Job Discussion Forums

[scot47]

http://arabnews.com/world/article152114.ece

[Qaaolchoura]

Wow. I'm not sure what to say. I'm not sure there's really anything I can say that would make the least bit of difference, actually. There seems to be a worrying trend of people across the world who believe in conspiracies by the experts. I've heard this described as people seeking simple answers to complex questions, though often it seems to be exactly the reverse.

Much as I love the idea of going to Turkey, it's the home of Harun Yahya, and a country where 80% of the population believes the theory of natural selection is a conspiracy. Countries in the Arab world teach Protocols of the Elders of Zion in schools. And the President of Iran is a Holocaust denier. It's incredibly worrying, but the "9-11 truth"-ers should probably be the least of our worries regarding faith-based reality in the Muslim world.

And personally, I'm more concerned about what's happening in my own country--for example the resurgence of creationism in the United States, and the increasing number of well educated people who take their medical advice from a Playboy model.

~Q

[johnslat]

From The Economist, December 22, 2002:

"The evolution of theories

So what is the attraction of conspiracism? For starters, as grand unifying theories of geopolitics go, it is simple to grasp. In ill-educated societies, that makes it appealing. It is also impossible to disprove, because any fact that does not fit the theory can be dismissed as a trick by the conspirators to throw ordinary folk off the scent.

In countries with opaque and authoritarian political systems, rumour is often the only alternative to official news sources. If the people in such countries remember falling victim to real conspiracies, they may be inclined to attribute fresh misfortunes to a similar cause.

Take more or less anywhere in the Middle East. The very borders of countries such as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are a product of the 1916 Sykes-Picot accord, a secret agreement between Britain and France to divvy up the region between themselves, despite earlier British pledges of statehood to Arabs. In 1917, war-pressed Britain sought to curry favour with the growing Zionist movement by promising a "Jewish national home" in Palestine. The Palestinians, nine-tenths of the territory's population at the time, were not consulted. Thirty years later, when the UN voted to give Jews 53% of the land, the 13 "Eastern" countries that objected were overruled by 33 "Western" countries, which between them ruled over some 120 future members that surely would have voted otherwise had they been able to. Small wonder Palestinians see the world through a lens of victimhood.

In the West, conspiracies have, for some reason, tended to fail, and so fade from the popular imagination. Who now frets about the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when a gang of Catholics failed to blow up Britain's Parliament? Or the doomed Carlist uprisings in 19th-century Spain? Or the European anarchists who assassinated seven heads of state in the 1890s, to no avail? Or the Watergate scandal?

In Iran, by contrast, people still seethe over the CIA-backed coup of 1953 that toppled Muhammad Mossadegh, a man much loved for having dared to nationalise British oil interests. Syria and Iraq have suffered a dizzy sequence of successful plots and counter-conspiracies, ending with the pair of Baathist coups in the late 1960s that installed their current ruling cliques.

Half the governments of the Middle East trace their origins to coups. In a sense, conspiracy is the region's only real form of politics, which can make it hard for Middle Easterners to understand the dynamics of open, democratic societies. Hence, for example, the Arab tendency, as the French say, to "occult" America's generous backing for Israel. Aiding the Jewish state infuriates hundreds of millions of oil-supplying, American-product-consuming Arabs and Muslims. So why does America do it? It must be a conspiracy by the Zionist lobby, or perhaps a plot to divide and rule Arabs to control their oil, or part of a Christian crusade against Islam.

Blaming others for one's troubles may be emotionally satisfying, but it is a counsel of despair. Stella Orakwue, a journalist, writes in the New African that: "Today, [Africa] has to remain in deficit so Europe and America can maintain their obscene wealth." Given that Africa accounts for less than 2% of global trade, this is hardly an adequate explanation of why the West is rich and Africa is poor. And without understanding why their continent is poor, Africans will find it harder to grow rich.

In extreme cases, conspiracy theories can cost lives. Osama bin Laden genuinely seems to think he is fighting a Zionist-Christian-materialist assault on Islam. Adolf Hitler sincerely believed he was ridding the world of a Jewish menace. Many Serbs were convinced that the Muslims of ex-Yugoslavia were out to annihilate them. And many Rwandan Hutus, informed by their leaders that the Tutsis were planning to kill them, were happy to follow orders to pre-empt this threat.

*For the record, around 300 Jews and 100 Muslims were among the 3,000 victims. The origin of the rumour was probably a report in the Jerusalem Post of September 12th, which mistakenly said that 4,000 Jews had "disappeared" in the disaster."

Regards,
John

[scot47]

Should I now be worried that johnslat has a role in this global conspiracy ? Come to think of it, the cleaner at work has denied that there is a conspiracy. He has clearly been duped by the enemies of truth or accepted a bribe to put me off the scent.

[johnslat]

Dear scot47,

Pursue this line of questioning no further - or we will have to terminate you with extreme prejudice.

Regards,
John

[Kornan DeKobb]

This wholesale dismissal of "conspiracy theories" is what I find troubling, as if people have never plotted bad stuff together. While mentioning a number of very important still-unanswered questions regarding the attacks, the article attempts to paint the idea of conspiracy as ludicrous by imputing it to "the US government." While obviously the attacks were not official government policy, it is pretty much impossible that they could have occurred without active participation of rogue elements within our military and intelligence agencies for which there is a lot of evidence.

But what is more ludicrous? That idea or the one that a guy living in a cave on the other side of the world (on dialysis, no less!) was able to defeat the most sophisticated military in the history of the planet?

The official fiction, The 9/11 Report, is not even believed by its own commissioners. John Farmer served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission. In his book titled "The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America's Defense on 9/11,"

[007]

Unle Sam & 911!!

http://current.com/shows/supernews/89258410_uncle-sam-911.htm

Was it an inside job? Only God and Uncle Sam know the story!

http://current.com/16b9u4c

[Kornan DeKobb]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

Let me put my tongue into my cheek:

Ah yes. World War II was started by those pesky Polish who just wanted sympathy.

[scot47]

It is all the work of the "Illuminati", the "Elders" and their ilk.

[Sashadroogie]

Man some people just can't see a Communist plot when it's under their noses...

[RiverMystic]

Just go to the China Daily forum, where many Chinese believe that every bad thing happening to or inside China is a conspiracy of the USA or "the West". Westerners do not know this truth because they have been "brainwashed", unlike the well-informed Chinese public.

As has been stated, most conspiracy theories thrive amongst the ignorant who feel powerless and disempowered. There's always someone else to blame.

[scot47]

Our friends in Pakistan have unearthed more conspiracies -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9110766.stm

[scot47]

Nearer to home, what about this one ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._David_Kelly

[scot47]

This silence is clear evidence that they are conspiring.