I watched a History channel special on the assassination about 5 years back and they sold me on the magic bullet theory with a 3D computer animation showing the trajectory of the bullet and lining up the wounds. But that’s all a red-herring, since the root problem with the entire discussion of JFK’s assassination from day one has always been this child-like idea that a conspiracy to kill a political person should be entertained only after the evidence suggests it. Of course, this is downright silly. Imagine Don Corleone gets murdered on the front steps of one of his restaurants and the police name a perp and say it was a random, stranger homicide. Get real! The President is the Don of the mafia called the US government. A stranger homicide of the President is logically possible but barely conceivable. Then consider that the US Presidency has been the target of innumerable “attention-seeking” homicidal maniacs! In all of human history, no political leader has been so safe from their entrenched enemies and yet so vulnerable to the narcissistic, suicidal and mentally-deranged among the rabble!
Completely serious. It’s downright absurd to suggest that we should not assume a conspiracy in the death of any wealthy or powerful person until the evidence requires us to believe there was a conspiracy. It’s like “innocent until proven guilty” applied to all the enemies of the individual in question. But critical thinking is not a criminal trial, we don’t need evidence “beyond reasonable doubt” to be pretty damn sure what happened and why.
If a President, important senator, military leader, wealthy businessman, etc. dies unnaturally my first assumption is that there was foul play. Michael Jackson? I said it was foul play long before it was fashionable to blame his doctor… as if MJ’s doctor had anything to gain by murdering him. Senator Stevens? Probably murdered. The Polish President and many top government and military brass were killed in a plane crash in April 2010. To suggest that this crash may even possibly not have been an accident is to descend into the Coast-to-Coast AM realm of UFO conspiracy theorizing. I’m sick of this lobotomized form of thinking.
It’s all well and good to question hypothetical reasons for certain events happening, but if you’re putting a large deal of creedence into any particular story or alleged motive without any evidence, then you’re going to start spinning castles out of moonbeams.
For example: Senator Stevens, probably murdered? Why? Because he was a high profile individual who died in an accident? What evidence do you have that makes you so sure that you would go so far as to say it “probably” went down that way? Who did the murdering? Sean O’Keefe? His teenage son? The pilot? Why would he go on a suicide mission?
People in power are still people, and die all the time. About 1 in 7000 people die from car accidents alone every year in the US, and that’s from the entire population. If you’re talking only about people who drive that number shoots up. This doesn’t take into account accidents from any number of sources, including high risk activities like skiing, hunting, or other sports that are popular with the affluent. At these rates, yes, high profile and powerful people will die in accidents. Assuming foul play off the bat is giving into superstition and abandoning reason. That doesn’t mean you don’t look for evidence of of foul play, but don’t get ahead of your self.
And yet no-one has even bothered to address my question. I imagine it’s all too hard to produce primary evidence or anything that even comes close to confirming Assange is controlled opposition, right? Certainly seems like it. Carry on then.
Wikileaks seems to be causing a world wide backlash against censorship and a thirst for answers as to what governments keep behind the curtains more than anything else.
Actually It was pretty awesome how completely and utterly exposed the emperor was when the hype reached a fever pitch last week. From the death threats to the ridiculous ‘rape’ charges, to the corporate pressure… the reaction of State agents and supporters was absolutely and glaringly on display for all to see. The sheer horror and outrage, cries for blood, accusations of blood spilling… it was like catching your boss completely off guard as he was prancing in front of a mirror in women’s underwear or something. All for a man who essentially did nothing wrong whatsoever.
In the age of Wikipedia and Facebook… Wikileaks seems more like it was just an idea waiting to happen (and executed well enough).
Seems to me precisely the type of thing a libertarian movement could use to it’s advantage.
You’re looking at the statistics incorrectly. The comparison is not between the death rates between drivers and non-drivers or fliers and non-fliers. The comparison is between the unnatural death rate between the wealthy/powerful and the average person. How often do billionaires get mugged? How often do national political leaders die in random, stranger homicides? Come on, those who are wealthy can afford to live in more secure environs and be transported in better accommodations, both in terms of safety and luxury. Those who are politically powerful enjoy similar protections. Also, there are always many individuals who stand to benefit greatly from the death of any particular wealthy or powerful person (think about it). Hence, it’s many times more suspicious when someone who is wealthy or powerful dies an unnatural death both because, all-in-all, the wealthy and powerful are less likely to be the victim of a random accident or a random act of violent crime and because the wealthy and powerful are more likely to be the target of a motivated enemy.
Airplanes are notoriously safe. If they weren’t, nobody would fly. They’re also notoriously easy to knock out of the sky via sabotage. To suggest that the death of a wealthy or powerful individual due to a plane crash is unremarkable, in itself, is irresponsible. An accident on a commercial aircraft is remarkable. An accident on a wealthy individual’s private jet is so much the more remarkable, in itself. And the more sharks in the water that stand to benefit from the death of the individual in question, the more suspicious I become that the “accident” was only made to look like one.
Read about Senator Stevens here. Whenever someone important dies of something other than natural causes, my suspicions are automatically raised. I find it interesting* that Sen. Stevens was convicted in 2008 of charges that were then later overturned but only after his conviction caused him to lose his re-election. Was he supposed to go away but was just as much of a nuisance out of office as he had been while in office? It’s a thought.
Clayton -
*“Interesting” in a very casual sense… I haven’t the slightest interest in Stevens’ political positions nor would I care if it was “Republicans did it” or “Democrats did it” since I don’t believe in those political fairy tales any more.
This is horrible public relations by the government. By attacking it, they are giving Wikileaks credibility. What’s the proof that the cables are authentic?
Having watched every significant interview with Julian Assange on wikileaks, I tend to think he’s the real deal. He uses vocabularly and terms from time to time that points in the direction of having read libertarian literature quite a bit. One that comes to mind is his frequent references to the “coercive powers of government.” Now it’s possible that he could be an elaborate asset of the CIA, but I’m unconvinced until I see evidence indicating otherwise.
War documents is a decoy
The documents from the Iraq and Afghanistan war, however, I believe were planted by the USG. Convenient that no one’s been able to get an interview with Bradley Manning. I’m guessing he’s made up, or at the very least is an operative. In my view, the USG saw wikileaks as having the potential to really hurt them. Their strategy was first to marginialize them by having the MSM ridicule them. Seeing as that didn’t work, the next strategy was to overload wikileaks with so much bogus material that it would bog them down and waste wikileaks resources on unimportant things. That has by far succeeded in my view as enormous resources have been used on these documents to very little gain. The next plank was to destroy the reputation of key figures associated with wikileaks. That seems to be moderately succeeding. Wikileaks still wasn’t dead though, so my theory is that at that point there were some people who got nervous and started doing boneheaded things like making a big stink about how he’s a “traitor” and perhaps sending threatening letters to Amazon and Citigroup.
End game
It seems to me that at the very least, it has helped bring to light some strategies for circumnavigating troublesome governments through mirrored sites, routing traffic through different jurisdictions, etc. Another boon from this seems to be that more people are rejecting the party line. In any event though, the USG won’t let a crisis go to waste, and will surely use this as justification for policing the internet, and for more world government to prevent people from hopping jurisdictions as Julian is doing. Long term solution? High concentration of free market voluntaryists. Move to NH with me
