Do YOU believe in conspiracies?

[BrokenPaw]

I'm not accusing your friends of anything. Acting as though I have only feeds my strange suspicions and the irrational part of me they come from.

I know you didn't.  But we're required to act as if you had, so as to feed your strange suspicions, for to keep you distracted from our real agenda, which is to...oh.  See?  You almost made me say it. 

I neither created or espoused such a theory. I merely stated that I have a  rather tenuous, totally unproven hunch that there are groups that do it.

Of course you didn't.  But to leave such a non-accusation unanswered would be to allow your unproven hunches to remain mere hunches, instead of festering into actual suspicions under the "Methinks Thou Dost Protest Too Much" Act of 1832.

Do you guys have to have periodic "Thunderdome"-like bouts to settle disputes?  "Cause I'd come to watch something like that, even if you couldn't promise Tina Turner's in dressed like a barbarian broad would be there.

The closest things that we have to Thunderdome are: 

- Another Trip Up The Neverending Stair (there's a flight of 30 deck stairs and 30 terraced steps cut into the hillside leading down to our sacred space.  More than one time, members (including myself) have played the role of Slinky in falling arse-over-teakettle down them)

- Heaving pumpkins across the field with a trebuchet

- Shooting pumpkins with spudguns, and
 
- Pumpkin baseball.

We go through a lot of pumpkins at the Grove.  So if you think of pumpkins as people, 1) you can sort of imagine our Samhain festival as Thunderdome for Autumnal Squash, and 2) you probably need a mental health checkup.

Hell, I'd consider joining, if I knew what you believed was true.

Since (at least at the Grove) what we do is more to espouse a philosophy and a way of living, there's no particular belief required, and no true dogma thus necessary.  In this way we can have a diverse community of folks whose connections to and beliefs about the Divine may be be radically different. (Imagine that a bloodthirsty savage like RevDisk, and a fluffy-bunny treehugger (we have some) can all gather in one place in harmony...that's actually happened)  Some ideas and truths transcend individual path or faith, and it is from these that we draw our unity.

-BP

[T.O.M.]

I have mixed feelings on different "conspiracy" theories.  Some I disregard outright, like Bush Admin orchestrating and faking the 9/11 attacks, or the scret UFO's in Hanger 13 at Wright Patterson AFB.

Some I might buy into, like the existence of Bigfoot or UFO's.  I'm not convinced that we know it all about everything on this planet, so I can believe that creatures exist that are yet to be discovered.  Happens all the time in the ocens.  Why not on land?  And, I absolutely believe that given the size of the universe, there's more life out there, and some of it may be capable of interstellar travel, and might just have stopped by this little blue/green planet called Earth and laughed at the primative creatures firing some type of crude projectile weapons at pieces of paper.   

[RevDisk]

We go through a lot of pumpkins at the Grove.  So if you think of pumpkins as people, 1) you can sort of imagine our Samhain festival as Thunderdome for Autumnal Squash, and 2) you probably need a mental health checkup.
Since (at least at the Grove) what we do is more to espouse a philosophy and a way of living, there's no particular belief required, and no true dogma thus necessary.  In this way we can have a diverse community of folks whose connections to and beliefs about the Divine may be be radically different. (Imagine that a bloodthirsty savage like RevDisk, and a fluffy-bunny treehugger (we have some) can all gather in one place in harmony...that's actually happened)  Some ideas and truths transcend individual path or faith, and it is from these that we draw our unity.

-BP

You mix the blood with peppermint schnapps, and it really cuts off the copper ish taste.  Keep both chilled in the fridge, and there's no reason to be thirsty.  While I've yet to see a coven yet without drama at some point, most covens have a very diverse range of folks.  They manage to get along extremely well dispite their differences.  The single most redeeming thing I've found about pagans is they can actively dislike a thing or idea without seeking it's ban or destruction.  I've met very few other groups on the planet with that trait.  BP's grove is better organized than most, but it's far from unique. 


Oh, and BP?  Wait until I hand your coven blue prints for a real fire wheel.   Actually, it's just a water wheel.  Naphtha float on water...   

[Tallpine]

Shocking New Theory Surrounding JFK Conspiracy

Dallas, TX  |  Overwhelming evidence of a highly coordinated conspiracy regarding President John F. Kennedy has sparked controversy as the anniversary of his assassination approaches.

"I was pretty shocked," says Texas School Book Depository Sixth Floor Museum tour guide Noel DiGrassi. "It's so obvious, and it's been right in front of our faces all along."

DiGrassi spent just one afternoon in the Dallas Public Library earlier this month and discovered that the conspirators were so smugly confident, they left a long and condemning paper trail.

Implicated are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of authors, book and magazine publishers, screenwriters, directors, filmmakers, theaters, television network executives, souvenir traffickers, lecturers, pollsters, and websites.

And their despicable schemes have all had the same goal: to squeeze every dime possible out of people obsessed with Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

But how many individuals were actually involved in the plot to kill Kennedy that tragic day in Dallas forty years ago?

"Oh, that's obvious too," DiGrassi says. "It was just Oswald. We all know that."

Permanent Link: Shocking New Theory Surrounding JFK Conspiracy

 

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

It's interesting. Oswald, AFAIK, wasn't thought to be a really smart cookie. He didn't use a very good rifle or a very good scope. He succeeded where others:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bastien-Thiry
had failed. Bastien-Thiry was an engineer/Lt Col, and had a pack of helpers with automatic weapons. He was after De Gaulle.

Brains and careful planning can't beat plain luck, I guess.

Another interesting conspiracy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

[Perd Hapley]

At church the other day (an evangelical church), we were discussing the possibility of an Obama assassination.  In the course of this discussion, one older lady made a passing remark to the effect that Kennedy was assassinated because he was a Catholic.     Never heard that one before. 

[AZRedhawk44]

You seriously posted that without qualifying the completeness of context?

Wow.  Here come those black helicopters.

[Perd Hapley]

Ooooooooooooooooooh K.  We were discussing the possibility of an Obama assassination.  What more context do you need?  I didn't say we were planning it, did I? 

[TommyGunn]

It depends on what you mean by "conspiracy."
I don't believe in the Bilderberger, Trilateral, black chopper stuff.

OTOH while JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Boorth, who acted in conjunction with a few others who were to assassinate other government officials.  Booth was the only one to succeed. 
A "conspiracy" is two or more people cooperating toward the commission of a crime.  In fact when any two people so much as steal from a "Stob & Rob, there's conspiracy involved.

[Lee]

I'm beginning to believe in one.  One group manipulates the world's money markets at a particular time so they can crash global markets and gain far more financial and political power.  A second group manipulates the world oil supply to counter-act the first group's move. 

[GigaBuist]

Yes and no.

I do believe there are people working to create a one world government, or New World Order as some call it, simply because that's how things have always been.  Empires have expanded and collapsed all through human history, or at least the recorded portions of it.  Before we got sophisticated enough to form civilized nations tribes warred with the neighbors.

Somewhere, right now, somebody is laying plans to try and take over the world. It might be some nut in his mom's basement, or maybe it's Putin.  Who knows?  I don't, but I guarantee you that's somebody's fantasy out there right now

And it could happen. It's not hard to figure out how it'd come about either.

WWII, I believe, was the final knife into the notion that you can take over the world by force.  But you could do it through treaties forming large alliances with similar economic goals.  Just look at the absurd things that the Federal government in our own country lays claim to cased on the "interstate commerce clause." 

So, what you do is form a 'North American' union, a 'European' Union, a 'South American' union, etc. until we've basically got 6-7 of these unions covering the entire globe.  Then North America joins with South America.  Europe joins with Asia... until we're down to 2-3 unions. Then you join them further, and eventually you end up with one, and all the a-holes that supported these things, that are high in positions within their own little fifedoms only have to jockey with each other for the position of World Leader.

Sure, they won't have much power at first, but over time that single global entity will expand its powers, not much unlike our own Federal government, or any government, does.

And not many people will care.  No blood will have been shed and the average person, quite honestly, is unable to understand a system of government more complex than that of a benevolent dictator.  The world will be a much simpler place, and that'll sit just fine with people.  Just look at the fawning people do over their own choice this country for president.  I swear a good 80% of the voters actually think the POTUS just gets to magically do things he's not entitled to do, and they vote for them based on their positions in matters that they don't really control.

So, there's my "conspiracy theory."   Of course, it's not really a "conspiracy" it's just the way things are, and what I fear might eventually result.

[Antibubba]

I believe conspiracy theories are themselves the biggest conspiracy, cleverly designed to distract otherwise intelligent people from more important things.

I just don't who, or what, is behind this.

[Waitone]

Maybe we need to change the word from "conspiracy" to "consensus" theory.  We can debate conspiracy all we want all the while watching evident consensus.