List conspiracy theories here.

"There is a guy on a Rush usenet group who has a similar steez with regard to Geddy and Neal and how they have fucked his life over."
more details please!

have we talked about the guy who thinks sylvester stallone is dead and the stallone we have now is a b-movie actor from the 70s who has had a ton of plastic surgery?

jimi hendrix rock prophecy guy

"There is a guy on a Rush usenet group who has a similar steez with regard to Geddy and Neal and how they have fucked his life over."

>>more details please!

Wow, see last time I looked in there were actual sane conversations about Rush going on, with L1b3r@tor's insane posts here and there. Now it seems he's almost the only one posting:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.music.rush/topics?lnk=rgh

Holy shit wait is it the same guy as latebloomer's?

Scientists create synthetic cell/organism (Megan Fox is proof)

We all know by certain individuals thought to be dead they're way way
beyond this. This was achieved 50 years ago, probably by a Nazi
scientist. Megan Fox wants people to know by her tatoo. That's all I
can say at this time (for those that don't know).

That rainbow video! I immediately signed this petition and you should too:
http://www.petitiononline.com/h2o/petition.html

And also it seems like they ALL GET RACIAL when you trace them far enough, it's kinda depressing.

― Blog is a concept by which we measure our pain (Jon Lewis)

Can't spell "comspiracy" without r-a-c-i-s-m

lol

Speaking of Usenet crazies, anyone recall the guy on alt.prophecies.nostrodamus that some guy posted in August 2001? Look up "Xinoehpoel".

Oops I brainfarted. the guy on alt.prophecies.nostrodamus that posted in August 2001 about "911" and then on sept 4 said "in 7 days I am going away and wont be back". Creepy.

A cabal of evil corporate geniuses have generated thousands of useless internetish and cell phonish technologies as the most invasive and effective way to distract the minions from the fact that they have taken over our government, committing crimes against humanity and are polluting our environment.

http://alllayedout.com/Images/Funny_Posters/graphics/whatever.jpg

o_0 at that Solaris Blueraven/Neil Peart thing. She could practically be another Verbal Kint-level talespinner

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9219647520615705963#

USA Today's been reading this thread:

Matt Chasansky, the public art administrator at Denver airport, has watched all the YouTube videos, answered many e-mails and read all the internet postings about the secret messages allegedly embedded in murals, sculpture and other art pieces in the airport. He's glad people are responding emotionally to the airport's collection but insists concerns about strange doings at DEN are just misunderstandings.

One traveler wrote to complain about the "demons" in the baggage claim area. Those demons are part of Terry Allen's work, Notre Denver and are European cathedral-inspired gargoyles meant not to harm people, but to protect them from losing their luggage. Other travelers see a secret code in the words and images in 21st Century Artifacts, the four mosaic floors created by Carolyn Braaksma and Mark Villareal for Concourse B. "The piece is actually about geography, archeology and topography," says the airport's Chasansky, "And those are Native American words and symbols for the Colorado River and other sites around the area."

http://forums.abrahadabra.com/showthread.php?2681-the-Case-for-A-Binary-Partner-to-our-Sun

http://www.vimeo.com/9104959

I've always thought that one of the problems with most conspiracy theories is that they aren't outlandishly batshit enough to have any kind of lasting interest. Who cares about who plugged JFK when it's possible that the entire MIddle Ages didn't exist. Meet Phantom Time Hypothesis - what happens when a clerical error goes horribly wrong.

I read the Voodoo Histories book kingfish plugged upthread. It was a very high-quality and reasoned takedown of various conspiracy theories and the conspiratorial thought process. OTOH it was what I happened to have in my purse when my husband went to the ER and I have to note: this book will not cheer you up. It will only make a bad day worse.

dude elvis holy shit what

dude elvis holy shit what

In short, the current year is 1713 and not 2010. Also Charlemagne was a fictional character. Quoting from http://www.damninteresting.com/the-phantom-time-hypothesis

The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened, but were added to the calendar long ago either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents, or by deliberate falsification by calendar conspirators. This would mean that all artifacts ascribed to those three centuries belong to other periods, and that all events thought to have occurred during that same period occurred at other times, or are outright fabrications.

damn I want a movie made out of that!!!

btw Danny Glover only got into the movies because he caught Gene Wilder choking a woman in the shower and blackmailing him

Abbs, yr boy ok?

omg this http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=1565

http://www.yardwear.net/blog/content/binary/dolphin.jpg
http://www.dingogames.com/dolphin/graphics/titlescreen.jpg
http://shirtoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dolphin-revenge.jpg

there is a SyFy original movie in this

this one is my current fave:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemption_movement

oh wow that is hilarious. more recommended reading:

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Freeman_On_The_Land

these people are waaaaayyy more fucked up than e.g. climate change deniers. the level of cognitive dissonance and just plain retardation is astounding.

3) In a democracy, 'a majority' does not depend on 'large numbers'. A majority can be as low as ONE. And that ONE must, of itself, (therefore) carry sufficient empowerment to put any motion into practice. (The US Supreme Court has 9 Members. A 5 - 4 majority carries any ruling. That's 'democracy')
http://www.fmotl.com/Fundamentals.htm#BM16

Reading that entry on the Redemption Movement, it's pretty much the first 1/3 of a David Icke book I read, "Tales From the Time Loop".

My favorite current theory is from Terrence McKenna, whose "Stoned Ape" hypothesis of human evolution says that ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms is mostly responsible for evolving us into modern man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna#The_.22Stoned_Ape.22_hypothesis_of_human_evolution

A couple more fun crazy ones (killer dolphins, stoned apes, denver airport reptiles, jay-z the overlord) and we have a poll.

How likely is it, after all, that the people who drew up, for example, the tax laws, should have carefully provided a loophole such that anyone who prefers not to pay their taxes could get out of it just by shouting: "Abracadabra! Presto no taxo!"

Haha, I don't know that Terrance McKenna's ideas really count as conspiracy theories. The audience just doesn't seem like the same audience as all the other ones, is why I say that. (ie audience of McKenna = people who devote a serious percentage of their life to psychedelic drugs and/or anthropologists)

He did have that whole thing about how sugar and caffeine are drugs that fuel our society, which is true, but that they're evil and bad bcz they are not mushrooms & marijuana (maybe less true).

oooh i totally love american tax paranoiac theorizing

Ordered Voodoo Histories. Should have ordered all the books recommended on the Mexico thread as well but at this rate my book buying to reading ratio is getting ridiculous. Thinking I may have to delete my amazon account and ask them to keep pictures of me up in waterstones/charity shops so they remember to refuse me.

Sara Robinson, who've I've linked to for years on here, wrote a couple of bits using Voodoo Histories to help explain why the hell the weirder Obama conspiracies are floating around now, like he blew up the Gulf oilwell to get the energy bill passed, that sorta thing.

...Aaronovitch defines a conspiracy theory as any story that assumes that things happen due to the deliberate, covert actions of powerful others -- even when the preponderance of evidence points to the conclusion that the events were almost certainly accidental and unintended.

Unfortunately, the right wing doesn't hold the franchise on conspiracy theories -- a lot of progressives are quite ready to believe all manner of sordid things about the Bush regime, for example. But as Dr. Robert Altemeyer observed, there are distinctively conservative habits of mind (suspicion, fear of strangers, fear of change, faith in strong leaders, paranoia) that do seem to lend themselves to conspiracy thinking. It's no surprise we're seeing it out of them -- but we also need to be more acutely aware that we're hardly immune to the siren song of crazy paranoia, either.

Why do people believe this stuff? It turns out that it's a complicated issue, with several answers. Some of those answers have to do with the internal state of the people who believe them; others have to do with the cultural and political environment they're trying to navigate. This post covers some of the external factors that create a climate that predisposes people to suspend their judgment and believe the worst. Next week, I'll follow up with a second post about what goes on inside people's heads that untethers them from reason just far enough to be swept away by their fears...

annnd the followup post to that.

...The bottom line on why we believe conspiracy theories is this: We're terrified of admitting that nobody is really in control. It's a lot more comforting to think that *somebody* engineered a crisis than to reckon with the horrible, sickening fact that *nobody* did.

Most humans don't deal at all well with the cruel, capricious randomness of fate. Shit happens -- and it often happens for absolutely no meaningful reason at all. That thought makes people crazy with terror, so we make up entities to blame -- God, Satan, the Freemasons, the CIA, or the All-Seeing Eye of Sauron. It's far easier to blame it all on imaginary Lizard People from another planet than have to deal with the bald fact that millions of lives have been upended (or just ended) by an event -- and yet there is simply is nobody out there to blame for it.

As my friend Bob Mackey puts it: "The alternative is a universe that is controlled by absolutely nobody. There is no control, no security, no Men in Black or Black Helicopters or Black Hussein Presidents to frighten the God-fearing upright citizens." In the end, conspiracy theories are simply stories we tell to fill the blackness of the existential void.

Bob also reminds us to "Never confuse a conspiracy with a massive cluster f**k." The bare truth is: most conspiracies start with massive clusterfucks. And this brings us back full circle to where this series started last week -- with the gusher in the Gulf, which is much easier to explain as the massive clusterfuck the evidence tells us it is than it is to attribute any of it to malice or venality on the part of President Obama...

What surprised me most in that book is learning most conspiracy theory peeps are middle class peeps w/college degrees.

Oh yeah; it's like if you think you're smart & educated, you'll naturally gravitate to things that will make you think you're smarter. "Hey man, get hep to the REAL truth." You'll have one up on all the suckers for being able to see the lever-pulling behind-the-scenes. Not an especially admirable trait, but humans ain't too admirable.

conspiracies are real. it's just that the successful ones you never learn about...unless they want you to.

my friend does this one on the Denver Airport (he's not a believer, just finds all this weird shit interesting): http://diaconspiracyfiles.wordpress.com/

"Oh yeah; it's like if you think you're smart & educated, you'll naturally gravitate to things that will make you think you're smarter. "Hey man, get hep to the REAL truth." You'll have one up on all the suckers for being able to see the lever-pulling behind-the-scenes."

The flipside of this is true, too. Many other people like to pat themselves on the back for seeing through the illusions of "crazy" people.

I should know!

Truth is we're all crazy. We're all crazy.

On the contrary, believing in one or more conspiracy theories seems to be compulsory in modern society, with people treating you as if you were naive if you don't.

it IS naive not to believe in one or two. after being involved in a creepy very secretive cult for several months i have firsthand experience with this. it may not be illluminati or spacemen, but there's weird shit going on everywhere!

But the real weird shit that goes on is very different from the fake weird shit that people make up. The fake stuff reads like fiction--they have morals and endings where everything gets resolved and other stuff that very, very rarely happens in real life.

Conspiracy Theorists = terrorists

Secrecy surrounding counter-terrorism operations is fuelling mistrust of authorities, a study by independent think tank Demos suggests.

It urges the government and secret services to be more open to stop extremist groups using conspiracy theories to discredit them.

A Demos spokesman said: "Less-secret services could make Britain safer."

The study calls for greater communication with trusted community leaders and individuals.

The report - entitled the Power of Unreason - says groups use conspiracy theories to recruit and radicalise people to commit acts of violence.

An example of one such theory is that the bombings in New York and London, on 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005 respectively, were "inside jobs" carried out by authorities in the US and UK.

Other theories highlighted were that "freemasons control the world economy through manipulation of paper currency", that the UK government is "consciously seeking to destroy Islam" and that a "conspiracy between the Japanese government, the US, and the Jews existed to gain world domination".

The study claims such theories are frequently adopted by extremist groups to demonise outsiders, discredit moderates and push them in a more extreme and sometimes violent direction.

The report's authors made a number of recommendations concerning the counter-terrorism work carried out by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and the government.

The publication of all National Security Council annual reports, including outlining the risks to national security and the current terrorist threat, was among their suggestions aimed at improving transparency.

"Conspiracy Theorists = terrorists"

most conspiracy theorists are not even violent, let alone terrorists! you only feed their persecution complex when you tar them all with the same brush.

"reasonable" people can be just as dismissive and prejudiced as the "crazies".

well yes. but reasonable people are much less dismissive and prejudiced than the crazies.

http://wfmu.org/playlists/DX

Dave Emory (who I thought I linked to on this previously but must've been another thread) does radio shows about all kinds of crazy things, from actual covert government operations to weird UFO stories. Two years ago he had a series of shows about Sarah Palin's links with secessionist and white power groups, and one of his pet conspiracies is that Ronald Reagan let an ex-Nazi pick all his cabinet members and that basically after WWII Nazis have infiltrated American politics. There's some fictional book that he says basically describes what has happened FOR REAL, but I can't find the name of it...