[mrsocko]

Has a Conspiracy Theory ever been Proven True?

The only ones I can think of are the attempt to kill John Paul 2 which was finally proven to have been a plot of the Soviet Union and the Tobacco companies knowing that smoking caused cancer.

In 1978 the House select committee on Assasinations concluded that Oswald was conspiring with someone else((hidden on the grassy knoll) but that his bullets were the ones that did all the damage(magic bullet ad naseum). This isn't a huge conspiracy people have been advocating and no one has proven who else was involved(although Woody's dad is a prime candidate)

Any others?

[kwlafayette]

Theories prove to be true all the time. The thing that separates conspiracy theory is that people continue to believe in them despite evidence to the contrary. The protocols of the elders of zion was proven to be a fabrication decades ago, yet it haunts us still. Think about the 9/11 thing where the unbalanced claim that "all Jewish people were absent from their jobs in the towers that day". In several Arab countries, the protocols regularly top best seller lists.

[mrsocko]

When I was 25 my Grandpa died and I was given his 150 year old violin. I went for lessons and was doing pretty good at them when my instructor gave me a copy of the Protocols and I flipped out on him.

I would nominate the Protocols as the most harmful document ever printed.

[FascistLibertarian]

Operation MKULTRA
The Mafia
King Richard III killed his nephews.
French govt did cover up the The Dreyfus Affair.
That 15 year old girl who testified in front of congress before the first iraq war.

[FF_Canuck]

I was just recently reminded of Watergate. Hell, I believe our own AdScam probably fits the bill.

[kwlafayette]

You are not grasping the essential difference here. Some event happens, and people come up with possible explanations. In a perfect world, the good ideas are kept, and the bad ideas are thrown out. This pool of bad possible explanations is where conspiracy theorists go to look for the "truth", not the good ideas. I will give you an example.

Say you have a choice between Newton's universal law of gravitation, and a theory that states that the core of the earth is a super powerful magnet, and it attracts the iron in our red blood cells, keeping our feet on the ground. The conspiracy theorist latched onto the clearly bad theory. Of course, it starts to affect his personal life; if he was a professor of physics at Harvard, he would be fired for example. Now this just proves that he is right, because he is getting persecuted for speaking the "truth".

[kwlafayette]

Lets use the 9/11 example. If the truthers are right, that basically means that there are tens of thousands of US citizens out there, who were involved with the cover up, all happily keeping quiet. An experienced demolition team, consisting of dozens of workers, worked in the towers for months planting explosives, strategically weakening the structure, and not one person noticed. Not one clumsy tourist from Arkansas tripped over a blasting cord and wrecked the plan. Chances are, you have met someone involved in the cover up; just think that guy on the bus next to you every morning took $100 bucks to sell the rest of us out, and he is happily just keeping quiet now, ignoring the fact that he could get a trillion dollar book deal as the first guy to blab. Bush is a moron, and yet he pulled it all off. What does that make the rest of us?

All the experts the world over have been paid off to lie, and gladly continue to do so. It goes on and on, ad nauseum. The simple explanation, the one that physics says happened, the one that has empirical evidence behind it, the one all the real engineers and demolition men agree on? A load of crap of course.

Do you see the difference between conspiracy theories and real theories now? Basically, the definition of a conspiracy theory is that it is false, yet people continue to believe in it despite all evidence to the contrary.

[mrsocko]

[gc]

[kwlafayette]

I don't know enough about the JFK thing to speculate. I do know that it ranges from the mafia to who knows what. Seemed like lots of people had lots of reasons to wish him harm.

[Duck Tory]

9/11 Conspiracy theory is sham,smoke and mirrors by the far-left in self-denying the fact there are people in this world that hates the USA and are willing to hurt the people and the Nation.

[Craig]

[Mike McB]

The MSM is biased for the Liberals. Of course if your a liberal then you would consider it an unproven theory.

[plantguy]

My favorite conspiracy theory is the Avro Arrow. The theory goes along these lines.The Americans were threatened by the Arrow in that it had superior performance to their planes and could threaten their monopoly in the fighter/bomber market. Canada was convinced to scrap the program in favour of American built Bomarc missles in exchange for the Auto Pact .All prototypes and plans for the Arrow were destroyed to prevent another country from acquiring the technology. The official line was that the program was over budget and fighter planes would become obsolete with evolving missle technology. This conspiracy theory is interesting because it's not out there on the looney fringe and is just plausable enough to be true

[mrsocko]

Every political event can be called a conspiracy theory. Look at the Cuban missile crisis. There was a definite trade off in regards to where each side positioned its missiles but you would have thought JFK won WW3 single handledly from media reports.