By now, you're probably familiar with the nonsense theory that the U.S. government orchestrated the attacks on 9/11 in order to justify the Iraq WarIronic that they would say "All you need is the ability to ignore 90 percent of the facts and focus on the ones that support the case for war", since that's all we're really saying they're doing about 9/11. But the 9/11 conspiracy wasn't just about needing an excuse for war. It was about creating the whole "post-9/11 world" that we are now living in. Such a transformations in global society do require "eloborate conspiracies".
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So in light of the truth about the Tonkin incident, is it really so crazy to think that 9/11 was an inside job? Yes. Still crazy. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin conspiracy makes such elaborate conspiracy theories seem even more unlikely (to the sane). It proves that you don't need to orchestrate elaborate conspiracies to justify an unjust war. All you need is the ability to ignore 90 percent of the facts and focus on the ones that support the case for war. In that way, the Tonkin incident bears a much closer resemblance to the many intelligence oopsies that happened in the run up to the Iraq War.
In response to that article, I thought I'd outline 6 more "insane" conspiracies that actually happened that you probably won't read about on Cracked.
6) Bush and Blair Plot a Modern Day Gulf of Tonkin / Northwoods
According to: A White House Memo, Channel 4 News
Another conspiracy the authors of the Cracked article could have mentioned was Operation Northwoods, a series of false flag proposals outlined in 1962 memo authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but rejected by President Kennedy. The intent was to stage false flag terrorist attacks to generate public support for a war against Cuba. One of the proposed scenarios involved converting a civil aircraft into a drone and substituting it for a passenger-carrying duplicate mid-flight and destroying it in a way that made it look like Cuba was responsible.
But this sort of thing isn't just history. In the weeks leading up to the Iraq War, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair discussed the possibility of a modern day Northwoods-like event. On February 2, 2006, Channel 4 News in Britain reported on the minutes of a meeting that took place between Bush and Blair at the White House on January 31, 2003. The memo reveals how they discussed the possibility of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter escort over Iraq, painted in UN colors; hoping that Saddam would fire on them so they could drum up support for the war.
5) The JFK Multiple Gunmen Theory & the CIA Propaganda Operation
According to: A Congressional Committee, A Declassified CIA Document
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texa. According to the most plausible of the official timelines, three shots were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The first, when Kennedy's limo was less than 140 feet away from Oswald, was a wild miss that rebounded off a curb and injured a bystander. The second, fired 6.3 seconds later, between Zapruder Frames 223 and 224, when the limo was 190 feet away from Oswald, was the infamous "magic bullet" shot that allegedly created seven wounds in two people. And the third, fired 4.9 seconds after that, between Zapruder Frames 312 and 313, when the limo was 265 feet away from Oswald, was the fatal head shot.
The idea that Oswald could fire, re-load, re-aim, fire again, reload again, re-aim again and fire a third time in only 11 seconds with increasing accuracy on a moving target accelerating away from him is itself far-fetched to some, and over the past nearly 50 years, all three shots, and the possibility of more shots, have been analysed and debated in detail by researchers. The Zapruder film, the witness statements, the audio recordings and Kennedy's autopsy reports have been gone over with a fine tooth comb and many have argued that shots had to have been fired from other locations, such as the Dal-Tex building or the famous "grassy knoll". If those researchers are correct, then that would mean that there were multiple gunmen, and multiple gunmen would imply a conspiracy.
The media and the so-called skeptics of course like to dismiss and ridicule these researchers as "conspiracy nuts", even though the officials themselves once endorsed one of these theories. Between 1963 and 1979, there were four official investigations into the JFK assassination: the Warren Commission, the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which also investigated the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968. The HSCA report, published in 1979, concluded that both Kennedy and King were probably assassinated as the result of conspiracy. Regarding Kennedy, the HSCA criticized the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and the Warren Commission for withholding information and concluded that the acoustical evidence and witness testimony established with a high probability that at least two gunmen fired at President Kennedy. They also noted that Kennedy did not receive adequate secret service protection, a fact cited by some researchers as evidence of foreknowledge and stand-down. Watch a December 30, 1978 NBC news report of the findings below.
In 1998, a CIA document dated January 4, 1967 entitled "Countering Criticisms of the Warren Report" was declassified. The document states that:
From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy ... a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone ... This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization ... Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.One of the actions the report called for was "To employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics". Prior to the mid-to-late 60s, when this document was written, the term "conspiracy theory" rarely appeared in the major print media, and the term "conspiracy theorist" had never been used at all. From then onwards, usage of the terms exploded. This document is evidence that the "conspiracy theorist" ad-hominem was likely the brain child of the CIA. Even more interestingly, the arguments the report suggested be used when responding to critics in the media are familiar talking points we hear all the time from debunkers, such as "Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States", critics "fall in love" with their theories, there's been "no new evidence" and various arguments of incredulity. Conspiracy theory skeptics and debunkers (and Cracked authors) literally employ tactics outlined 45 years ago in a CIA propaganda memo!
4) The Bilderberg Group Created the EU
According to: The Bilderberg Group
Cracked.com has written about Bilderberg before, in an article entitled 5 Pathetic Groups That People Think Rule the World. Again the authors ridicule any notion of a conspiracy.
While it is true that no official policy is set at Bilderberg itself, its members are highly influential people who are expected to implement the Bilderberg agenda in the arenas in which they do have official influence. In 2010, former NATO secretary general Willie Claes discussed Bilderberg proceedings on a Belgian radio show. In this MP3 clip, he says:
... maar natuurlijk, de rapporteur probeert toch altijd wel een synthese te trekken, en iedereen is verondersteld gebruik te maken van die conclusies in het milieu waar hij invloed heeft hé.Which Google translates as:
... but of course, always the report tries to draw a synthesis, and everyone is supposed to use those conclusions in the environment where he has his influence.There are many pieces of evidence which prove that Bilderberg was instrumental in the creation of the European Union. In 2009, the 1955 Bilderberg conference report was leaked by Wikileaks. The report discusses the prospect of "European unity" under a "common market" and "the need to achieve a common currency". In 2003, BBC Radio 4 examined the papers of the former Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, who attended the early Bilderberg meetings in the 1950s and made notes. One document included the following quote:
Some sort of European Union has long been a utopian dream, but the conference was agreed it was now a necessity of our times. Only in some form of union can the freemasons of Europe achieve a moral and material strength capable of meeting any threat to their freedom.The Treaty of Rome in 1957, essentially the birth of the EU, was signed into existence by, among others, Bilderberg attendee Paul-Henri Spaak. George McGhee, former US Ambassador to West Germany, reportedly stated that "The Treaty of Rome, which brought the Common Market into being, was nurtured at Bilderberg meetings". Bilderberg Chairman Étienne Davignon admitted to the EU Observer in 2009 that Bilderberg "helped create the euro in the 1990s".
In 2010, a member of a related group, the Trilateral Commission, inadvertantly let slip to activists during a meeting in Ireland that they are "deciding the future of the world", "need a world government" and, referring to Iran, "need to get rid of them". Another member revealed that "Bilderberg expects us to have a plan outlined".
Oh, but its just a friendly supper club!
3) The Princess Diana Murder Conspiracy
According to: Princess Diana herself!
On August 31st, 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma Tunnel in Paris. Four years prior, in October 1993, Diana wrote the following in a letter:
"My husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure or serious head injury ..."
This letter didn't come out until the inquest nearly a decade later. Had French officials known about it back in 1997, they would have had no choice but to investigate the incident as a murder, and Prince Charles would have been the prime suspect.
There are numerous anomalies surrounding the so-called "accident", but two in particular stick out to me:
1. As every animation ever made of the incident shows, prior to crashing into the pillar, Diana's Mercedes side-swiped a white Fiat Uno. The driver of said Fiat would have seen the Mercedes spin out of control, smash into a pillar and rebound into the middle of the road directly in front of him. Yet supposedly, he just nonchalantly drove around the wreckage as if nothing happened. He didn't even brake. The only way this makes any sense is if he was involved in a plot to intentionally cause the Mercedes to crash. The owner of the Fiat has never been definitively identified, and the prime suspect allegedly killed himself by setting himself on fire. In 2000, he was found dead in his burned-out car in a woodland area 400 miles away from his home with a two inch hole in his left temple and the doors to his car locked from the outside with the keys nowhere to be found. Nothing suspicious there!
2. Even mainstream documentaries have admitted that there is no way the driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, could have been as drunk as the official story says he was. In 2003, the Discovery Channel aired a program called "Diana: Death of a Princess" as part of its Unsolved History series. The documentary was a MythBusters-style conspiracy theory debunking program of the type that we are all too familar with, but even its producers could not deny that there were serious problems with the official story that Henri Paul had a high blood-alcohol content. See here for the clip. Both bodyguards who were with Diana the night she died - Trevor Rees-Jones and Kes Wingfield - swore in interviews that Henri Paul was not drunk and that they would not have allowed him to drive had he been drunk.
Those two facts, along with Diana's letter, strongly suggest that the incident was more than just an unfortunate accident.
2) The 9/11 Prior-Knowledge/"LIHOP" Conspiracy
Oh boy! Where do I begin?! Just go here: Complete 911 Timeline! Cracked authors ridicule any notion of 9/11 being an 'inside job', but maybe they're more open to the possibility of officials simply having advanced knowledge of 9/11 and allowing it to happen so they could use it as the "new pearl harbor" they so desperately wanted. Even if this is as far as it goes, it still implies a global, bi-partisan, fake war on terror conspiracy.
1) The Darwin Conspiracy
According to: Mainstream historians of science
I suspect there are probably some religious fundamentalists out there who believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to be some evil satanic conspiracy or something. While this is probably bullshit, there is an element of truth to the conspiracy claim that today's Darwin zealots openly acknowledge.
Historically, most scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts come about from the bottom up, and the natural acceptance of ground-breaking new ideas by the establishment is often a gradual process. Consider, for example, the Copernican Revolution or the shift from Newtonian Gravity to Einsteinian Relativity. The Darwinian revolution, however, came about from the top down, and wasn't entirely natural, but manipulated. Which is ironic if you think about it!
In 1864, five years after the publication of The Origin of Species, the "X Club", a social club of nine prominent, highly influential scientists known for their advocacy of Darwin's ideas was founded. Its members included Joseph Dalton Hooker, Darwin's closest friend, Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog", and Herbert Spencer, coiner of the term "Survival of the fittest". The club met in London nine times a year for 28 years, during which time many of its members would go on to hold key posts at the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The group used their influence to shape much of late-Victorian science.
As prominent Darwinist Michael Ruse wrote in The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (1979):
Although primarily an opportunity for busy friends to socialize, the club rapidly started to function as a powerful group concerned with decisions significant to the course of science - grants, honors, posts, and the like. The influence naturally favored those sympathetic to Darwin's ideas.And as author Peter J. Bowler wrote in Evolution: The History of an Idea, which Wikipedia describes as "a standard textbook on the history of evolution":
It was by exploiting their position within this network that Huxley and his fellow converts ensured that Darwinism had come to stay. They avoided open conflict in scientific journals but used their editorial influence to ensure that Darwinian values were incorporated gradually into the literature. The journal Nature was founded at least in part as a vehicle for promoting Darwinism. Academic appointments were also manipulated to favor younger scientists with Darwinian sympathies, who would ensure that the next generation was educated to take the theory for granted. So successful was this takeover of the British scientific community that by the 1880s, its remaining opponents were claiming that Darwinism had become a blindly accepted dogma carefully shielded from any serious challenge.So the world's most prestigious journal was literally founded by Darwinists for the purpose of promoting Darwinism!
Because the Darwinian revolution was manipulated from the start by a social network of influential elite scientists, it was, in a sense, a conspiracy. It wasn't necessarily a malevolant conspiracy (although researchers into the history of eugenics may argue that it was), but it was politically and philosophically driven, and therefore not entirely scientific.
And once again, we have a modern day equivalent. It's called "Climategate".
