Just want to know if any members here buy into any of the major conspiracy theories? Or, maybe, conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories?

For the purpose of this thread, I may be playing devil's advocate. The views you see expressed by me in this thread, may not actually represent my real views.

I think the belief on conspiracy theories mostly boils down, like someone said once and I can't remember who, to people who believe the government and such is made up of supremely competent people with bad intentions, while it's mostly incompetent people with good intentions.

Among the few ones who have a chance of being real, in my view, are Kennedy's death and the WT7 collapse.

I don't believe in what is usually meant by the term conspiracy because I don't believe in hidden forces of such competence as to be able to (1) pull off these grandiose plans and (2) keep it quiet afterwards. "Three can keep a secret if two are dead," wot.

Conspiracy theories I believe may be true.

1) Michael Jordan quit basketball for a couple years because the NBA found out he bet on NBA Games.

Michael Jordan, is universally seen as the best basketball player by something like 97% of people who pay attention to basketball. There really to my knowledge isn't another sport in which there is one person so dominantly considered the best.

Today, Michael Jordan acts as if nobody thinks he's the best, he seems bitter, used his hall of fame speech to belittle people who dismissed him... in HIGHSCHOOL and he's made it clear that he'd be playing TODAY if his body could handle it. He also came back out of retirement before despite being richer then hell.

I'm supposed to believe this guy said in the middle of his prime... "nope, i'm good, i've proven everything."

Michael Jordan is the kind of guy who's never satisfied.

Tin Foil hats not only do NOT block electromagnetic radiation, but they amplify the signal of radiowaves designated for government use!

http://berkeley.intel-research.net/arahimi/helmet/

The "governments are too incompetant" rationality. Are they incompetant at their true aims, or just their stated aims? If one can can make the claim that the goal of Government is to increase its power, at all costs... well, we can say that it has done this with extreme competancy. Why can't they run a post office? If they could run a post office, more people like you would believe the conspiracy theories.

I haven't really read into 9/11 conspiracy theories, though I do have a question: how can you accept that the Twin tower collapse was an act of terrorism, but WT7 was a conspiracy? Clearly the Gov't would have had to have known about the terrorist plot to co-ordinate the WT7 collapse? Or was it just a coincidence?

Saw the ESPN film on him riding the bus (going to play baseball).  It was actually pretty decent and explained a little.  He was going through a pretty rough time when his father was murdered.  Supposedly, his father wanted him to play professional baseball and it was something they talked about before his death.  Since Jordan pitched in high school he couldn't really just jump into baseball and play basketball at the same time (couldn't play 2 sports at once like Bo Jackson, Deon Sanders, etc).  He had to work a lot on his swing and pretty much everything else.  They mentioned the betting in the film but almost everyone dismissed it as a reason why he took a break.  So him taking a break from basketball and trying baseball was more with him dealing with his father's death than anything else.

But the increasing concentration of power is not a result of any sort of plot, it's just the nature of the beast. The people who get involved with government tend to be the types who feel fit to tell everyone else how to live their lives, so there will never come an occasion when the government will decide that it's not its proper role to get involved in a given situation, and since people are always happy to let others deal with the more bothersome aspects of life, they are perfectly fine with the government grabbing more and more power until it affects them personally in a negative fashion.

Failing to do the most basic of tasks, like living within a budget, doesn't really help their cause of increasing power - even if it also doesn't hurt it nearly as much as it should. So the simplest explanation is the best one: they don't fuck up at things to throw would-be conspiracy theorists off their trail, they fuck up things because they are fuck ups.