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Hello All,
Someone made a comment about conspiracy theories in the thread about the carbon footprint. I'm very sceptical about most of the so called conspiracy theories.
They usually take a few real facts plus several half truths and then spin them into what appears at first sight to be a plausible story. But story is what nearly all of them are.
So here's the challenge - do you know/have you come accross one that does stand up to scrutiny and preferrably is relatively little known.
Are you prepared to cite your sources and let others take it apart?
Re-cycling is not allowed - the aliens at Roswell, the more than one gunman at the Kennedy assasination and why did the airliner only make a small hole in the Pentagon building
have all been done to death. But if you can come up with an original slant on a 'golden oldie' then that's allowed. Unashamedly that's what I am going to do.
Here's my favourite - the sinking of the Lusitania.
Some of you know the story - British liner leaves New York in 1915 and gets sunk of the southern Irish coast by a German submarine.
Allegedly it causes America to enter the war as there were American citizens on the ship.
Actually it was the Zimmerman telegram that did that. (You will have to do your own research on that one
)
The submarine was directed there. False it was pure luck that it found the ship. The sub captain had already decided to go home and was trying to get a position when he saw the Lusitania.
The Lusitania is allegedly carrying explosives. This is true, it was allowed by the rules then and still is. But the explosives are the type that burn and do not explode.
Did the explosives burn or explode that day - no but the coal dust in the ships fuel bunkers did and greatly accelerated the rate of sinking.
Did the British government send the ship there on purpose in the hope it would be sunk. No they were really not that clever - they are still not
So where is the conspiracy then?
The British Royal Navy made several serious mistakes in directing the ship to where it was sunk.
This was shortly after losing three ships in the North Sea to submarines. They needed to cover up their mistake so that there would not be a public enquiry.
The answer? Blame the captain of the Lusitania by alleging he did not follow his instructions and then hang him out to dry.
Winston Churchill (who was then political head of the navy) initialled a memo from an official in the Admiralty (the Royal Navy administration) that said;-
'it is considered politically expedient that (the captain of the Lusitania) be most prominently blamed for the disaster.
To do this they removed pages from signal logs - interviewed only the passengers/crew of the ship that said the right things -
prevented the captain from using the navy's instructions in his defence - and very effectively 'engineered' the press reports.
That does strike me as a conspiricy
My sources?
Lusitania - by Colin Simpson 1972 (you can still find this in paperback)
Lusitania - by Diana Preston 2002.
RR.
Someone made a comment about conspiracy theories in the thread about the carbon footprint. I'm very sceptical about most of the so called conspiracy theories.
They usually take a few real facts plus several half truths and then spin them into what appears at first sight to be a plausible story. But story is what nearly all of them are.
So here's the challenge - do you know/have you come accross one that does stand up to scrutiny and preferrably is relatively little known.
Are you prepared to cite your sources and let others take it apart?
Re-cycling is not allowed - the aliens at Roswell, the more than one gunman at the Kennedy assasination and why did the airliner only make a small hole in the Pentagon building
have all been done to death. But if you can come up with an original slant on a 'golden oldie' then that's allowed. Unashamedly that's what I am going to do.
Here's my favourite - the sinking of the Lusitania.
Some of you know the story - British liner leaves New York in 1915 and gets sunk of the southern Irish coast by a German submarine.
Allegedly it causes America to enter the war as there were American citizens on the ship.
Actually it was the Zimmerman telegram that did that. (You will have to do your own research on that one
)The submarine was directed there. False it was pure luck that it found the ship. The sub captain had already decided to go home and was trying to get a position when he saw the Lusitania.
The Lusitania is allegedly carrying explosives. This is true, it was allowed by the rules then and still is. But the explosives are the type that burn and do not explode.
Did the explosives burn or explode that day - no but the coal dust in the ships fuel bunkers did and greatly accelerated the rate of sinking.
Did the British government send the ship there on purpose in the hope it would be sunk. No they were really not that clever - they are still not
So where is the conspiracy then?
The British Royal Navy made several serious mistakes in directing the ship to where it was sunk.
This was shortly after losing three ships in the North Sea to submarines. They needed to cover up their mistake so that there would not be a public enquiry.
The answer? Blame the captain of the Lusitania by alleging he did not follow his instructions and then hang him out to dry.
Winston Churchill (who was then political head of the navy) initialled a memo from an official in the Admiralty (the Royal Navy administration) that said;-
'it is considered politically expedient that (the captain of the Lusitania) be most prominently blamed for the disaster.
To do this they removed pages from signal logs - interviewed only the passengers/crew of the ship that said the right things -
prevented the captain from using the navy's instructions in his defence - and very effectively 'engineered' the press reports.
That does strike me as a conspiricy
My sources?
Lusitania - by Colin Simpson 1972 (you can still find this in paperback)
Lusitania - by Diana Preston 2002.
RR.
Could not have put it any better myself 
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