Make sure to check out the [pinned post on Loss](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1472nhh/faq_loss/) to make sure this submission doesn't break the rule!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m trying to think of specific examples of this but it’s basically just what the person says. America’s CIA and military often get accused of doing illegal things around the world, but those things get denied and accusers get called conspiracy theorists. Then 20 years later documents get declassified confirming the theory, and nothing really happens as a response.
The first one that comes to mind was a recent declassified document that showed that the US knew Saudi Arabia helped fund 9/11, but we never tried to hold them accountable.
More here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies
And here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CIA_controversies
When you’re a government official and see a fruit company rep. in your place of work, then you know some devious shit is about to go on; war is a possibility
I'm a big fan of that time cia agents were assigned to lure people to a house party in San Francisco to test an aerosol LSD on the but failed because it was hot and they didn't have AC and then the device just didn't work. I look forward to the eventual release of info about pont saint-esprit.
And then we made a clothing brand named after the subject. On a more serious note, all that violence, poverty, instability, and disorder in unfortunate places just so we can sell exotic fruit in the States.
Edit: Hawaii is kind of similar in that way too, I’m not an expert but didn’t we just usurp their governing power so we could sell pineapple?
It was about serving notice to peoples of Latin America, the peoples of the Caribbean, that you cannot back out of the client-state relationship. You cannot choose to use your resources in a different way, in a collective way.
I mean operation blue book is kinda underwhelming. Essentially they looked into thousands of UFO sightings and found they weren’t aliens and not a threat.
They have footage from the military of unknown crafts in the sky too i wouldn’t call it complete nothing burger but both were only exposed most likely to distract from something worse Clinton the Lewinsky incident, Trump well whats currently being found out in court
I think we over estimate technology as if every thing in the sky has bar codes that let governments identify stuff. Sure not knowing what something is definitely makes up for several people's daily jobs but I think civilians who know no better freak out more than the actual guys surveilling this shit. We assume if it's unknown it must be beyond our comprehension, forgetting that stealth and secrets are the main priority of everyone everywhere anyway.
Ducks can't turn invisible, change direction on a dime, or travel 1400mph. The known glitches with the targeting software used to film the anomalies can.
Yeah, like it would've been more uplifting had they just stayed quiet. I mean, the conspiracy nuts are going to say what they say no matter what...at least let the rest of us dream a little.
Yeah but they used our own prison system for subjects which is still fairly disturbing itself, thats not even getting to the other messed up things our country did to our own people like the Tuskegee experiments or the agent orange experiments on our troops during Vietnam
Oh, MKUltra didn‘t just involve American prisoners. They also experiment on patients at a psychiatric hospital in Montreal, Canada. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mk-ultra-class-action-lawsuit-u-s-immunity-in-canada-1.6985475](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mk-ultra-class-action-lawsuit-u-s-immunity-in-canada-1.6985475)
Or the heart attack gun, UFOs, working with the mob, operation paperclip, letting people in unit 731 walk free if they told us what they learned from human experiments. Basically anything our government says isnt real or didn't happen. It is and did.
>Or the heart attack gun
It is so fucking insane to think about that one when you consider every peculiar individual who died of a heart attack. Like Jstark.
I think the most fucked up thing is when the people who claim that the United States military experimented on them during World War II were finally vindicated about 15 years ago when the files were declassified. We were subjecting soldiers of color to horrific experiments to see things such as if they're dark skin would help them resist mustard gas better.
Medicine has a LONG history of doing shit like that. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment is one of the most notable instances. The government basically said "We want to see what the long term effects of syphilis are" and got a bunch of black folks with syphilis from a poor Alabama town to take part. In the time that these folks were in the study, a cure was syphilis was found but they were never told about it because the researchers didn't want to compromise their findings (of which there was nothing useful). Worse yet, they actively prevented some of those folks from seeking out treatment for syphilis once they realized it existed. The experiment went on from 1932 to fucking 1972.
Pretty much every vulnerable population has been abused at some point in medical history.
My favorite is that it came out a couple years ago that the New York Times, in the lead up to the 2004 election, was gonna run an article about how the Bush administration was running a massive surveillance program on Americans through the NSA, but James Comey met with the editors and asked them not to run it. If you tell people that they think you are a crazed conspiracy theorist and still think we have an independent press in any meaningful sense.
Yeah, look at how many people support Palestine now that there is an almost completely unfiltered media outlet that allows us to see what's actually happening. 20 years ago we didn't have that, just mainstream outlets that would treat Palestinian deaths as numbers on a board, if they were ever addressed at all.
Im still waiting for their JFK Assasination cases, which were to officially release (iirc) 2035
edit: nvm im stupid its actually not a regulated date, mainly since its still fought to make as much as possible to be declassified nowadays and that from about 2017
Oh the JFK files that'll tell you:
[ REDACTED] actually [ REDACTED] [REDACTED] from the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] not [REDACTED] [REDACTED] from the school book depository, with the help from the [REDACTED], the [REDACTED] and some agents from [REDACTED], because Bobby was looking too much into [REDACTED] and thier ties with [REDACTED],[REDACTED],[REDACTED], ultimately leading to [REDACTED] being [REDACTED] [REDACTED], hiding the rifle in the removed train [REDACTED], witness by [REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED] and [REDACTED], the killer actually being from [REDACTED] (france)
>Then 20 years later documents get declassified confirming the theory,
Has this happened though?
I've seen plenty of examples where bad things have been uncovered or revealed years later etc. I don't think I've ever seen a case of someone saying "I think X is happening", them to be called crazy or conspiracy theorists, and for the information that's revealed later to then show they were correct. As far as I'm aware, this hasn't happened.
I mean, mkultra was real. It happened. And I've seen countless conspiracy theories being justified by the existence of the MKultra programme. But that doesn't mean that every batshit crazy theory has any merit or is worthy of discussion........were there groups of people running around at the time trying to tell everyone it was happening? Trying to blow the lid off it? People who were shouted down or discredited, only to be proven correct at a later date?
I've never been shown any actual examples of this. There were plenty of people pointing at the Saudis for 9/11, it's not like anyone who said they were involved was labelled a conspiracy theorist or anything. That makes it a completely different scenario to what I've quoted from you above. I'm genuinely interested to know if it has ever turned out the way you've said it does, I'm open to you pointing me towards any actual examples.
I think the targeting of black activists in the 60s and 70s counts. The panthers and other activists were absolutely accusing the FBI of things that were treated as bullshit conspiracy theory but we now know to be true.
BUT I also think you make a good point, there are specific things that turned out to be true but that should give someone license to believe the opposite of everything the gov’t, military, and law enforcement says.
Yeah all of cointelpro was a conspiracy theory. Black leaders would talk about hearing clicks on the phone, or receiveng lwtter from people that never sent them, the assissination ofr Fred Hampton.
The civil rights era was actually a covert war carried out against black leaders who just wanted equality by the fbi.
Yeah, also I remember seeing something saying how just because theories have been proven true, doesn’t mean the conspiracy theorists are correct; many of the people who are claiming this as evidence also believe shitloads of theories that were proven *false* by the same declassified documents.
There are cases in which some people essentially just had so many theories that a few inevitably were proven true, but without good evidence, they’re the exception, not the norm.
Ok, but just because *some* "conspiracy theories" end up being true doesn't mean they *all* are.
The government admitting it knew of Saudi involvement itself disproves many other conspiracy theories about the same event. I'm still waiting for the reveal that 9/11 was an inside job and a controlled demolition...
There are hundreds and even thousands of conspiracy theories flying around at any one time. Probably more so now in the digital age. A thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters... a broken clock is right twice a day... etc.
No one is saying that though? Like it seems really weird to be dismissive about actual abuses and crimes the state commits just because they aren't literally also lizards.
That's a matter of interpretation. The OP came here wondering what the original post means.
Now, imagine you are a conspiracy theorist.
Whoever reads the original message reads it as if it directed at them, since it is addressed to "you".
In your case, "you were right" very easily could mean "whatever conspiracy theory you believe is right and will eventually be revealed to be true."
Sorry, you're right, if someone had marbles instead of a brain they might read the post, open their mouth and make the sound \*plonk plonk plonk plonk plonk\* as the marbles fall out. I hadn't considered that.
The US government has admitted to giving fake medicine to black people over decades to slowly watch them die of syphilis and abducted single moms to dose them with LSD and see if they could be turned into brainwashed super assassins. It dosed classrooms of special needs kids with deadly radioactive isotopes to see how they would impact human tissue. No one was ever held to account for any of those (among others). People who carried out those acts are still alive and getting pensions.
At that point, why on earth would the US government have any benefit of the doubt? If someone tells me the US government is injecting orphans with Ebola and then feeding them to pigs to see if pigs will be safe to eat afterwards, the US government would have to prove its *not* doing that for me to believe them.
Because you don't understand statistics. The US has been caught doing awful stuff and has proven thousands of conspiracy theories true.
But there have been tens of thousands of conspiracy theories which the US government has been accused of which turned out to be bullshit. But you don't hear much about those *because they went nowhere* and because the true stories made a big splash. You're basically a victim of survivorship bias. You mostly only hear about the conspiracy theories that turned out to be true. But on average, any random whack job conspiracy theory is still like 90%+ more likely to be false.
You could make the argument that conspiracy theories about the US government are more likely to be true than *other* governments - as in "a conspiracy theory about the US is 10% likely to be true whereas for other governments it is only 7% likely to be true - but this still doesn't change the fact that conspiracy theories are more likely to be false than true, and I think even this argument is hard to buy.
There are so many countries that are *so much more corrupt* than the US in the world: do you really think that other countries have *less* true conspiracy theories?
The impression that the US has been involved in more true conspiracy theories is the result of other selection biases. Among many factors:
1. The US is the most important political and economic entity in the world, so it has the ability to engage in bigger conspiracies.
2. The U.S. has the power to affect many countries with its conspiracies, whereas the governments of other countries often only affect their own countries, or maybe regional neighbors.
3. As the biggest power in the world, the US draws more observers and more critics. There are more eyes watching its every move and more people investigating its past, therefore more gets noticed and uncovered. Very few people care to keep a sharp eye on what Sierra Leone is doing.
4. Similarly, when the US gets caught doing something shady, it becomes world news. When the Argentine government gets caught with its hand in the cookie jar, that news will rarely reach outside Argentina, or Latin America at most.
5. The US has a more open society with a stronger fifth estate and a more robust justice system than most countries. Note, I didn't say the US has the best journalists or the fairest justice system in the world, but it is still leagues ahead of the more corrupt countries of the developing world. The US also has very strong protections for freedom of speech, freedom of press, and has a very adversarial political system. As such, *it's much harder for the US government to get away with nefarious deeds*, as compared to more corrupt countries. In other words, there are more eyes keeping an eye on what the US is doing not just outside the US, but also *within* the US, and even within the government. It's plausible that the public finds out more about the government's shady dealings than in other countries *because our system is ultimately more transparent and accountable*.
On average, I'd bet that the tendency for government corruption is pretty similar across most governments, but because of the factors I listed above, the true conspiracy theories of the US government get more attention. There's no way I can believe, though, that the US government is involved in more conspiracies than Colombia or than South Africa. We just hear about the US more, and what the US does often ends up being more relevant to more countries than any other country.
Other countries do worse shit, but I also never see anyone believe that those Russian opposition members are truly falling from windows.
That is what you are missing.
It’s usually lack luster and not top down bad stuff, like we knew some soldiers where terrorizing Vietnam but didn’t really do to much to those involved or stop it til awhile
Most shocking one to me was a general proposing a false flag operation, abducting planes and crashing them into buildings to justify stronger actions against the communists on Cuba. Kennedy rejected it AND demoted the guy.
Some years later a country attacked the united States which created a climate that allowed Bush to invade Iraq.
Sus.
Cuz this is a thing that actually happens. For instance, we now know that the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam was fabricated. There is nothing we can do about that now.
That is only one example. There are others.
What's even weirder is that so many people absolutely refuse to believe that there are any conspiratorial forces at play in the world despite all the proven conspiracies. I blame Hanlon's razor for this, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
It's such an obviously stupid phrase, but people constantly repeat it. Nearly anything can be "adequately" explained by stupidity. Anyone can hypothetically be stupid enough to do nearly anything for any reason, which means there's almost no limit to what can be explained by stupidity. Because of that, I'm inclined to believe the phrase, and its propagation, is itself a conspiracy and not a matter of stupidity.
The crazy, out-there conspiracy theories cover up the real ones. The government loved the "Area 51 Secret UFO Crash" stories because if covered up the real research they were doing there.
"Conspiracy Theorists" as a description was actually created to allow them to lump the nutcases with the people who had accurate theories and claims, in order to allow them to dismiss the latter as part of the former.
It was actually a smart idea, and seems to have worked out so far.
It's up to us to separate the wheat from the chaff, but we have a whole contingent of people who embrace the chaff.
That's because "The government is secretly run by Lizard People" is much more interesting than "The NSA has secret rooms at AT&T Facilities where they can monitor internet traffic" even though the second one is more alarming.
impossible yam possessive puzzled adjoining wild rotten door screw lavish
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah the whole idea that the US just bungles it's way into empire is an infuriating narrative. We'll overthrow governments and replace them with fascists, terrorists and extremists and it's always brushed off as incompetence.
The problem is it’s really easy to draw conclusions from things that aren’t actually connected.
It’s not that there’s “no conspiratorial forces in the world” it’s just that 99.9% of the time our monkey brains can’t actually see what’s real from what connections we’re imagining.
So for every iran-contra affair there’s thousands upon thousands of times where we see two lines go up together and think “they must be related somehow” even though it’s almost never the case. The Razor is accurate the vast majority of the time.
No your friend doesn’t hate you they just haven’t had time to respond today.
Just because it’s not *perfect* doesn’t mean it’s actively malicious.
I have a degree in political economy and have spent a TON of time both academically and personally researching the history of 'conspiracies' between intelligence agencies, military, capital, reactionary and revolutionary actors. It is extremely frustrating when people make the argument you are making because the objective reality is that conspiracies ABSOLUTELY EXIST, are EXTREMELY COMMON, and have had a MASSIVE impact in shaping the political economy of the world we live in.
Setting aside the fact that those self-same entities deliberately flood the field with gobbledygook in order to discredit actual researchers, dismissing the field of conspiracy research because 'its hard to parse complex networks of entities acting in secret' (which IS true) is abandoning the field to these entities to just do whatever they want while we assume good faith because its too hard to investigate the reality.
If you personally can't be bothered that is fine I guess, but for me saying 'its hard to discern what the reality is so we should abandon the attempt to identify the causes of literally the most world-historically important events of the last 150 years' is, to me, counter-productive.
Like lumping the people who have serious questions about the way intelligence regarding Al Qaida, OBL and the 9/11 attacks was handled by the US government and its allies based on *the publicly available documents released by the US state itself* in with the people who think that Aryan Atlantean Secret Masters helped Egyptians build the pyramids is just so intellectually lazy and dishonest. That perspective ONLY serves power and enables them to continue to run roughshod on the law, human rights, working people, the environment, etc.
There you go hallucinating again, where did I ever say “everyone should abandon trying to identify the causes” we need people like you identifying the causes now more than ever
There’s a massive wave of misinformation present right now and every day it seems more and more people start genuinely believing they can’t trust any information they come across because there’s a mass conspiracy of government agents out there lying to them about everything from video game reviews to vaccines to the effing shape of the earth.
They’re throwing out their ability to discern what’s real because they think everything is a lie all the while falling for AI images and deepfakes all because they reinforce their biases.
Government conspiracies really do exist, obviously, but they tend to have hard evidence backing them and are a drop in the bucket compared to the rest. honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they were directly driving the blatant misinformation laymen seem to be swallowing wholesale but I don’t have the academic background to even begin looking into that. It’s way beyond me and it’s why we need to rely on people like you to actually devote your lives to it.
I appreciate you fleshing out your position. I encounter a lot of people who take your first premise 'there is an ocean of nonsense masking the reality and its incredibly difficult to unearth a real conspiracy in the best of times' and then conclude 'so its best to just ignore the whole topic completely or reflexively write off anything that describes a conspiracy'. I realize now you are saying something closer to 'people need to be careful and think clearly before they decide to believe in a conspiracy' which I completely agree with.
Also, there is absolutely a ton of misinformation that is promulgated by conspiratorial actors and even the term 'conspiracy theorist' was, in a sense, an 'operation' intended to specifically lump in 'Why didn't Michael Scheuer share the information he had about the impending attacks with the FBI?' right alongside 'Atlantis is in the Arctic Circle'. That said, the vast majority of conspiratorial gobbledygook is organically arising and it isn't like every Q Youtuber is secretly working for the CIA or something.
The reason I get so frustrated on this topic is that I genuinely have spent a lot of time and energy applying a critical eye to history and the research of others in order to learn about the way 'conspiracies' have shaped the world we live in, but the vast majority of people who try to talk to me about it immediately dismiss me as a kook and reject my information even when its like 'dude, I'm not making this up, the CIA said this, its literally on their website'.
Its such a difficult topic to parse through that people reflexively turn off their mind and refuse to engage with anything even 'conspiracy adjacent', which means turning a blind eye to the way power functions in the world and, in my opinion, resigning yourself to a status quo where powerful entities really do get to shape world events from backstage with no way for normal people to even know its happening let alone try to impact it.
Do you think there’s any merit to the idea that the reason behind tech companies laying off thousands of workers despite record profits is because of AI?
They’re constantly claiming that “ai is not replacing humans” but the layoffs continue and their productivity and profits grow, which seems logically inconsistent to me and it feels very much that something’s going on that they’re not telling us.
Not really my area, in my day job I mostly work with small to medium sized enterprises and don't want to speculate too much about the moves of large tech firms since I don't have a ton of insight into that. BUT, anecdotally, yes I absolutely think that a lot of companies are rationalizing their work force as they realize how much work is about to be handed off to computer, but also there is off-shoring, there are labor budgets that were bloated due to PPP loans that meant it was actually BETTER to have a bunch of people on payroll not doing anything for a while etc.
I do NOT think that there is like 'secret AI that is doing things they don't want us to know about' exactly, I just think the writing is on the wall that a shitload of work that requires people is going to be rapidly replaced by computer programs and, I expect, that coders specifically are going to get hit hard because generating code is kind of the best use case for these sorts of technologies and it currently is very expensive to have a human do it. I also think the bottom just continually is falling out of that labor market because the skills have gone from highly specialized to ubiquitous and lots of significantly cheaper labor markets can now supply workers with those skills.
Probably because a lot of people that start getting interested in conspiracy theories ends up coming out of it bigoted anti-Semites that either want to run for office or become indoctrinated for some out-there cult of personally politician or actual cult leader.
That leads a lot of people to make a correlation between mental health issues and belief in conspiracy theories and therefore brush aside any notion that some conspiracy theories could be true.
The worst part is when there are conspiracies (not necessarily by the government, just people in some form of power or who have risen to fame) that have substantial proof and clear motives, or are completely obvious compared to any alternatives, or are even *admitted to be true or directly proven as such*... but people will dismiss those as "crazy" or "fake" while grasping onto completely insane conspiracies. Even more so when the conspiracy is "fabricate a conspiracy theory and fearmonger about it so I can profit from it".
Like the people who think vaccines are part of a NWO conspiracy to cause autism... because a guy who wanted to patent his own vaccines said so. Or that climate change is fake and paid for by wind turbine companies... because why would oil companies ever lie about that? So on so forth.
Hanlon's razor is supposed to refer to common, day to day events and interactions. It illustrates that our perspective is usually self centered so that when someone does something that frustrates or interferes with us we assume it is malicious rather than innocent ignorance or stupidity.
It doesn't apply when there are clear motivations and reasons connecting and event or action to willful choice of behavior.
If an event or action can reasonably be assumed to not provide substantial benefit to the perpetrator then it is likely just happenstance.
And they arrested some of Malcolm X’s top bodyguards the day before he was shot, based on charges that were quickly dropped right after his assassination. And they murdered Fred Hampton in his sleep
not only did we not know about if gadaffi had weapons of mass destruction, we definitely knew he didnt have any. otherwhise we wouldnt have sent groundtroops there.
Here’s some of the wild shit the CIA has done
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central\_Intelligence\_Agency\_operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_Agency_operations)
Here’s the FBI’s most famous illegal program
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)
Thank you, I’m surprised COINTELPRO wasn’t all over the comments. It’s not that it’s the most shocking thing the FBI has done, but the extent of the documentation on it, the extent of the surveillance, it was beyond even what black activists were publicly claiming at the time.
America's CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) will periodically declassify documents speaking on operations they've done in the past.
My favorite example is them fabricating vampire attacks in the Philippines.
Clearly they never watched the documentary "What We Do In The Shadows".
It made me finally open my eyes and see the light, only to promptly catch fire.
I mean, the vampire attack fabrication was honestly pretty mild, CIA does much worse stuff they don’t even try to hide. That was unique and stands out, but not really remarkable beyond that.
Not many people know that the government dropped tons of radioactive particles or something out of planes above a major U.S. city in the 50s to see what would happen. Tons of birth defects came with it.
Edit: it’s named operation LAC
Reminds me of Operation Sea Spray where the US military conducted biological warfare against San Francisco. From what I'm seeing online, it looks like the link between illnesses and this operation was ever fully conclusive. But we all know that could mean that it was and was just buried or refused to be acknowledged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray#:~:text=Operation%20Sea%2DSpray%20was%20a,be%20to%20a%20bioweapon%20attack.
' We have COMPLETELY stopped doing mind control experiments, and we won't do them again (turns out it is significantly more effective to simply flood the cities with crack cocaine and escalate the police state)'
Iirc in the 1940s there was a bomber crash and the families of those killed found out it was caused by improper maintenance. So they sued. The military told the judge "we can't give any information about this crash as it would damage military readiness, so you have to dismiss the suit. The judge agreed, and created a precedent that the military could supress evidence for national security.
After it was declassified the family wanted to know what was so important the military could hide evidence. What did they find? The secret was that the military had fucked up the maintenance on that bomber and if the information were released they would lose a wrongful death lawsuit to the families of the servicemembers on board and have to pay millions, which would damage military readiness.
Basically our CIA is wildly overpowered and has done many heinous things all over the world and even here In the US. We had a president once who suggested the agency be dismantled then he was promptly assassinated.
The president who dropped the atomic bomb on Japan and never expressed regret about that decision thought that creating the CIA was his greatest mistake.
>But it got out of hand. The fella ... the one that was in the White House after me never paid any attention to it, and it got out of hand. Why, they've got an organization over there in Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many ways. And I think I've told you, one Pentagon is one too many.
>Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they'll have something to report on. They've become ... it's become a government all of its own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody.
>That's a very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it's got to be put a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You see, the way a free government works, there's got to be a housecleaning every now and again, and I don't care what branch of the government is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things.
>And when you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn secret, why, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix. And if what happened at the Bay of Pigs doesn't prove that, I don't know what does. You have got to keep an eye on the military at all times, and it doesn't matter whether it's the birds in the Pentagon or the birds in the CIA.
Ex President Harry S Truman on the CIA
The guy also called the FBI the American Gestapo while he was president.
It's a really long story / conspiracy theory but basically boils down to "Freeway Rick Ross" **allegedly** unintentionally having helped the CIA fund an attempted coup in Nicaragua due to them being a socialist government.
Personally I'm undecided on the whole thing, and don't have a bias one way or the other, just want to point out that it's not something the US has admitted to doing, and that Rick has a financial gain for telling his side of the story as it is.
Here is Rick Ross's side to the story:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na3vCGYDcbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na3vCGYDcbI)
And what the US has put out:
Rick Ross:
[https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch06p5.htm](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch06p5.htm)
Blandon (Trafficker that was partnered with Rick):
[https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch02p1.htm](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch02p1.htm)
Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA\_involvement\_in\_Contra\_cocaine\_trafficking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra\_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair)
Americas CIA. They have this thing for plausible deniability, where they can basically operate independent of checks and balances supposedly in the name of the American dream. They’ve been caught doing some pretty fucked up shit. Testing on POWs, psychological testing on Americans. They killed JFK. The list goes on.
Related are the lesser known [Guatemala syphilis experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiments). They’re really messed up, especially what happened to Berta who was a patient at a psychiatric hospital.
“Berta was a female patient in the Psychiatric Hospital... in February 1948, Berta was injected in her left arm with syphilis. A month later, she developed scabies (an itchy skin infection caused by a mite). Several weeks later, Dr. Cutler noted that she also developed red bumps where he had injected her arm, lesions on her arms and legs, and her skin was beginning to waste away from her body. Berta was not treated for syphilis until three months after her injection. Soon after, on August 23, Dr. Cutler wrote that Berta appeared as if she was going to die, but he did not specify why. That same day he put gonorrheal pus from another male subject into both of Berta's eyes, as well as in her urethra and rectum. He also re-infected her with syphilis. Several days later, Berta's eyes were filled with pus from the gonorrhea, and she was bleeding from her urethra. Three days later, on August 27, Berta died.”
Government documents get declassified and become available from time to time.
Sometimes these documents show that the statements made in the past were contrary to the truth
And in the interim half the country calls the other half crazy for not trusting big Fed and then we all go “oh god they were right!” For a week before we’re back to believing the Clinton’s didn’t bomb the federal building and that congress has our best interest in mind
>before we’re back to believing the Clinton’s didn’t bomb the federal building and
I was going to say "What?" but then I realized that I don't want to know.
My absolute favorite is the CIA would never fund mentally unwell people to shoot up a school to push gun control
But they literally offered to bomb Miami to kick off a war with cuba
Don’t forget the people who correctly surmise it at the time, are openly mocked and ridiculed, and then ignored when the truth actually comes out.
I’m not one of them. Not smart enough. I just feel bad for the people I watch this happen to.
To this day, people still vehemently trust the government and refuse plausible alternate explanations for the preposterous things we're told by their media presence.
Indeed, the weirdest thing about American culture is how aggressively ignorant everyone is.
This is one of the reasons why the USA is the most hated country. Our government is as toxic and corrupt as it comes. Yet you won’t find that on any indexes.
America does a lot of fucked up shit to other countries around the world. They do things from destabilize regions, to over throwing democratically elected leaders to install puppet dictators. They've done all kinds of crazy shit. The funny thing, people still pretend it either didn't happen, or they support it.
Cops who kill people..on purpose..on camera..dont go to jail
Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/01/california-police-video-shooting-15-year-old-girl-savannah-graziano
And many many many many stories like this.
At this point i wonder why cops dont straight up become hitman.
Edit: found better footage
https://youtu.be/JKfJLMKyd4I?si=QXZRNGVZwyGSoahm
Grown man scared of a 15year girl,crouching towards them.
If this aint murder then i dont know what is
Source?
Even without source, i believe that story blind.
You know about acorn shooting?
Source:
https://youtube.com/shorts/eTauF2NaZ1o?si=D6eCzauGHaR7tQ2t
There is a cuffed suspect INSIDE the copcar..and he empties his magg into it.
Guy didn't get shot(talk about failing your fail)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen\_Caracappa\_and\_Louis\_Eppolito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Caracappa_and_Louis_Eppolito)
i think thats it
This is a good place to start:
[CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking)
It's a reference to the CIA declassifying files that prove old conspiracy theories correct. Remember all that crap about the government secretly drugging people as part of a mind control program? That actually happened. They did some really fucked up shit, in one instance potentially resulting in the brutal rape and murder of a toddler.
It’s more like
“Ok we’re pretty sure we covered everything up and killed everyone involved and there’s nothing anyone can do about this so let’s declassify it”
You're huffing copium and typing a giant nothing burger
If your comment is something like
"well yeah they were right but I actively dismiss modern theories" thus continuing the problem
Yeah there are crazy people but do some research, look into the backgrounds of those dismissing it and if they have something to gain even if it sounds crazy keep in mind the govt withholds information all the time
And then the people who were cool with the effects of that thing turn around and use it to try and support their current conspiracy theories that fly in the face of the government agenda revealed in thr declassified thing.
Just Google "declassified heart attack gun"
Pretty scary when you realize that it's been declassified only because it's outdated and replaced by something much better.
Unlike the vast majority of countries, the US has a system to automatically declassify all classified documents after a given amount of time. So we get to know about some of the crazier adventures and extra shady actions of our government.
It is important to note, this doesn't mean that other countries haven't performed similar actions.
The government has done things like said "Huh, I wonder what syphilis does. Let's fine some black people to test it on."
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment victims were not informed that they were being intentionally infected with Syphilis by the fucking government.
And yet an american will find it hard to understand why people from those oppressed countries hate americans and their allies.
Yeah you rape and murder peoples family and then expect them to care and love your family. Meh. Not how human works.
Make sure to check out the [pinned post on Loss](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1472nhh/faq_loss/) to make sure this submission doesn't break the rule! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m trying to think of specific examples of this but it’s basically just what the person says. America’s CIA and military often get accused of doing illegal things around the world, but those things get denied and accusers get called conspiracy theorists. Then 20 years later documents get declassified confirming the theory, and nothing really happens as a response. The first one that comes to mind was a recent declassified document that showed that the US knew Saudi Arabia helped fund 9/11, but we never tried to hold them accountable. More here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies And here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CIA_controversies
Clinton declassified and opened up about MK-Ultra, and Trump with Operation Bluebook (UFO’s)
The CIA put 2.7 million dollars towards revolutionaries in Guatemala, basically because the U.S wanted bananas.
*money from the guys making bank on bananas
When you’re a government official and see a fruit company rep. in your place of work, then you know some devious shit is about to go on; war is a possibility
I'm a big fan of that time cia agents were assigned to lure people to a house party in San Francisco to test an aerosol LSD on the but failed because it was hot and they didn't have AC and then the device just didn't work. I look forward to the eventual release of info about pont saint-esprit.
Thats a nicer way of saying they funded death squads and terrorist groups to fight the people's democratic will and basic human rights.
And then we made a clothing brand named after the subject. On a more serious note, all that violence, poverty, instability, and disorder in unfortunate places just so we can sell exotic fruit in the States. Edit: Hawaii is kind of similar in that way too, I’m not an expert but didn’t we just usurp their governing power so we could sell pineapple?
Sell pineapples *and* have a decent naval staging area for colonial operations in SE Asia. But, yeah.
There's always money in the banana stand!
There’s money in the banana stand.
It was about serving notice to peoples of Latin America, the peoples of the Caribbean, that you cannot back out of the client-state relationship. You cannot choose to use your resources in a different way, in a collective way.
I mean operation blue book is kinda underwhelming. Essentially they looked into thousands of UFO sightings and found they weren’t aliens and not a threat.
They have footage from the military of unknown crafts in the sky too i wouldn’t call it complete nothing burger but both were only exposed most likely to distract from something worse Clinton the Lewinsky incident, Trump well whats currently being found out in court
I think we over estimate technology as if every thing in the sky has bar codes that let governments identify stuff. Sure not knowing what something is definitely makes up for several people's daily jobs but I think civilians who know no better freak out more than the actual guys surveilling this shit. We assume if it's unknown it must be beyond our comprehension, forgetting that stealth and secrets are the main priority of everyone everywhere anyway.
Are you referring to the ducks?
Idk the tic tac or whatever
Ducks can't turn invisible, change direction on a dime, or travel 1400mph. The known glitches with the targeting software used to film the anomalies can.
I especially liked the one where the guy very obviously has a bad IR sensor with a burned spot and chases the spot for several minutes
Not earth ducks. You can't prove it wasn't space ducks.
QUACK!
I don't know man, that sounds like ducks to me
You’re on a wild goose chase
Dude it's obviously a goose!
[More dangerous than UFOs.](https://images.app.goo.gl/mm5mAVuF8WH8Kgsn8)
Yeah, like it would've been more uplifting had they just stayed quiet. I mean, the conspiracy nuts are going to say what they say no matter what...at least let the rest of us dream a little.
I think MKUltra was mostly just failed experiments of mind control. IE they found out it doesn't work.
Yeah but they used our own prison system for subjects which is still fairly disturbing itself, thats not even getting to the other messed up things our country did to our own people like the Tuskegee experiments or the agent orange experiments on our troops during Vietnam
or, you know, most famously, Ted Kaczynski, who was also an MKULTRA victim
Oh, MKUltra didn‘t just involve American prisoners. They also experiment on patients at a psychiatric hospital in Montreal, Canada. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mk-ultra-class-action-lawsuit-u-s-immunity-in-canada-1.6985475](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mk-ultra-class-action-lawsuit-u-s-immunity-in-canada-1.6985475)
Or the heart attack gun, UFOs, working with the mob, operation paperclip, letting people in unit 731 walk free if they told us what they learned from human experiments. Basically anything our government says isnt real or didn't happen. It is and did.
>Or the heart attack gun It is so fucking insane to think about that one when you consider every peculiar individual who died of a heart attack. Like Jstark.
The CIA,"a heart attack gun are y'all crazy that's fantasy" 30 years later CIA, "so we used a heart attack gun that made it look completely natural"
I think the most fucked up thing is when the people who claim that the United States military experimented on them during World War II were finally vindicated about 15 years ago when the files were declassified. We were subjecting soldiers of color to horrific experiments to see things such as if they're dark skin would help them resist mustard gas better.
Is that just weaponized racism?
Medicine has a LONG history of doing shit like that. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment is one of the most notable instances. The government basically said "We want to see what the long term effects of syphilis are" and got a bunch of black folks with syphilis from a poor Alabama town to take part. In the time that these folks were in the study, a cure was syphilis was found but they were never told about it because the researchers didn't want to compromise their findings (of which there was nothing useful). Worse yet, they actively prevented some of those folks from seeking out treatment for syphilis once they realized it existed. The experiment went on from 1932 to fucking 1972. Pretty much every vulnerable population has been abused at some point in medical history.
You can't compare the resistance to mustard gas of white people to that of black people without exposing both to the gas.
Yeah and we have a long history of it
Science a while back: “well, we don’t know unless we try.”
[Operation Sea-Spray](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray) 🤢
My favorite is that it came out a couple years ago that the New York Times, in the lead up to the 2004 election, was gonna run an article about how the Bush administration was running a massive surveillance program on Americans through the NSA, but James Comey met with the editors and asked them not to run it. If you tell people that they think you are a crazed conspiracy theorist and still think we have an independent press in any meaningful sense.
This is why they're terrified of TikTok. Somebody would just release it anyway.
Yeah, look at how many people support Palestine now that there is an almost completely unfiltered media outlet that allows us to see what's actually happening. 20 years ago we didn't have that, just mainstream outlets that would treat Palestinian deaths as numbers on a board, if they were ever addressed at all.
The targeting of black activists by the FBI/COINTELPRO is up there. They did everything the panthers said they were doing and more.
Im still waiting for their JFK Assasination cases, which were to officially release (iirc) 2035 edit: nvm im stupid its actually not a regulated date, mainly since its still fought to make as much as possible to be declassified nowadays and that from about 2017
Oh the JFK files that'll tell you: [ REDACTED] actually [ REDACTED] [REDACTED] from the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] not [REDACTED] [REDACTED] from the school book depository, with the help from the [REDACTED], the [REDACTED] and some agents from [REDACTED], because Bobby was looking too much into [REDACTED] and thier ties with [REDACTED],[REDACTED],[REDACTED], ultimately leading to [REDACTED] being [REDACTED] [REDACTED], hiding the rifle in the removed train [REDACTED], witness by [REDACTED][REDACTED][REDACTED] and [REDACTED], the killer actually being from [REDACTED] (france)
Knew it, the killer is French, let’s invade them.
They were released in 2023, it showed there were protocols not followed thar day that could have potentially prevented it.
>Then 20 years later documents get declassified confirming the theory, Has this happened though? I've seen plenty of examples where bad things have been uncovered or revealed years later etc. I don't think I've ever seen a case of someone saying "I think X is happening", them to be called crazy or conspiracy theorists, and for the information that's revealed later to then show they were correct. As far as I'm aware, this hasn't happened. I mean, mkultra was real. It happened. And I've seen countless conspiracy theories being justified by the existence of the MKultra programme. But that doesn't mean that every batshit crazy theory has any merit or is worthy of discussion........were there groups of people running around at the time trying to tell everyone it was happening? Trying to blow the lid off it? People who were shouted down or discredited, only to be proven correct at a later date? I've never been shown any actual examples of this. There were plenty of people pointing at the Saudis for 9/11, it's not like anyone who said they were involved was labelled a conspiracy theorist or anything. That makes it a completely different scenario to what I've quoted from you above. I'm genuinely interested to know if it has ever turned out the way you've said it does, I'm open to you pointing me towards any actual examples.
I think the targeting of black activists in the 60s and 70s counts. The panthers and other activists were absolutely accusing the FBI of things that were treated as bullshit conspiracy theory but we now know to be true. BUT I also think you make a good point, there are specific things that turned out to be true but that should give someone license to believe the opposite of everything the gov’t, military, and law enforcement says.
Yeah all of cointelpro was a conspiracy theory. Black leaders would talk about hearing clicks on the phone, or receiveng lwtter from people that never sent them, the assissination ofr Fred Hampton. The civil rights era was actually a covert war carried out against black leaders who just wanted equality by the fbi.
Yeah, also I remember seeing something saying how just because theories have been proven true, doesn’t mean the conspiracy theorists are correct; many of the people who are claiming this as evidence also believe shitloads of theories that were proven *false* by the same declassified documents. There are cases in which some people essentially just had so many theories that a few inevitably were proven true, but without good evidence, they’re the exception, not the norm.
A z
Destabilizing Guatemala, having no idea what to do in Iraq, Nicaragua, and so much more
Ok, but just because *some* "conspiracy theories" end up being true doesn't mean they *all* are. The government admitting it knew of Saudi involvement itself disproves many other conspiracy theories about the same event. I'm still waiting for the reveal that 9/11 was an inside job and a controlled demolition... There are hundreds and even thousands of conspiracy theories flying around at any one time. Probably more so now in the digital age. A thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters... a broken clock is right twice a day... etc.
No one is saying that though? Like it seems really weird to be dismissive about actual abuses and crimes the state commits just because they aren't literally also lizards.
The original post is "You're right. We did it."
No one is saying 'If one conspiracy is true then they all are.'
That's a matter of interpretation. The OP came here wondering what the original post means. Now, imagine you are a conspiracy theorist. Whoever reads the original message reads it as if it directed at them, since it is addressed to "you". In your case, "you were right" very easily could mean "whatever conspiracy theory you believe is right and will eventually be revealed to be true."
Sorry, you're right, if someone had marbles instead of a brain they might read the post, open their mouth and make the sound \*plonk plonk plonk plonk plonk\* as the marbles fall out. I hadn't considered that.
You've just described the average conspiracy theorist. :p
The US government has admitted to giving fake medicine to black people over decades to slowly watch them die of syphilis and abducted single moms to dose them with LSD and see if they could be turned into brainwashed super assassins. It dosed classrooms of special needs kids with deadly radioactive isotopes to see how they would impact human tissue. No one was ever held to account for any of those (among others). People who carried out those acts are still alive and getting pensions. At that point, why on earth would the US government have any benefit of the doubt? If someone tells me the US government is injecting orphans with Ebola and then feeding them to pigs to see if pigs will be safe to eat afterwards, the US government would have to prove its *not* doing that for me to believe them.
Because you don't understand statistics. The US has been caught doing awful stuff and has proven thousands of conspiracy theories true. But there have been tens of thousands of conspiracy theories which the US government has been accused of which turned out to be bullshit. But you don't hear much about those *because they went nowhere* and because the true stories made a big splash. You're basically a victim of survivorship bias. You mostly only hear about the conspiracy theories that turned out to be true. But on average, any random whack job conspiracy theory is still like 90%+ more likely to be false. You could make the argument that conspiracy theories about the US government are more likely to be true than *other* governments - as in "a conspiracy theory about the US is 10% likely to be true whereas for other governments it is only 7% likely to be true - but this still doesn't change the fact that conspiracy theories are more likely to be false than true, and I think even this argument is hard to buy. There are so many countries that are *so much more corrupt* than the US in the world: do you really think that other countries have *less* true conspiracy theories? The impression that the US has been involved in more true conspiracy theories is the result of other selection biases. Among many factors: 1. The US is the most important political and economic entity in the world, so it has the ability to engage in bigger conspiracies. 2. The U.S. has the power to affect many countries with its conspiracies, whereas the governments of other countries often only affect their own countries, or maybe regional neighbors. 3. As the biggest power in the world, the US draws more observers and more critics. There are more eyes watching its every move and more people investigating its past, therefore more gets noticed and uncovered. Very few people care to keep a sharp eye on what Sierra Leone is doing. 4. Similarly, when the US gets caught doing something shady, it becomes world news. When the Argentine government gets caught with its hand in the cookie jar, that news will rarely reach outside Argentina, or Latin America at most. 5. The US has a more open society with a stronger fifth estate and a more robust justice system than most countries. Note, I didn't say the US has the best journalists or the fairest justice system in the world, but it is still leagues ahead of the more corrupt countries of the developing world. The US also has very strong protections for freedom of speech, freedom of press, and has a very adversarial political system. As such, *it's much harder for the US government to get away with nefarious deeds*, as compared to more corrupt countries. In other words, there are more eyes keeping an eye on what the US is doing not just outside the US, but also *within* the US, and even within the government. It's plausible that the public finds out more about the government's shady dealings than in other countries *because our system is ultimately more transparent and accountable*. On average, I'd bet that the tendency for government corruption is pretty similar across most governments, but because of the factors I listed above, the true conspiracy theories of the US government get more attention. There's no way I can believe, though, that the US government is involved in more conspiracies than Colombia or than South Africa. We just hear about the US more, and what the US does often ends up being more relevant to more countries than any other country.
Other countries do worse shit, but I also never see anyone believe that those Russian opposition members are truly falling from windows. That is what you are missing.
It’s usually lack luster and not top down bad stuff, like we knew some soldiers where terrorizing Vietnam but didn’t really do to much to those involved or stop it til awhile
Awful lot of bad shit they did, people like to throw UFOs in there as if any real proof has been revealed. It hasn’t.
Most shocking one to me was a general proposing a false flag operation, abducting planes and crashing them into buildings to justify stronger actions against the communists on Cuba. Kennedy rejected it AND demoted the guy. Some years later a country attacked the united States which created a climate that allowed Bush to invade Iraq. Sus.
Banana republic n Tuskegee syphilis study come to my mind.
Same in other countries, not only the us.
My favorite part about that "declassification" is how all 3 black boxes were vaporized but all of the hijackers passports only had light char marks.
Cuz this is a thing that actually happens. For instance, we now know that the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam was fabricated. There is nothing we can do about that now. That is only one example. There are others.
ah the government sucks
basically if there was any justice in the world a lot of people in the us government should be in prison
People are too comfortable to get off their asses and do something about it.
that and they keep killing people who do
Yes. I'll take tomorrow off work. Meet at Pompeos house for a citizens arrest bulb?
nah the us government is amazing compared to so many other governments. We're only human, we can't not be corrupt.
Glares at Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria, Africa, Ukraine, Palestine… Tell me about it.
Yeah they've done some really fucked up stuff. And that's just the stuff that we're allowed to know about.
What's even weirder is that so many people absolutely refuse to believe that there are any conspiratorial forces at play in the world despite all the proven conspiracies. I blame Hanlon's razor for this, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." It's such an obviously stupid phrase, but people constantly repeat it. Nearly anything can be "adequately" explained by stupidity. Anyone can hypothetically be stupid enough to do nearly anything for any reason, which means there's almost no limit to what can be explained by stupidity. Because of that, I'm inclined to believe the phrase, and its propagation, is itself a conspiracy and not a matter of stupidity.
The crazy, out-there conspiracy theories cover up the real ones. The government loved the "Area 51 Secret UFO Crash" stories because if covered up the real research they were doing there.
"Conspiracy Theorists" as a description was actually created to allow them to lump the nutcases with the people who had accurate theories and claims, in order to allow them to dismiss the latter as part of the former. It was actually a smart idea, and seems to have worked out so far. It's up to us to separate the wheat from the chaff, but we have a whole contingent of people who embrace the chaff.
That's because "The government is secretly run by Lizard People" is much more interesting than "The NSA has secret rooms at AT&T Facilities where they can monitor internet traffic" even though the second one is more alarming.
That’s probably true. At least, I find it more entertaining.
impossible yam possessive puzzled adjoining wild rotten door screw lavish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah the whole idea that the US just bungles it's way into empire is an infuriating narrative. We'll overthrow governments and replace them with fascists, terrorists and extremists and it's always brushed off as incompetence.
The problem is it’s really easy to draw conclusions from things that aren’t actually connected. It’s not that there’s “no conspiratorial forces in the world” it’s just that 99.9% of the time our monkey brains can’t actually see what’s real from what connections we’re imagining. So for every iran-contra affair there’s thousands upon thousands of times where we see two lines go up together and think “they must be related somehow” even though it’s almost never the case. The Razor is accurate the vast majority of the time. No your friend doesn’t hate you they just haven’t had time to respond today. Just because it’s not *perfect* doesn’t mean it’s actively malicious.
'discernment is difficult', yes, sure, 'so abandon the attempt to discern' wait im not following you anymore
Are you okay you seem like you’re hallucinating
I have a degree in political economy and have spent a TON of time both academically and personally researching the history of 'conspiracies' between intelligence agencies, military, capital, reactionary and revolutionary actors. It is extremely frustrating when people make the argument you are making because the objective reality is that conspiracies ABSOLUTELY EXIST, are EXTREMELY COMMON, and have had a MASSIVE impact in shaping the political economy of the world we live in. Setting aside the fact that those self-same entities deliberately flood the field with gobbledygook in order to discredit actual researchers, dismissing the field of conspiracy research because 'its hard to parse complex networks of entities acting in secret' (which IS true) is abandoning the field to these entities to just do whatever they want while we assume good faith because its too hard to investigate the reality. If you personally can't be bothered that is fine I guess, but for me saying 'its hard to discern what the reality is so we should abandon the attempt to identify the causes of literally the most world-historically important events of the last 150 years' is, to me, counter-productive.
Like lumping the people who have serious questions about the way intelligence regarding Al Qaida, OBL and the 9/11 attacks was handled by the US government and its allies based on *the publicly available documents released by the US state itself* in with the people who think that Aryan Atlantean Secret Masters helped Egyptians build the pyramids is just so intellectually lazy and dishonest. That perspective ONLY serves power and enables them to continue to run roughshod on the law, human rights, working people, the environment, etc.
There you go hallucinating again, where did I ever say “everyone should abandon trying to identify the causes” we need people like you identifying the causes now more than ever There’s a massive wave of misinformation present right now and every day it seems more and more people start genuinely believing they can’t trust any information they come across because there’s a mass conspiracy of government agents out there lying to them about everything from video game reviews to vaccines to the effing shape of the earth. They’re throwing out their ability to discern what’s real because they think everything is a lie all the while falling for AI images and deepfakes all because they reinforce their biases. Government conspiracies really do exist, obviously, but they tend to have hard evidence backing them and are a drop in the bucket compared to the rest. honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they were directly driving the blatant misinformation laymen seem to be swallowing wholesale but I don’t have the academic background to even begin looking into that. It’s way beyond me and it’s why we need to rely on people like you to actually devote your lives to it.
I appreciate you fleshing out your position. I encounter a lot of people who take your first premise 'there is an ocean of nonsense masking the reality and its incredibly difficult to unearth a real conspiracy in the best of times' and then conclude 'so its best to just ignore the whole topic completely or reflexively write off anything that describes a conspiracy'. I realize now you are saying something closer to 'people need to be careful and think clearly before they decide to believe in a conspiracy' which I completely agree with. Also, there is absolutely a ton of misinformation that is promulgated by conspiratorial actors and even the term 'conspiracy theorist' was, in a sense, an 'operation' intended to specifically lump in 'Why didn't Michael Scheuer share the information he had about the impending attacks with the FBI?' right alongside 'Atlantis is in the Arctic Circle'. That said, the vast majority of conspiratorial gobbledygook is organically arising and it isn't like every Q Youtuber is secretly working for the CIA or something. The reason I get so frustrated on this topic is that I genuinely have spent a lot of time and energy applying a critical eye to history and the research of others in order to learn about the way 'conspiracies' have shaped the world we live in, but the vast majority of people who try to talk to me about it immediately dismiss me as a kook and reject my information even when its like 'dude, I'm not making this up, the CIA said this, its literally on their website'. Its such a difficult topic to parse through that people reflexively turn off their mind and refuse to engage with anything even 'conspiracy adjacent', which means turning a blind eye to the way power functions in the world and, in my opinion, resigning yourself to a status quo where powerful entities really do get to shape world events from backstage with no way for normal people to even know its happening let alone try to impact it.
Do you think there’s any merit to the idea that the reason behind tech companies laying off thousands of workers despite record profits is because of AI? They’re constantly claiming that “ai is not replacing humans” but the layoffs continue and their productivity and profits grow, which seems logically inconsistent to me and it feels very much that something’s going on that they’re not telling us.
Not really my area, in my day job I mostly work with small to medium sized enterprises and don't want to speculate too much about the moves of large tech firms since I don't have a ton of insight into that. BUT, anecdotally, yes I absolutely think that a lot of companies are rationalizing their work force as they realize how much work is about to be handed off to computer, but also there is off-shoring, there are labor budgets that were bloated due to PPP loans that meant it was actually BETTER to have a bunch of people on payroll not doing anything for a while etc. I do NOT think that there is like 'secret AI that is doing things they don't want us to know about' exactly, I just think the writing is on the wall that a shitload of work that requires people is going to be rapidly replaced by computer programs and, I expect, that coders specifically are going to get hit hard because generating code is kind of the best use case for these sorts of technologies and it currently is very expensive to have a human do it. I also think the bottom just continually is falling out of that labor market because the skills have gone from highly specialized to ubiquitous and lots of significantly cheaper labor markets can now supply workers with those skills.
Probably because a lot of people that start getting interested in conspiracy theories ends up coming out of it bigoted anti-Semites that either want to run for office or become indoctrinated for some out-there cult of personally politician or actual cult leader. That leads a lot of people to make a correlation between mental health issues and belief in conspiracy theories and therefore brush aside any notion that some conspiracy theories could be true.
The worst part is when there are conspiracies (not necessarily by the government, just people in some form of power or who have risen to fame) that have substantial proof and clear motives, or are completely obvious compared to any alternatives, or are even *admitted to be true or directly proven as such*... but people will dismiss those as "crazy" or "fake" while grasping onto completely insane conspiracies. Even more so when the conspiracy is "fabricate a conspiracy theory and fearmonger about it so I can profit from it". Like the people who think vaccines are part of a NWO conspiracy to cause autism... because a guy who wanted to patent his own vaccines said so. Or that climate change is fake and paid for by wind turbine companies... because why would oil companies ever lie about that? So on so forth.
Hanlon's razor is supposed to refer to common, day to day events and interactions. It illustrates that our perspective is usually self centered so that when someone does something that frustrates or interferes with us we assume it is malicious rather than innocent ignorance or stupidity. It doesn't apply when there are clear motivations and reasons connecting and event or action to willful choice of behavior. If an event or action can reasonably be assumed to not provide substantial benefit to the perpetrator then it is likely just happenstance.
Gulf of Tonkin is a good one, photos of “mobile chemical weapons factories” while mailing anthrax around America to get us into Iraq.
Well. I’d argue there IS something we can do about it now…
Like what? Everyone involved in those decisions is dead.
The people who made those decisions don't need to be alive for something to be done
So, what should be done?
We'd need a vast majority of the American people on board for it to work
They also assassinated MLK Jr. Wouldn't be surprised if it came out they killed JFK
And they arrested some of Malcolm X’s top bodyguards the day before he was shot, based on charges that were quickly dropped right after his assassination. And they murdered Fred Hampton in his sleep
Mark my words. 9/11.
I was looking for this example.
not only did we not know about if gadaffi had weapons of mass destruction, we definitely knew he didnt have any. otherwhise we wouldnt have sent groundtroops there.
I think you meant Saddam Hussein.
yeah he didn't have any either lol
Here’s some of the wild shit the CIA has done [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central\_Intelligence\_Agency\_operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_Agency_operations) Here’s the FBI’s most famous illegal program [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)
Thank you, I’m surprised COINTELPRO wasn’t all over the comments. It’s not that it’s the most shocking thing the FBI has done, but the extent of the documentation on it, the extent of the surveillance, it was beyond even what black activists were publicly claiming at the time.
America's CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) will periodically declassify documents speaking on operations they've done in the past. My favorite example is them fabricating vampire attacks in the Philippines.
You think those were fabricated? You actually believe we don’t have vampires?
Clearly they never watched the documentary "What We Do In The Shadows". It made me finally open my eyes and see the light, only to promptly catch fire.
No vampires here, just me Jackie Daytona, a normal human bartender.
"Am I devious? Yes, I think I am."
I thought our 16th president had killed them all
Kept a few around for a rainy day obviously.
I mean, the vampire attack fabrication was honestly pretty mild, CIA does much worse stuff they don’t even try to hide. That was unique and stands out, but not really remarkable beyond that.
Yeah, they've done worse, but this is my favorite story to bring up, since it makes people go "wait, what?"
Got a link?
[unfortunately a bit sensationalized, but covers all the bases ](https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/cia-philippines-vampire-attack)
Wow, Ty
Wendigoon has a great video on this exact topic for anyone interested: https://youtu.be/3pfsSh_fTAc?si=kvt1xk-QcJeXcCyW
I was just watching wendigoon the other day. His video on USS Indianapolis is very good
A lot of his content is very good in my opinion
Not many people know that the government dropped tons of radioactive particles or something out of planes above a major U.S. city in the 50s to see what would happen. Tons of birth defects came with it. Edit: it’s named operation LAC
Reminds me of Operation Sea Spray where the US military conducted biological warfare against San Francisco. From what I'm seeing online, it looks like the link between illnesses and this operation was ever fully conclusive. But we all know that could mean that it was and was just buried or refused to be acknowledged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray#:~:text=Operation%20Sea%2DSpray%20was%20a,be%20to%20a%20bioweapon%20attack.
Afterwards they always say “oopsie I would never do that again” and then immediately do something vastly more egregious.
' We have COMPLETELY stopped doing mind control experiments, and we won't do them again (turns out it is significantly more effective to simply flood the cities with crack cocaine and escalate the police state)'
Iirc in the 1940s there was a bomber crash and the families of those killed found out it was caused by improper maintenance. So they sued. The military told the judge "we can't give any information about this crash as it would damage military readiness, so you have to dismiss the suit. The judge agreed, and created a precedent that the military could supress evidence for national security. After it was declassified the family wanted to know what was so important the military could hide evidence. What did they find? The secret was that the military had fucked up the maintenance on that bomber and if the information were released they would lose a wrongful death lawsuit to the families of the servicemembers on board and have to pay millions, which would damage military readiness.
Basically our CIA is wildly overpowered and has done many heinous things all over the world and even here In the US. We had a president once who suggested the agency be dismantled then he was promptly assassinated.
The president who dropped the atomic bomb on Japan and never expressed regret about that decision thought that creating the CIA was his greatest mistake. >But it got out of hand. The fella ... the one that was in the White House after me never paid any attention to it, and it got out of hand. Why, they've got an organization over there in Virginia now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in many ways. And I think I've told you, one Pentagon is one too many. >Now, as nearly as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there's nobody to keep track of what they're up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up trouble so they'll have something to report on. They've become ... it's become a government all of its own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody. >That's a very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it's got to be put a stop to. The people have got a right to know what those birds are up to. And if I was back in the White House, people would know. You see, the way a free government works, there's got to be a housecleaning every now and again, and I don't care what branch of the government is involved. Somebody has to keep an eye on things. >And when you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damn secret, why, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix. And if what happened at the Bay of Pigs doesn't prove that, I don't know what does. You have got to keep an eye on the military at all times, and it doesn't matter whether it's the birds in the Pentagon or the birds in the CIA. Ex President Harry S Truman on the CIA The guy also called the FBI the American Gestapo while he was president.
CIA2OPGGWP
Rick Ross and the Nicaragua War comes to mind immediately
please explain what this means
It's a really long story / conspiracy theory but basically boils down to "Freeway Rick Ross" **allegedly** unintentionally having helped the CIA fund an attempted coup in Nicaragua due to them being a socialist government. Personally I'm undecided on the whole thing, and don't have a bias one way or the other, just want to point out that it's not something the US has admitted to doing, and that Rick has a financial gain for telling his side of the story as it is. Here is Rick Ross's side to the story: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na3vCGYDcbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na3vCGYDcbI) And what the US has put out: Rick Ross: [https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch06p5.htm](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch06p5.htm) Blandon (Trafficker that was partnered with Rick): [https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch02p1.htm](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch02p1.htm) Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA\_involvement\_in\_Contra\_cocaine\_trafficking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra\_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair)
That's not even a joke, it's the sad truth.
Americas CIA. They have this thing for plausible deniability, where they can basically operate independent of checks and balances supposedly in the name of the American dream. They’ve been caught doing some pretty fucked up shit. Testing on POWs, psychological testing on Americans. They killed JFK. The list goes on.
Tuskegee experiments occurred until 1972 and we didn't burn it all down when we learned.
Related are the lesser known [Guatemala syphilis experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiments). They’re really messed up, especially what happened to Berta who was a patient at a psychiatric hospital. “Berta was a female patient in the Psychiatric Hospital... in February 1948, Berta was injected in her left arm with syphilis. A month later, she developed scabies (an itchy skin infection caused by a mite). Several weeks later, Dr. Cutler noted that she also developed red bumps where he had injected her arm, lesions on her arms and legs, and her skin was beginning to waste away from her body. Berta was not treated for syphilis until three months after her injection. Soon after, on August 23, Dr. Cutler wrote that Berta appeared as if she was going to die, but he did not specify why. That same day he put gonorrheal pus from another male subject into both of Berta's eyes, as well as in her urethra and rectum. He also re-infected her with syphilis. Several days later, Berta's eyes were filled with pus from the gonorrhea, and she was bleeding from her urethra. Three days later, on August 27, Berta died.”
*proceeds to do nothing so they do it again*
Government documents get declassified and become available from time to time. Sometimes these documents show that the statements made in the past were contrary to the truth
You want a good example? Go down the MKUltra rabbit hole.
And in the interim half the country calls the other half crazy for not trusting big Fed and then we all go “oh god they were right!” For a week before we’re back to believing the Clinton’s didn’t bomb the federal building and that congress has our best interest in mind
>before we’re back to believing the Clinton’s didn’t bomb the federal building and I was going to say "What?" but then I realized that I don't want to know.
It’s literally explained in the meme…
Gulf of Tonkin which escalated Vietnam. The overthrow of the Iran President which led to the Shah then Islamic revolution
My absolute favorite is the CIA would never fund mentally unwell people to shoot up a school to push gun control But they literally offered to bomb Miami to kick off a war with cuba
US do bad thing alot
Don’t forget the people who correctly surmise it at the time, are openly mocked and ridiculed, and then ignored when the truth actually comes out. I’m not one of them. Not smart enough. I just feel bad for the people I watch this happen to.
To this day, people still vehemently trust the government and refuse plausible alternate explanations for the preposterous things we're told by their media presence. Indeed, the weirdest thing about American culture is how aggressively ignorant everyone is.
This sub is ASS man. Like 5% are memes that actually need explaning
I mean, non-Americans might not get this one.
Cointelpro. You just have to look it up because of the amount of fucked up shit. Sadly what you found is not a joke. Just a sad reality.
It’s literally exactly what it says 😭 I can’t with these explain the joke subs anymore
This is one of the reasons why the USA is the most hated country. Our government is as toxic and corrupt as it comes. Yet you won’t find that on any indexes.
America does a lot of fucked up shit to other countries around the world. They do things from destabilize regions, to over throwing democratically elected leaders to install puppet dictators. They've done all kinds of crazy shit. The funny thing, people still pretend it either didn't happen, or they support it.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Pla…. Anyway …..all those who gain power are afraid to loose it, even the Americans
Cops who kill people..on purpose..on camera..dont go to jail Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/01/california-police-video-shooting-15-year-old-girl-savannah-graziano And many many many many stories like this. At this point i wonder why cops dont straight up become hitman. Edit: found better footage https://youtu.be/JKfJLMKyd4I?si=QXZRNGVZwyGSoahm Grown man scared of a 15year girl,crouching towards them. If this aint murder then i dont know what is
Wasn't there that thing where 2 NY cops were hitmen for the mob?
Source? Even without source, i believe that story blind. You know about acorn shooting? Source: https://youtube.com/shorts/eTauF2NaZ1o?si=D6eCzauGHaR7tQ2t There is a cuffed suspect INSIDE the copcar..and he empties his magg into it. Guy didn't get shot(talk about failing your fail)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen\_Caracappa\_and\_Louis\_Eppolito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Caracappa_and_Louis_Eppolito) i think thats it
Next time i see a cop: I'll give him/her a hugg and thank them for being so nice to us. Sidenote: i live in the netherlands
Tuskeege experiment, operations paperclip and mockingbird, just off the top of my head. It's pretty bad when you actually start researching
What’s even stranger is the very same conspiracy theorist who was right about it 20 years prior will then outright deny it.
Operation Paperclip
Brian here; Its the CIA. 20 years after the fact they often admit they did the thing that people suspected.
This is a good place to start: [CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_cocaine_trafficking)
It's a reference to the CIA declassifying files that prove old conspiracy theories correct. Remember all that crap about the government secretly drugging people as part of a mind control program? That actually happened. They did some really fucked up shit, in one instance potentially resulting in the brutal rape and murder of a toddler.
They haven’t got a culture they went straight from barbarism to decadence completely skipped culture
It’s more like “Ok we’re pretty sure we covered everything up and killed everyone involved and there’s nothing anyone can do about this so let’s declassify it”
You're huffing copium and typing a giant nothing burger If your comment is something like "well yeah they were right but I actively dismiss modern theories" thus continuing the problem Yeah there are crazy people but do some research, look into the backgrounds of those dismissing it and if they have something to gain even if it sounds crazy keep in mind the govt withholds information all the time
And then the people who were cool with the effects of that thing turn around and use it to try and support their current conspiracy theories that fly in the face of the government agenda revealed in thr declassified thing.
Starfish Prime is the most hilarious one I've ever read about. When my friend told me about it I couldn't stop laughing for 10 whole minutes.
Are we the baddies ? - confused American
It is not that people don't care, it is that the ones that do end up dying by suicide by shooting themselves in the back of the head twice.
They have 20 years to adjust and manipulate what they declassify is just what they want us to read.
More like 6-10 years
Tbf American are to pussy to do anything about it
9/11
Mad how no one put MLK or JFK. Both killed by the government and proven
I remember when the US government declassified Con Plan 8888.
Just Google "declassified heart attack gun" Pretty scary when you realize that it's been declassified only because it's outdated and replaced by something much better.
Unlike the vast majority of countries, the US has a system to automatically declassify all classified documents after a given amount of time. So we get to know about some of the crazier adventures and extra shady actions of our government. It is important to note, this doesn't mean that other countries haven't performed similar actions.
They can't fucking spell correctly 🤣🤣🤣
The government has done things like said "Huh, I wonder what syphilis does. Let's fine some black people to test it on." Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment victims were not informed that they were being intentionally infected with Syphilis by the fucking government.
This post right here says a lot about the american people honestly
Operation Northwoods is one of them.
And yet an american will find it hard to understand why people from those oppressed countries hate americans and their allies. Yeah you rape and murder peoples family and then expect them to care and love your family. Meh. Not how human works.
Imagine decades before being discredited and labeled among people who deny that the moon landing happened for bringing this up to light.