I am not offended by the insult 'conspiracy theorist'

[Philosoraptor]

I never was offended to be called one, and I'm still not. Nine eleven was a conspiracy and that's more than a mere theory.

More often than not the label of CT is thrown around as an insult, implying that you are an old crank, or demented, or angry so you just make shit up.

I don't care, I never did, stick and stones, rubber and glue.

Someday somebody will have the guts to say that many of the theories were in fact true, but I won't gloat.

[ck4829]

1. Amen to that

People used to say the CIA's involvement with the downfall of Allende was just a 'conspiracy theory' (Also happened on 9/11), but they were proved to be wrong.

The Path to 9/11

[hobbit709]

2. I revel in it

and in the long run, I've been able to gloat more often than not.

[bigtree]

3. keep looking

keep questioning

that's our responsibility. our government better goddamn well be accountable to our questions. don't put anything past these meglomaniacs.

[angstlessk]

4. For sure..the 'official story' is a conspiracy theory for sure...AND

a 'coincedence theory' to boot...the surviving passport? Gee..the government has 'secret evidence' Sadaam has WMD..and we should just give them the 'benefit of the doubt'..yeacht sure reight..

[Rex]

5. I never could understand the reason for arguing with someone

who, some here, call 'conspiracy nuts'. What is the point? You can't even begin to believe you will ever change their minds, so why try? It makes that person look like they have an agenda (don't we all) ack...a conspiracy!

IMO, the word 'conspiracy' is abused by way too many people and dismissed out of spite by others. It lessens the meaning, exactly what Karl Rove wants!

[lostnfound]

6. I have far more respect for those who ask questions and try to find out

the truth than for those who refuse to ask questions because they are afraid that the answers will be ugly or painful.

I wish people would stop equating the asking of questions to gullibility, when in fact the opposite is generally true.

One should have an open mind, "not so open that one's brains fall out", as the saying goes -- but in this bizarre world where we have a government run by pathological liars and a media that is habitually untrustworthy, it's darned hard to fault ordinary individuals for not being able to discern fiction from fact.

Especially when the people in the best position to have access to the most facts are totally untrustworthy.

[stepnw1f]

7. I Just Need Proof

Fuck... we haven't even had a real investigation.... HELLO? ANYBODY WHO DOESN'T HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT THE OFFICIAL STORY needs to snap out of it, or grow a pair.

[Rex]

9. Didn't you just hit the nail on the head!!!

So fucking true...we haven't had a real investigation yet! The FBI and the CIA, from day one, were being held back from doing their jobs. Why? Hey, I know! Let's investigate!

[stepnw1f]

14. People are Really Losing Clarity on This

I understand 9-11 is emotionally charged, but seriously... nobody KNOWS THE TRUTH! And until then, people will either believe the official story, or people won't. I really don't understand what is so wrong with those who don't buy the official story. I may disagree with specific claims they make but that doesn't make them nuts nor does it make me right either. We don't even know the truth, and today is the 5th anniversary under the tenure of this fascist prick called Bush.

And look at the Pentagon? They say there are two video tapes proving a passenger plane flew perfectly over the lawn without touching it, and slamming into the pentagon, yet they won't release it. Why wouldn't they? Why the mysteriousness of it all. Show the TAPE FULLY and get it over with! If a plane hit the damn Pentagon, it shouldn't be hard to prove.

Finally, If I were the President, and I knew a large part of the populace thought I was responsible for 9-11 or even incompetent, I would order the release of the video footage and prove beyond a doubt what happened. And I wouldn't have BLOCKED an investigation of 9-11, so that the country could move forward!

[Rex]

16. I hope that is the first thing the Dems do this November

when they takeover Congress. Start the first, real investigation into 9/11. We've waited 5 years and the 9/11 Commission report STILL sits, incomplete and full of unanswered questions. Gotta take baby steps.

[nashville_brook]

24. spend twice as much as the rpukes did on Whitewater and get a

"prosecutor" who is as biased toward the TRUTH as ken starr was to the rethuglican machine.

is that asking too much?

[Mr_Spock]

20. ... WHO DOESN'T HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT THE OFFICIAL STORY needs to grow a pair

...no hyperbole or sexism there. :(

[stepnw1f]

27. What's Your Beef with Me Tonight?

really? Come out and say it....

growing a pair could technically mean ovaries as well as balls... lol.

[Mr_Spock]

28. I'm just noticing a rant & responding to it

It just happens that you are on a roll tonight :D

[stepnw1f]

29. The Speed is Slow on My End

my replies to your posts are slow as hell. Any ways... cheers. I hope you checked out Olbermann tonight. Damn .... now that is a rant. He is good.

[Mr_Spock]

30. That was one great commentary

Keith really has a bead on the pulse of what this nation is supposed to be about.

[Parche]

8. conspiracy

But they link conspiracy with whacko's
And facts are not 'whacko'

That is when I draw the line, there are too many unanswered questions

[niallmac]

10. The 'Conpiracy Theorist' label is a warning to anyone

who dares to think beyond group think.
Alternative ideas themselves are not attacked or debated by the Bushites.
They can only argue with platitudes.
What is scorned and attacked is the insolence to authority that questions represent.

How many times do the White House thugs attack ideas logically? I think not much.
It is the person or persons who are attacked viciously with mockery, slander and libel.
Doesn't really matter if the mud they sling sticks. The thinker is tarnished and so goes the thought.

[Philosoraptor]

12. the right uses insults very effectively

cut and run, wild eyed liberals, appeasers, etc.

[panader0]

11. "Question Authority"!!!!

[pretzel4gore]

13. it must bug them...

the murder of jfk really took very little skill once the plan was up; and the perps (mcloy, hoover, dulles, ellsworth bunker et al) would never allow their names to be linked to the deed, cuz it was a cheap and sordid public execution of a wonderful man. 911, you gotta admit, is different. it took tremendous skill to plan, it took incredible nerve to carry out and it cost vast sums of money; thus the perps can be fairly easily id'd and so on, but, unlike in the jfk murder, the men who did it can never admit to it (cuz even their offspring probably be run outta town!) or let it become widely known, thus we can credit anyone with doing it, even osama bin laden, even martians! lol. and never will the pigs who secretly must want their handiwork recognized ever get it (cuz even the truth is now just a variation of vast leftwing conspiracy)

[davidwparker]

15. Me either. At one time, the planet being round was a conspiracy.

Later, those put to death for believing it were vindicated.

[Philosoraptor]

17. there's just no satisfaction in vindication AFTER execution

[davidwparker]

21. true

[Straight Shooter]

18. All it takes to make a conspiracy is two people.

It was never a big deal to me if someone said I was a conspiracy theorist or conspiracy nut. Check out the legal definition. Just paraphrasing, but conspiracy is as simple as two or more people conspiring to commit an illegal act, or conspiring not to stop an illegal act which they know will be committed.

If you and I conspire to rob a store, we're conspirators. If you and I overhear a couple other people conspiring to rob a store, and we discuss the situation and agree not to do anything to stop it, we're conspirators.

Conspiracy. BFD. Happens all the time, from the playground to the highest levels of government. In fact, September 11, 1973 culminated in one of the most heinous conspiracies of all time, when Pinochet was installed in Chile with a CIA-abetted coup.

How many people would have believed it back then? Compare that to the facts as we know them now.

[Skip Intro]

19. When you know you're being lied to, when the "official "story doesn't add

up, what choice is there left but to look at facts and statements and draw (obvious) conclusions?

I believe Afghanistan was about getting an oil pipeline completed.

I believe Iraq was probably about oil. Looking back, I'm not sure the secret agenda started with the malevolent forces now in power.

I've read too much. Heard too many lies.

And I agree with your post 100%.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

22. Some Are True, Some are False, Some Are The Inner Workings Of Lunatics.

When it comes to the theories of 9-11, the theories themselves run the gamut of sanity.

[intheflow]

23. Hey!

I posted something along these line in another thread almost at the exact same time you posted this! :hi:
I even gloated a little. :blush:

So obviously, I couldn't agree with you more.

I'd rather be labeled a progressive conspiracy theorist than be a regressive conspirator like *Co.©

[daninthemoon]

25. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy realist.

[democraticinsurgent]

26. time to reclaim the phrase as positive

remember how long it took before people would again admit to being liberal?

same problem here. "Conspiracy Theorist" was turned into a pejorative post JFK. Back then, it largely worked.

With today's technology, not so much. Otherwise 36% of the public wouldn't think that Bushco had their hands in 9/11. And that's with the lid on corporate media shut tight to 9/11 alternative thinking.

Imagine what it would be like if just one of the three networks would run with this.

Oh yeah, they won't. Not after what Rove did to Dan Rather.

[Mnemosyne]

36. Damn straight! Count me in. n/t

[OneBlueSky]

31. I consider myself a truth seeker, not a conspiracy theorist . . .

if I were a conspiracy theorist, the biggest conspiracy I could possibly hypothesize is the one that's being foisted upon us as the "official" story of 9/11 . . .

all I want is for the truth to come out -- because I KNOW that it hasn't yet . . .

[No Exit]

32. The loony moonbat conspiracy theorists

are the people who believe that the World Trade Center towers were taken down by 19 Arabs with boxcutters who were directed by a man in a cave in Afghanistan, who (in between dialysis treatments which he received through special medical equipment installed in his cave) directed their every move.

These same loony moonbat conspiracy theorists believe that the anthrax attacks were done by some Arab in New Jersey--some Arab who just happened to get hold of weaponized anthrax from the extremely secure Fort Detrick in Maryland, U.S.A.-- who flitted from mailbox to mailbox, casually dropping the loaded envelopes which were just coincidentally addressed to democrats and news media anchors.

[Philosoraptor]

33. officially, no one talks about anthrax.

Some things are so obvious the only way to deal with them is not talk about them.

[REP]

34. "Special Medical Equipment"

Y'all need to drop this part of your theory. There's two kinds of dialysis: peritoneal and hemodialysis. Peritoneal is designed to be done at home by the patient, usually at night while sleeping. Hemodialysis is usually done in a clinic because the machines are very, very expensive and only someone with a lot of money could afford either a hospital-size dialysizer or a portable one. Hm. You think that Bin Laden guy has any money? Think he could pay 15K for a machine to keep kimself a alive? The more often someone is able to do hemodialysis - say, daily - the fewer hours a day they have to do and the better their prognosis. Peritoneal (CCPD) and hemodialysis units can be run off generators or batteries; peritoneal (CAPD) dialysis doesn't require power.

See, when you don't know all the facts, you just sound silly.

Pretty good description of how CAPD is done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peritoneal_dialysis

[Vidar]

35. A badge of honor as far as I'm concerned.

[John Q. Citizen]

37. I'm proud to be a conspiracy theorist. The Neocon use of the phrase

as deragatory is fairly recent in American politics, and is akin to the blatant re-defining of the term liberal as an insult. I caution people who claim to be "liberal" from adopting the speech patterns of the Neocons. Either they are ignorant of what they are doing, or they are actively supporting this Neocon attempt to re-define anyone who would oppose their agenda.

Conspiracy theory as a term of opprobrium is relatively new. It dates back to the work of Richard Hofstadter of Columbia University. Hofstadter was himself a kind of neocon ante litteram who became a direct beneficiary of McCarthyism: he took over a job vacated by Prof. Philip Foner, who had come under ostracism as a member of the Communist Party USA. In his essay on "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964) and in his other writings Hofstadter took issue with the 1880s-1890s prairie populist critique of international bankers, a critique which today seems prophetic in its foreshadowing of the destructive shenanigans of Lord Montagu Norman of the Bank of England during the interwar period (Norman was part of Brown, Shipley in London, the home office of Prescott Bush's Brown Brothers, Harriman in Wall Street) and of the International Monetary Fund during the entire postwar period. But for Hofstadter, radical critics of Anglo- American finance oligarchy were paranoids. His essay is doubly suspect because it appeared in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, and seemed to suggest that the many critics of the Warren Commission report were also -- paranoids. An interesting problem was posed for Hofstadter in that sophisticated western Europe, where populist paranoia was supposedly less strong, was even more critical of the Warren Commission report than was the alleged US citadel of paranoia.

Hofstadter's favorite habit of tarring political forces he did not like, such as the populists, with the brush of paranoia appears illegitimate. The paranoid typically fears that there is a conspiracy afoot specifically against himself. For Hofstadter, this notion becomes impossibly broad: anyone who thinks he sees a conspiracy anywhere is ipso facto a paranoid. What is lost here is the necessary reference point in reality: is there a conspiracy going on or not? US Attorneys have been proving the existence of conspiracies to juries for a long time, and they have generally escaped the charge of paranoia.

It is impossible to write political history without admitting from time to time the possibility of confidential agreements for concerted action made in advance. There are of course times when conspiracy plays no role: an absolute tyrant at the height of his power has no need of conspiracy; he can act directly by issuing orders. (Yet even here, even figures like Hitler and Stalin turn out to have been less absolute than usually assumed; it is enough to think of Hitler's chronic need to keep an eye on his Gauleiters, or the fact that the USSR functioned as an oligarchy during more years of its history than it did as a tyranny.) Similarly, an absolutely spontaneous mob -- a rarity, although a theoretical possibility -- is also innocent of conspiratorial planning. Between these two extremes, some form of surreptitious concerted action can frequently be found. As has been stressed throughout this book, US society today is neither a tyranny nor a democracy; it is organized from top to bottom according to the principle of oligarchy or plutocracy. The characteristic way in which an oligarchy functions is by means of conspiracy, a mode which is necessary because of the polycentric distribution of power in an oligarchical system, and the resulting need to secure the cooperation and approval of several oligarchical centers in order to get things done. Furthermore, the operations of secret intelligence agencies tend to follow conspiratorial models; this is what a covert operation means -- oordinated and preplanned actions by a number of agents and groups leading towards a pre-concerted result, with the nature of the operation remaining shielded from public view. So, in an oligarchical society characterized by the preponderant role of secret intelligence agencies -- such as the United States at the beginning of the twenty- first century -- anyone who rules out conspiracies a priori runs the risk of not understanding very much of what is going on. One gathers that the phobia against alleged conspiracy theory in much of postmodern academia is actually a cover story for a distaste for political thinking itself.

From chapter XII: CONSPIRACY THEORY: THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION
of WebsterTarpley's book, 9/11 SYNTHETIC TERRORISM MADE IN USA
http://www.american-buddha.com/911.syntheticterrormade13.htm#XII:%20CONSPIRACY%20THEORY:%20THE%20GREAT%20AMERICAN%20TRADITION