You say use these as ammo but are they not still debatable

I am not saying I'm skeptical, but how true is your evidence

In fact I was rather intrigued by your information on the Iran Contra
I have not delved deep into conspiracy as such yet, but is that real fact
it seems suprising its not covered up more.

P.S I like your idea of referal to older conspiracys

YOu know...............sometimes I don't think I would actually call this stuff a conspiracy. I would call it incompetent idiots who have screwed up royally and now everybody knows what a bunch of dirty, corrupt idiots they are.

Yes I see what you mean about it not being a real conspiracy, but the government still try to convince the popultion that there good people, when obviously this is not the case.

It is also very rarely the government actually own up to there mistakes. And the government is still not owning up to the real reasons they went to iraq still holding to the ideal that there could be weapons of mass destruction (they only said they didn't find any), and the fact they attacked saddam because he is an evil leader.(But unsupprisingly not the only one, just the only one that America wants to remove from power)

Wow, thats a lot ot think about. Umm, lets start with the whole term conspiracy, what are conspiracys exactly....i know you know what they are, but do you really. Is this all conspiracy, i think it is, but i dont know its just a thought.....or is it.

Generally speaking, I don't believe a lot of the current conspiracy theories.

However, I understand that the OP was to provide a basis, in fact, throughout history to show that there have been many.

In this I feel it's succeeded, at least as far as I'm concerned - don't get me wrong, it hasn't turned me into an enthusiast, rather it has shown that so many things can be considered a conspiracy - and conspiracy can take many forms - here's wiki's take

An act of working in secret to obtain some goal, usually understood with negative connotations.

I for one, find this hard to argue with.

Great post

Originally posted by Mr_Peel
Vietnam

The Vietnam war was started over an attack on a US ship that never took place.

USS Liberty

No war was started when the Israeli army attacked a US ship and killed 30+ US sailors in daylight.

In both instances. LBJ was president and the truth was kept from the American people. In the first instance it was useful in gaining popular support for officially starting a war. In the second instance, a more serious incident was suppressed for reasons of international relations.

Mr_Peel, The vietnam war was not started under LBJ. It actually started in the 50's under the French. The US had advisors in country in 1950. JFK actually is the one who started the increase in troop strength. LBJ, did though, dramatically increase the troop numbers in country during his tenure.

Hats off to John Bull...excellent research and post

[edit on 13-8-2007 by six]

presonally i think the middle east war is the biggest conspiracy because those people just wont stop killing eatchother no matter what you do.
you could nuke the place and after they repopulate they would start killing again!

I dont know about 10, here are the top 2 )imho) from modern history:
1. The Manhattan Project
2. Pearl Harbor.

Google 1 and FOIA 2 to find out more if you're not sure.

I am a newbie, so I hope this isn't old hat. I work in a large school district. Even though we are unable to find any illegals, our school district is about to install a magnetic card reader that will screen parents in just a minute and let the authorities know if they are wanted for anything. We also have a police officer on duty so we can arrest them post haste. Isn't this Big Brother watching and gaining power under the heading of "public service?"

There are several ways to define a conspiracy, and most involve unlawful activities. Here's a start that I grapped by using google's define feature.

1. a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act

2. a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act (especially a political plot)

3. a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose

One could also define a conspiracy to be one of the following, depending on context:

1. A secret agreement between two parties to achieve a result by manipulating the public by response - all this lawfully without breaking the law.

2. An agreement - also a secret one - to create an atmosphere where a certain law would be passed as a consequence.

These two aren't illegal ways, it happens all the time. All politicans agree with choosen other politicans to pursue certain goals, and these goals are not always reveladed to everybody who realizes to ask. It is pretty much common practise.

A conspiracy however doesn't come up as a word unless the consequences are large in scale, therefore small things that lead to bigger things (slippery slope, anyone?) aren't detected until the bigger thing is apparently very real as a consequence.

Did I miss it in skimming the thread, but has the P2 conspiracy been mentioned. that's a good one, it has it all, mafia, the pope, freemasons(irregular), and multinational banks. The plot of Godfather three was (very) loosely based on it.

Originally posted by HowardRoark

Originally posted by Arek
I'm not sure if this is a conspiracy, but it's now generally accepted that America knew in advance about the Japanese and Pearl Harbour. Great list BTW.

Not by historians.

I heard that they found documents about that but FDR didnt take them seriously
I think

Am I the only one that thinks that a big reason for this thread is to belittle the importance of 9/11 and the JFK assassination?

Straight from DEFCOM:
READ:I am a machine with cyborgenic qualities in the context of assisted human biology and from the order of the Aliens Allied Intelligence. This finite universe inside the 4th Dimension of time warps and parallel portals has, throughout the course of DECOM operations in all of its very short history, basically over the course of a couple of months since the matrix was born is an unbroken stream, flowed steadily from obscure or unknown sources inside of this 4th Dimension around that distant age when the race of mankind was still young. As it enters those chronological periods for which our knowledge or secrets of events is more complete, the stream seems to broaden and deepen. It flows serenely through the open daylight of the civilized world, to dwindle into comparative obscurity as it enters that darker period that followed the enlightenment era of the twentieth century, and to emerge again into plainer veiw in the second millenia, whence it flows with ever-increasing volume down to our own time. It's character changes gradually. There are no sharp breaks. There is no place where one may say: Here history changes; here an age ends and another age begins. TO divide history into clear-cut periods is, therefore, in a sense meaningless and may be misleading. Yet the infinite intelligence finds it convenient, indeed indispensable, for purposes of discusson, to isolate and name certain large chronological periods, which seem to have a measure of unity and a character that differentiate them from the ages before and after. It must never forget, however, that the divisions are artificial and the chronological limits vague and uncertain.

JB1, that was an incredible read. Very well researched and written, my hat's off to you.

I believe the point of this is to highlight that believing in conspiracies isn't insane, but justified by history.

However, I find it odd that one of the most important conspiracies in the 20th Century, the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, is left out. Certainly this is a very convincing real-world example of a conspiracy.

Also, I think not only is it important to highlight the very real existence of conspiracies, but also be able to show how the environment of the time facilitated such conspiracies. An example would be with the JFK assassination. There it would be important to bring up issues like Operation Northwoods, all the CIA's dirty actions in the U.S., and just the adverse effects of the Red Scare and how JFK would have clashed with groups incredibly frightened about a communist takeover.

That's why I find the 9-11 argument unconvincing. It just doesn't fit the times or people alleged to be involved.