You saw Conspiracy Theory didn’t you?
Julia wouldn’t LIE tom, would she?
No. It’s a cancer.
It’s beginning to look more and more as if Stalin, Mao, and Kim il Sung http://www2.gol.com/users/hsmr/Content/East%20Asia/Korea/History/korean_war.html]conspired to invade South Korea in 1950, but it is still uncertain if the “Reluctant Dragon” theory was planted among revisionist historians by the International Communist Conspiracy.
…And I just know someone is going to mention bodily fluids now.
See! See what I mean!? Effing commies–they’re everywhere!
Actually, I’ve always been amazed that people write off the so-called “JFK conspiracy”. In 1978, after 15 years of rumors, contradictory or ignored evidence, and new facts after teh Warren Commission, the US House of Representatives decided that they didn’t know the whole truth, and held a Congressional inquiry into it (Jan-June 1978, and later) akin to the Frank Church hearing into US foreign intelligence activities.
Upon completion, they promptly sealed and classified their findings for 20 years. This is not something they’d do if they’d found that the Warren Commission was substantially correct. A separate House Select Committee on Assassinations was then formed, which issued a 686 page report in 1978, which only considered JFK as one of 9 presidential assassinations and 81 other prominent assassination in our history. Their major finding was basically “Wow, we’ve had a lot more assassinations than similar democracies” (A finding copied, with attribution, from the 1968 Eisenhower commission) with out addressing exactly what to do about it, or even defining what qualified as an assassination.
I tried to get a copy of the 1978 findings when the 20 years expired in Fall 1998. No dice - though a lot of sources tried to palm off the published 1979 report as the report that had been classified in 1978. This year is the 25th anniversary of the second Congressional inquiry into the JFK assassination. I’m no JFK nut, but I think I’ll see if it’s been released yet. Clearly there’s stuff in there that they didn’t think was known to the general public even five years ago.
Sure governments like to keep secrets, even with no good reason. But I can’t dismiss it as foolish paranoia until I’ve read the report
People tend to use the word “conspiracy” kinda loosely. Frex, the Catholic church isn’t “conspiring” to limit anyone’s access to birth control. Their opposition to birth control is part of their official public policy – there’s no secrecy, hence there’s no conspiracy going on.
Some Catholics HAVE conspired to do things like bomb abortion clinics but not with the approval of the Catholic church.
I consider most government intelligence activities to be a special form of conspiracy, rather than non-conspiracies. If agents of one government secretly organize to conduct illegal activities in the territory of another government, it IS a conspiracy.l
911 was a conspiracy, and Al Qaeda like most terrorist organizations, is all about conspiracy.
There are also financial conspiracies, such as the Hunt brothers conspiring to corner the silver market back in the 80s (IIRC). Enron was a conspiracy, as was Halliburton.
Price fixing might well be regarded as a conspiracy.
There are also benevolent conspiracies, such as interventions for drug abusers, and the deprogrammers who conspire to kidnap cultists to restore then to normalcy. (I’ll grant you that cultists might not view this as benevolence, but most folks do.)
If certain elements of the Government/academia secretly experimenting on Humans for military/medical reasons & in many cases fighting decades to cover it up counts, this is a list.
http://www.idleworm.com/sfi/strek.shtml
(Note some are footnoted, some are not: caveat emptor)
There’s a consipracy briefly mentioned at the end of the movie One Day in September (a documentary about the terrorist action at the Munich Olympics). After a botched rescue attempt, all of the hostages and some of the terrorists were killed, and the three surviving terrorists were taken into custody. About two months later, an airliner was hijacked, and the terrorists were handed over to Libya in exchange for the hostages on the plane. The movie alleges that the hijacking was planned by the German government.
I haven’t been able to find out anything more about it, although I haven’t looked all that hard. It seems that if it were true, it would have been a bigger story than it was.
RealityChuck:
Chuck, the Constitutional Convention was treasonous to the extent that it wasn’t empowered to scrap the Articles of Confederation and come up with an entirely new document, per the Articles themselves. That is, they were duly appointed to make changes in the Articles of Confederation–they weren’t duly appointed to replace the Articles of Confederation without the unanimous consent of all the states (which they didn’t have).
(The Convention, of course, wasn’t treasonous in the most important sense–it wasn’t perceived as such. Most of the country recognized that the Articles were in need of severe overhaul.)
How about teh one where Cecil is supposed to take over the world?
oops…
One unfolding conspiracy that is undoubtedly true involves several anti-authority locals in North Carolina who helped Eric Robert Rudolph evade the government for years.
Outside magazine had a pretty interesting article about it last month.
http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200309/200309_rudolph_1.html
Regarding the Constitution I concur with Gadarene except for the last part. Many politically active citizens, perhaps most, felt that the Framers had gone to far. Some of those felt that its actions were treasonous but the presence of such popular and trusted figures as Washington and Franklin moderated the personal attacks, at least publicly. According to Jackson Turner Main’s The Antifederalists no one even complained about the secrecy of the proceedings until Jefferson did so from Europe. Right now I’m reading a book on the news coverage while the convention was ongoing. If something pertinent pops up I’ll post it.
Surely the Iran-Contra affair counts as a conspiracy: illegal activities, high-ranking officials breaking the law, weapons trading, possibly treason.
The notion of a conspiracy is rather vague: there have been plenty of assassinations of presidents and other important figures around the world, many organised and funded by foreign governments. For example, the CIA attempts to kill Castro;the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero by elements in the El Salvadorean government; numerous coups in third-world countries backed by foreign superpowers.
Pearl Habor. I think that would be considered a conspiracy. Considering at the time, the president knew that the Japanese were going to attack (According to some documents that have recently been released, but those documents are questioned by more than a few people), but did nothing to stop them, then acted like it was a sneak attack. The only reason being that it was an excuse to get the US citizens to back entering into WW II. It took about 40 years for the truth to come out about that one (If in fact this is the truth which I do believe it is. But, the best conspiracy theory is one that is impossible to prove right? 
)
I personally think that in the future we’ll find out the same thing about 9/11. Hate to say it, but if you want to, you can find thousands of conspiracy theories about that one, and some seriously strong evidence that SOMEONE knew this was going to happen and did nothing to stop it.
Cites for Pearl Harbor (Sorry about the Geocities)
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/001207Stinnett.html
http://www.bigeye.com/pearlhar.htm
For 9/11 They’re everywhere…
Some of the most interesting stuff I’ve found about “TRUE Conspiracy Theories” is in this book:
Censored 2003: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Censored, 2002-2003)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1583225153/qid=1065448213/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-9195031-4119067?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
A must read for anyone that thinks the media is really informing them of what’s happening in the world.
O.J. Simpson?