This is why I have tried to make the distinction between the theorist and the researcher. Theories are an essential part of the scientific method. Believing in a theory because you like the sound of it, for whatever lame or noble reason, is NOT research. Hence, my BS-detector comment. There is a lot of crap out there, in terms of ideas, exaggerations, misleadings, AND disproven theories. And this is why I made particular emphasis about ‘belief’, and its general non-permanent uselessness. On what evidence have you based your conclusions, above, and have those conclusions been thoroughly tested? Who is the theorist here?

It is not about ‘knowing’ or being ‘right’. It is about uncovering something which is closer to the truth. The researcher understands that that truth will never be fully grasped. There is no point in having a pre-conceived notion of what the truth is before trying to find it. And as it happens, some ‘truths’ are superceded by others at various points of the progression. I have been led by curiosity, in the past, down certain avenues of investigation which have turned out to be red herrings or non-workable ideas. So have many famous and non-famous inventors and scientists; so have thousands of police detectives; so have countless numbers of spiritual seekers; that is simply the nature of investigation. What am I to do? Take a big ego hit? Cry like a baby ‘cos my own personal investment in a mere belief has left me with nothing much to cling to? As I said, I’m not a clinger (or a Klingon). I am merely very curious.

But I can see where you might be coming from. Unusual discoveries have a tendency to capture the imagination, and invoke that sense of belief that is so similar to a religious feeling of sorts. That capacity remains one of the great unsolved mysteries. (But ’somewhere’, it IS solved.) Cults and kooks spring up everywhere, obsessed with proving themselves as being in-the-know, compelled to ensure that they are seen to be right, regardless of facts that prove otherwise. That is not my game. (All this stuff shows is that the psychological state of the human mind is missing information, call it ‘The Big Picture’.) That is just falling for one’s own publicity. The media and the politicians are happy to dish out the labels, and they are confident that you will infer your own interpretation based on what they have already presented to you in relation to those labels. (Sale Now On!)

Tell me if you think I’m wrong about this, but do you ever get the impression we’re being screwed big time? Now, can you imagine a guy on the news, all suit and tie and serious, starting off with the show: "Tonight’s Headlines at 6 o’clock: It’s official - we’re all being screwed big time." How would that story run the corresponding details? Do such details exist that would support such a headline? Almost inconceivable - difficult but fun to imagine, not to mention pretty inspiring. Or should fear be the appropriate response? You decide. Would you scrutinise such a declaration, or just take it on the chin like the old-fashioned type of news story?

Are we ready to look at everything without flinching? Not yet, I guess. Does the hypnotist bring you out of hypnosis, or can you do it yourself? Is there a Help button?

A further illustration: http://www.nomorefakenews.com - Short piece entitled: THE LEFT, THE RIGHT, AND 9/11 (if it’s moved on check the archives).

I trust you don’t think I’m comin’ on heavy here, I’m only attempting an explanation. But if you do, that’s your business, not mine. However, I respect the exchange, and wish you well. If you have a last word, go for it, Brother.

"God is a comedian
playing to an audience
too afraid to laugh."
~ Voltaire (1694-1778)

conspiracy theories are the new religeons. They are constructed by people to give answers to things they don’t understand. They mix theories and facts until they become interchangeable and state some ‘facts’ which defy logic. Everyone believes that their conspiracy theory is true even though many of the theories contradict each other. And, like religeons, conspiracy theories either lead to monkish withdrawal (’I already know the answers and I will spend all my time finding evidence to support them’) or crusader/jehad attacks on the perceived bad guys (even if these attacks only take verbal form or discrimination against certain groups).

Like all religeons conspiracy theories are not scientific proofs, they require belief. I am a conspiracy agnostic, I don’t think believing in them helps but I don’t mind people believing them if they want to - as long as it doesn’t lead them to increase the level of hate in the world and/or reduce the level of positive activity.

Uncarved Block: First of all, don’t be sorry (! - I know it was a figure of speech but nonetheless…) - none of us needs to apologise for trying to think our way around these issues. At least some of us ARE trying to think, and not just REACT like a Pavlov’s Dog to the ‘News’ that is really just a presentation of a narrow band of current affairs. And we do it because we sense that no matter how inevitable all this war and violence seems to be, it is SOMEHOW unnecessary. However, I am somewhat amused and slightly concerned at the thought processes that have led you to put me in the same bracket as Bush & Blair! This is an excellent new site, but it is not a discussion forum as such, so it’s bound to be tricky to qualify certain statements, and related lateral tangents. And it is the lateral part of this that stumps most people when it comes to dealing with ‘conspiracy theories’. It is not I who want people to be scared of the ‘bogy men’. I am certainly not scared of them (and that would get their goat, for sure, fraternity-ritual references aside!). If anything, my main thrust of the arguments I present, if you were reading between the lines of any of my comments, is that fear is NOT an appropriate basis on which to attempt some fact-finding and open, honest inquiry. Your comments do not address the points I made; they only reveal the fear already buried within you.

IF there really is a dark agenda, or ten, to fundamentally change the basis of modern life on a global scale, then it is essential that fear is employed amongst the many. But you will have seen recently that that fear has nowhere specific to direct itself. Confusion, fear, and some means of daily ‘non-controversial’ escape are the key ingredients to exploitation by the few. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to appreciate that. Our problem is that we are not READY to confront the IMPLICATIONS of what the ‘conspiracy’ represents. It is a common, convenient and almost automatic phenomenon that the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ necessarily conjures an image of a casual reactionary whose main task is scare-mongering for the sake of it. This image is essential to the prevention of the majority of folk BECOMING conspiracy theorists! It has been used blatantly and adeptly by Blair and Bush in the last several years. It is a classic strategy of simple psychological manipulation. And IT WORKS! The reason it works is because we think we are happier being simple minded. And we are too full of self-importance and self-consciousness resulting in a dread of what others might think of us. Oh, what a shame. While simple-mindedness is a spiritual elevator when engaged with wisdom, it is a self-constructed prison for those who do not appreciate the benefits of becoming wiser, or at least of aiming in that general direction. The trouble for the governments of this world is that INFORMATION IS DANGEROUS, and so much of it has to be secreted, distorted or dismissed as \x91silly\x92 or \x91irrelevant\x92.

My approach, over 20-plus years of research, is one of evidence gathering, and the suspension of judgement, until and unless certain connections FORCE one into seeing a hitherto unseen PART of the bigger picture. There is, inevitably, a psychological and emotional reaction to this aspect of research when certain conclusions are drawn. But that is not the end of it. The true researcher will expect such a reaction and let it pass. The various conclusions are then formulated into a theory, which MUST be tested and corroborated. My scientific background will not allow me to do anything less. The problem lies in the nature of the evidence and the difficulty in establishing links that present a clear cohesion. The point about a conspiracy is that you are NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT IT. Despite the long history of political unreliability, flaky integrity, and predictable and repeated corruption and self-interest the world over, we are happily seduced into believing that nothing can be done except to carry on voting, trusting, and becoming frustrated, scared and disappointed, time and again, over and over. And if I could swear like a maniac here, then this is the point at which I’d start! (It’s a release technique, I’m sure you’ll appreciate!)

As for the evidence itself, I concede that much of it is circumstantial (and would be no less acceptable in a normal court proceeding), but plenty of it is hard empirical facts. Ever tried to get the simple hard facts out of a Government recently?!!! The ‘Devil’ is literally in the details, to mix a Masonic metaphor. When a politician says on TV, "I am not going to comment on…" - that’s exactly when they should be pressed for clear information. As long as folk are willing to absorb the basic messages of today’s events, and just say, "Oh, that’s terrible," we can expect to carry on, business as usual.

Your last comment makes no sense. My belief, or anyone else’s, is not the important thing; information is. My beliefs come and go, changing daily, but I do not cling to them because then I would be shutting doors and giving up. Belief is a transient thing and is not to be relied upon for any permanent effects. It is merely a temporary by-product that has been shot down time and again, and which simply doesn’t matter. It is also the proof by which ANY religion can be seen to provide nothing more than a GENERAL SENSE of understanding at best, and an unquestioning, lifeless routine at worst. Any conspiracy researcher with enough patience (and ’self-awareness’) to get past the first week of research begins to understand that it will either be dismissed here and now, or that there is a long hard slog involved in dealing with the material thankfully available on the Internet and elsewhere. There is no need to pigeon-hole every piece of information into some convenient category in order to avoid further, closer, deeper examination. You could just ‘bear it in mind’, and continue down some other avenue. Sooner or later, the connections come together like those 3D holographic images which spring from a 2D mess of patterns. One thing is for sure; such activity hones the mind into the finest of BS-detectors, and the politicians just end up looking dim, stupid, deceptive and downright dishonest. So let’s dismiss the conspiracy theorists, since all they have are theories. NO. It is the public which are being fed the theories, and they are all consumed without question. We may not be able to ‘do anything about it’ (and that in itself is a notion worth promoting from a control point of view), but it is precisely because I am NOT scared that I will not flinch from expressing my instincts to look deeper, and respect my right to learn. I would happily go head-to-head with Blair, live on TV, and he would be out of office by the end of the day. But THAT WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING, unless, as a result, I found myself no longer ‘whistling in the wind’.

Max: You answered your own question, but again the feeling of worthlessness and a diminished self-belief is an effect not a cause. It is both the nature of the information made available to the public via mass media, and the LACK of vital information which is NOT presented or examined, which causes this effect. The survival instinct is probably THE biggest barrier to being tenacious with those in authority about the facts. At this point, the argument should rightly detour into a consideration of spiritual content, and philosophical and metaphysical areas. But again, the tendency is to pigeon-hole these aspects, and see them as unconnected and irrelevant. The pains and the pleasures of a split mind.

As a tiny illustration, I will provide just five links (out of thousands) worth spending some time with (i.e. following the further trail of links from these, as well as the actual content):

<a href="http://www.themedianews.com/DAGGER/Stefan/September.Terrorists.htm">http://www.themedianews.com/DAGGER/Stefan/September.Terrorists.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.wardrobe.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/murder_inc/terrordome.html">http://www.wardrobe.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/murder_inc/terrordome.html</a>
<a href="http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/">http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/</a>
<a href="http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/new_world_order/bush_nazis.html">http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/new_world_order/bush_nazis.html</a>
<a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5829.htm">http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5829.htm</a>

Valid questions to ask are these: If this stuff is made up, why? If this is not made up, then how come I don’t already know about it? Why didn’t it make the News? You have to make your own mind up about this stuff, but don\x92t do yourself an injustice by premature rejection of the tale it tells when put all together.

Good luck, Adventurers. Just check your emotions as you go. Try not to just react without careful self-observation.

"Please be scared of these bogy men. We have no evidence that they exist or of anything they do but we can blame the world’s problems on them. As long as you believe they exist and are scared of them, that’s all that matters."

They talk about agents of evil, you talk about the illuminati (or some other similar group). The end result is the same. People spend all their time trying to find circumstancial evidence of, or protecting themselves from, an imaginary threat instead of puting their energies into tackling the quite obvious and real problems in the world, such as selfishness, short-termism and inequality, amongst others.

Even if you are right and there is a huge conspiracy of powerful people, then it is quite clear that ‘we’ could do nothing about it anyway. It’s like dying of thirst because you think the water might be poisoned. It doesn’t matter how real the threat is, the fact that you believe it means that you have become a victim of the belief.

When I talk of money men, I do not mean those who live for it, sweat for it, lust after it, or merely accept it as a ‘fact of life’. I mean those who create it, out of nothing, and deal with it, persuading us all to sustain it as the kingpin of all religions, as if that’s all we came here to do. I refer to those who consider a billion dollars as loose change. They know how to maintain an abundance for all those in the same club, as well as offer it to the rest as a scarce and precious thing to be strived for. Behind this movement is a freezing cold attitude and disdain for all the inferiors, the ants, that would uncover the FACTS about the economic machine, if it were not for there skill and vast experience at mass mind control. Want some proof? Dig a little deeper. An archaeologist would hardly uncover that prize specimen if he always stopped after two feet of excavation.

Consider the blatant and fraudulent emotional invocation of our ‘leaders’ in the face of recent events. Their minds are disjoined, distorted, disconnected and deeply concerned with their place in history, as if that mattered one bit. Humility is only good as an excuse for more killing and torture, and to sustain the guilt that keeps this world in chains. Politics, above all else, is a career. That’s all. You can apply if you wish, subject to status. History, if anything, is your proof of that. How on Earth can I respect and co-operate with my fellow human beings? Mmmm, let me think. No, I can’t see a way to do it. I would have no idea where to start. I give up. But if you give me enough money, I’ll shoot someone for you. Sounds familiar?

The official sense of injustice at certain events and not others is a clue to how insane the world is, those who would lead and those who would be led. Getting and taking is the mantra of those in dread of losing everything, as Death stalks constantly. But one thing needs to be looked at square in the face. Death is inevitable. Big deal. Is that what all this fuss is about?

So Guantanamo inmates will do penance on our behalves, just in case. In America, there are vast sections of desert reserved for a Federal Emergency in which the A, B and C list ’subversives’ (a mix of peace-loving free thinkers, gung-ho Rambos and general misfits) will be contained ‘just in case’. The train carriages have been manufactured with shackles fit only for humans. This is NOT a TV drama. If you do not comply you will be taken out of circulation. Absurd? Exponential momentum. Sooner or later, we will be in no doubt about it. Vaccines, GM, biometrics, false medicine, the requirement to be identifiable, the permission to question ONLY within certain parameters, the endless war, the endless research into imaginative ways of killing and control, the endless supply of labour to equip the future with hopelessness. But it’s OK; ‘cos we’re gonna stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies against an invisible enemy who we are certain is more crazy than ourselves, as if that makes any sense. How will we know when we have won the war? When the terrorist lays down his arms and says, "OK, you win, your violence makes more sense than ours." At this point the WWII lesson usually gets read out. But again, the funding of it, the planning of it, the execution of it and the benefits of it were all the domain of those very same money men. There were, and ARE, no sides, in actuality. There are only those who take, those who ’sacrifice’, and a few who refuse to subscribe to this view of the world, because they have seen something else which relegates it all to its proper place - sheer illusion.

"A spokesman for US Southern Command in Miami, told BBC News Online: ‘We do treat the detainees in a fair humane way, according to the Geneva Convention.’" (on BBC site)

Talk of whether it’s "legal" in the letter of the law is ignoring the important point, here: it’s clearly against the spirit and the purpose of the document in question, and any use of loopholes in it can’t be called anything less than a breach of the spirit - and a breach of the human rights of those people.

Regardless of how you feel about them: there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this, and we’ve been on the wrong fork in that road for well over two years now. This belated U-turn ignores the fact that we’re now a long way down that road from where we were.