George S. Patton....

[Peter Gunn]

Agreed Steve.

Besides, the "umbrella man" issue has been solved for decades (and debunked by the way).

For years I wanted to believe a conspiracy killed Kennedy, in the mid '90's I researched (HARD) the whole issue, and unfortunately came up with a "no" to a conspiracy. However I understand that it is a polarizing event with strong emotions on both sides and it just about took a brick falling on my head for me to give up my cherished beliefs, but in the end, when you analyze the evidence, you come up with Lee Harvey Oswald. Your mileage may vary and we're all entitled to our opinions, I'm happy to discuss any theories about it in a civilized and friendly manner, but if so, please keep and open mind as some of the stuff I'll point to you may be 180 degrees from what you think you know about the assassination.

Regards.
Pete

 

[mikewint]

FBJ, as I respect your opinion to the contrary. As I stated earlier we absolutely do not want to open the Kennedy can of worms here or ever. Suffice it to say what I posted earlier "the larger the set of coincidences, the more certainty increases and the more it appears that there is some cause behind a remarkable coincidence." Circumstantial evidence can never prove anything but it certainly can raise questions and as those inconsistencies multiply. It is patently ridiculous to think Eisenhower "ordered" Patton's death but again as I stated previously underlings hoping to curry favor can "take the hint" and act on their own initiative.
Steve, as I posted above to FBJ, prove?...no... but question yes. "At the highest levels" maybe, maybe not. Again read the above to FBJ. Good old Ben was probably right in his analysis as was Sonny Barger who appropriated it. I would also point out that "witnesses" have come forth to contest the "official" accounts. At this late date I'm not sure what "real" evidence still exists.
What comes to my mind is:
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The inconceivability of these acts are exactly what is counted upon by those who commit the acts. Or in modern terminology "plausible deny-ability"

 

[bobbysocks]

I too have a hard time with using a traffic accident in the context that it happened as an assassination attempt. at the end of the war there were still hardline Nazis who continued a campaign of resistance. with all the ordnance able to be gathered they had no problems arming themselves with guns, explosives, panzerfaustes, etc. it would have been easier to ambush patton in a guerrilla raid where you had a high probability of success and you had a ready made and plausible scapegoat if you blame subversives.

the coroner from Pittsburgh Cyril Wecht weighed in on the second shooter using video of blood spray coming from the front of kennedy's head as proof. rounds will make a smaller hole going in and through mushrooming (expansion) of the round ( hunting round ) or tumbling leave a bigger exit hole. the video I saw was consistent with a round impacting the back of the head and exiting the front. I can recreate this with a watermelon or pumpkin. could there have been a second shooter...maybe. but not using that as evidence.

political assassinations by one's own peers or country isn't something I totally dismiss. one of the first cases I heard of as a child was caesar getting it in the senate. both patton and kennedy had ample enemies with resources. so to me it is not inconceivable it just needs harder proof to convince me.

 

[stona]

It's usually the obvious, a drunk driver or a British assassin? Traffic accidents would be a thoroughly unreliable way of ensuring someone's demise, though Nigel Farage did claim that the brakes on his car were tampered with.
Cheers
Steve

 

[mikewint]

Bobby, which will never be allowed to exist if done correctly. And again as previously posted you do NOT want an "in your face" overt act making your target a martyr. A simple, natural appearing, erased from existence whopsie, how sad. A simple "traffic accident", how common. STEVE, the accident itself agreed BUT: Target killed at the scene perfect, target survives, still good as he will be taken to a hospital wherein so many anonymous people perform whatever. Target succumbs to his injuries...perfect. Target rallies...still no problem. A set of hospital whites and you are just another cog in the machine free to administer anything.
Generally speaking, "in your face" assassinations are counter productive producing the opposite of their intent. "Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis" made a martyr of Caesar and initiated the end of the republic and a line of emperors and much later on made Lincoln into a mythical giant.
Rats, getting sucked into the morass: Conspiracy theorists have identified two possible roles for the Umbrella Man in the assassination plot. One says that he opened the umbrella as a signal to the shooter to go ahead and open fire, and that he raised the umbrella to communicate, "he isn't dead – keep shooting."
The other says that the umbrella itself was a weapon; Robert Cutler argues that it contained a paralysing dart that was fired at President Kennedy so that he could be more easily shot at. This idea is supported by the fact that Charles Senseney of the CIA admitted that the CIA did possess such a weapon in 1963. However, it seems unlikely, given that there's no evidence that the president was paralysed before the first bullet hit.
The first explanation is more plausible, except that a man called Louie Steven Witt came forward in 1978 claiming to be the Umbrella Man – and had a completely new explanation for the umbrella. He said that he brought the umbrella to heckle the president, because JFK's father had been a supporter of Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain was Prime Minister of Great Britain before Winston Churchill, and is highly controversial for his Nazi appeasement polices. His trademark fashion accessory – which subsequently became a derogatory symbol of appeasement – was a black umbrella.
However, some researchers find Witt's claims to be highly dubious. They point out that Witt claimed to have not seen the president get shot because the umbrella was in front of his face. This contradicts photos and footage of the umbrella man, showing the black umbrella to be above his head as the motorcade goes past. And would he really have kept the umbrella down, obscuring his view, after the first shots rang out? Theorists claim that Witt was either a false stand-in for the real Umbrella Man, planted by the conspirators, or he really was the Umbrella Man, but was lying about his true purpose at Dealey Plaza that day.

 

[bobbysocks]

guess we will know next year when the rest of the warren commission finds are to be released....

 

[mikewint]

Maybe not:
Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which established the Assassination Records Review Board, or ARRB, to carry out release of records related to the assassination. As a result, about five million pages of documents have been released and are available for review at the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland.
But the review board agreed to withhold about 1,100 records -- each record comprises 1-20 pages -- that are considered to contain information about confidential sources or methods or have national security implications.
The JFK Act required all records to be released by 2017, but it left some wiggle room for agencies to petition to have records withheld if disclosure would compromise "military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations."
With a very few exceptions, virtually all of the records identified as belonging to the Kennedy Collection have been opened in part or in full. Those documents that are closed in full or in part were done so in accordance with the Kennedy Act, mentioned above. According to the Act, no record could be withheld in part or in full, without the agreement of the ARRB. The guidelines for withholding records are outlined in the provisions in Section 6 of the Act. The full report of the ARRB (Assassination Records Review Board) is available online. A copy of the Act is in Adobe Acrobat PDFAppendix C of the ARRB Report mentioned above. In all cases where the ARRB agreed to withhold a record or information in a record, they stipulated a specific release date for the document. In addition, according to Section 5(g)(2)(D) of the Act, all records in the Kennedy Collection will be opened by 2017 unless certified as justifiably closed by the President of the United States.

 

[Peter Gunn]

*SNIP*

Conspiracy theories are constantly ridiculed and those who propose them a wacko nut-jobs, right? You might want to go back to my post #13 and check out some of those wacky conspiracies to see just how real they actually were.

Probably because most people proposing them come off as wacko nut-jobs spouting opinion and supposition instead of hard evidence and facts. Now, do not take that as an insult or an indictment of you, I have no idea if you are a whacko-nut-job or not. I do not think you are. In fact, you remind me of my brother, he did two tours in Vietnam and holds the same view about these events as you do. Makes for some fun times at holiday gatherings I can tell you.

You raise valid issues over past events in history that can be qualified as conspiracies in the purest definition of the word. Not many will actually deny those events of questionable character/morals, (although the Silkwood case is far from conclusive). I do not disagree that conspiracies do in fact exist. It's just that not every major event in human history is the result of some shadowy all powerful all knowing Illuminati, life changing issues often just happen, it's the way of the universe.

In regards to Kennedy and Patton though, well, nothing in the Patton "conspiracy" passes the smell test, it pretty much stands on it's own for what it appears, a traffic accident with a tragic death of the hero, dime store novel stuff.

JFK, well, you are correct, opening that can of worms would occupy the rest of our lives in debate. One thing is for sure though, as I stated above, it is a polarizing event with great passions on both sides, the biggest reason is that no one wants to believe some pathetic loser with a mail order rifle could be solely responsible for the death of a U.S. President.

One last note, all the issues you listed have pretty much come to light and have been accepted as fact. JFK not so much, still no conclusive evidence of a conspiracy after 53 years and counting.

As always, Regards,
Pete

 

[mikewint]

Pete, no sweat, been called MUCH worse than a "wacky nut-job" in fact that's pretty close to an approbation.
I've always felt that when someone calls you anything there are two possibilities: (a) you are the name in which case you are neither more nor less than before and (b) you are not the name henceforth they are just making noises with their mouth.
It is the very outrageousness of these acts that allows them to escape detection as the majority will not be able to conceive of such an act actually being carried out by other humans, much as the acts of 9/11 were inconceivable to America. I watched live TV that AM an could not accept what I was actually seeing happen.
So, in short, I know with total certainty that it is possible to flip a coin 100 time and get 100 heads if I actually see you do it I'm gonna REALLY check out that coin.
So wacky-nut job - opinions are divided but all would agree I am a

 

[bobbysocks]

ok was thinking about this last night and thought of this. lets say if the patton assassination was "A simple, natural appearing, erased from existence whoopsie,"....not a classical ambush as to not make a myrtar, etc,...then why wasn't this same strategy/ tactic employed with kennedy? the secret service in the early 60s was nothing like it is today. the president was extremely accessible and vetting people who could get near him was a long tedious process that was wrought with error. you could tour the white house and actuall see the president in the halls. if a high powered entity wished to take him out of the picture it would have been much easier for them back then than it is today to do it in a quiet, out of sight way. infact, many of changes in the secret service's protocols and SOPs are direct results of failures and near failures...a lessons learned you could say. heck even years later squeaky fromme was able to level a 45 mere feet away from prez ford's nose! had she really known what she was doing he would have not left that encounter standing. all the powers that be that would wish kennedy harm were highly organized, had intelligence wings, had a covert wing or agency, had everything they needed to make it look like kennedy suffered from a freak heart attack or stroke or a drug overdose ( if you believe those rumors). why depart from the quiet "traffic accident" type of assassination if it worked so well? why wait for crowded dealey plaza with thousands of witnesses when you can do this quietly and with less controversy? also where you have far "less loose ends" to have to clean up. too many links in the chain for me. too many opportunities to be discovered. the only one who needs a window of opportunity like dealey plaza is a small group with limited intel and resources....a lone gunman, oswald or small group. it drew too much attention and controversy and possible "fingerprint" that a larger power would not want...unless they are arrogant and stupid.

 

[Peter Gunn]

Well said Mike, couldn't agree more, actually I probably am in more agreement with a lot you say than it might seem. Also love the graphic!

 

[mikewint]

Bobby, The difference is in what the assassin(s) want to accomplish. The blatant "in your face" type WANT all the news exposure possible. The assassin has an agenda to fulfill.

The nobodies who want fame and to be remembered in history

Mark David Chapman who shot John Lennon 5 times with a .38 revolver said: "Lennon was a phony of the highest degree, but there were others who could – and would- have served the same purpose." He recalled that he had considered shooting Johnny Carson or Elizabeth Taylor instead, and said again that he chose Lennon because the ex-Beatle was more accessible. He also stated: "'I felt that by killing John Lennon I would become somebody."

James Earl Ray who shot Martin Luther King from ambush. Ray was an escaped convict, a strong racist who hated the integration changes sweeping the country, and who thought fame and money would be his after the killing. Captured by the FBI 5 months after the killing, he confessed to the murder then spent the rest of his life trying to reverse that confession. He stated that Raoul whom Ray had met in Canada had planned the murder and fired the shot. Later on he suggested a conspiracy involving the government had been behind the assassination. Just before his death Ray told Dexter King, Martin's son, that he had had nothing to do with his father's killing.

Then we have the Political and Ideological Killers

Gavrilo Princip who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne) and his wife Sophie. The couple were touring Sarajevo in an open car, with surprisingly little security, when Serbian nationalist Nedjelko Cabrinovic threw a bomb at their car; it rolled off the back of the vehicle and wounded an officer and some bystanders. Later that day, on the way to visit the injured officer, the archduke's procession took a wrong turn at the junction of Appel quay and Franzjosefstrasse, where one of Cabrinovic's cohorts, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, happened to be loitering.

Seeing his opportunity, Princip fires 2 shots into the car, shooting Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at point-blank range. He hits Ferdinand in the neck and Sophie in the stomach. Princip then swallows cyanide and turns the gun on himself, but was prevented from shooting it by a bystander who threw himself upon the young assassin. A mob of angry onlookers attacked Princip, who fought back and was subsequently wrestled away by the police. Meanwhile, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie lay fatally wounded in their limousine as it rushed to seek help; they both died within the hour.

Cabrinovic and Princip were members of a seven man, state sponsored, violent, terrorist gang known as the Black Hand Society. They are angry that Greater Serbia does not have self-rule and is instead ruled by Austria. In addition Princip is dying of tuberculosis and wants his death to accomplish something. He sees himself as a freedom fighter and patriot. Too young to hang he is sentenced to prison where he dies of tuberculosis 4 years later.

John Wilkes Booth shoots Abraham Lincoln. Booth, a member of a famous acting family (many considered Booth's father, Junius Brutus Booth, the finest Shakespearean actor of his generation, and Booth's older brother, Edwin is commonly named among the greatest American actors of all time), John Wilkes Booth enjoyed a phenomenally successful stage career during the Civil War: by 1864, he earned $20,000 a year, at a time when the average Northern family earned around $300 annually. A Marylander by birth, Booth was an open Confederate sympathizer during the war. A strong supporter of slavery, Booth believed that Lincoln was determined to overthrow the Constitution and to destroy his beloved South.

After Lincoln's reelection in November 1864, Booth devised a plan to kidnap the president and spirit him to Richmond, where he could be ransomed for some of the Confederate prisoners languishing in northern jails. Booth enlisted a group of friends from Washington to aid him in his attempt. That winter, Booth and his conspirators plotted a pair of elaborate plans to kidnap the president. He gave up acting to focus on these schemes, and spent more than $10,000 to buy supplies to outfit his band of kidnappers. Neither of his two kidnapping plans worked. After Lee's surrender Booth gave up the notion of kidnapping and now planned to assassinate the president along with top officials his administration: besides Lincoln and General Grant, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson were to be killed the same night by other members of Booth's gang. Booth appears to have plotted the murders in the belief that the simultaneous assassination of four top officials would throw the North and the Republican Party into chaos long enough for the Confederacy to reassemble itself. Booth envisioned himself as becoming a Confederate hero finally surpassing his two brothers fame.

Then we have the religious and revenge Killers

Nathuram Godse shoots Mahatma Gandhi. Hindus extremists thought that Gandhi's insistence on non-violence and non-retaliation prevented them from defending themselves against attack. Ominous cries of 'Let Gandhi die!' were heard in Delhi, where Gandhi was occupying a mansion called Birla Lodge.

A group of Hindu fanatics, who detested Gandhi's calls for tolerance and peace, set off a bomb some yards from him, which did no harm. It was not the first attempt on Gandhi's life.

Nine days later one of the fanatics, a man in his thirties named Nathuram Godse, returned to Delhi, armed with a Beretta automatic pistol. About five o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, the 78-year-old Gandhi, frail from fasting, was being helped across the gardens of Birla House by his greatnieces on his way to a prayer meeting when Nathuram Godse emerged from the admiring crowd, bowed to him and shot him three times at point-blank range in the stomach and chest. Gandhi raised his hands in front of his face in the conventional Hindu gesture of greeting, and slumped to the ground, mortally wounded. In the confusion there was no attempt to call a doctor or get the dying man to hospital and he died within half an hour.

Nathuram Godse tried but failed to shoot himself and was seized and hustled away while the shocked, hysterical crowd cried out, Kill him, kill him!' and threatened to lynch him. He was tried for murder in May and hanged in November the following year.

Satwant Singh and Beant Singh shoot Indira Gandhi (4th Prime Minister of India). During the 1980s, a Sikh separatist movement developed in India, which Gandhi attempted to repress. Sikh extremists held a campaign inside the Golden Temple, and Gandhi ordered some 70,000 soldiers to purge the sacred space. More than 450 Sikhs died and the Sikh temple was heavily damaged. Gandhi was on her way to and interview when, a trusted bodyguard, Beant Singh who was a Sikh whom she had known for 10 years, pulled out a .38 revolver and shot her point-blank 3 times. Another bodyguard, Satwant Singh also a Sikh, who had been assigned just 5 months earlier, then took out an automatic weapon and shot 30 rounds into her body. Gandhi, still alive, was rushed to the hospital where she was operated on though her injuries were very severe. She was pronounced dead 4 hours later. R. K. Dhawan, Mrs. Gandhi's secretary, overruled intelligence and security officials who had ordered the removal of Sikh policemen, including her eventual assassins, as a security threat. Beant Singh was killed by gunfire at the scene of the assassination. Satwant Singh was arrested and Kehar Singh was later arrested for conspiracy in the assassination. Both were sentenced to death and hanged in Tihar jail in Delhi.

Faisal bin Musad shoots King Faisal bi Abdulaziz al Saud. Faisal bin Musad was the King's half brother's son and as such had an open invitation to the palace and King. He calmly entered the palace and when the King embraced him, he pulled out a gun and shot the King twice in the chin and ear. Still alive, the King was rushed to the hospital and operated on. Unsuccessful the king soon died. Faisal was avenging the death of Prince Khaled bin Musaid, the brother of Prince Faisal bin Musaid. King Faisal instituted modern and secular reforms that led to the installation of television, which provoked violent protests, one of which was led by Prince Khalid, who during the course of an attack on a television station was shot dead by a policeman. Faisal bin Musad was convicted of regicide and publicly beheaded.

Then we have the FUBAR assassination

Unknown Person(s) shoot and bomb Benazir Bhutto. The confused and ineptly investigated assassination of Pakistan's female, two time, Prime Minister and leader of the opposition Pakistan's People Party remain unknown. In fact so inept was the investigation that not even the cause of her death is known.

Shortly after leaving a political rally in her bullet-proof Toyota Land Cruiser, Bhutto opened the sun roof and stood up to wave to her supporters exposing her head and chest. Shots were then fired at her and then a suicide bomber detonated next to her car. Initial reports stated that bomb shrapnel had killed her. Pakistan's Interior Ministry stated that the force of the bomb blast had caused her to hit her head on the sun roof. Bhutto's aides stated that she had been shot twice before the bomb blast. Doctors initially reported gunshot wounds then changed to a depressed skull fracture. Police officials almost immediately caused the entire scene to be hosed down destroying any additional evidence. No autopsy was performed.

On the day of the assassination, al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid is said to have claimed responsibility for the assassination. In his statement to the media, al-Yazid stated that al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the killing in October 2007. U.S. intelligence officials have said that they cannot confirm this claim of responsibility, nonetheless, U.S. analysts have said that al-Qaeda was a likely, or even prime suspect. For its part, the Pakistani Interior Ministry stated that it had proof that al-Qaeda was behind the assassination, stating "that the suicide bomber belonged to an Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim militant group. The Interior Ministry also claimed to have intercepted a statement by militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, said to be linked to al-Qaeda, in which he congratulated his followers for carrying out the assassination. Two days later a Mehsud spokesman told the Associated Press that Mehsud was not involved in the assassination: "I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don't strike women. It is a conspiracy by government, military and intelligence agencies." The Pakistan Peoples Party also called the government's blame of Mehsud a diversion: "The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention". In the US, CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed that Mehsud and his network was responsible.

 

[GrauGeist]

I don't buy into conspiracy theories (chemtrails, anyone?) but let's look at it like this:
Patton was very outspoken against the Soviets AND he had the respect of the Germans to the point that he could have rallied them to take up arms and start a new war. There was a resentment of the Soviets from the NSDAP propaganda and then from the actions of the Red Army against the civilians as they closed in on Berlin.

From all political angles, he was perceived as being too powerful and a liability to an uneasy peace between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies.

If we look back through history (including the Roman Empire), we'll see that he isn't the first General to be silenced.

 

[mikewint]

Dave, the Chemtrails group are another example of why the very term conspiracy applied to anything automatically gets that theory discounted as fringe lunatic stuff not worthy of any real consideration. Something that real conspirators hope for and rely on to get away with their acts. Conspiracy is however very real and common.
Conspiracy is one of those "loaded with connotations" words that evoke different images to different people. In essence a conspiracy is a secret plan made by two or more people to do something that is harmful or illegal. Ok, so far so good.
Now, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) states: An agreement to restrict production, sales, or output is just as illegal as direct price fixing, because reducing the supply of a product or service drives up its price.
OK, then they state: A uniform, simultaneous price change could be the result of price fixing, but it could also be the result of independent business responses to the same market conditions. For example, if conditions in the international oil market cause an increase in the price of crude oil, this could lead to an increase in the wholesale price of gasoline.
Now, our gasoline prices here were down to $1.39 per gallon a few months ago and are now $2.00 per gallon. At the lower price crude was $32 per barrel at the high the price is $38 per barrel. Supply and demand yes BUT several refineries have shut down reducing the supply to in effect hike the price. Conspiracy? Depend on what an "Agreement" is defined as. A couple of years ago when prices were approaching $5 per gallon the big oil companies were posting the largest profits in their histories.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
Let's look at another "Big" business, the Ford Motor Company. Records indicated that Ford had first conducted rear-end collision tests on the Pinto in December 1970, months after it was already in production. Initially, 11 carefully coordinated crashes were conducted, and in all but three of them, gas tanks ruptured and burst into flames. In the three tests that didn't result in fires, the cars had prototype safety devices that engineers had developed while working with suppliers.
Most effective was the use of a rubber bladder/liner produced by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Despite rupturing the exterior of the tank, no fuel was spilled, and no fire resulted. It was estimated that the unit cost of bladders would have amounted to $5.08 per car.
The second method that had been employed was an extra steel plate attached to the rear of the car just behind the bumper, isolating the tank from direct contact during impact. It successfully warded off a blow at 30 mph, helping to keep the tank intact. Experts felt that this part could have cost up to $11 per car to install.
The third successful fix was a rather simple plastic insulator fitted on the differential that would keep the bolts from ever making contact with the fuel tank. Cost of this item was less than $1 per car.
Several company memos presented as evidence during the civil trials revealed that these remedies were discussed, with the conclusion that to shut down production and retool would be too expensive. Most damaging to Ford were memos found that showed that Ford had done a detailed cost analysis of corporate liability in the event of having to compensate crash victims.
Company lawyers calculated the value of a human life at around $200,000, while a serious burn injury was worth about $67,000. Using an estimate of 180 deaths and 180 serious burns, while the cost to redesign and rework the Pinto's gas tank would cost close to $137 million, while possible liability costs worked out to around $49 million.
Needless to say the company continued to produce the unchanged Pinto. Conspiracy?
Conspiracy theories get a bad rap when the weird get on board:
Reptilian Elite
The 'reptoid hypothesis' is a conspiracy theory which advances the argument that reptilian humanoids live among us with the intention of enslaving the human race. It has been championed by former BBC sports presenter David Icke who believes that deceased American comedian Bob Hope, members of the Royal Family and former US Presidents George W Bush and Bill Clinton are part of the "Anunnaki" race who came to earth for "monatomic gold". Some critics accused Icke of anti-Semitism, alleging that his talk of reptiles was code for Jews – but he clarified that the lizards to which he referred were literal, not metaphorical.
Elvis Presley faked his death
In 1977, the world mourned the King as Elvis Presley died at the age of 42 – or did he? Many Elvis fans believe that he went into hiding and really died in the 1990s, although sightings continue to the present day.
The Holocaust never occurred
Despite overwhelming evidence and an admission and apology from Germany decades ago, conspiracy groups continue to claim that nearly 6 million Jews were not killed by Nazis during the Holocaust. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for one, has called the Holocaust a "myth" and suggested that Germany and other European countries, rather than Palestine, provide land for a Jewish state.
Now these groups do not deny that Jews were interned in prison camps during World War II; rather, they argue that the number of deaths was greatly exaggerated. Gas chambers are a particular sticking point: Holocaust deniers say they were purely a rumor or, if they indeed existed, were not powerful enough to kill And the photographs of emaciated and dying Jews? Attorney Edgar J. Steele, a revisionist, says, "All those pictures of skinny people and bodies stacked like cordwood were actually of Czechs and Poles and Germans who died of typhus, which was rampant in the camps.
Faked Moon Landings
The U.S. government, desperate to beat the Russians in the space race, faked the lunar landings, with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin acting out their mission on a secret film set, located (depending on the theory) either high in the Hollywood Hills or deep within Area 51.
Their evidence is the film of Aldrin planting a waving American flag on the moon, which critics say proves that he was not in space. The flag's movement, they say, clearly shows the presence of wind, which is impossible in a vacuum. NASA says Aldrin was twisting the flagpole to get the moon soil, which caused the flag to move. (And never mind that astronauts have brought back hundreds of independently verified moon rocks.) Theorists have even suggested that filmmaker Stanley Kubrick helped NASA fake the first lunar landing, given that his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odessey proves that the technology existed back then to artificially create a spacelike set. And as for Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee — three astronauts who died in a fire while testing equipment for the first moon mission? They were executed by the U.S. government, which feared they were about to disclose the truth.
Cover-up or Conspiracy?
Cigarette smoking and cancer
In 1950, a physician and epidemiologist, Dr. Ernst Wynder, published a landmark study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, pointing to cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer. In response, six major cigarette makers funded a massive research effort of their own — not so much to find out whether their product did indeed pose a risk, but to publically discredit the report.
In January 1954, the Tobacco Institute Research Committee, which later changed its name to the Council for Tobacco Research, ran full-page ads in 400 newspapers claiming that "eminent doctors and research scientists have publicly questioned the claimed significance of these experiments" and asserting that although the industry believed that smoking wasn't hazardous to health, it pledged to assist "the research effort into all phases of tobacco use and health".
In truth, the industry's own scientists already knew there was a possible link to cancers; a 1953 survey of scientific literature by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco chemist Claude Teague, for example, concluded that "studies of clinical data tend to confirm" a link between heavy smoking and lung cancer. Yet they continued to try to cloud the issue. A 1972 industry memo described an ingenious strategy of "creating doubt about the health charge, without actually denying it".
Eventually, though, attorneys-general from 46 states in the U.S. joined in a massive lawsuit against the industry. The tobacco companies agreed in 1998 to pay out a staggering $10 billion annually – indefinitely – to make up for the damage they'd done, especially in health care costs.
Chernobyl
In April 1986, a crew at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine —then part of the Soviet Union — ran a seemingly routine test to see how long a reactor's turbines would continue to supply power to its circulating pumps in the event of a loss of electrical power. The reactor malfunctioned due to an inopportune power surge, and the fuel rods got stuck, overheating the water inside the reactor and causing a buildup of steam. The resulting explosions caused massive amounts of radioactive gases and debris to spew into the atmosphere for 10 days — the biggest such uncontrolled release in history not from a nuclear bomb.
Two workers died immediately from the explosion. Twenty-eight more, including six firemen who struggled to put out fires on one of the plant's rooftops, died later from radiation exposure, and winds carried the radiation far and wide across the Soviet Union and even to other European countries. But despite the magnitude of the disaster, Soviet officials didn't publicly admit that the accident had occurred until two days later, when Swedish officials sounded the alarm about increased levels of radiation drifting westward.
Then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev waited an astonishing three weeks before even mentioning the accident publicly. He later claimed, somewhat implausibly, that the Kremlin had difficulty getting the full story, and "we realized the entire drama only later." But the rest of the world responded with such scathing criticism that Gorbachev felt compelled to lift information restrictions.
Pedophile Priests
In 1973, Massachusetts-based Roman Catholic priest James R. Porter, sent a disturbing letter to Pope Paul VI. Porter admitted that he had been sexually abusing children for years, and asked that he be relieved of his duties before he hurt anyone else. "I know in the past that I used to hide behind a Roman collar, thinking that it would be a shield for me," he said.
But Porter's personnel file, obtained in 1992 by the Boston Globe, revealed that Porter had considerable help covering up his crimes against roughly 100 young boys and girls. In the course of his 14-year career, Porter had been removed from his duties at least eight times by superiors because he had assaulted children, and sent to receive mental health treatment for pedophilia — only to be allowed to resume his work after they were satisfied that had been cured of his predatory predilections .
For decades, the Catholic hierarchy — both in the U.S. and in other countries — engaged in a systematic effort to cover up crimes by its clergy. But when victims of priestly abuse finally began going public in the 1980s, widespread outrage led the truth to come out.
A study commissioned in the 2000s by church officials in the U.S. revealed that between 1950 and 2002, 4,392 priests had been accused of sexual abuse. Some, such as Porter, ultimately were convicted and sent to prison. But the church itself also paid dearly for the cover-up. By one estimate in the late 2000s, various U.S. archdioceses have paid out more than $3 billion to settle lawsuits by victims.
For our Britisher members: Fleet Street Phone Hacking
The first revelations emerged in November 2005, when Clive Goodman, royal editor at the tabloid News of the World, wrote a story about a previously unrevealed knee injury suffered by Prince William. The Royal family quickly guessed that someone had hacked into the prince's mobile phone voicemail to get the scoop. Scotland Yard arrested Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator employed by the paper.
The pair was sentenced to jail in 2007 after revealing that they'd obtained back-door codes used by network operators and used them to listen in on several hundred messages.
In 2009, the Guardian, a rival newspaper, revealed that News of the World's parent company, News Group International, had paid out more than $1 million British pounds (about U.S. $1.5 million) to quietly settle lawsuits that might reveal the use of phone hacks and other data thefts to obtain inside information about important people. In 2011, the Guardian further reported that police had discovered that the phones of more than 5,800 people — including celebrities such as actor Hugh Grant — had been hacked by Mulcaire.
As a result of the scandal, international media baron Rupert Murdoch shut down News of the World in 2011 In 2012, he admitted that there had been a cover-up and publicly apologized, claiming that had he understood the depth of the misdeeds, he "would have torn the place apart"

 

[mikewint]

Dave mentioned CHEMTRAILS. If you are not familiar with that bit of pseudoscience:
We've known that planes form contrails, or long, reflective clouds, since the end of World War I. But in the late 1990s, many people became alarmed by what they believed were new kinds of contrails, dubbed chemtrails that, were being used to change the Earth's atmosphere. What likely kicked off this sudden chemtrail craze was a paper published by the Air Force in 1996, "Weather as a Force Multiplier," where a group of military researchers speculated about how they could use weather manipulation as a form of combat. The paper was explicitly presented as a work of speculative futurism about what could happen in the year 2023, but it raised suspicions in the civilian community. In 1999, environmental journalist William Thomas published a paper the popularized the topic of chemtrails, toxic clouds that the Air Force was testing to control the weather for geoengineering. He based some of his ideas on the Air Force paper, but also on a patent filed in 1991 for a "Stratospheric Welsbach Seeding for reduction of global warming." That patent was related to research into the idea that seeding the upper atmosphere with reflective particles might slow global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space. So Thomas work steered the chemtrail conspiracy away from weather control for combat, and into weather control for combating global warming.But journalists interested in fringe science and the paranormal decided that both the Air Force paper and the patent were probably a tacit admission that the Air Force was already conducting weather-controlling tests. And "chemtrails" were the sign of those tests. Art Bell, whose Coast to Coast radio show covers many fringe science topics, popularized the chemtrail conspiracy even further.
The fires were fanned in 2001, when the U.S. Congress considered the Space preservation Act of 2001, which would have permanently banned space based weapons. In this report, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), claimed that chemtrails were one of the many 'exotic weapons' being used by the government that should be banned. Many proponents have interpreted this statement to be an admission of chemtrail use by the federal government. But if that's true, we'd have to contemplate the reality of the other threats Kucinich mentioned in the bill, including extraterrestrial weapons, tectonic weapons and psychotronic weapons. The bill never made it out of committee.
Today, people in the chemtrail conspiracy community report that they've grown sick after seeing contrails in the sky. Many believed that contrail clouds were a new phenomenon, delivering dangerous "geoengineering" chemicals that were making them sick. They've held large protests in a number of large cities.
There is no scientific evidence linking the formation of contrails with illness. And the evidence that has come from the chemtrail community is not persuasive. Michael Murphy's frequently-cited documentary, What In the World Are They Spraying? tries to make the case that we're seeing higher levels of aluminum in rain since the advent of chemtrails. Murphy tested the aluminum content of rain by measuring the aluminum content of soil, which he found had roughly 7% aluminum. This amount of aluminum is well within the normal range for soil.
Murphy did eventually test rain for aluminum content and got the same result. But that measurement would is well within normal ranges too, because rain tends to pick up dust on its way down to Earth — we would expect both rain and snow to have mineral content that is similar to soil in the region. Indeed, the rain water tested by Murphy shows the same concentration of aluminum as tests conducted on rain water in 1967, well before fears of chemtrails existed.
Finally, Murphy and other chemtrail believers say that since the 1990schemtrails are increasing the mortality rate of respiratory illness. Claims by experts in Murphy's film state that respiratory mortality in the US have increased in the past six years directly implying that chemtrails must be the cause of this increase. This statement is very misleading. It's true that respiratory illness is now the third most common cause of death in the U.S., up from fourth place. But this was actually due to a decrease in the mortality of strokes; respiration mortality rates did not change.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Dave mentioned CHEMTRAILS. If you are not familiar with that bit of pseudoscience:
We've known that planes form contrails, or long, reflective clouds, since the end of World War I. But in the late 1990s, many people became alarmed by what they believed were new kinds of contrails, dubbed chemtrails that, were being used to change the Earth's atmosphere. What likely kicked off this sudden chemtrail craze was a paper published by the Air Force in 1996, "Weather as a Force Multiplier," where a group of military researchers speculated about how they could use weather manipulation as a form of combat. The paper was explicitly presented as a work of speculative futurism about what could happen in the year 2023, but it raised suspicions in the civilian community. In 1999, environmental journalist William Thomas published a paper the popularized the topic of chemtrails, toxic clouds that the Air Force was testing to control the weather for geoengineering. He based some of his ideas on the Air Force paper, but also on a patent filed in 1991 for a "Stratospheric Welsbach Seeding for reduction of global warming." That patent was related to research into the idea that seeding the upper atmosphere with reflective particles might slow global warming by reflecting sunlight back into space. So Thomas work steered the chemtrail conspiracy away from weather control for combat, and into weather control for combating global warming.But journalists interested in fringe science and the paranormal decided that both the Air Force paper and the patent were probably a tacit admission that the Air Force was already conducting weather-controlling tests. And "chemtrails" were the sign of those tests. Art Bell, whose Coast to Coast radio show covers many fringe science topics, popularized the chemtrail conspiracy even further.
The fires were fanned in 2001, when the U.S. Congress considered the Space preservation Act of 2001, which would have permanently banned space based weapons. In this report, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), claimed that chemtrails were one of the many 'exotic weapons' being used by the government that should be banned. Many proponents have interpreted this statement to be an admission of chemtrail use by the federal government. But if that's true, we'd have to contemplate the reality of the other threats Kucinich mentioned in the bill, including extraterrestrial weapons, tectonic weapons and psychotronic weapons. The bill never made it out of committee.
Today, people in the chemtrail conspiracy community report that they've grown sick after seeing contrails in the sky. Many believed that contrail clouds were a new phenomenon, delivering dangerous "geoengineering" chemicals that were making them sick. They've held large protests in a number of large cities.
There is no scientific evidence linking the formation of contrails with illness. And the evidence that has come from the chemtrail community is not persuasive. Michael Murphy's frequently-cited documentary, What In the World Are They Spraying? tries to make the case that we're seeing higher levels of aluminum in rain since the advent of chemtrails. Murphy tested the aluminum content of rain by measuring the aluminum content of soil, which he found had roughly 7% aluminum. This amount of aluminum is well within the normal range for soil.
Murphy did eventually test rain for aluminum content and got the same result. But that measurement would is well within normal ranges too, because rain tends to pick up dust on its way down to Earth — we would expect both rain and snow to have mineral content that is similar to soil in the region. Indeed, the rain water tested by Murphy shows the same concentration of aluminum as tests conducted on rain water in 1967, well before fears of chemtrails existed.
Finally, Murphy and other chemtrail believers say that since the 1990schemtrails are increasing the mortality rate of respiratory illness. Claims by experts in Murphy's film state that respiratory mortality in the US have increased in the past six years directly implying that chemtrails must be the cause of this increase. This statement is very misleading. It's true that respiratory illness is now the third most common cause of death in the U.S., up from fourth place. But this was actually due to a decrease in the mortality of strokes; respiration mortality rates did not change.

 

[GrauGeist]

 

[mikewint]

ZOWIE BATMAN! I stands corrected. FBJ would certainly be the one to be in the "know" about this stuff

 

[FLYBOYJ]

 

[GrauGeist]

Contrary to popular belief, "spraying" did not start in the 1960's but in the 1940's.

And the compounds used weren't barium, aluminum or whatever exotic elements (known or imaginary) that they can come up with...it was ammonium picrate, ammonium nitrate, TNT and iron - lots of it...