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RE: Sasquatch
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Sasquatch (in reply to Ruphus)
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quote:
HAS THERE ACTUALLY OCCURRED SOMETHING LIKE IGNORED WARNINGS ABOUT THE 9/11 ATTACKERS?
Yes, of course. No one has ever denied that there was negligence, that warnings were ignored or not sent to higher echelons for vetting. But that is not the issue.
The NYT article you posted simply confirms what everyone has known all along: there was negligence, particularly on the part of the FBI in not reporting to higher echelons the information about the Saudis taking flight training. Bin Laden was on the intelligence community's watch list, and there was always the possibility of terrorist activity, but there was no indication that an attack of the magnitude of 9/11 was anywhere near imminent.
That there was negligence is an established fact, and that's why the US Government has arranged greater intelligence-sharing among various agencies in an attempt to better "connect the dots." But negligence is very different from deliberate sabotage. Only a conspiracy theorist could read that NYT article and conclude that the US Government was complicit in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Sep. 30 2013 11:54:58
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
The NYT article you posted simply confirms what everyone has known all along: there was negligence, particularly on the part of the FBI in not reporting to higher echelons the information about the Saudis taking flight training. Bin Laden was on the intelligence community's watch list, and there was always the possibility of terrorist activity, but there was no indication that an attack of the magnitude of 9/11 was anywhere near imminent.
See how you need relativizing about magnitudes in order to find fancied plausibility for blatant ignoring in the case. And how you omit ( if aware at all) the actual extend of neglection, that would need an even more extensive farytail trying to cover all that overlooking.
First of all in sight of the foregone briefs whichs critical content the NYT journalists mentions.
His desciption of: "In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it" can leave you only dismissing.
But there is no bias for blind exclusion with you, is there.
And then the messages from foreign countries like listed on Wikipedia:
quote:
The 9/11 Commission Report states that "the 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamic extremists had given plenty of warnings that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers."[28] The Report continued:
"During the spring and summer of 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings about an attack al-Qaeda planned, as one report puts it "something very, very, very big." Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told us "the system was blinking red.""[29]
The US administration, CIA and FBI received multiple prior warnings from foreign governments and intelligence services, including France, Germany, the UK, Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco and Russia.[5][30] The warnings varied in their level of detail, but all stated that they believed an Al-Qaeda attack inside the United States was imminent. British Member of Parliament Michael Meacher cites these warnings, suggesting that some of them must have been deliberately ignored.[31] Some of these warnings include the following:
March 2001 – Italian intelligence warns of an al-Qaeda plot in the United States involving a massive strike involving aircraft, based on their wiretap of al-Qaeda cell in Milan.
July 2001 – Jordanian intelligence told US officials that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on American soil, and Egyptian intelligence warned the CIA that 20 al-Qaeda Jihadists were in the United States, and that four of them were receiving flight training.
August 2001 – The Israeli Mossad gives the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US and say that they appear to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future.
August 2001 – The United Kingdom is warned three times of an imminent al-Qaeda attack in the United States, the third specifying multiple airplane hijackings. According to the Sunday Herald, the report is passed on to President Bush a short time later.
September 2001 – Egyptian intelligence warns American officials that al-Qaeda is in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within the US.
All that neglection of clues about terror attacks, by secret services that are reknown for hardly refraining from taking the bearings from Joe Average´s anus when he wants to spend his holidays in the USA. Services that according to you fail by "not reporting to higher echelons", whereas the same case being characterized by "the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed / prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real".
So stoically shrinking fully-grown rhinos of pardoxy to understandabel little miniature pinschers is supposed to be no problem and good common sense, but those conspiracy theorists on the other hand are really overdoing it, aren´t they.
quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
That there was negligence is an established fact, and that's why the US Government has arranged greater intelligence-sharing among various agencies in an attempt to better "connect the dots." But negligence is very different from deliberate sabotage. Only a conspiracy theorist could read that NYT article and conclude that the US Government was complicit in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks.
Only methodical approach can pass how the 9/11 official interpretation bears about no congruence, but instead from start to end is being full of improbabilities, down to physical impossibilities.
If sceptisism against this scenario ought to equal conspiracy theory, then analogue the subject of chemistry has to have been entirely baseless in the times before the invention of the electron microscope that first time allowed for visioning molecules.
Subordinates in the rigid hierarchy of US official instances constantly "not reporting to higher echelons"!! What lousy mental crutch for justification!
There is only one way for to take the blatant inconsistencies of official 9/11 for real.
One must be gagged.
Ruphus
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Date Sep. 30 2013 15:17:29
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
On a more positive note, this afternoon I attended the sixth and last of the Miró Quartet's concerts of all the Beethoven Quartets. They finished with Opus 130, with the Grosse Fuge, its original finale. Austin likes standing ovations, but I heard and participated in the most enthusiastic one ever at the end of the performance. Before the concert and at intermission I had chatted a bit with the man next to me. As we walked up the aisle leaving he said modestly, "I feel I have led a rather circumscribed existence."
I replied, "No one having heard that can call his existence circumscribed."
To continue to change the pace, I'll hazard a pointless rejoinder to your concert report:
...When I was in Monterey going to the very fine Jr. College studying anthropology I picked up a back row seat in a small orchestra of elder musicians. They needed a few more warm bodies to round out the sections. It was called Elder Hostel program and they arranged activities for seniors to get out and socialize. This orchestra was made up of retired folks who played classical music, the few younger people that were taken in had a good ride. They arranged to have a conductor named I think, Morris Seagrave...can't recall his first name for sure, but last name was was Seagrave. He was a good conductor, I remember his talks about the music we played were especially informative. He indulged us in his knowledge because we were not pros.
He choose Beethoven's first symphony as one of the pieces we played at the concert. He said in Beethoven's time that music would have only been heard by the nobility and merchant class people who had money. Beethoven's music he said "..was a music of priviledge performed to the exclusion of the common man." Today Beethoven is available to almost everyone, or at least his music is not the exclusive right of the well to do.
Beethoven's work no longer inhabits a narrow closed world. I have tons of it on my iTunes, I have a storage drive full of classical music and the Beethoven file is one of the largest. As a consequence of spending so much time alone in the work shop during the day I have been listening to lots of music. Not new music either, old music. Music I have heard over the years many, many times. I have the complete cycle of quartets recorded by one string quartet and half of it by three other quartets. I also have all nine Anton Bruckner symphonies ( I know you are jealous) and all nine of Mahler ( were they trying to reach nine to match Van B.? )
I have the Grosse Fuge by Karajan and the Berlin SO as a string orchestra. I have several versions of the Bach suites for cello and Nathan Milstein and Heifitz's Partitas and Sonatas for violin by Bach. And Gidon Kramer's and Perlman...It's all stuff I have been into for years and know very well. Except for the Bruckner symphonies, they are big spacey things and I can't hum them. They last forever. They are like musical skyscrapers. I have also been listening to almost the entire recorded output of Andres Segovia. He's not bad you know.
I've been not only listening to these works, but comparing how different personnel play them. In the case of the Beethoven quartets, I can set my iTunes to "Beethoven" and it will play all 16 quartets in a row. It's a more than a few hours of material.
What did I learn? What am I learning? I learned that Segovia was a guitarist that could take a big fart in the middle of a piece and still get through it. Why? Because he was a communicator. I don't like the way he handles a lot of things and players today have become more suave, but he communicates. It's valuable to get this. Not every one can do that. The quartets playing the Beethoven, they can do this too, the older ones like the Busch quartet or the Emerson of our day. ( Most of them record the last intended movement of the opus 130 as part of the quartet and I think today it's considered bad form to exclude the GF from a public performance. )
What am I exactly getting at..I've fallen into the rabbit hole of comparative quartetting, listening. It sounds so snooty and circumscribed, like a rarified world only the high born can reach. But what I have I gotten listening every day is that Beethoven was out of this freaking mind. And he was a bastard too, because he messes with your mind. He tries to cajole you into thinking you are hearing things in the distances. He sets up dramatic scenes and leaves you standing in the middle of the room with your britches down. He does not like you, he has contempt for you unless comply and listen. I do hear things in the distance;I hear kids practicing taiko drumming, and a lady a block away plucking her koto through an open window. And Beethoven works with all of it because he communicates through that vast amount of time.
And mainly I'm trapped in my studio without an internet connection to stream NPR or other radio. Trapped like a savage animal soothed by the Grosse Fugue and Le Sacre and Smetana. Poor me.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Sep. 30 2013 15:24:44
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
And mainly I'm trapped in my studio without an internet connection to stream NPR or other radio. Trapped like a savage animal soothed by the Grosse Fugue and Le Sacre and Smetana. Poor me.
Lucky you! Fortunate you! There are times when I ignore my computer, unplug the television, and listen to Beethoven symphonies, all on 40-year old vinyl record albums, as they rotate on my equally dated 40-year old turntable, and I ascend into a state of bliss. My favorites, although they are very different, are the Ninth and the Sixth ("Pastoral"). How could there exist a soul so dead as to not appreciate such musical genius?
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Sep. 30 2013 16:02:39
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
I was just about old enough to find Ronald Reagans claims about StarWars defense risible. Was Ronnie a better actor than his film performances suggest or was he himself a believer ? . Well I don't know.
D.
Edward Teller, always flamboyant, was well into his dotage when he told Reagan of his fantasy. He thought you could produce a desk-sized x-ray laser that could shoot down Soviet ICBMs during boost phase. A small contingent of these lasers would produce a leak-proof defense.
The joke at the time among the defense tech establishment was that only three people believed Star Wars actually would work: Teller, Reagan and Gorbachev. But the latter two were enough.
In fact, the U.S. had long been doing research on strategic missile defense. We had not fielded a defense because we calculated that a large strategic and economic advantage lay with the offense. We proliferated our ICBM and submarine launched missile forces.
I was not privy to the Teller-Reagan-Gorbachev dynamic. But I was privy to our response to the Soviets' reaction of shock and horror.
If the U.S. fielded a strategic defense it would radically shift the strategic balance. The U.S. never renounced the possibility of a first strike when sufficiently provoked, for example by a Soviet tank assault on western Europe. Many doubted that Eisenhower would ever have ordered a first strike, but he went to his grave having never hinted to a soul that he would not. The threat continued up until Reagan's time.
The Soviet defenses were designed to protect enough of their own missiles to allow a devastating response to a first strike. A U.S. first strike would have wiped out the majority of the Soviet strategic capability, but their defense would have preserved enough missiles to devastate the undefended U.S.
The Soviets had little doubt of U.S. technological superiority. They knew that if we embarked on a practical course of strategic defense, we were likely to succeed--not with Teller's imaginary x-ray laser, but with the conventional interceptor technology we had been developing all along.
With a U.S. defense in place, we could launch a first strike, then our defense could significantly neutralize the severely weakened Soviet reply. In the Soviet calculation, this made a U.S. first strike far more likely.
At the time of the journalists' visit, the U.S. was showing continued success with conventional hit-to-kill interceptors, in tests run at Kwajalein where I worked. It scared the p1ss out of the Soviets, and along with the fatal economic and political flaws of the their system, it was a significant contributor to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
At one point the major U.S. media were mocking the U.S. defense project over its batting average of only 5 successful intercepts in 8 tries. The journalists suffered from ignorance of how technological development programs go. At the time of Sputnik, the U.S. rocket program had an unbroken record of failure. The Soviets had the first man in space. But in the end we beat them to the moon.
We spent more money on the moon program--we had a lot more money to spend. We had more engineers with the required qualifications. We had superior technology in a number of critical areas. We seldom repeated a mistake.
The U.S. strategic defense program was following the same trajectory. We never made the same mistake twice. Eventually we worked out the bugs. The 5 successful intercepts followed the 3 failures. Two of the failures revealed design flaws that were corrected. One of the failures was just a dumb mistake. We took pains not to repeat it.
In a recent test conducted over the Pacific with both land- and sea-based equipment, U.S. strategic defense forces intercepted a number of simultaneously launched missiles. It didn't displace the more popular news stories of the moment.
The Russians still feel threatened by U.S. missile defense capabilities. They object strenuously to our deploying missile defenses in northeast Europe. We say, "Well, we're just protecting against the Iranians."
The Russians say, "Those defenses could act against our strategic missiles as well." They have a point.
Another case of the whole story not making it into the media, nor into public awareness.
At a later time I hosted a couple of other distinguished journalists, one from the Los Angeles Times, the other another Washington Post guy. Clearing it in advance with all three I took them to lunch with three two-star generals who were visiting Kwajalein at the same time. One was in charge of all Pentagon procurement projects, one was in charge of all test and evaluation of development projects, one was in charge of the strategic defense development program of the day.
The Washington Post guy asked, "With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of terrorist threats, isn't it more important to defend against, say a nuclear bomb smuggled into a major seaport, than it is to defend against strategic missiles, since North Korea and Iran seem to be the only countries seriously in the strategic missile game?"
"Look at it this way," replied one of the generals. "If you were in a room with two guys who were out to kill you, one had a knife, the other one a gun, would you turn your back on either one of them?"
One wonders, of course, that if we had acted a bit differently over the past few decades, perhaps there wouldn't be so many guys out to kill us.
Maybe, maybe not.
RNJ
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Date Sep. 30 2013 20:06:46
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
quote:
"Look at it this way," replied one of the generals. "If you were in a room with two guys who were out to kill you, one had a knife, the other one a gun, would you turn your back on either one of them?"
RNJ
Looking at that quote above I can't help but cast the general as John Wayne, as I am sure the gentleman in question did in his own imagination.
I have had a certain amount of experience with generals. During the four years I was in high school in Washington DC, 14 generals lived on our street. Most evenings I sat down to dinner with one of them: white table cloth, china and sterling, waited on by our maid. If you had something to say, you wanted to have a good story and to speak up in a loud clear voice. All the same, he was a loving father, and he treated us and his subordinates with due respect.
These were the guys who won the Air Force's part of WW II, but didn't get their names in the paper as much as Nate Twining and Hap Arnold. I knew both Twining and Arnold, too. Twining and Arnold were civilized men, but not all the rest of them were. A degree of savagery was tolerated in those who regularly achieved the results required of them, often in the face of determined and violent opposition.
There was certainly no lack of ego among them. High military rank is one of the most severe tests of character devised by our culture. Everyone knows who you are. No one contradicts you. Everyone laughs at your jokes. People lie awake nights trying to figure out how to make a good impression on you. If you shout "Sh1t!" people squat and start straining.
More often than not this head-turning authority is exercised in the absence of any peers who might detect and point out developing character flaws. I have encountered my share of flagrant wing-nuts wearing stars on their shoulders. They seemed more common in the Army, less so in the Air Force, and fairly infrequent in the Navy. The two Marine Corps generals I knew didn't see themselves as John Wayne. They actually were the people that John Wayne played on the screen.
MacArthur was a general for thirty years before Truman fired him for insubordination. He was a military and political genius, but he became completely insufferable to all but a few sycophants who followed him about. His self-absorbed picture of the world and his contempt for Truman brought his career to an end.
However, I found the three generals that I joined for lunch to be remarkably level headed and easy to get along with.
The missile defense program was showing signs of mismanagement before the boss I mentioned was appointed. There was heavy pressure from the administration to deploy the system before the next presidential election. A confidential report I was asked to help in reviewing gave several instances of program management ignoring the input of the engineering staff, to their eventual sorrow.
The new 2-star manager showed up for his first visit to Kwajalein, trailing the usual entourage of a couple dozen spear carriers. I was tasked with conducting a tour. I arranged for a bus to carry them. The range commander, a lieutenant colonel, showed up unannounced, commandeered the bus, loaded the entourage onto it, and waited for the boss to climb aboard so he could bend his ear for the rest of the tour. This filled all the seats on the bus. I was left with the golf cart I had driven to the airport.
The new boss didn't get on the bus. He came and climbed into my golf cart. He said, "I'm going to ride with you. I talk to those guys every day. I want to hear what you have to say. What's your job when you aren't stuck with running dog and pony shows?"
"I'm the radar boss."
"They say you 250 guys are the technical core of the range. How are you folks getting along with my people?"
I told him frankly that there were plusses and minuses, and what I saw them to be. The conversation continued in that vein. I was impressed.
After a couple of months it became apparent that the missile defense program had stopped making avoidable mistakes.
Quite a few generals see themselves as John Wayne. Many make fools of themselves because of it. But there are significant exceptions. That was one reason I wanted the journalists to meet the three guys at lunch.
quote:
I am right not to be impressed with the three missile aren't I ?
Sorry, I don't understand the question. If you would like to rephrase it, I will try to answer.
RNJ
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Date Oct. 1 2013 1:52:53
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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Back to conspiracy theories. I think one reason they arise, persist and propagate is a sense of powerlessness that easily arises from the complex interdependence of modern societies.
In my grandfather's day, the ranch was largely self sufficient. It raised essentially all the food consumed by the families that lived there. Necessities that the ranch didn't produce, like boots, saddles, wagons and the like were mostly made locally by specialized tradesmen. But these were people you knew, whose shops you could visit, seeing your stuff being made. Major exceptions to this were firearms and some industrial products like cast iron hand pumps for water wells--but most wells were originally served by wooden buckets made in the ranch shop. In my great-grandfather's day, dishes and cookware were made in the pottery and the tinsmith's shop on the ranch.
Fast forward to my life style. Almost everything I own or use was made somewhere else by some anonymous entity. I live in a suburb, so I need a car literally to survive. It's a 15-minute road trip to the supermarket. When I get there, the origin of most of the stuff I buy is mysterious. If my car needs work, I have to rely on parts getting here from Germany. I have no idea where my shoes or clothes come from. How do I know all this is going to keep on working? Short answer: I don't. My life depends on a gigantic and complex civilization that it largely mysterious and opaque to me.
Even in simpler days, civilization has always seemed to be poised on a knife edge. Veer to the left or right of the established path and disaster ensues. In the present, disaster lurks in every corner.
Take the Y2K bug, for example. It was a real problem. Nobody knew the full extent of it. It could have brought any number of systems that our life depends upon to a shuddering halt. As it happened, it did not. But I never read or heard any argument before midnight December 31, 1999 that conclusively proved, or was even highly convincing that a meltdown wasn't going to occur. I didn't think one would occur, but I had no good argument to use on those intelligent and well informed people I knew who thought the Y2K bug would end civilization.
In many people this complexity and anonymity of civilization engenders both anxiety and a sense of powerlessness.
A believer in chemtrails asked me to review a Youtube film on the subject. As Bill Barkel pointed out, chemtrails are supposed to be stuff ejected into the trails of condensed water
behind jet planes at high altitude.
The film started off quite reasonably. Soil samples at various rural places in the U.S. and Europe showed unexplained contaminants. Many of the samples were taken and analyzed by seemingly reputable agencies like government agricultural services in the USA. Others of the same sort were done by individuals, whose testimony in the film seemed reasonable enough.
Then came the typical great leap of logic for a conspiracy theory. The film shifted to a meeting--I believe it was in the Netherlands--of a group of people concerned about chemtrails. The discussion was temperate and reasonable, except for one aspect. The presence of soil contaminants was accepted as irrefutable evidence that someone was loading up stuff into airplanes and sprinkling it around for some nefarious purpose.
I thought over my response. An idea occurred to me. In my reply to the one who requested my review, I pointed out the leap of logic, and said the argument would never stand up in court. But, I said, with readily available components, you could design and build a radio controlled drone that could be flown into the highly visible contrails. Using commercially available air sampling filters designed to evaluate the concentration of mold spores and particles in the air, you could collect any microscopic particles that were in the contrails.
I gave an outline of how to build the drone, where to get the parts, and where to get the air sampling kits. It could all be done for a few hundred dollars by anyone familiar with the remote controlled model aircraft hobby. If you collected the suspected contaminants from the contrails, you would have them dead to rights, no big leap of logic required.
The person who asked me to review the video thanked me for my reasonable assessment, in particular for not calling them a bunch of nuts. But he objected to my scheme for resolving the issue. The chemtrails obviously were being produced by some powerful government conspiracy. It would be risky to challenge them, and the news media would never believe just a group of private citizens.
The very alienation and sense of powerlessness that I believe gives rise to conspiracy theories, also makes them proof against being debunked.
Of course, alienation and powerlessness are not the only things that give rise to conspiracy theories and makes them impossible to refute. But I think they are big components in most of them.
RNJ
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Date Oct. 1 2013 23:44:58
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
Really? Could you fly it up to those altitudes (30,000 feet plus??)? Just curious.
You would probably have to do your own wing and propeller designs, and carry a lot of fuel. Putting a strobe light on the drone so you could see it from the ground at high altitude might or might not be legal.
I had been challenged to review the film in a completely objective way, without putting my own opinions into it. It occurred to me to see what the reaction would be to a suggestion to objectively settle the question of the chemtrails' existence. I wasn't surprised by the response.
I was disappointed. If I had a few dozen people like those in the film, passionately stirred up about chemtrails, I'd be passing the hat to collect $1-2,000, finding a remote control model airplane expert, and going after those conspiring sonsabitches who were corrupting my precious bodily fluids.
Or what the heck, find a rich chemtrail enthusiast-- there are bound to be some-- and hire a Learjet for a few hours.
But in either case, you would then have to find a new conspiracy theory to persecute yourself with.
RNJ
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Date Oct. 2 2013 4:35:36
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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As I child I went to school in what was, on reflection, a staunchly Catholic environment.
I abandoned (after a brief period of devoutness) all attempts at belief at a very young age. I think (although who amongst us truly knows themselves?) that the three main reasons were;
A) The narrative of the bible was not convincing
B) The figures who presumed to embody the values of the faith were not convincing.
C) The presumed superiority of this particular religion over others was neither intellectual or moral but TRIBAL
It may be true that feelings of powerlessness and alienation followed from this rejection of a tribal norm. However I trust that my earlier characterisation of myself as a lab rat being trampled underfoot demonstrates my awareness of this.
But the question is, did I opt into a conspiracy of one or opt out of a grand and far more obviously intellectually and morally indefeasible conspiracy ?
These conspiracy theory threads pop up every once in a while and never seem to inspire the introspection that they might. Here is a quote from the thread which I attempted to set up in parallell
'Now I don't want to get bogged down in the murky waters of corporate agendas. So for the purposes of this thread it would be great if we could focus on the individual responsibility of consumers.'
Why is it so hard for people to look 'objectively' at the 'conspiracies' which they have opted INTO.
Now I am not saying that late stage capitalism is a conspiracy. Nor that the CIA in any way conspire. I am not even saying that Democracy is a religion. I am just trying to suggest that when looking for conspiracies we should start with ourselves and work outward.
But this can be a tough ask, usually people postulate a position which is the polar opposite of one aspect of their own beliefs and ascribe it to me, or indeed any other dissenting voice. Then they tediously joust with that stalking horse.
(Of course you are right this situation is exacerbated by my all too obvious communication problems and too frequent descent into faceciousness.)
Anyway here are some examples of conspiracies which were, I think, significant but inspired by tribalism and belonging, not alienation.
National Socialism, the Cultural Revolution, the Salem witch hunts,massive amounts of sugar in bread with no texture or fibre leading to widespread diabetis,selection of a lifestyle which binds one to a car and addiction to fossil fuels........, the production of infrastructure which prevents walking, the commodification of exercise, four legs good two bad, flamenco good classical bad...............
Richard you said
'But in either case, you would then have to find a new conspiracy theory to persecute yourself with'
I trust (hope) that you meant 'one' ? You see I believe in choice, and that it is not necessarily binary in nature. Or to paraphrase my inalienable moral hinterland 'first remove the stone from your own eye before you tell your brother to remove the mote in his'.
D (which stands for David)
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Date Oct. 2 2013 11:05:49
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
But in either case, you would then have to find a new conspiracy theory to persecute yourself with.
I think, perhaps without intending to, you may have exposed the real reason conspiracy theorists would not, and do not, accept evidence that debunks their theories. I do not think it is due to alienation and a feeling of powerlessness. Alienation and a feeling of powerlessness may lead one to philosophical concepts such as Existentialism: the idea that man is alone in the universe, there is no God, and thus man is responsible for what he is and what he becomes. But actually that is a very rational approach.
Conspiracy theorists embrace the idea that nothing is what conventional, logical evidence says it is; and that individuals, governments, and societal institutions that offer such evidence to debunk their theories are obviously doing so in order to cover up the very conspiracies they are engaged in. And here is where I think your statement, quoted above, comes into play.
Conspiracy theorists have developed a congenital rejection of government and business (e.g., Chemtrails are attempts to poison our environment for population control; Big Agriculture and the FDA are conspiring to poison us with genetically-modified food; 9/11 was really a US Government planned and executed attack; and on and on). They have so much of their lives invested in these theories that they would not take you up on your offer to refute (as an example) the Chemtrails lunacy with irrefutable evidence because it would show them to have been wrong, and it would leave them with one of two choices: either continue to deny the irrefutable evidence as proof of the cover-up or find a new conspiracy theory to persecute themselves with.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Oct. 2 2013 11:17:33
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
I was disappointed. If I had a few dozen people like those in the film, passionately stirred up about chemtrails, I'd be passing the hat to collect $1-2,000, finding a remote control model airplane expert, and going after those conspiring sonsabitches who were corrupting my precious bodily fluids.
Or what the heck, find a rich chemtrail enthusiast-- there are bound to be some-- and hire a Learjet for a few hours.
I've thought much the same thing, only I would like to see it formatted as a high school science fair experiment. Some chemtrails advocates say the debris or whatever is distributed as low as 1500 feet. Easy for a high school student with balloon to reach and sample.
Of course who would let thier precious child do that and risk the wrath of the evil government agents coming to school to collect them and put them in a work camp which is guarded by black helicopters corps? 
________
I still think it is a manifestation of varying degrees of narscisissm. It's a lot like belonging ing to club, it's about groups and tribes. We do this, you do that, you are wrong, we are correct. I still think it is the same psychological mechanism that drives cults.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Oct. 2 2013 12:17:15
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
Anyway here are some examples of conspiracies which were, I think, significant but inspired by tribalism and belonging, not alienation.
....selection of a lifestyle which binds one to a car and addiction to fossil fuels...
Richard you said
'But in either case, you would then have to find a new conspiracy theory to persecute yourself with'
I trust (hope) that you meant 'one' ? You see I believe in choice, and that it is not necessarily binary in nature. Or to paraphrase my inalienable moral hinterland 'first remove the stone from your own eye before you tell your brother to remove the mote in his'.
D (which stands for David)
While I was in Europe for six weeks last year, one of the things I enjoyed most was total reliance on public transportation. The trains in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain were clean, punctual and swift. Even musty old England had far more acceptable trains than the U.S. We did grant ourselves the luxury of renting a small Fiat convertible for a few days in Sorrento and the Amalfi coast, where "public transportation" consists of crowded tourist busses on rigid schedules.
Of course, all the diesel burned to haul us about on European trains could be seen as immoral and wasteful. Some would say we should have stayed home and tended our own vine and fig tree.
At least the gondolas in Venice had a negligible carbon footprint. Oh wait, all the groceries, clothing...all that stuff have to be trucked and boated into Venice so the gondoliers can sleep, dress, eat breakfast and row us about the decaying masterpiece of architectural beauty....
I too rejected much of the tribal culture I was raised with. I once told a U.S. Army colonel, "You see, I am a civilian. If I were one of your soldiers and you told me to take my platoon and assault a position that would get us all killed, I would be out of line even to mention the fatal outcome. But as a civilian, if you tell me to do something that will damage the taxpayers' expensive equipment, my responsibility is to refuse. If you insist on doing it, you can get someone else to carry out your orders. That will probably take a while."
As I suspected he would, he saw my point.
I also rejected large swathes of other tribal mores I was raised with. It really pained my father to hear of my participation in anti-Vietnam war protests, getting beaten and tear gassed in the process.
After his passing, my mother said she had pointed out to him that in a way I had followed my father's example. He was an 11th generation white southerner, and a racist, until he met and worked with African-American officers and enlisted men in the integration of the Air Force. He changed his views, rejecting more than three centuries of the paternalistic attitudess of his slave owning ancestors. It was one of the things I admired him for the most.
"Selection" is the operative word in the quote above. I could live in Europe, Asia, just about anywhere. I live in Austin because both of my children live here. At age 75 I can still take care of myself, travel and generally do what I like, but in a few years that will no longer be the case.
Austin's public transportation system is better than some U.S. cities, but totally lacking in the area where I choose to live. I seriously considered living downtown in a high rise condominium, where I could have taken the bus to places I needed to go, but after 18 1/2 years of apartment living on Kwajalein I chose to own some dirt.
By the way, all motorized transportation on Kwajalein was public. The great majority of personal transportation was by bicycle. My weekend boating and diving was sail powered. But God only knows what the carbon footprint was for barging in the fuel for the trucks, busses and commuter aircraft.
My car is four years old this month. It has 29,000 miles on it. The average in the U.S.A is 15,000 miles per year. My car is fairly sporty, but it gets good gas mileage for its age.
My brother lives in the country. He is even more dependent on the automobile than I am. Yes, we subscribe to tribal mores. But we are aware of it as a choice. The last time I visited my brother and his family we reminisced a good deal. I observed, "We live now only slightly better than our parents did when we were in high school and college. We were middle class then. Now people see us as rich bastards." He nodded in assent.
One thing that distinguishes our lifestyle choices from adherence to a conspiracy theory is that we are aware that there are valid alternatives, and that we chose to live the way we do. Others may consider our choices immoral. We are willing to grant the validity of their position. Both of us will soon be gone, and our carbon footprints with us.
Conspiracy theorists, by my understanding of the term, do not grant the validity of alternative views.
The chemtrail conspiracy theory seems relatively harmless to me. Other theories like 9/11, moon landing and so on seem relatively benign as well. The two moon landing deniers among my mother's acquaintance annoyed her, because she was proud of my brother's role as Head of the Flight Medicine Department of the the NASA Manned Spaceflight Center throughout the Apollo program.
But my brother and I are contributing to global warming.
I think you should make your carbon footprint negative, to compensate for rich bastards like my brother and me.
RNJ
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Date Oct. 2 2013 16:52:34
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Sasquatch (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
The chemtrail conspiracy theory seems relatively harmless to me. Other theories like 9/11, moon landing and so on seem relatively benign as well.
They seem benign because a small minority of people subscribe to them, and that minority cannot harm the interests of the large majority or the US national interest. Were the conspiracy theorists to gain a large enough following, however, and were they to gain a political foothold (and thank goodness I don't expect them to), their theories could have serious repercussions on politics and the national interest. Both domestic policy and foreign and defense policy could well be forced into directions that would be detrimental to the US (or any other country, for that matter) through the mandated pursuit of crackpot theories, while the real issues and dangers are left unattended. Fortunately I do not foresee that possibility in the US.
Nevertheless, I have lived in countries where large segments, even a majority, of the population believed in rumors and conspiracy theories, regardless of solid evidence to the contrary. In Indonesia, for example, after the 2002 Bali bombings, a majority of Indonesians polled responded that they believed the CIA planned and executed the bombings in order to have the blame cast on Islamic militants. In other words, they believed the US cooked up what in the business is called a "false flag" operation. Eventually, the Indonesian Jihadist masterminds were caught and put on public trial. But there were still plenty of Indonesians who remained convinced that it was a set-up engineered by the US.
I have seen and been privy to many similar cases in several countries where rumor and conspiracy theory immediately took precedence over calm evaluation of the evidence. It has taught me that human beings can be susceptible to such irrational thought, and that although it may be benign and at times weirdly amusing, it should never be taken for granted as completely harmless.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Oct. 2 2013 19:41:01
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