I’m now confused.
Let me get something straight… is 9/11 a conspiracy by Bin Laden?
I’m not sure who you’re asking, but yes, the September 11th attacks - the real attacks, not the ‘Israel did it/Bush let it happen/the buildings were full of thermite and the planes carried missiles’ nonsense - were the result of a conspiracy.
Certainly. No one is arguing that conspiracies do not happen.
A Conspiracy Theory, however, is different than a conspiracy in the way that guilt feelings are different from guilt. A Conspiracy Theory, (capitalized to indicate that it is a special type of mind twisting), is a baseless claim that shadowy forces are doing impossible things to bring about events for which there are better and more accurate explanations. A conspiracy is a small group of people getting together in secret to plot an action, generally in violation of law.
Okay.
I was under impression that some argue that when a conspiracy is discovered that it ceases to be a conspiracy.
Which means then that attack on Egypt (Suez crisis) and wars in Vietnam and Iraq are all example of A conspiracy.
Just because we know all the details TODAY it does not take away from the whole thing to be designated as a conspiracy.
Needless to say I totally and utterly refuse argument that some POTUS and/or people close to him “screwed up”. Such arguments are not worthy a debate.
Nobody made that argument, so I don’t know where you got that impression.
So, what’s the debate then?
Um…read the title of the thread and then skim if you want a synopsis. Here, let me help you out…the title of the thread is ‘Why do we flat out reject CT’s [Conspiracy Theories]’.
That’s nice, but depending on what you mean here I’d say that it’s a classic CT, in that you have no actual evidence to support, er, whatever you are asserting and feel is not worthy of your vast debating skilz. Or, no one is disputing it and thus it’s not a Conspiracy THEORY. Take your pick.
-XT
I disagree. Ike merely noted that the American people should be aware of the natural synergy of those institutions and try to avoid letting them have their way without question.
Do you?
No. I rejected The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a forgery.
The question was why most posters on the SDMB reject CTs out of hand. The reason is that claims that Mossad or the Bush administration engineered the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon are Conspiracy Theories while the information regarding bin Laden simply reports on a conspiracy. Claims that the moon landings were a hoax are Conspiracy Theories. The debate is whether we actually do or should reject Conspiracy Theories out of hand. Some folks, for example still believe that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. The various separate and multitudinous conspiracies that have been put forth are Conspiracy Theories that can be rejected since the information all points to one nutter with an Italian rifle.
Kozmik wants to believe that a group of college professors who wrote about political theory in the eighteenth century ans were disbanded at the order of the local prince somehow managed to become great wielders of power in secret and still control the world through something called the New World Order. Several of us have been pointing out that that is one more silly Conspiracy Theory that we can dismiss out of hand, while Kozmik appears to believe that the lack of any evidence for such a purported 200+ year old organization is evidence that it exists and the lack of evidence that they have actually done anything is evidence that they are successful.
Why? It has just as much basis in fact as a claim for a 200+ year old Illuminati. Why reject one silly CT while embracing another CT when neither have any evidence to support them? (Citing Wikipedia is hardly a solid reason.)
Because I do not reject CTs that involve coups d’etat:
[Asks the inevitable question.]
I don’t. I’ve made it clear that some conspiracy theories I reject, some conspiracy theories I believe are possible, and some conspiracy theories I believe are real.
I’m not the only one who believes this.
[QUOTE=Kozmik]
I’m not the only one who believes this.
[/QUOTE]
Well sure you aren’t. Just like there isn’t just one deranged guy who thinks the Moon Landings were a hoax, or one woman who thinks that 9/11 was perpetrated by a cabal of Jews and the Bush Administration (or whatever the current ‘theory’ is), or a single person who thinks JFK was assassinated by the Cuban Mob or the US government or whatever. There are plenty of people who think all of these things plus a bunch more crazy or whacky theories. What you have in common with them is that you believe what you believe despite the fact that there is no evidence to support your belief that a NWO actually exists, or that the Illuminati have managed to survive centuries in the shadows and still exist as a viable group today, plotting and manipulating events like puppet masters. You and they BELIEVE these things, in the face of logic and reason and despite the fact that there is no evidence to support that belief…and that’s the heart of a Conspiracy Theory.
Another similarity is that all of this is wasted electrons. Nothing is going to convince you that that there is zero basis to your pet theory, or that ‘possible’ doesn’t equate to ‘probable’ or ‘likely’. Like the various 9/11 CT threads, I simply hope that some lurker reading along while sitting on the fence about Illuminati and NWO stuff will see the lack of evidence and how ridiculous and far fetched the idea is and decide to toss the ‘theory’ out with yesterdays garbage and move on to something else…like the Roswell Incident, which we can tackle next week, same bat time, same bat channel. 
-XT
I still don’t have a clear picture on how you make that determination. This NWO/Illuminati stuff is as absurd as the ones you’re rejecting.
That’s just an argument ad populum, though. People are very often bad judges of evidence, causation, and history.
Not as absurd as the ones I’m not rejecting:
Right. So where are you going with this again?
Back to the OP:
So you’re not rejecting some of them. We know that. We don’t know why and I’m forced to include you don’t have a specific reason or any particular facts.
But, to take one example, “Coups d’etat” is not A Conspiracy Theory. This is a convenient label for one type of Conspiracy Theory. Look at **tomdebb’s **definition of “conspiracy” versus “Conspiracy Theory”:
No one on this board would deny governments have conspired to overthrow other governments but this does not mean that all theories regarding government plots are equally credible. The fact that the US and UK governments had conspired to overthrow the elected government of Iran in 1953 came out in the usual course of historical research and all the actions attributed to the conspirators made sense in achieving their goals. Also the actions ascribed to them were credible - they did not involve mysterious new inventions or thousands of unrelated people acting in concert keeping silent forever. This is why there is NO Conspiracy Theory around Operation Ajax.
If, on the other hand I launched a web site dedicated to the proposition that - say - the 1991 August Coup attempt in the Soviet Union was engineered by the British Government on the orders of the Prime Minister to ensure a Conservative election victory in 1992, this would be a Conspiracy Theory. I could use the total lack of evidence to support the Theory to demonstrate the success of the Conspiracy! I could add in some true but irrelevent facts in support. I could chuck in that the G7 Summit was in London in July - allowing Major to agree the details with Bush Snr - and that a British Hostage in Lebanon was released in August as the result of the agreement with hard liners in the KGB. (Wow! I’m really getting in to this. I think it’s got legs 
). If you come back and say all the meetings of Major and Bush at the summit were recorded and no discussion on a Soviet Coup took place I will just say that shows the Foreign Office officials recording the meetings were in on the Conspiracy (as were the journalists who also monitored the meetings). And so on.
But the thing is it would still be rejected out of hand on this Board because the slighest thought and check of the facts shows it is overwhelmingly improbable. I suppose it is, in your terms, “possible” but, because it does not fit with known facts, it requires large numbers of people with divergent objectives and ideologies to work together and remain silent about it for 21 years, and the motivations ascribed to all the parties make no sense it will remain a Conspiracy Theory.
Kozmik, this is where your discussion of the Illuminati and the NWO fall down. You seem to be saying it is “possible” that the Illuminati continued to exist after they were apparently supressed, they continued in secret through the 19th and 20th centuries having some - undefined - influence on the course of world history and then morphed into the New World Order controlling much of what we see happening in the world today. OK, may be it is possible but with absolutely no evidence for it, it is overwhelmingly unlikely. It is a Conspiracy Theory and it will continue to be rejected out of hand by the bulk of people who frequent this Board.
Conspiracy Theories do not get rejected because they “make people nervous, spooked, or some other feeling of insecurity”, they get rejected because they are - by definition - nonsense.