What Kind of Conspiracy THeories Do You Know?

[Silverwing/Ataegina]

Well, HAARP is a real thing, but whether it is powerful enough to make any noticable change in the weather (let alone earth quakes) is doubtful

That last part was what I meant. I mean yes, HAARP is real and yet, I have my doubts that it caused the tsunami that wrecked Japan last year...which was what I was trying to get at.
I forgot to elaborate, because sometimes I assume people know what I'm talking about. Sorry.

[Dragonoake]

I forgot to elaborate, because sometimes I assume people know what I'm talking about. Sorry.

Consider yourself forgiven

[Dragonoake]

Every powerfull person on earth (politicians, kings, big corporate directors, etc) are in fact evil aliens (reptiles?) and are here to make us their slaves.

Look at it this way:
If the alien race in question is capable of Faster Than Light travel, they have mastered technology we aren't even sure is possible ....
If they are not capable of Faster Than Light travel, then they will have been coming for a very long time with no intention of going home empty handed, and will probably have brought an armada to ensure their success

Either way, their conquest is unlikely to be subtle ....
More like a war that lasts a few hours

[LunaPark]

I've always been fascinated by the whole "aternative theory" stuff. I only know of one, though. (The second gun man on the grassy knoll.)

How many do you know? What are they?

Oh man I know a ton... Expanding Earth theory, which I think is pretty interesting... and in turn... Hollow Earth theory which states that the earth is hollow and there is a interior sun and intelligent life.

The Philadelphia Experiment.... perpetual motion exists.... Planet X or Nibiru.... Bob Marley was assassinated.... JFK was assassinated because
he wanted to either...
a.) Wanted to tell the American people about alien contact
b.) Wanted to change the monetary system from the Fed (which is corporate) to a national bank.
c.) He pissed off the mob
d.) was going to tell people about alien bases on the moon.

Also that he was assassinated by the vice president.... whose name is completely escaped me right now... (Johnson?)

Finally the Zeitgeist movies I wouldn't necessarily call this last one a conspiracy theory but worth checking out.

[Ruby Moon]

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is that the Queen had Princess Diana killed to stop her from marrying a muslim and embarrassing the Royal Family.

I believe the Royal Family were responsible for Diana's death. I'm not sure about the reason behind it, or the involvement of the Queen, but I definitely wouldn't put it past Charles...

[RandallS]

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[Jabberwocky]

I don't want to start an argument, but I wouldn't mind hearing the premise behind them...

I have some. I'll do one for now, but there's another major one if you're interested. If I put them both at once, this post will end up the length of a thesis!

I'm always somewhat reluctant to mention the first. Simply because it involves Bin Laden/al-Qaeda and I don't want to be lumped in with the Troofers. (To be clear, I do think that al-Qaeda carried out 9/11 and I don't believe it was in any way a 'false flag' operation, let alone the theories about controlled explosions, hologram planes etc.) But I do think there's a strong chance that CIA funding, and possibly even training, went to al-Qaeda in the 1980's via Operation Cyclone. (Along with funding from MI6, the SAS, Saudi Arabia & China).

There's several reasons for that. I find the official line that the funding (which was massive, approximately $630 million a year at its height) only went native mujahideen and none went to foreign fighters highly unconvincing. Apart from anything else, how can you possibly be sure of that? Especially when you consider that the CIA favoured Islamist mujahideen over the more non-ideological ones. Partly because Pakistan did and they were closely cooperating with them.

There's also the Gulbuddin Hekmatyar issue. Hekmatyar undoubtedly received a disproportionate amount of the US aid provided, via the ISI (Pakistan's intelligence services). He also received much of the aid provided by Saudi Arabia, who liked his Islamic fundamentalism. Now, according to studies on Hekymatyar, he had very little grassroots support within Afghanistan during the war. Not only does this mean he was more reliant on the foreign funding then other militia leaders, it also makes it likely that at least some of his fighters weren't local Afghans. It's a matter of record that camps were set up by Pakistan, with US, Saudi and UK backing, to train his militia. So even if foreign fighters weren't being directly trained (which seems unlikely to me), the aid and training that went to Heymatyar's Hezb-i islami is going to have ended up having had an effect there.

And there's a significant body of evidence that Heymatyar had links with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, although that's complicated by the fact that he (in my view) is fond of making fantastical claims to puff up his own significance. Still, in 2002 US intelligence sources said he'd been trying to join al-Qaeda. In 2003 the US requested that the United Nations Committee on Terrorism declare him a "global terrorist" and an associate of Bin Laden. In 2007 he claimed that his fighters had helped Bin Laden escape from the Tora Bora mountains five years earlier. So I think it's clear that he does have al-Qaeda links, it's simply a question of whether these are all post Afghan Civil War or if they actually started while he was being funded by the US.

The final factor I'd put forward is the strange case of Ali Mohamed. It's known now he was a double agent for both the CIA and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad as well as being an FBI informant. He was a major in the Egyptian army, but was discharged in 1984 for suspected fundamentalism. He then entered the US on a visa-waiver program, that was sponsored by the CIA for those people that were believed to have performed important services for the US. From there, he married an American woman and got citizenship. Then he signed up for the US army in 1986 and joined special forces. In 1988, he told his superiors that he was going on leave to fight Soviets in Afghanistan. According to his then commanding officer, Lt. Colonel. Robert Anderson, he reported this to intelligence services and was ignored:

I think you or I would have a better chance of winning Powerball (a lottery), than an Egyptian major in the unit that assassinated Sadat would have getting a visa, getting to California . . . getting into the Army and getting assigned to a Special Forces unit," he said. "That just doesn't happen. "

It was equally unthinkable that an ordinary American GI would go unpunished after fighting in a foreign war, he said.

Anderson said all this convinced him that Mohamed was "sponsored" by a U.S. intelligence service. "I assumed the CIA," he said.

(Source)

While this was all going on, Mohamed took maps and training manuals off US military bases, which he later used to train al-Qaeda fighters and to write their training guides. Eventually, he was charged with involvement in the 1998 US Embassy bombings and entered a guilty plea in 2000.

So far, this would look like a classic, if tragic, double agent case; of someone who took in his intelligence handlers. Apart from one important factor. While there's a record of Mohamed's trial, there is no record of sentencing or even a conviction. According to his wife, Linda Sanchez, he still hadn't been sentenced in 2006. Since then, he's just gone off the radar completely.

So, to recap, we have someone who worked for US intelligence and definitely did have al-Qaeda links, where it looks like his trial for terrorist offences is simply never going to happen.

There are two main arguments against the suggest of CIA training of al-Qaeda.

The first is that both the US government and al-Qaeda deny it. My response to that is, well, they would. For separate reasons, both parties there have strong motivation to deny any links, if there are some. Obviously, they would also deny it if there weren't any in the first place. So my view there is it's neither evidence for or against my theory.

The other is the suggestion that there wasn't any US (and other western interests) funding/training of al-Qaeda, because all money was given out by the Pakistani government. That I think is a half-truth. Certainly, I think that's where the bulk of the money was channelled through. It's missing the point deliberately though, it still leaves the question of what the SIS were doing with their resources. What I do find very unconvincing is the related argument that it wouldn't have been possible for the CIA to train mujahideen, because the Pakistanis were only prepared for them to have a handful of agents in the area. We're talking about an agency with high levels of experience and skill in covert operations. It would be entirely possible for them to operate against the wishes of the Pakistani government.

To conclude, I'm going to move firmly into the realms of speculation. So what do I think happened? My current view is that there was definitely funding and weapons, and probably direct training, that went to some of the mujahideen that later went on to become al-Qaeda. (It's worth remembering that al-Qaeda is a loose network of Islamist terrorists, not a centralised organisation). At the time, this would have seemed sensible. In the context of the Cold War, Islamists weren't seen as the priority by those making foreign policy or the intelligence services. So funding them to undermine the Soviets would have been relatively uncontroversial and the time. Whether that went to Bin Laden directly or not is difficult to say- there's little evidence either way. I also don't think there's the evidence to back up some of the wilder claims about him having been a CIA asset himself. Instead, I suspect that Bin Laden and al-Qaeda largely slipped off the radar once the Afghan civil war ended. And then 9/11 happened. At which point, there was a lot of people suddenly realising that this was not something that they wanted to come out. So, really, as much cock-up as conspiracy.

The one issue that doesn't really answer is the case of Ali Mohamed. I'm still working out what I think about that; the information's a lot newer to me than the other stuff. Provisionally, what I suspect is that he has information too important to pass up and so has been able to plea bargain his way out of a prison sentence. He's almost certainly in the witness protection scheme now with a new identity, although he can expect to be under full surveillance from the FBI/CIA for the rest of his life.

[Azra]

Well, HAARP is a real thing, but whether it is powerful enough to make any noticable change in the weather (let alone earth quakes) is doubtful

Well, you know HAARP is really supposed to be a weapon to psychically disrupt the mind waves of entire armies - or nations - and thereby making them easier to control...

[outlaw393]

I've always been fascinated by the whole "alternative theory" stuff. I only know of one, though. (The second gun man on the grassy knoll.)

How many do you know? What are they?

1) The latest one I keep hearing is that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged.
2) JFK was killed by the CIA. (due to something to do with equal rights or something...)
3) Reality is actually The Matrix. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...-prove-do.html
4) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were done for Oil, not to overthrow a dictator or for anything else.
5) 9/11 was an inside job.

Those are what I can think of.