The Shape-Shifting Illuminati Lizards monitor this board.

Sorry, Rab. You'll find no takers here. You'll only trigger a torrent of feeble jokes about Icke/Di/Moon landing/Lizards etc

Personally, having read extensively on the subject, I do not believe Oswald assassinated JFK.
Other (no doubt, feeble-minded, nutjob fantasists) who believed that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK included - LBJ, Nixon, Hoover, Connally, Tolson (Assoc. Dir. FBI), DeLoach (Asst. Dir. FBI), Sullivan (Domestic Chief FBI), McCone (CIA Dir.), Burkley (White House physician), Rowley (Chief of Secret Sevice), Curry (Chief of Police, Dallas), the HSCA and, finally, the Kennedy family themselves.

Try the CTKA website if you are genuinely interested.

Hardly. I'm also amazed you think one book could " demolish" all the evidence for the conspiracy to kill JFK. ( CD Rom included )

http://wordmagazine.co.uk/content/toupees-we-have-loved

(Here We Go Round Again - Pugwash)

"The Oldest Enemy"(BIG IRONY: David Irving used this as an anti-semitic dog-whistle to attract his eye-swiveller supporters).

If you look at the way the world is governed and structured - using economics and politics - you quite quickly get past left/right and into a realm of how power is exercised. There is a long consistency in the way that national and commercial interests actually play themselves out - republican vs. royal France, or the actions of City Of London for example. This is history and very controversial stuff of course but its also massive (forgive me...)

Lots of US president got topped by varying interests or loonies. Political leaders are ALWAYS getting topped. I don't think it doesn't matter - absolutely not. I just think it doesn't merit the level of attention - and by extension anger - it still generates so many years later. It somehow feels like a way of distracting anger that might usefully be directed elsewhere.

If you want a conspiracy there is one staring you right in the face which even the loser lefties on the Daily Telegraph have acknowledged - the biggest theft in history is going on right before your eyes in plain sight - and its your money thats being stolen.

I think on the whole many people want to believe conspiracies because they're often far more exciting and interesting, the truth can be quite mundane.

However, there is one for me I suppose, in that I don't believe that the moon landing footage is real. I regard that as more "not believing something" than believing a theory. Whether there was an actual landing, I don't know, it seems unlikely but I can't say, I wasn't there.

*awaits "of course it's real, it was on TV!" type response :)*

Lots of people unhappy with the official version and would point the finger at Iranian involvement for the US shooting down of a passenger airline.
Not sure that's a conspiracy as such though.

Most conspiracy theories seem to rely on two fundamental ideas:

1. The world includes a few evil but brilliantly skilled people who can carry these things out flawlessly.

2. The people who are involved in helping these master criminals carry out their fiendish plans are on the whole able to keep their mouths shut.

Neither of these things is at all in line with human nature in my view.

I think ironically, some people find comfort in conspiracy theories in that they imply someone (ie some big daddy figure) is running things with some sort of masterplans and actually knows what they're doing. Surely, the one thing we've all learnt from the past few years is that, even at the highest levels, people mostly don't.

Lockerbie is a conspiracy in that it was a planned terrorist attack. Rather like 9-11 the aftermath feels like opportunistic politics. All of which is more "cock up" than "conspiracy" with a soupcon of "genuine injustice."

...I can honestly say I don't care who shot JFK or why. (I do find his unwarranted canonisation as annoying as that of Lennon, but these things fade over time.) Same as Roswell and UFOs and so on. I just don't care. If aliens have landed, that's all fine and interesting, ditto any 'government cover ups'... but it's had no effect on me and won't have and I don't have any purely arcane interest in it, so I don't get involved.

If people want to collect books on this stuff, then it's a perfectly harmless hobby.

For the rest of us, it's fun every now and again to chip in a lame joke about David Icke.

is called Ivy.

Which to some conspiracy theorists stands for Illuminati's Very Youngest. That's what I read anyway.

Much as I love a good conspiracy theory, they are without doubt all tosh.

did Shakespeare really write all those plays?

Have subsequently been proved correct?

I've known occasions where the conspiracists have been proved right.

I'm a regular visitor to F1 messageboards.
Following the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, a few observers suggested that Nelson Piquet Jr may have crashed deliberately to aid his team-mate.

They were roundly humiliated and labelled 'foilhats'.

But then...

clearly murdered - otherwise I have to believe that someone as young, beautiful and intelligent as the queen of hearts was stupid enough to be driven at reckless speed by a drunk without her bothering to put her safety belt on.

And how can I possibly believe that ?

Has a conspiracy theory ever been completely unravelled to the satisfaction of everyone? I can’t think of one. (I mean the big ones, Apollo, JFK, Lizards, 911 was an inside job, Area 51, not stuff like the CIA get up to nasty stuff). Which, to me, suggests that they are impossible to uncover as there is nothing to uncover. So are conspiracy theories just theories invented by conspiracy theorists, who are running a conspiracy to invent conspiracy theories. And of course anyone who says they are not is part of the conspiracy. I've got a headache!

We had a squint at Apollo 18 on Sunday and as the credits ran , I mentioned to the family - how it reminded me of a 70's April Fools' spoof documentary by Anglia TV - Alternative 3.

Originally planned for broadcast on April 1st , but, due to industrial action - ran a few month's later and terrified the bejeezus out of anyone taken in by it - including me aged 11..

Like all the best conspiracies it tapped into a full hand of contemporary (seventies) fears: pollution, brain drain, brainwashing, secret space projects... have a peep here

Thats a family with an amazing history of political dirty tricks, general shagging around, drug addiction and the like, and some very very unpleasant associations through Black Joe Kennedy.

That's not ALL there is to say about them of course. Even if it was for a mixture of reasons there is no doubting their sincerity in many honourable causes.

But the idea of something nasty happening to one of them out of some aspect of their past wouldn't be remarkable in any way. And even if at this distance it could all be unravelled it wouldn't tell us very much we didn't already know.

Like I said before I don't want to sound blase or dismissive - I'd never dismiss anything given how shoddily government agencies have behaved throughout history - the MI5 official history reads like a load of whisky sodden schoolmates preying on the miniscule UK Communist party for most of its life - except in WW2 when they straightened up and played a blinder.

BUT - EDIT and to emphasise I mean this by way of complete contrast - Hundreds of thousands of people working for thousands of hi tech companies and NASA were involved in the moonshots and they used 4% of the federal budget for the whole of the 60's. Something fraudulent on that scale would have thrown up a bit more than a series of grumbles about old photos from amateurs over 50 years

I believe they happened but the film fogged* or something, and the actual published photos are carefully crafted mockups, re-shot on return OR done beforehand as a 'plan B'. My wife's a pro photographer and can't see how the photos could have been taken under any but the most controlled studio circumstances (which the moon definitely isn't).

* radiation up there is apparently far greater at 'surface level' than on the earth - atmospheres being handy for reducing radiation it seems.

I've always though that if I was going to cover up something major (e.g. 9/11 organised by Bush, no one landing on the moon, we're all lizards really etc) then I'd need to create an environment where conspiracy theories were routinely picked apart by the masses for entertainment purposes and anyone subscribing to them was automatically dismissed as a loon.

So, what if 'they' have been doing that ever since the Kennedy assassination, with magic bullets, alien abductions and the like slowly drip-fed to us all to the point that it's all noise. Everything is in place so that when a real conspiracy takes place, no one will notice.

I may be the first meta-conspiracy theorist. Or perhaps they've thought about that already, and in fact all the theories AFTER the Kennedy assassination are there to detract from what realy happened. Or maybe... *disappears in puff of meta*

I had a nightmare conversation a couple of years ago with a bloke at work who had watched one of those stupid 'moon landing' conspiracy theory programmes on TV. You know the sort of thing - 'they didn't go to the moon, it was all a NASA hoax' etc.

It got to the point where I had him acknowledging that, in order for his conspiracy theory to stand up, he would have to accept that everyone involved in the NASA programmes (how many thousands?), every close family member, every journalist, every politician with even a tenuous link to the decision-making process ... they would all have to be in on it. At a conservative estimate, let's call that 20,000 people.

So ... in more than 40 years, not one single person from that 20,000 had ever broken rank to come forward and spill the beans about how NASA faked the moon landings. "How do you explain that?" I asked him, "particularly in a world where, if David Beckham sends a saucy text message to one woman, we all get to read it eventually?"

"Money" he said. "NASA and the American government have probably bought them all off."

I’ve learned that trying to engage with this kind of ‘thinking’ is pretty close to being pointless. Most people who don’t buy into conspiracy theories would, I am confident, change their mind if only they were presented with verifiable evidence (e.g. one reliable eye witness, one credible informant , one bullet found at the side of the road, whatever). The conspiracy theorists, by contrast, will never accept an evidence-based position, because it is an article of faith to believe in the conspiracy. The key difference between scientific humanism and religious faith is that the former seeks empirical evidence and hard proofs, while the latter requires only the willingness to believe. If you have faith, it doesn't really matter what 'evidence' is presented to challenge your view of the world.

So when people says things like "we will probably never know" over the JFK assassination, the moon landing, 9/11 or the death of Diana, it can usually be translated as:

"In spite of the complete absence of a single shred of credible evidence to support any aspect of my extremely flimsy hypothesis, I am quite prepared to give credence to a series of facile observations, feeble innuendos, vile slanders and half-baked theories cooked up by the kind of folk who probably believe that the world is run by lizard people and that government agents sneak into their houses at night and hide nuclear waste under the sink."

A book has been written about each one and, as ever, a persuasive argument is made.

The first was about the Titanic. The sister ship was originally damaged, badly, in a collision. They swapped nameplates in Harlands so the ship which set sail wasn't the Titanic. The crash into the berg was planned as an insurance job, with ships standing by to rescue people but someone cocked up.

(Falls down on traditional conspiracy grounds. Hundreds of men worked on the two ships. Not one of them said anything to anyone?)

The battleship Royal Oak wasn't sunk in Scapa Flow in 1939 by torpedoes from Günther Prien's U-boat, but by bombs planted inside the ship by communists. Prien falsified his log to claim the kudos and the admiralty went with it, not wishing to admit sabotage.

(The log is dodgy but wreck surveys show torpedo strikes and torpedo remnants have been found)

376 clues here so it has to be true.

http://homepages.tesco.net/harbfamily/opd/index.html

I think the JFK assassination is a conspiracy to invent landscape features. As far as I know, this part of Dallas is the only place in the world where one can find a "grassy knoll".

it is highly probable that Marilyn Monroe was bumped off by the CIA.

I also believe Maggie Thatcher deliberately sunk the Belgrano knowing that it was moving away from our task force and not presenting a danger. She did so to satisfy her lust for a military victory that would preserve her leadership.

'voodoo histories' by david aaronovitch.
well written analysis of such theories.

I have the theory that everyone writing on this blog is the same person. I know I am.

Like the one that didn't happen to prevent the Met from the effective pursuit and prosecution of Stephen Lawrence's killers

Like the one the Catholic Church has not been engaged in to prevent the pursuit and prosecution of Priests who have abused boys in their care

Like the one that did not allow regulators, financial institutions, central banks and governments to remain dancing partners as the world economy sped to ruin.

Conspiracies are not things that are done, but the things that are left unsaid, undisclosed and undone.

The sin of omission, not commission.

No, there are never any conspiracies just coalitions of interest, elective affinities, disparate enitities with like minded motives

Conspiracies do undoubtedly exist e.g. Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a conspiracy by the Black Hand terrorists and the head of Serbian Military Intelligence. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth who was but one of a number of conspirators.
However, most modern 'conspiracies' are nonsense. Man did land on the moon in 1969; no aliens crashed at Roswell; the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by the American government; and don't start me on the Illuminati nonsense.
Kennedy Conspiracy theorists are a mixture of the rational and the insane. I personally believe that a conspiracy is highly unlikely, if not impossible. One thing I am absolutely certain of is Oswald’s guilt. The evidence against him is overwhelming. But as William Buckley wrote, “If O.J. (Simpson) was found not guilty, why can’t everybody be found not guilty?”

Some conspiracists believe the following nonsense on the Kennedy assassination
1. The Zapruder film was altered
2. The President’s body was kidnapped from Air Force One and then altered to give the appearance of shots from behind
3. Lee Harvey Oswald was framed by a conspiracy involving most major government bodies. In fact, reading some of thi, it would be easy to believe that everyone is guilty except Lee Harvey Oswald.

the one about the US knowing that Pearl Harbour was going to happen....

...as far as I know David Icke doesn't have a position on the moon landing business. No: he goes much further than that. Apparently the moon is a hollow relic of an ancient spaceship, from whence came the Reptilians alluded to in Sumerian myth... and so on down to the Prince Philip, Kris Kristoferson et al.

There are any number of Icke clips on youtube on this and other pressing issues of the day but you start watching them and after a minute or so realise you're being sucked into the tawdry world of a madman.

...it's evident....most people would agree....it's clear that....it stands to reason that....

the favourite phrases of both conspiracy theorists and politicians trying to sell a new policy based on zero evidence.

*puts tin hat on*

...that climate change is all a conspiracy. Like most conspiracies it seems too expensive and complicated to organise. Be interesting to know if Nigel Lawson and "Lord" Monckton believe in any other conspiracies.

What about Jim Morrison..."The Lizard King". ;-)

Radio Four’s Thinking Allowed programme had an interesting discussion about conspiracy theories today. Both of the contributors, David Aaronovitch and Jovan Byford, have written books about these, and regard them as social and psychological phenomena, rather than hidden truths.

It’s a bit of a coincidence that the BBC should broadcast something knocking these theories at the same time as this thread has appeared – or is it…? (X-files theme starts to play.)

(It's not on Iplayer yet but should appear soon.)

That one wonders what happens when a couple of them who believe different theories meet.

Do they dismiss the other out of hand...or listen politely to the other before trying to convert them to their own beliefs?

And you have to wonder how many legs the whole JFK thing would have if Mr Zapruder had forgotten to take his camera that day.

Personally I find this very suspicious...

The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the available evidence suggested the probability of a conspiracy in the assassination of JFK.

I tend to concur with HSCA's line. In short, the probability is that Oswald fired the shots that killed the President. Given the acoustic science available at that time (late 70s), HSCA also suggested that it is possible that another assassin also fired another shot which missed.

It is probable that this other assassin was in cahoots with Oswald and possibly others but no substantive evidence supports this possibility.

There is one conspiracy theory that try as I might, I just can't discredit. There are some coincidences and discrepancies that I can't simply ignore. Have a read of this:

http://www.debunking911.com/questions.htm

Troubling. Very troubling.

Photographic and other evidence for an alternative conspiracy theory (ie: one not perpetrated by Bin Laden, etc)

www.drjudywood.com

It revolved around a guy who was an architect and a member of a group called something like Architects for 9/11 Truth. He put over an ostensibly convincing case as to how a plane crash could never have brought down the twin towers and how it had to have been a controlled explosion.

The film-makers then spoke to a demolitions expert; someone employed to deliberately demolish skyscrapers. He patiently explained how this process took a large team of men several months, using loud and noisy equipment and leaving cables and explosives all over the place. He asked the quite reasonable question of how he could (1) achieve this over a weekend and (2) do it without a single person in the building noticing?

Not to be outdone, the architect then claimed that the explosives would have been placed in the building when the World Trade Center was originally constructed. Bloody hell.

is that the smug nit despite his rationalist credentials actually bought into the BIGGEST and COSTLIEST consp theory of the late 20th century - the crock of sh*t that suggested that Saddam Hussein was a major threat to world peace and had to be taken down. Credibility epic fail, as they say on the 'net.

Just a personal opinion, & not really conspiracy related...

I think Saddam Hussein was as nasty & vicious a piece of work as the world has ever seen, & the world is better off without him in it any more.

Should we have invaded Iraq on the strength of the dodgy, supposed WMD?
Not sure, probably not, however, I would think that a lot of Iraqi people are glad he has gone.

I have said this before, & will say it again. I think Tony Blair was right to support the removal of Saddam Hussein, but for the wrong reasons, & I wish he were still Prime Minister.

You're obviously welcome to your opinion and I won't have a go at you about it. Problem was - on the basis of poor intelligence and a massive abuse of process, the US establishment whipped the hysteria resulting from 9-11 to its own ends to invade a country not much worse than the ones it (and we) prop up all round the world. And several hundred thousand Iraquis are now unable to express an opinion one way or another.

to those hoping for a Mahavishnu set list. However here is another obscure obsessive post. As there were some issues in previous posts that I would disagree with and having researched some points (on Oswald as an FBI informant and procedures at Dallas Post Office) I thought I would share the results (plus some other issues)with all uninterested parties.

1"'Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr and District Attorney Henry Wade told the Warren Commission that Oswald was an FBI informant, made $200 a month, and even provided his informant number of 179."

They didn’t actually say this. In Wade’s testimony before the Warren Commission he said that he had heard the rumour that Oswald was an FBI informant but had ‘no knowledge of its veracity.’ Bill Alexander of the Dallas PD said that Wade knew nothing and that Waggoner Carr only knew that someone called him on the phone and told him about the rumour. He also said that it was common knowledge among the media in Dallas that it was a false story made up by a reporter called Lonnie Hudkins (who admitted this when interviewed by the HSCA) to see what he could find out from the FBI. The House Select Committee on Assassinations ‘found no credible evidence that Oswald was an FBI informant.’

2 "No one at the post office recalled handing the rather large and bulky package to Oswald. There is the problem of the post office box being signed for in Oswald’s name only, though the rifle was ordered in the name of A. Hidell. If Oswald picked up the rifle, he would have had to show that he actually was the bearer of both identities. An event which probably would have been remembered."

This is from the Warren Commission Report
“Postal Inspector Harry D Holmes of the Dallas Post Office testified … that when a package is received for a certain box, a notice is placed on that box regardless of whether the name on the package is listed on the application as a person entitled to receive mail through that box. The person having access to the box then takes the notice to the window and is given the package. Ordinarily identification is not requested because it is assumed that the person with the notice is entitled to the package.”

3 Why did Oswald not just shoot at JFK from head-on as the car approached the Depository?

Because he would have been easily spotted by the Secret Service men in the car behind

4 "Oswald was in the cafeteria shortly after assassination. He would have been unable to get there in time from 6th floor and neither did he pass workers sitting on the stairs at the time."

a Officer Baker saw Oswald in the Second Floor lunchroom approximately 90 seconds after he parked his bike on Elm Street. FBI reconstructions of the time taken ranged between 74 and 78 seconds. On no occasion was the person out of breath. A more recent reconstruction by independent researcher Dave Perry, ranged from 48 seconds to 74 seconds, for an unfit person. Again without being out of breath. So Oswald would have been easily able to make the lunchroom in the time available.
b The 2 office workers were not sitting on the stairs but were walking down the stairs. They saw Billy Lovelady and Bill Shelley when they reached the first floor. They both testified that they did not come into the Book Depository until about 5 minutes after the assassination. So the two women walked down the stairs later than they thought. This is further confirmed by the fact that they saw neither Officer Baker nor Supervisor Truly who headed on up the stairs after their confrontation with Oswald.

5 "In addition, no fingerprints were found on the alleged murder weapon, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The Dallas Police found a palm print on it after Oswald was already dead."

The Palm print was taken by Lt. Day of the Dallas Police on the afternoon of the assassination before the rifle was handed over to the FBI. I have previously posted on how fingerprints on the trigger guard have subsequently been identified as Oswald’s.

6 "The 'deformation' of the 'magic bullet' that you refer to is the same deformation that one gets if the bullet is fired into water. The bullet that struck Connally left fragments in his wrist, so why is it so pristine? "

A bullet fired into water would not be deformed at all. The so-called magic bullet is considerably deformed. It is not pristine.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ce399.gif

7 "The moment when Connally is shot is clearly evident from his facial reaction. This is after JFK has been hit. Please remember this whole theory was created only when it was revealed a bystander had been struck by a piece of paving thrown up by a stray bullet."

The moment when Connally is not defined by his facial reaction as people can react a second or two after being hit. The key moment is when his jacket lapel flips as the result of a bullet passing through his chest i.e. a bullet which has just passed through Kennedy went on to hit him.

8 JFK was caught in a triangulation of shooters - one in Depository, one on grassy knoll and one in Daltex building. The last is where Frank Sturgis (aka Fiorini) was picked up after acting suspiciously.

Eugene Brading, not Frank Sturgis, was picked up after the assassination. However, no one at the time identified the Daltex building as the source of any of the shots. In addition neither a rifle nor bullets were found in the building. He was only picked up because he was a stranger in the building not because he was acting suspiciously.
Although some people did identify the Grassy Knoll as the source of the shots, no gunman was seen at the time and neither a rifle nor bullets were found on the Knoll. Stories of gunmen being seen only emerged several years after the assassination.

...for anyone still yearning for some kind of Mahavishnu angle on the JK assassination, all I can off is a glimpse of what John McLaughlin was doing around that time. Here's three tracks recorded for Saturday Club (BBC Radio) in July 1963, with JM (gtr), Graham Bond (org), Ginger Baker (dr). Jack Bruce (dr) plus Duffy Power (voc).

Come November, John M had been fired from the band. Hmmm....

...about the JFK assassination is Oswald's behaviour after his arrest: he displays neither the triumphant boasting of a successful political assassin, nor the desperate pleading of an innocent man caught in a Kafka-esque nightmare, but instead the resigned air of someone who's been fitted-up - or, indeed, made a 'patsy'.

Maybe he was just Crazy?

and raise you one Pasty

that's current doing the rounds. You know, the one where - if you analyse the Sky Sports footage using an Esper machine - you can see the point where Evra refuses to shake Suarez's outstretched hand. Don't believe me? Here's the PROOF: http://thekop.liverpoolfc.tv/_PROOF-Evra-refuses-Suarez-handshake/blog/5...

I would just like to say that I am genuinely enjoying this thread, in particular JFK, 9/11 & The moon landings.

I have been fascinated by the claims & counter claims on these subjects, & think the level of discussion has been excellent.

Above all, I like the passion that believers / non believers alike have in their views.

Brilliant stuff.

Keep it coming chaps (& chapesses)

When I was at school, during the 60's, I remember a typed sheet being passed around that listed a whole series of coincidences about JFK and Abraham Lincoln......Lincolns assistant was named Kennedy, Kennedys assistant was called Lincoln, JFK was shot from a book depository and his assasin was arrested in a theatre, Lincoln was shot in a theatre and his assassin was arrested in a book store etc etc. Does anyone remember such a list?