Greg Carlwood has become a talent scout for conspiracy theories |330|

Given what we know of US elite - a bunch who conducted many wars, and supported even more; who tortured and slaughered people on its land and abroad; who installed a propaganda machine breeding fear to the whole world and hostility to any alternative; who forgiven countless misdeeds to its corporate buddies yet was always eager to punish a guy smonking a joint; who gave up any pretense of "democracy" and is constantly seeking "civil rights" it once promiced to populace... Should I continue... I think there is no need to do so, so let's move to a conclusion: there is nothing inherenty unthinkable in a notion of state(-sponsored) terrorism within the state's own borders. As long as most people remain docile, repeat state interpretations, follow its institutions and never actively resist, let alone uprise, guys and gals above would be free to do the most horrendously atrocious and the most derangedly idiotic deeds they want, and get away with them.
Paradoxically, the 'US elite' are usually the first to rock up with humanitarian aid when disaster strikes.
 
Given what we know of US elite - a bunch who conducted many wars, and supported even more; who tortured and slaughered people on its land and abroad; who installed a propaganda machine breeding fear to the whole world and hostility to any alternative; who forgiven countless misdeeds to its corporate buddies yet was always eager to punish a guy smonking a joint; who gave up any pretense of "democracy" and is constantly seeking "civil rights" it once promiced to populace... Should I continue... I think there is no need to do so, so let's move to a conclusion: there is nothing inherenty unthinkable in a notion of state(-sponsored) terrorism within the state's own borders. As long as most people remain docile, repeat state interpretations, follow its institutions and never actively resist, let alone uprise, guys and gals above would be free to do the most horrendously atrocious and the most derangedly idiotic deeds they want, and get away with them.

Some good addition from the Center for the Stateless Society. Would love to learn your thoughts!
 

Rockefeller and his dimes... a true break through in the art of being rich while controlling optics.
rockefeller-foundation-rock-5-13.jpg
 
I always struggle with grand conspiracies and the massive amount of collusion that seems to be required. Folks just seem to be a) not that smart (or more directly the level of intelligence required seems prohibitive) and b) all too willing to share "confidential" information with others. Mix in the modern cell-phone audio/video recording capabilities and it gets even harder. I will admit this comes from someone who has an a priori negative bias for belief in conspiracies and as such done no serious research/reading on the topic. So, I apologize if I offend. By no means am I intending to judge.
 
I always struggle with grand conspiracies and the massive amount of collusion that seems to be required.
Yes, the sheer number of people involved would seem to be an extremely foolhardy risk to take. It would only take one agent to get stoned, get God, develop Alzheimer's, change sides, and the thing comes apart. Given that one of the more common conspiracies is people were told in advance to stay away from the twin towers, how come all those individuals stayed home based on one-to-one warnings, but not a single person involved in the operation has been found? No one from aviation, demolition, the higher reaches of state or the emergency services, dirty ops has left a trail? Scores of people apparently missed work, each with a mentor who convinced them it wasn't a crank call, but none have admitted they got a message? It seems inconceivable.

The gunpowder plot to blow up parliament and the king was uncovered because one conspirator warned a friend to stay away, yet in an age of mobile phones and the internet numerous individuals survived and not one has come forward.
 
Yes, the sheer number of people involved would seem to be an extremely foolhardy risk to take. It would only take one agent to get stoned, get God, develop Alzheimer's, change sides, and the thing comes apart. Given that one of the more common conspiracies is people were told in advance to stay away from the twin towers, how come all those individuals stayed home based on one-to-one warnings, but not a single person involved in the operation has been found? No one from aviation, demolition, the higher reaches of state or the emergency services, dirty ops has left a trail? Scores of people apparently missed work, each with a mentor who convinced them it wasn't a crank call, but none have admitted they got a message? It seems inconceivable.

The gunpowder plot to blow up parliament and the king was uncovered because one conspirator warned a friend to stay away, yet in an age of mobile phones and the internet numerous individuals survived and not one has come forward.

There has been an effort to address this mathematically:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35411684
 
A few things that stood out to me, from the very end of the interview:

Greg mentioned that outliers will occasionally break through and escape the trap, so to speak, and the elites allow it because it doesn't threaten the system if only a few people get out. I tend to take that a step further and say that having those outliers get through actually strengthens the system, because it gives the elites a chance to point at them and say "See? These people made it! Clearly there's nothing wrong with the system, because if there was, no one would ever make it!" So, you use that to convince people that there's nothing going on behind the scenes, and they stop looking for it and dismiss anyone who says there's anything going on.

This might seem extreme to others here, but I can't help but wonder how suicide might factor into all of this. Toward the end, Greg said that you can acknowledge how bad and difficult things are, but that doesn't mean you should stop fighting the uphill battle. Well, what if someone decides that the best way for them is to simply egress? I mean, if we're looking at it from a big-picture, spiritual standpoint, I don't see how committing suicide to leave this world is much different from moving out of a bad neighborhood or ending a bad marriage. And yet I see a lot of condemnation for suicide, even among a lot of people in spiritual communities. Lots of talk about how it's the biggest mistake you can make, how you'll be sent back to live through all the same problems until you "get it right", and so on. One of the things Alex and Greg discussed is that every group and movement can and has been infiltrated. If that's the case, I have to wonder if some elements of spiritual community may have been infiltrated as well, to spread propaganda against a legitimate and highly effective tool of resistance.

I guess I'm really getting into the conspiracy spirit today.
Peter Gelderloos wrote a book called, "How Nonviolence Protects The State," that reasons in a similar way: allowing nonviolence makes the state look benevolent, (but it won't make the state change at all. (And yes, he addresses Ghandi and MLK.))

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state
 
All the reasons for not believing conspiracies are where most conspiracists start. I dismissed conspiracies for years, saying that, yes, people get together for financial purposes and it may look sinister/conspiratorial, but it's not like they're dressed in black cloaks in dark rooms planning out all forms of nefarious misdeeds (like 9/11)! Everyone somewhat calculates the number of people needed to be involved and the chances against one of them speaking up. Everyone initially defaults to pedestrian explanations of conspiracies.

I had a friend who believed the Mena conspiracies and had what I remember as an old VHS on the subject. It had grainy images and I found it easy to not take too seriously at all. I was open to the idea that they may be right after all, but I didn't think they could really prove such a thing (with their fuzzy pics). This is how I viewed most conspiracies, coupled with the idea that the one presenting such things was a bit of a strange and isolated individual . . . probably single, in his late twenties and living in the low-lit basement of his parents' house, smoking cigs. Now, of course, I know the Mena thing on the whole is certainly true.

Also, I might point out, I considered myself fully non-conspiracist despite the fact that I fully disbelieved the official JFK and RFK narratives. These somehow didn't count because they were so old, which was ridiculous on my part. My first exposure to 911 conspiracy I now see as an almost perfect example of cognitive dissonance meets conspiracy realism: I somehow, absurdly, pictured a missile hitting the Pentagon plane exactly as it was entering the Pentagon, thus solving the problem without having to revert to deep conspiracy. I mean, it never even crossed my mind, even as a staunch Bush hater, that it could be anything other than something like that . . . and yet the evidence was right in front of me and really only pointed one direction. Then, after being a fully confirmed believer in 911 conspiracy, I still didn't really believe any others for quite a while. I didn't want to! What person, who considers themselves an intelligent and careful thinker, wants to be known for believing something that looked wildly absurd to them only a year before? I'll answer my own question: no one. It's a bit painful, to be honest.
 
maybe, but it seems like step 1 is determining what really happened.
Step 1 is for Crime and Accident Investigators and professional journalists. A good Conspiracy Theorist needs to construct a convincing story. The art is in creating an absurd conclusion (eg. the US government orchestrated 9/11) and then building an argument of pseudo-facts so that you can make people think twice about what actually happened. A good Conspiracy Theory encourages people of all persuasions to think about the world they live in. I do agree, however, with the argument that the internet has produced a litany of people who do not think for themselves and instead simply believe Conspiracy Theories no matter how absurd the theory is. The irony is that these people don't realise a horrible joke is being played on them.
 
What person, who considers themselves an intelligent and careful thinker, wants to be known for believing something that looked wildly absurd to them only a year before? I'll answer my own question: no one. It's a bit painful, to be honest.
I found it a valuable and worthwhile thing to do.

If something is (according to one's own assessment) correct, then it needs to be shared with others.

In my case, the "something that looked wildly absurd" was reincarnation. I freely shared this with other people. There were two motivations for sharing. One, a 'sanity check' - did other people think my views made sense, and two, if the information was actually true, it could be of benefit to everyone to know about it. The outcome? I came through the sanity check unscathed - no-one was dismissive. As for benefiting others, I've no idea, I hope I at least opened others up to the possibilities.
 
I found it a valuable and worthwhile thing to do.

If something is (according to one's own assessment) correct, then it needs to be shared with others.

In my case, the "something that looked wildly absurd" was reincarnation. I freely shared this with other people. There were two motivations for sharing. One, a 'sanity check' - did other people think my views made sense, and two, if the information was actually true, it could be of benefit to everyone to know about it. The outcome? I came through the sanity check unscathed - no-one was dismissive. As for benefiting others, I've no idea, I hope I at least opened others up to the possibilities.
I understand that. And it's certainly a positive thing.

But I'm more curious what you're driving at exactly with your other posts (in the past) on the subject of conspiracy and reality and/or making reality . . . Or am I getting that (enormously) wrong? Is your position that they're inherently negative and thus not good to dwell on?
 
I found it a valuable and worthwhile thing to do.

If something is (according to one's own assessment) correct, then it needs to be shared with others.

In my case, the "something that looked wildly absurd" was reincarnation. I freely shared this with other people. There were two motivations for sharing. One, a 'sanity check' - did other people think my views made sense, and two, if the information was actually true, it could be of benefit to everyone to know about it. The outcome? I came through the sanity check unscathed - no-one was dismissive. As for benefiting others, I've no idea, I hope I at least opened others up to the possibilities.
I don't personally share my thoughts on parapsychology or political conspiracy with many people at all. I start to say that I only rarely do in 'real life,' but I rarely do online, as well, except for here. I don't comment nearly as much on parapsychological items simply because my view of them is firmly of a trickster type: clearly true, but so slippery as to be almost impossible to pin down; this seems, to me, best exemplified in ufology.

Anyway, if I were to think of the people in real life - and of course these people know me personally, which changes something - I could also say that I've come through the sanity check unscathed, more or less, though that's never worried me . . . with both conspiracy and parapsychological things . . . though how we discern the truth of those two categories seems a bit, but not totally, different from each other.

As for benefitting others, in the case of conspiracy, I suppose the general argument would be that by understanding what has and is taking place, we'll be more apt to prevent it from happening again. Of course, I thought - pre-conspiracy days - by exposing the transparent lies that've led to war, we would be able to achieve more . . . But, I don't know how well any of that works, to be honest.

Ah, it seems I had something else to add, but it's 4am and I can't remember now . . . Perhaps mañana.
 
I understand that. And it's certainly a positive thing.

But I'm more curious what you're driving at exactly with your other posts (in the past) on the subject of conspiracy and reality and/or making reality . . . Or am I getting that (enormously) wrong? Is your position that they're inherently negative and thus not good to dwell on?
It's very much an individual position. That is, I don't aim to extend my own outlook on the conspiracy topic and apply it to everyone else. Each person has their own individual reaction to the world, it would be a dull place if we all reacted in an identical manner. So on the one hand I found this subject area took me to darker places in my journey through life. On the other hand, if other people find it beneficial, that's ok too.

I should add that visiting darker areas isn't in itself necessarily a bad thing. It's just that I'd already been there - rather a lot darker in fact. It was while on the upward path out of the darkness that I encountered these ideas which caused a temporary slowing down of my travel. Hence my disinterest - why climb on board a bus which is going to places I'd just come from?
 
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It's very much an individual position. That is, I don't aim to extend my own outlook on the conspiracy topic and apply it to everyone else. Each person has their own individual reaction to the world, it would be a dull place if we all reacted in an identical manner.
That's pretty much my position. I would add that conspiracy theorists often think us civilians are naïve or purposely looking the wrong way. I don't think it's that, I'm sure conspiracies happen, but like evil itself it's mostly a banal business. The kind of three ring circus conspiracies, with their endless web of counter intuitive reasoning are not necessary to fulfil covert agendas. WW2, perhaps the biggest criminal conspiracy ever perpetrated, began when a bunch of thugs took advantage of the downtrodden populace in a war torn country by beating up anyone they disapproved off. From then on it was blatant opportunism, the big plan as it has come to be seen was made up on the hoof. I believe that's much closer to the way conspiracies actually work, and the stage set version with a cast of hundreds are the stuff of James Bond villainy.

It's more likely that no one is really in control, and that is the thing people are most afraid of. The fact that disaffected extremists can get through the supposed might of US intelligence is unthinkable, so it must be more complicated. Remember how the Soviet Union, probably the most highly controlled regime in world history, was brought down by workers striking in the Gdansk shipyards. Once things unravel no one has the power to stop them.
 
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