is generally impossible to predict. And the small number of people who correctly called the housing bubble and subsequent meltdown generally failed utterly to predict what happened next.

Every time you see the S&P 500 beat %90 of managers, you're seeing ground truth that even with huge amounts of data and lots of analysis, predicting the future is very hard.

When you look back in time, you select only the data that conform to one particular scenario that you care about; but at the time you don't have that luxury. In the moment, you have all kinds of information, and much of is noise; trying to discriminate the signal from the noise is the problem at the time . . .

[DTravel]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

I'm smiling a bit reading this.

It's increasingly likely that Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK were both major conspiracies

No it isn't.

There are many indications that there was advanced knowledge of the proposed 911 attack.

al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations "propose" thousands to tens of thousands of attacks a year. More than 99% of which will never even be attempted. Right now we probably have "advanced knowledge" of "proposed attacks" on every US embassy and consulate on the planet and every significant monument in Washington DC. The important bit is figuring out which ones they are actually going to try, not just talk about.

[ArnoGoldfinger]

Been looking into the Laurel Canyon story after hearing stories from Frank Zappa. Don't have time to check all the names mentioned ( and there are many) against backgrounds, nor is there much hard documentary evidence (mostly anecdotal accounts) but it presents some fantastical scenarios and gives pause for thought on today's so called music scene.

[CARLTON BROWN]

Originally Posted by DTravel

No it isn't.

al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations "propose" thousands to tens of thousands of attacks a year. More than 99% of which will never even be attempted. Right now we probably have "advanced knowledge" of "proposed attacks" on every US embassy and consulate on the planet and every significant monument in Washington DC. The important bit is figuring out which ones they are actually going to try, not just talk about.

There are many major events throughout modern history that don't look entirely kosher. Pearl Harbor is right up there, along with JFK and for that matter Rudolph Hess's visit to the UK during WW2. All represent definite turning points in world history and a good deal of information about these events remains classified. Why would that be, if there is nothing to hide?

Advanced knowledge of 911, involved a string of unexplained activity, VIPs receiving travel warnings and as I recall, the very strange case of a US citizen held in prison in Canada, who claimed to be a member of US Intelligence with information about a coming major attack against the US.

Yes, there are probably weekly terrorist threats received by all major governments, but so what? If they turn out to be accurate, then they are probably genuine. However, I'm unaware of any advanced claims from Islamic fanatics about 911 and this is not the point I am making.

DTravel, you must have immense faith in the integrity of Western governments and their agencies. Perhaps you don't believe that the US and UK public were intentionally deceived by each country's leadership over the war with Iraq and the ridiculous threat from WMDs that didn't actually exist.

Conspiracies are a sad fact of life, even if they often get blown out of all proportion Telling lies when you cannot be caught out, is often the most effective way of doing business and staying in power.

And, no, I am not a conspiracy buff :-)

[seany65]

Originally Posted by knobby109

I cannot imagine any agency member, sworn to protect the USA , would have stood aside and allowed 911 to happen.But it wouldn't have been just one person but quite a group of them thus rendering it totally unfeasible that none of them would have acted.

I generally disagree with that, as I think a 'conspiracy' by any US agancy (or an agency from any country) could just be a few people who have got a fairly reasonable picture of what's going deciding to do nothing and allowing the act to happen. So in fact in any big incident there could actually be two conspiracies going on, one by the plotters of the act and another one by a few people in one or more agecies that are supposed to be stopping the act.

That's why I don't understand why it's meant to take only a dozen or so terrorists, organised from thousands of miles away, to attack the WTC, but it's meant to take thousands of Americans, organised from a few miles away, to attack the WTC.

I'm not saying the Americans did it, as I don't know who did do it, but I can't see how it would take thousands of them, as contrary to popular belief and may be portrayed on TV, I don't think the Americans are more stupid than anyone else.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by CARLTON BROWN

There are many major events throughout modern history that don't look entirely kosher.

"Don't look entirely kosher" doesn't succeed as evidence of a conspiracy.

Many things are hard to understand. Talk to a group of airplane passengers and ask them "how many of you understand how an airplane stays in the air"

Argument from personal incredulity is a logical fallacy: "I don't see how an airplane crashing into a building could make it fail" and "something sure seems weird about Rudolph Hess and Lee Harvey Oswald" do not stand as evidence for any kind of conspiracy.

You cannot go from "x doesn't seem right to me" to "this is evidence that there was a [logically highly improbable] conspiracy".

Only evidence for a conspiracy is evidence for a conspiracy. Retrospectively odd seeming coincidences are not evidence of a conspiracy. Evidence of a conspiracy is, for example, a group of French Army leaders who undertook to overthrow General de Gaulle in 1961, the "Algiers Putsch".

We have precisely zero evidence for a government conspiracy with respect to the Kennedy Assasination, Pearl Harbor, Rudolph Hess or 9/11. With respect to these events, we _do_ have abundant evidence of a conspiracy by, respectively, LHO, the Japanese military, Hess, and al Qaeda.

[scoundrel]

Conspiracies usually are exposed (when this happens) from a starting point that people are dissatisfied and the official explanation feels phoney. It took an awfully long time in the case of the Hillsborough Disaster and the fat lady still hasn't sung yet on that one; but from very early on there was disquiet and suspicion. I am still in hopes that The Sun newspaper will be further humiliated for its shameful role in supporting the version peddled by South Yorkshire Police.

However, it is also true that "This feels funny [not in a good way]" is not evidence of anything, and it is entirely possible for things to seem wrong because we don't understand them properly, rather than because they actually are wrong as such. The Pearl Harbour thing is old hat now: the facts have had 74 years to come out and they haven't, which says to me that the likeliest explanation is the official one and that there are no facts to actually come out.

There has been no end of speculation concerning JFK and the grassy knoll, but I think personally that nothing like enough attention has been given to Jack Ruby and his intervention, which decisively closed down the hot leads in the investigation. I am firmly of the opinion that there is an undisclosed conspiracy somewhere there, but that we have been played like musical instruments with all the shit about the supposed magic bullet and the man on thr grassy knoll. This is a case where IMHO something feeling wrong is a rational view and lack of proof does not stop me from feeling intensely dissatisfied. Sadly the event was 52 years ago and I would be amazed if anything new ever emerges now. JKF would be 98 years old if he were still alive today.

[thunderfly]

Line from a movie (I can't remember which one).

"The vampire's greatest weapon is the fact that humans believe they don't exist".

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

This is a case where IMHO something feeling wrong is a rational view and lack of proof does not stop me from feeling intensely dissatisfied. Sadly the event was 52 years ago and I would be amazed if anything new ever emerges now. JKF would be 98 years old if he were still alive today.

One can feel dissatisfied with an explanation without that being evidence for anything else.

A sense of dissatisfaction with "the official explanation" can certainly motivate investigation of other possibilities-- that's reasonable, but that's all. Then you have to go and find evidence for some alternate theory.

You either do or don't have evidence for a conspiracy. If you don't, you don't.

LHO certainly is a guy with an odd story, as is Jack Ruby. But folks have been over both of their strange stories in very great detail, and you just can't come up with evidence for anything much.