libertarians would do good to fight conspiracy theories... of the state ("Iran will make a bomb and nuke Israel!")
Or al-Qaeda, a creature of CIA (Mossad a silent partner?)... or the Taliban, also a creature of CIA and ISI (MI6 a silent partner?). The State is always spewing an endless stream of ridiculous paranoid conspiracy theories and then does the very thing that it claims that it's trying to stop (drugs, prostitution, gun-running, street crime, terrorism, you name it...)
Clayton -
I remember hearing on John Stossel's "Illegal Everything" that some time ago, a bunch of Feds broke into a family's home, looking for cocaine. They shot their dog, and didn't find anything. And they arrested the guy anyway.
America is a free country?
It happens every day, holograms and robots are neither necessary nor sufficient.
Ah, but if the robots are conspiring to use the holograms in an elaborate plot to overthrow humanity then it is certainly sufficient. #jesseventura
The term conspiracy theorist was invented by the state to stigmatise people who question the official version of events. When someone is labelled a conspiracy theorist then people have pre-conceived ideas about that person and it is stigmatisation through association that creates the preconceived idea about the person. By associating aliens and crazy crack pot theories with real investigations about a terrorist attack like 9/11. Just because someone think that man has never been to the moon or that there was controlled demolitions on 9/11 does not mean that they believe in aliens or go to stupid conferences or believe everything they read. Most people that think there was a controlled demolition on 9/11 hate the term conspiracy theorist and do not subscribe in any way what so ever to the cliché idea of a conspiracy theorist. These are just normal professionals, scientists, working people and similar that have looked in to the events and have come to a different conclusion than the state's official story.
But what the term ends up doing is creating and all or nothing sort of language trick. That means if you question the governments offical story about X event then you believe that man never walked on the moon or that aliens exists. That is obviously not necessarily the case, most people who are intelligent enough to question the governments officlal narrative are intelligent enough to discrern for themselves. Each event or narrative that is being questioned has its own set of information and people make up their minds based on that information on a case by case basis. People that question the state narrative will most likely be better equip to not believe everything they read, even dissident related material, than the average football watching, state loving person.
I'm sure that's exactly what Clayton thinks happened. /sarcasm
/sarcasm
Haha, I realize that; I'm just saying that there is a discernable difference between being skeptical and being a kook. I don't think every 9/11 truther is a kook. But... quite a few of them are.
Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. The difference, to me, is more of an issue of semantics: the conspiracy theories that have substance cease to be conspiracy theories if they actually hold water. Then they become more mainstream and their labelling changes (scandals, etc.).
When people are given the opportunity to find truth, (thanks primarily to the greatest information disseminator ever: the Internet) truth will prevail over lies. This is why Ron Paul and the Austrian school have been gaining so much support. It is also why people who think the moon landing was faked are laughed at.
The term conspiracy theorist was invented by the state to stigmatise people who question the official version of events.
I put a conspiracy theory in your conspiracy theory so that you can conspiracy while you conspiracy.
The state may exploit the term, but it definitely did not "invent" it. Just because you're skeptical of skeptics doesn't mean you're a statist.
EDIT: let me clarify before I'm attacked-- I am very skeptical of everything the state tells us; one of the state's main tools is keeping the public in the dark as much as possible. However, I do not consider myself a conspiracy theorist. It's true, I think it is a dirty word. I just don't want the beliefs that I share with David Icke (central banks as shadowy, unaccountable, unethical organizations) to be tainted with fuckin' lizard people. Not that any of you have done so.
Ok well I said that state invented the term i did not mean literally, Obviously not as an act of congress. I never said it was a conspiracy. I think it first appeared in government agency communications to the media or press releases. The idea or meme of the word though has been perpetuated by the media and often it is used in government related press releases or government news. They use the term as a way to marginalize dissent, through the very stigmatisation through association. Obviously aliens have nothing to do with jfk or 9/11 and 9/11 nothing to do with jfk. The only commonality is that the state via the media calls any different version of events a conspiracy theory.
In a way the cliche idea of a conspiracy theorist actually pisses many people off who subscribe to some of the ideas that get labelled a conspiracy theory. Obviously through marginalization. It even gets exploited by the pro state people by coming up with crazy crack pot theories about events. For example when someone starts making outrages claims about 9/11 like holograms or space beams. This is done by people as counter intelligence measure, this way any valid theories that come up have less credence, as people always cite the worst theories to refute and use as an example.
Truthers lost their credibility once some of them started claiming there were no planes... You just know the person saying that is just not in his right mind. I don't beelieve government planned controlled demolition (there wouldn't be a point, and if there was, one has to think one, so...back to square one). It is possible that there was 9/11 conspiracy going on, but not the kind truthers want us to believe. Because what they want us to believe is the same shit christian fundies want us to believe when they say evolution isn't true because human eye is too complex. Learn damn science first, you nut, that would be my response to him.. :)
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
To mention credibility, In some instances I think that the people who agree with the official version of events have no credbility.
Truthers is another non sense term. What if you are not a truther what are you, a liar?
Everyone ("truthers") loses credibility of their beliefs because "some" of them believe something which the others do not? I'm confused by your use of language and I don't know if you're saying all the people who question the 9/11 events are discredited by the beliefs of a few (possible disinformation agents, possible crazy people, possible people who just believe anything they here). As for there being no point to government-planned controlled demolition, do you not think the government has used the events of 9/11 to greatly expand its power in a way it could not without a "Pearl Harbor" type event? (I hope my questioning does not sound hostile, I am genuinely curious.)
I'll answer to your last point only:
Yes, it would be stupid unwise to ignore the fact, that this event have helped the government to expand its power and scare people, but it has nothing to do with the conspiracy, I think that even most liberals and republicans would agree with it. You can take any major tragic event, and all it does is making it easier for government to reach their own ends (ultimate control, ultimate power).
To the fella above you, truther is a legitimate term, that came few years after the 9/11, when they started making documentaries "searching for truth" or something like that. I don't call all conspiracy theorists truthers, big majority of them are simply nuts, truthers is a group who question 9/11 official story and draw so many conclusions, that it often becomes no more credible than reptilian/illuminati conspiracy.
Is it not the nature of a state to agitate in foreign lands, and stage attacks to be blamed on phantoms?
Yes, it would be stupid unwise to ignore the fact, that this event have helped the government to expand its power and scare people, but it has nothing to do with the conspiracy, I think that even most liberals and republicans would agree with it. You can take any major tragic event, and all it does is making it easier for government to reach their own ends (ultimate control, ultimate power). To the fella above you, truther is a legitimate term, that came few years after the 9/11, when they started making documentaries "searching for truth" or something like that. I don't call all conspiracy theorists truthers, big majority of them are simply nuts, truthers is a group who question 9/11 official story and draw so many conclusions, that it often becomes no more credible than reptilian/illuminati conspiracy.
I concur with Maiku, after these tragic events a discredited documentary came out called "Loose Change". It seemed pretty sketchy and hyperbolic with the scientific facts, and there are websites devoted to proving LC wrong using simple chemistry and physics. It is hard to take these conspiracy people seriously, and bad things happen in the world. In Madrid for example there were horrible, immoral train bombings in the early 2000's that killed hundreds of people. Sometimes bad things happen and people don't want to accept that.
I'm happy to accept that sometimes bad things just happen. However, I won't accept that explanation from the primary beneficiary of those bad things. When a woman's completely healthy ex-husband mysteriously keels over and she's collecting his $10M life insurance and then tells me "Sometimes, bad things just happen", I'm disinclined to believe her until every possible way she could be lying and covering up a crime has been ruled out to the best of my ability. Even then, I will simply say "I couldn't prove she did it" rather than "She couldn't possibly have done it." Yet the government apologists demand that I throw my arms around the US government because it issued a massive tome called "The 9/11 Report" and declare it could not possibly have committed 9/11 in any sense. Ridiculous.
Loose Change was an amateurish work put together by a very young man and it contained some of the errors to which amateurs are prone. It focuses on issues that aren't that important, doesn't close the loop on other issues, and so on. It's not even disinfo. It's just not the best critique out there.
If you want to try to tackle serious criticism of the government's official story, start with David Ray Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor.
Clayton: I'm happy to accept that sometimes bad things just happen. However, I won't accept that explanation from the primary beneficiary of those bad things. When a woman's completely healthy ex-husband mysteriously keels over and she's collecting his $10M life insurance and then tells me "Sometimes, bad things just happen", I'm disinclined to believe her until every possible way she could be lying and covering up a crime has been ruled out to the best of my ability. Even then, I will simply say "I couldn't prove she did it" rather than "She couldn't possibly have done it." Yet the government apologists demand that I throw my arms around the US government because it issued a massive tome called "The 9/11 Report" and declare it could not possibly have committed 9/11 in any sense. Ridiculous. Loose Change was an amateurish work put together by a very young man and it contained some of the errors to which amateurs are prone. It focuses on issues that aren't that important, doesn't close the loop on other issues, and so on. It's not even disinfo. It's just not the best critique out there. If you want to try to tackle serious criticism of the government's official story, start with David Ray Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor. Clayton -
Everything, especially his latest three on WTC7, Cass Sunstein's boneheaded anti-conspiracy paper and his 9/11 Ten Years Later.
The State is incompetent only in its stated aims. The mantra of general State incompetence arises from going along with the polite pretense that the governments's stated aims are, in fact, it's only aims. But this is simply not true. The government is not incompetent at all once its true aims are rightly understood. In fact, the State is astoundingly competent. Imagine trying to collect money from hundreds of millions of people and waging wars and covert actions around the world affecting the lives of billions in such a way as to keep expanding your turf and keep quelling dissent?
Agreed. Organized crime is...unsurprisingly....rather adept at crime.
Well the train bombings in Madrid were al-Qaeda's response to Spain's involvement in Iraq with the United States, so it's not just a matter of bad things happening.
But, I suppose it's true that if there's one thing the state is good at, it is keeping itself in power.
The Madrid bombing investigation found no al-Qaeda involvement. It concluded that those involved were "homegrown radicals".
I think it is just a different way of looking at it. Just because someone does not agree with the government's official accounts of events, does not mean that they think the government was involved or actually committed the crime. When an attack like the madrid bombing happens i just try to look at it with an open mind and see who would benefit. The same way that I look at most man made terrible incidents that occur in the world.
Every event has any number of possible causes. Just because you looked in to a terrible incident or a government accounts does not mean that you have taken on the identity of a truther or a conspiracy person. It also does not mean that I don't ever agree with the official version of events or that sometimes I find it a waste of time to even have an opinion about a specific set of events. But if an event occurs that changes geo politics then I realy don't think it is that crackpot to spend some time and investigate it, generally speaking. That is what interests me, you might like marching bands, I like looking in to world news and finding new information.
^Yeah... that's totally true. Here are two embodiments of critical thinking in the flesh.
Alex Jones can be a bit of an asshat at times and he definitely makes a handsome living peddling doom-porn... however, info-wars.com is actually a compendium of government crimes and misdeeds that exceeds LRC in its scope and scale, if not in its sophistication and discernment.
David Icke is an interesting fellow. Either he's MI5 or (my favored hypothesis) he's a genuinely misled fellow who may be being subtly manipulated through "higher powers". A lot of his stuff is basically twice-baked theosophy. And while his lizard thing is batshit crazy, he's not crazy for thinking about it. However, I believe that he may be aware that he is manipulated to an extent and does a little manipulating of his own... I detect woven into his crazier stuff a kind of anarchist or minarchist narrative that is opposed to the modern religion of democracy and the false egalitarianism and monoculture emanating out of the Establishment.
While neither Alex Jones nor David Icke are harmful... neither are they good examples of critical thinking. If you want to get educated on the crimes of the State and its overall short-term agenda (CFR bullshit), Alex Jones is a great resource, though use LRC to keep an even keel. If you want to get educated on the spiritual affect of the Establishment... which really operates at a much higher level of manipulation than what Alex Jones talks about, then David Icke can give you the general gist of it, though he's awful short on substance at times.
If you want to learn critical thinking then there's no better place to start than Mises (Ultimate Foundations of Economic Science). Peruse this thread for more specific recommendations on a related note.
Is alex jones an anarcho capitalist?
If he is a minarchist then why? Wouldnt anarchy be the best way to sever the people from control of nwo/rothschild/goldmansax/etc/etc?
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
So Clayton, you no longer believe that Alex Jones is part of controlled opposition?
I don't recall asserting that he is. Alex Jones is odd, let me say it that way. There's something fishy about him but I can't put my finger on precisely what it is.
Those conspiracy theorists are nuts! Except for the ones touting the Reptilians, which are definitely among us....
Redemption day is one month away for Icke. He must be sweating by now.
Ooh, nice one Al Gore. I think we should have a 30-day countdown to the end of the world!
Edit: Someone beat us to it. LOL
The websites that addressed Loose Change, also did a pretty good job of addressing the most fundamental questions surrounding the attack. This is why I am hesistant to waste my time on 2001 conspiracy theories.
What the state openly admits to doing is far worse imo, and enough to motivate Libertarians.
@hk: The 9/11 issue should not be viewed in an evangelistic light. There is no "gospel truth" that needs to be shared to as many people as possible. Rather, I see it in a much more mundane light - the 9/11 attack is one in a string of attacks and staged wars stretching back at least a century and which have formed the basis of war - even the world wars. In other words, 9/11 was the work of thugs and was meant to be exploited - and is being exploited - by those same thugs in order to consolidate their power and achieve other political objectives.
This isn't something that people need to "wake up" to. If you don't see it, that's fine. As you said, what they openly admit to doing is bad enough. The awakening that we need is a moral one. If people can turn a blind eye to the unspeakable abuses and systemic corruption - just consider the astronomical public debt, for example - then that needs to be addressed before worrying about the subtler elements of manipulation by covert means. In other words, if the public cannot even see the gross immorality in the government's overt means of maintaining power, there's no use in getting in a frenzy over its covert means.
I dont think Icke has ever said that something momentous will occur precisely on that day, only that it marks the ending of one cycle and the beginning of another, referring to it as a window. In other words exactly what the Mayans said and not what doomsday hucksters have been peddling. The years following will be the true indicator of whether there's something to it or not. I remain optimistic.
I like Icke (lol) a lot but... I finally put my finger on what bothers me about his message. Basically, the Reptilian idea means you either have to believe that the human (appearing) ruling Elites literally are lizards (which is batshit crazy) or you have to believe that we are all (including the "Elites") being manipulated by external forces... which excuses the Elites of their crimes. So, either you believe something that is crazy, or you excuse the flesh-and-blood (and 100%, homegrown Homo sapiens... even if a bit inbred) ruling Elites.
Wasn't it Icke who said that "They use human fear, guilt, and aggression as energy"? I think this is spot on.
I just started watching Icke's seven hour, "The Lion Sleeps No More" Wembley event on youtube. Will let you know how it goes.
I think this is spot on.
It is... but then we're all victims of reptilian overlords.
See, the "unspeakable" truth is that there is no civilized or decent aspect to politics at all - it is merely the wrangling for turf between competing ganglords (rulers) using any and all means necessary... including murder (even of innocents/bystanders), bribery, extortion, blackmail, you-name-it. This fact is wrapped in so many layers of euphemism and propaganda from the youngest age that it is nearly impossible for most people to ever come to grips with the unspeakable truth (that's why it's unspeakable).
But Icke's reptilian thing doesn't really challenge the unspeakable. It leaves it, still, unspoken. But perhaps the lizard thing provides a sort of verbal half-way point for people to begin talking about the true nature of government without actually uttering the unspeakable.