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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

“CIA’s leadership is committed to being as open with the public as possible,”

Then they've got a long way to go. Everybody already knew that the Shah's coup was planned and backed by the CIA. That was part of a long and ugly history of CIA covert operations that have backfired spectacularly. It's not unreasonable to trace the Sunday's horrors in Israel to that event in 1953.

I really hate the way events like that justified so much conspiracy-theory thinking. The CIA gets blamed for anything and everything, much of false and outright deranged. But there was a time that the CIA was responsible for an awful lot of heinous things, and the ousting of Mossadegh is just one.

Maybe, just maybe, they can issue a long string of mea culpas and the US can begin to repair its absolutely horrific reputation in the Middle East, Latin America, and elsewhere. But it took seven decades to come clean about this one, and it's going to take many more decades to undo the damage it did.

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> It's not unreasonable to trace the Sunday's horrors in Israel to that event in 1953.

It actually goes back much farther than that to WW1 and the dissolution of the Russian Empire and the fighting that happened amongst the middle eastern states, the new Bolshevik government, and the Triple Entente, and of course the Balfour Decleration.

> But there was a time that the CIA was responsible for an awful lot of heinous things, and the ousting of Mossadegh is just one.

There was a time? Because of course they promised 100% that they would totally not do something like that again ever ever, and so of course they aren't doing anything like that anymore.....

> There was a time? Because of course they promised 100% that they would totally not do something like that again ever ever, and so of course they aren't doing anything like that anymore.

Indeed. They've finally found their moral compass and we should forgive them /s

> In it, CIA spokesman and podcast host Walter Trosin cites the claims of agency historians that the majority of the CIA’s clandestine activities in its history “bolstered” popularly elected governments.

This was really just one exception, normally they are the "good" actors /s

Does anyone believe that? After that they were involved in MKUltra, enhanced interrogation torture, toppling governments in South America and other places. Why bother pretending instead of staying quiet.

Still means the CIA interfered in democratic elections in sovereign nations.

> It actually goes back much farther than that to WW1 and the dissolution of the Russian Empire and the fighting that happened amongst the middle eastern states, the new Bolshevik government, and the Triple Entente, and of course the Balfour Decleration

I’m pretty sure it goes back much, much, further than that.

Nope, it doesn't really. I did some research[0] to get to the bottom of it, and it goes back to the Zionism of the late 19th century. Before that, the Jewish population in the Palestine region was a 5% minority (and Christians a 10% minority) and the rest were Arab Muslims, and they mostly got along. Anti-semitism has been awful throughout history, of course, particularly in Eastern Europe, which is a big part of what fueled the Zionists to resettle in Palestine, but locally the tensions started then, and increased significantly when Britain stepped in after WWI, and then when the UN created Israel in 1948, and so on.

[0] https://chat.openai.com/c/83abf663-6011-4ed0-9a8b-f183d2e029...

Edit: why the downvotes with no explanation? I thought the same thing as the parent, and did some research, to discover the real history, that the Israel-Palestine tensions actually only go back to the late 1800s. I did some independent verification, but would appreciate being corrected if this is wrong.

>why downvotes with no explanation

I'd wager people aren't likely to be as methodical in their analysis of comments' verity on this topic as they might be normally. I thought US politics was polarizing, israel palestine legit seems to drive people to even further extremes

I downvoted out of principle as their only source is a procedural generator for natural language text, as opposed to peer-reviewed historiography.

I cannot believe someone could honestly wade into the fraught topic of the political history of Israel with full confidence armed only with a transcript of a chatgpt chat and calling it "research". This has to be a troll attempt right?

That's fair, I shouldn't have made a comment asserting the minds' of the downvoters. I wonder, if the chat is wholly correct factually, what bearing that might have on your opinion of the source? What if in the generative response it cited the historical sources? I am not trying to make any statements on the truth of either comment, I am woefully uneducated when it comes to Israel/palestine. Just interested in the value of chat gpt convo as a source in the abstract. It feels just somewhat like when I was told not to use wikipedia in my early school days.

How would you know if the chat is "wholly correct factually", unless you look at other spurces? It is not uncommon for even it's citations to simply not exist.

Wikipedia sometimes has similar problems, but it has generally gotten pretty good over the years on many topics. I still wouldn't cite Wikipedia on something so politically charged as the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Definitely should've said "use as a source" not "cite". Like you note, wikipedia, and chatgpt for that matter are great not for "i need 100% confidence this is correct" queries but "i want to know where to dig deeper" queries. I wouldn't cite wikipedia itself, but I also wouldn't be shied away from a primary source found from wikipedia. And that to me makes wikipedia as useful if not more useful than the primary source itself, because if I can't find the primary source what good is it? Tree falling in the forrest and all that.

Sure, but the point stands that the original poster actually cited ChatGPT as their research, which is where all the reactions cam from. They didn't say "I found these sources from ChatGPT", they just gave us a ChatGPT log as a source.

> value of chat gpt convo as a source in the abstract

The ChatGPT conversation has zero value as a source in the abstract.

> It feels just somewhat like when I was told not to use wikipedia in my early school days.

Do you understand why you should not cite Wikipedia?

>The ChatGPT conversation has zero value as a source in the abstract.

If your objective is to get only first hand accounts, sure. But like wikipedia it's good as a source to find where to look deeper. I disagree there's zero value there. I often use it to generate a few things I go look at more serious sources for. Surely that's some value when web search's well has been well (heh) poisoned by ads?

>Do you understand why you should not cite wikipedia

If you find the primary source through wikipedia, did wikipedia provide "zero value as a source"? I don't think so. Bad analogy I suppose - I meant like how wikipedia was seen as not trustworthy to use even if you just used it to find the primary sources. I guess I should've said "use as a source" wikipedia not "cite" it.

> If you find the primary source through wikipedia, did wikipedia provide "zero value as a source"?

You aren't using Wikipedia as a source but as a partial and severely biased index of the reference material. You must still be very skeptical because you have no idea what led a page's editors to include or exclude a particular reference. Frankly, you'd be better off contacting the reference desk of your local library. That's what it's there for.

I mean is there any value to sources beyond "peer-reviewed historiography"? For instance here's a Vox video about the conflict which says much the same thing as the above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYZjOuUnlU

"it goes back to the Zionism of the late 19th century"

Which, in itself, was a reaction to other developments. Zionists argued that Jews needed their own homeland in order to be safe from pogroms and potential extermination at the hands of European nationalists; the Zionist idea, obscure and fringe at first, only gained traction with the increase of anti-Semitic attitudes after the Great War.

To a big degree, current existence of Israel is a strange echo of the vicious nationalisms of pre-WWII Europe.

It goes back at least to the early 1800s and builds from there. Colonisation and nationalism, plus world wars led to increased friction between Jews and others in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Arabia, and elsewhere. Jews were pushed and pulled towards the future Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...

> It goes back at least to the early 1800s and builds from there.

I read the Wikipedia article you cited, and I can’t find anything in it about conflict between Jews and Muslims in the early 1800s. The vast majority of the conflict of that nature it describes is 20th century; it mentions a few things happening in the second half of the 19th century, but I’m struggling to find anything in it about that in the early 19th century

Probably not noteworthy enough for historical records, but living under Dhimmi is not exactly tension free.

Dhimmi also means "protected" but you may ask protected from what?

compare Noahideen

> compare Noahideen

That's not a standard English term, I think you mean to say "Noahide". I am guessing you are getting your information from non-English sources.

In contemporary use, "Noahide" primarily refers to a religious movement which is a sort of "Judaism lite", of people who accept Orthodox Judaism's theological beliefs without formally converting to Judaism, and without following the vast majority of Orthodox Judaism's rules and rituals.

But, I think what you are actually referring to, is the concept in Jewish religious law (halacha) of "ger toshav", which is a non-Jew permitted to reside in the land of Israel. Formally speaking, contemporary Noahides by religion do not have the legal status of "ger toshav".

It is true that there are some clear parallels between "ger toshav" and "dhimmi" status. However, at the same time, there is a very fundamental difference – the Jewish laws of "ger toshav" have not been enforced in practice since the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE. The Rabbis engaged in a lot of development of those laws (as an abstract intellectual exercise, not a practical matter) since 70 CE, and so those laws as they currently exist in Orthodox Judaism have never been enforced in practice, and for all we know their pre-70 precursors were rather different. The State of Israel has never recognised the laws of "ger toshav", and the majority of Orthodox Rabbis believe they are impossible to apply in the current scenario (in which the Jewish Temple no longer exists, etc). Indeed, the majority of Orthodox Rabbis believe that the laws of "ger toshav" are not to be put into practice until the Messiah comes. There is a small minority of Jews who believe they can and should be applied today (such as the followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane), but that minority has never had the political power to put their beliefs into effect.

By contrast, dhimmi status has been a real thing in the Islamic world, not just a theoretical thing, for many centuries. There are a lot of disagreements between different schools of Islamic law (madhabs) on what the exact rules of dhimmi status are, and very often what Islamic scholars have insisted should be done in theory has had little to do with what actually happened in practice. Still, it doesn't really make sense to compare what has been, for the past 2000-odd years, a purely theoretical/hypothetical legal construct, with a legal construct which has actually been implemented in practice (to varying extents and in varying ways) in many societies for more than half of those 2000-odd years.

https://www.sefaria.org/Arakhin.29a.17?lang=bi

Yes, exactly - the Jubilee year has not been observed since either 70 CE or 720 BCE [0] so the laws of ger toshav no longer apply. The majority opinion is that the Jubilee (and hence these laws) will not be reinstated until the coming of the Messiah.

[0] there is somewhat of a debate on the topic in Orthodox Jewish sources, not that it makes much difference to the matter under discussion: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/513212/jewish...

Chatgpt is research now?

To a first degree, yes. Its answers made sense, they comport with other things I've read and other people I've talked with. I have seen nothing that appears incorrect, either grossly or subtly. If the information I got from this session is factually wrong I would love to know, but so far it seems accurate to the level of understanding I was aiming for.

What you describe isn’t research, even to a first degree.

Whether that conversation happens to be accurate or not and to what degree, I don’t know, because the link fails to load.

Did you ask ChatGPT to define research before it after you had it write this comment?

How did Arab Muslims get there?

Muslim Arab armies conquered the region in the 7th century A.D. and treated the existing population relatively well, compared with other conquered populations anyway.

From the transcript:

> The animosity that characterizes the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict has roots in the late 19th and 20th centuries and shouldn't be projected onto earlier epochs. The current conflict is influenced by nationalist movements, territorial disputes, and political developments of the last two centuries, rather than solely religious differences.

The current conflict arises directly from the Muslim Arab armies conquering what was the Jewish homeland. Because that’s what made it impossible for the Jews to have a country of their own—something that most people want, and most Arabs have—without coming into conflict with the descendants of those Arab conquerors.

Imagine if the Cherokee fought the US government and somehow captured part of Tennessee. That would surely create hostilities between the Cherokee and displaced Tennesseans. But would you say those hostilities arose from what the Cherokee did, or the original conquest of the land by Americans?

The Muslim Arab armies did not conquer a Jewish homeland, they conquered Eastern Roman (Byzantine territory). The Jews, as a population, i.e., the diaspora had been expelled hundreds of years earlier during the big three revolts against the Roman Empire.

Jews were banned from even entering Jerusalem (except for the day of Tisha B'Av) until the Arab armies marched in and took it from the Christians.

It doesn’t matter if the Muslim Arab armies conquered it directly, or after others had already done so. They’re the ones who are there now, not the Romans or Babylonians.

To be fair the Jewish people had been largely spread into the diaspora or killed by that point thanks to the Romans siege of Jerusalem in 70AD and the fallowing supression of rebellion revolts and sieges of other Jewish cities and settlements. Over a million Jews are said by concurrent historians to have been killed many of the remaining enslaved. Most of those remaining left spreading into the empire as they weren't even allowed into their capital city after the Romans rebuilt. The Romans then removed Judaea from the map and established the new governing districts of Syria and Palestine in its place.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)

> To be fair the Jewish people had been largely spread into the diaspora or killed by that point thanks to the Romans siege of Jerusalem in 70AD and the fallowing supression of rebellion revolts and sieges of other Jewish cities and settlements. Over a million Jews are said by concurrent historians to have been killed many of the remaining enslaved.

That same Wikipedia article says: "Josephus' death toll figures have been rejected as impossible by Seth Schwartz, who estimates that about a million people lived in all of Palestine at the time, about half of them Jews, and that sizable Jewish populations remained in the area after the war was over, even in the hard-hit region of Judea. Schwartz, however, believes that the captive number of 97,000 is more reliable"

The Judaean Jewish community was nowhere near wiped out by the 66–73 CE war, given the fact they were able to launch another sizeable rebellion against Roman rule (the Bar Kokhba revolt) in 132–136 CE.

And even after the Bar Kokhba revolt, significant Jewish communities survived in what is now Israel/Palestine – of particular note is Judah ha-Nasi, the redactor of the Mishnah, who was born during the Bar Kokhba war. The office of Nasi (leader of the Jewish community in Israel/Palestine) continued until the death of Gamaliel VI in c. 425. The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius II refused to permit the appointment of a successor, which was arguably the decisive step in transferring the seat of leadership of the Jewish community from Galilee to Babylonia.

While it is clear that many Jews were driven into exile, killed or enslaved, it is also likely that a significant number succumbed to the temptation/pressure to convert to Christianity (and later Islam). How many is difficult to say; I wonder how many Palestinian Arabs have Jewish ancestors, it is possibly a quite substantial number.

Certainly a lot of Palestinians in Hebron are of Samaritan ancestry.

In the same way it usually happens. A small elite conquered the region, and, over time, the local people largely adopted the dominant language, religion, and culture. Large-scale population replacement is rare, because it would eliminate most of the economic and military benefits of conquest.

You managed to miss the Crusades in their entirety.

I'm honestly not sure how much the events of the Crusades really contribute to the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Crusades were a rather belated attempt by Christians to reconquer the territories they had lost to Islam – over 400 years after that initial Islamic conquest. They succeeded in the short-term – the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem endured for almost 90 years, and they managed to hang on to the coastal city of Acre (now in Israel's Northern District) for almost another hundred – but were ultimately unsuccessful.

Whereas, the current Israel-Palestine conflict is primarily a Jewish-Muslim conflict, not a Christian-Muslim one. There is a small Christian minority on the Palestinian side, but Palestinian Christians have no particular links to the Crusades; nor do Israeli Jews or Zionism have any particular link to it. Some of the Crusades (especially the First) involved antisemitic pogroms-but there were plenty of other pogroms in European history which had nothing to do with the Crusades, and by the time Zionism came along, other more recent instances of antisemitism were much more of a motivating factor than any of those as historically distant as the Crusades by then were. So, the Crusades were really a rather different historical chapter without much to do with the current one.

Depends on your definition of crusade and success. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista - without that Spain would still be Islamic, so would Portugal.

Historians disagree on how to define “the Crusades”. The traditional definition only includes Christian attempts to reconquer “the Holy Land”, and by that definition the Reconquista was a separate thing. Other historians support broader definitions which include the Reconquista, wars against the remnant non-Christian populations of the Baltics, religious wars against Christian heresies such as the Cathars/Albigenses and proto-Protestants such as the Hussites, etc

However, given that the historical crusades in Israel/Palestine have rather dubious relevance to the contemporary conflict, other “crusades” fought thousands of kilometres away are of even more dubious relevance

Re: grugg. Wow, we have a comedian. Do you do birthday parties?

Someone saying with a straight face "no, I really checked and it goes no further than this" about the Holy Land seems unbelievably naive, no?

Did you miss the part where their “research” is literally a ChatGPT session.

It’s not naive, it’s willfully blind. You’re supposed to pretend history started in 1850 and ignore certain other wars of conquest.

And not everything goes back to the crusades some like this goes back farther still see the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 ad. Or you could look back farther still to the Babylonian conquest and captivity. History is deep that way trying to trace back to first causes is an exersise in futility. If the religions of both sides are to believed on this it goes back to an inheritance despute over the blessing of their mutual patriarch about 3500 years or so ago in a episode of religious history that reads more like bronze age episode of the Maury Povitch show.

We’re not talking about ancient history that recedes into mythology here. The Arabs conquered a whole bunch of land during a specific period of time that’s well documented in written history. When the Jews came back to their ancestral homeland, it wasn’t the Romans or Babylonians they found there. That matter fact is directly related to that former fact.

Interesingly their wouldn't be Islamic Arab there if it weren't for the the Roman conquest many of those scattered Jew moves to what is now southern Saudi Arabia and Yemen and eventually converted the Himyarite Kingdom to Judaism. Those Hymarite Jew along with several other monotheistic religons that moved into the area (early christian, Mandaeins, Sameritain Zorastrians) became highly influential culturally and created the environment in which Mohammed and Islam emerged.

My man didn't even mention the battle of Uggg vs Gruggg in the region in 38,000 BC.

What it sees to me is the Ottomans played tribal groups in their empire off against each other. And suppressed the any and all entities that could provide balance against their power.

Compare with Europe which never was unified and where tribal distinctions were slowly replaced with national and religious ones.

The Ottoman Empire fell apart 100 years ago. After which the French and the British tried to colonize it and when that didn't work they just drew lines on a map and installed a tribal chief from a weaker tribe as king.

Which is to say this mess has a deep history that has it's roots in the Muslim conquests, the Mongol conquests, and the Ottoman Conquests. Followed by the dissolution of the Ottoman empire and ham handed foreign meddling since.

Don’t forget the breakup of the Ottoman Empire around the same time.

> I really hate the way events like that justified so much conspiracy-theory thinking.

Probably because the people who theorized that there had been a conspiracy turned out to be correct, and the usual bromide objections ("someone would have talked," "more than 50 people can never keep a secret," "the government just isn't that competent," etc) were shown to be entirely false.

I'm not even sure if this qualifies as a secret. People were openly discussing the UK and US involvement at the time.

Yes, and this is one of the main problems with the "someone would have talked" objection. There are often witnesses or leakers, including to events like the JFK assassination, but as long as they can be kept out of the public consciousness or adequately smeared as cranks, it's as if the secret was kept regardless.

The New York Times published an article reporting Soviet charges that the United States was behind the coup.

It was just genuinely not a secret.

The same or similar can be said about pretty much any "conspiracy theory", from totally insane ancient alien stuff to mundane corruption and foul play.

its funny how governments ALWAYS lies about wars they have been involved with, and people by and large considers this to be true. but currently when there are wars, we are to trust them 100%

I'm sorry, but this coup is the only "conspiracy theory" where i got second-hand versions of actual witnesses (actually, participants). There were journalists that wrote on that in France in the 60s (proamerican anticommunist, hardline right wing, so when he wrote "the US did it because Mossadegh was a commie", i mean, everybody should believe it). We had actual political party that wrote that the US did it in their manifesto in the 70s, and taught that to their members in their "modern history" lessons (my father tended to those instead of going to catechism/sunday school). You had public figures in Iran who said "The US paid us".

It was quite clear the US did it until in the 00s a top US official said "yeah, we did it, it was cheap".

JFK assassination is weird, because only 3 people needed to be involved, so it might be hard to find actual participants, but most conspiracy theories needs a lot more (anywhere from dozens to thousands), and those, i wouldn't trust no one serious talked. When Seymour Hersh managed to find proofs on CIA most secret operation (MKUltra, which is way worse imho than lying about getting on the moon or whatever), its hard to keep that objection.

> most conspiracy theories needs a lot more (anywhere from dozens to thousands), and those, i wouldn't trust no one serious talked.

The CIA tried to deleting all evidence of the mkultra project in 1973. They missed a few documents related to the funding that allowed the commission to actually find evidence for it. Had they succeeded you would never have had enough evidence to prove it. You would have had ex-cia members involved in drug experiments. Would the general public have trusted them? If a guy with drug problems claimed the government had experimented on him, who would have believed him?

How many projects did they successfully erase all proof of?

Yup. Inteligence agencies are something that when you start doing serious research on, you end up being very paranoid. Cause the most sucessful operations leave no traces, and if the people responsible don't happen to leave behind documents about it that happened to be disclosed later, it is very possible for everybody, even the country responsible for it, to never learn the truth.

This one too. “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”.

We’ve always known the NSA spies on Americans. We’ve always known ISPs were involved in dragnet surveillance. We’ve always known the CIA assassinated Kennedy

Right, this is a common tactic once the conspiracy's effects are set in concrete and the opportunity for agitation or reaction has long since passed.

Except people didnt keep quiet and weren't that compatent that why it shows up in high school us history books and gave us the shit shows in the middle east and Latin America today. So both side were right and wrong it was a conspiracy of blabering incompatents.

Conspiracy theorists can be wrong about 100 things before they're right about one thing. They're useless for understanding the current state of the world.

Conspiracy theories do not emerge from nothingness but the lack of transparency, double-standards and lack of a clear moral framework is what gives them a breeding ground.

Realpolitik is like corporate America today. It optimizes return for the next couple quarters disregarding the long-term damage.

Have every meeting in public, publish every document, and they'll still insist you're part of a Communist conspiracy to poison the tap water.

Or for a more modern one, examine the diverse accusations around 5G.

Some of it's just general paranoia and distrust, or outright mental illness.

Mentally ill conspiracy theorist are just mentally ill. Why even bring those up. They are used to smear people pointing out actual conspiracies in such a way that even using the word "conspiracy" will make people think you are a lunatic.

We're discussing the reasons for conspiracy theories "emerging". Any honest list will include mental illness.

Fair enough.

Exactly after all the conspiracy theorists were only right about

- Iraq WMDs

- MkUltra

- The Crack Epidemic

- Watergate

- Glados

- Paperclip

- Robert Kennedy car crash

- Epstien

But they just got lucky a bunch.

1. You listed 8 conspiracies. How many false conspiracies (or ones that failed to pan out) are there? If there are 800 of them, then OP isn't exactly wrong.

2. For the ones you listed, were there specific and credible "conspiracy theories" that existed prior to them being discovered/confirmed? Or were there only vague theories of "government doing something shady"?

> You listed 8 conspiracies. How many false conspiracies (or ones that failed to pan out) are there? If there are 800 of them, then OP isn't exactly wrong.

The set of possible conspiracy theories is infinite. The set believed by any one 'conspiracy theorist' is likely to be far smaller. Lumping in hollow earth, lizardpeople, flatearther, aliens etc with 'government lies about wars' is always a cynical move to avoid legitimate criticism and spread propaganda.

Exsept the believable ones act as gateways to the hard stuff. Its a small mental jump from epsteins pedo island to the DMC being run by satanic communist pedophilias frequenting a pizza shop child brothel. It only a few more jumps to secret base and tunnel system under Denver airport to hallow flat earth and lizard people.

This seems about as true as the theory that marijuana inevitably acts as a gateway to harder drugs.

Then also, which specific conspiracy theories were actually confirmed? Part of the problem is that the kernel of truth in the theory is scaffolded out to "justify" the much broader, wilder claims.

I’ve been told in earnest that the earth is flat but people of Jewish decent are hiding that fact from me. Including only the successes on your list is misleading.

Most of this was revealed by mainstream journalists, not conspiracy theorists.

The one I lived through, Iraq WMDs, wasnt a conspiracy theory at the time. All credible evidence said there were no WMDs. Bush and Cheney lied with no evidence. Everyone that was not a partisan Republican called them out on their flimsy pretext. That's why we had the largest antiwar protests ever (while conservatives ridiculed us).

I was at those protests, but pretending that the Iraq war was a purely Republican partisan contrivance is historical revisionism.

Here's the voting record for the authorization for use of force in Iraq:

House: For: 296 (R:215, D:81), Against: 133 (R:6, D:126, I:1) [0]

Senate: For: 77 (R: 48, D:29) , Against: 23 (R:1 , D:21, I1) [1]

Yes, there was more opposition from members of the Democratic Party, but there's quite a lot of support there from Dems.

[0] https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll455.xml

[1] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...

A conspiracy theory of that time was that Bush was behind 9/11 because he wanted a causus belli to shore up his tanking popularity in the leadup to his re-election. Basically, fitting the plot of Wag the Dog to the facts of the day. The theory remains unsubstantiated.

Another was that the collapse of the world trade center towers was due to planted explosive charges. That one has been roundly refuted.

Of course, people continue to believe what that will, but there's a pretty big gap in the amount of evidence behind those theories and confirmed conspiracies.

> A conspiracy theory of that time was that Bush was behind 9/11 because he wanted a causus belli to shore up his tanking popularity in the leadup to his re-election.

It's not just unsubstantiated, it's flatly wrong on its face. Bush had been in office less than 9 months. He wasn't anywhere close to re-election. This is when the next race typically didn't ramp up until the year of the election.

Fault me for not paying terribly close attention to the conspiracy theorists, but it's true his approval ratings were dismal and dropping (and right after, he was around the most popular president in history). The bit about the leadup to the election is probably my mid-remembered addition.

Yes, I do fault you for not paying terribly close attention to the conspiracy theories... yet accepting what they say as true.

His approval was relatively stable and above 50%. You can see what it looked like if you scroll down from this link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/

I don't care if you pay attention to the conspiracy theorists or not. But please stop propagating conspiracy BS as if it were true.

To be fair, his approval was continually dropping when he decided to invade Iraq on claims of WMD, but that was well after 9/11 and going into Afghanistan.

What did I accept as truth? I said it was unsubstantiated. As in, no evidence for it. The context of the thread is that some people are saying that the broken clock was right a couple of times, and I was pointing to times when it was wrong. And yeah, Biden is pretty unpopular too -- he's doing worse than Bush II.

2 planes, 3 buildings.

Hack those numbers.

I put more stock in the people who can do deeper analysis than your arithmetic.

https://www.nist.gov/pao/questions-and-answers-about-nist-wt...

> Most of this was revealed by mainstream journalists

No, most of this was ignored by mainstream US journalists, and the mainstream journalists who still insisted on talking about them were pushed out of the mainstream. Journalists like Judith Miller at the notoriously conservative NYT (a woman who was made to take the blame for everything for some reason) were the face of the mainstream.

The only distinction that makes journalism "mainstream," at least in the US, is a running mutual relationship with the administration and intelligence agencies. Not circulation, not profitability, not influence, not truthfulness of reporting, nor quality of reporting. "Mainstream" outlets float government narratives crediting anonymous sources or sources delivered to the outlet on a platter. They also consult with the government and intelligence agencies before publishing stories, and will avoid entire subjects or questions on request. They do this in exchange for accurate inside information and scoops, or external benefits for the owners of the outlets.

The vast majority of Democrats energetically supported the WMD lie, although it was false on its face based on the reports of the inspectors, and the fact that the documents used to justify it were obvious frauds ("The Dirty Dossier"). The rest was from "Curveball" who was an obvious fraud with an ulterior motive from the first encounter, and who no one ever bothered to corroborate, but who offered what the people who sell war material (and the politicians they fund) were buying.

Democrats ridiculed us, too. All but one of them voted for the war, and they still marginalize her for it.

This personal identification with Democrats among certain people seems to wash away all of their actual votes and rhetoric. Every problem becomes about how evil Republicans are, and no rational reason is ever offered for that evil, because all of the rational reasons (corruption, ambition) apply as easily to their Democratic counterparts. I found a name for those people during the Trump impeachment: "emoluments libs." They were the people who insisted that the Democrats weren't impeaching on emoluments because they weren't brave enough and weren't really trying, rather than because any investigation into Trump taking advantage of his office for cash would in the end implicate most of Congress to a greater extent than Trump, who was an outsider in a bad position to make the kind of money that old masters get up to.

The idea that Tony Blair is the face of conservatism is laughable. Obama taking over the wars was ideal for people who made money from them, because they had become too closely associated with US religious warriors who were trying to put clothes on naked statues. You needed an Obama to indemnify the worldwide black site torture program and the intentional destruction of the evidence of it, to continue PATRIOT and to indemnify the companies that surveilled their customers, and to continue to prosecute those wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)

Iraq War's Authorization by Congress Is Still on the Books and Dangerously Open-Ended

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/28/iraq-war-aumf-authority...

> Democrats ridiculed us, too. All but one of them voted for the war

Where are you getting this information from?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37875198 has the actual voting record. Senate Democrats were 57-43 in favor but 2:1 against in the House.

Are you confusing it with Afghanistan? A lot of people seem to do that these days, though I didn't look up the voting record for that conflict.

Republicans had a total of 7 votes against attacking Iraq - in both houses.

Operation Northwoods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Now name the thousands that they aren't right about. Your comment is literally survivorship bias in action.

A broken clock is right twice a day.

Conspiracy theorists didn't know about any of those conspiracies beforehand, most if not all were revealed by mainstream media (or, in the case of MKUltra, by accidental declassification) and conspiracy theorists claimed credit for them after the fact.

Epstein is a particular howler because the QAnon set loudly proclaiming triumph about that was entirely focused on phantom satanic pedophile cults with the Democratic Party while Epstein was never even on their radar.

Yes, they just got lucky a bunch.

Epstein was on plenty of conspiracy theorists' radars, if maybe not the QAnon set's. There's a through line from the Franklin Scandal to the Dutroux Affair to Epstein, all of which conspiracy theorists have been citing as evidence of elite pedophilia, trafficking, and unaccountability for years.

Probably you're unaware of this because your conception of a conspiracy theorist and what they believe or argue has been handed to you by mass media.

If you're going to make a list like this, at least make sure all of them are right. "The Crack Epidemic" is not one conspiracy theorists are right about. As the common conspiracy trope is that the government invented crack and gave it to black people to destroy their neighborhoods.

Iraq WMD's is also wrong and case of what happens when conspiracy theorists get a hold of the US government. Most countries and the US house did not accept the WMD conspiracy that immediately turned out to be untrue as most conspiracies do. Now the conspiracy theorists are that it was all done for oil, which is also a blatantly dumb characterization.

As conspiracy theories go "The Crack Epidemic" is at least ballpark - the details are hazy but there's something there.

The OIG (Office of Inspector General) report into "THE CIA-CONTRA-CRACK COCAINE CONTROVERSY" (December, 1997)

https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9...

didn't touch the bedrock involvement of the CIA-Contra support underpinning the magnitude increase and near literal flooding of cocaine powder into the USofA (because that connection had already been "extensively reviewed in previous inquiries by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations; the State Department; the DEA; and the CIA.")

That, however, is enough on it's own to make the case that the CIA was (indirectly) responsible - had the volume not increased so substantially and had the price not dropped so dramatically there would never had been any driver to make a more addictive by product so readily available.

The rest of the OIG report is volumous but weak - there is no evidence because various targets "fell between the cracks", there was no task force because the agent who suggested one had a case of "her supervisors did not take her request seriously because she was a female agent." and not "because there was pressure to cover up".

These are not great reasons that the evidence is lacking because deeper investigations were not held, and they don't exclude unseen pressure to not look further.

The point is not that any given random conspiracy theory is correct. It's that these specific objections to conspiratorial analysis are spurious and disproven.

"Conspiracy theorists" isn't one group of people. "Conspiracy theory" is just a label applied when anyone believes something outside the Overton Window.

I don't think it's related to the Overton Window. Usually it's just a web of insinuations based on vibes.

Until that percentage starts to improve dramatically like in the last 5 years.

> I really hate the way events like that justified so much conspiracy-theory thinking. The CIA gets blamed for anything and everything, much of false and outright deranged. But there was a time that the CIA was responsible for an awful lot of heinous things, and the ousting of Mossadegh is just one.

> Maybe, just maybe, they can issue a long string of mea culpas and the US can begin to repair its absolutely horrific reputation in the Middle East, Latin America, and elsewhere. But it took seven decades to come clean about this one, and it's going to take many more decades to undo the damage it did.

My goodness, the actual things that the US has done abroad has damaged its reputation in the most affected places around the world.

EDIT: I can't help myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37767826

If you really want to know how evil and down right fucked up the CIA was, I highly recommend The Devil's Chessboard, a biography of Allen Dulles https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/24723229

After finishing it, my sense was that the best thing for America and the world would have been to put an end to the CIA.

Yeah the were an agency with basicly no oversite and unlimited budget for much of their existence. Now they supposedly have to answer to Congress at least. Personally I think we ought to start over with clean slate agency with better oversight and legistive limits on their action beyond which they require Congress aproval on a case by case basis, and none of the current decision makers be allowed in. Do the same with the NSA. Also enable the FBI to have constant oversight on them and report if they are hiding anything from Congress from or exceeding their remit

I think just saying the "CIA did it" is also not entirely fair. They carried out the activities, but Eisenhower gave the greenlight after being cajoled by Britain. It wasn't a rogue operation, it was explicit policy of two governments.

I agree with this. There is a lot to be said for leadership through honesty. In some ways I feel like we've entered something like a "Foundation Crisis" (if you have read Asimov's Foundation series) in that a long series of events has lead to a crisis in the world order where the "good guys often seem just as bad as the bad guys.

> CIA was responsible for ...

In the case of "rogue operations", the CIA is responsible.

In the more usual case the Administration signs off on the go-ahead, and POTUS is ultimately responsible. Examples: Kennedy's Bay of Pigs, Bush 43 torture flights ...

> I really hate the way events like that justified so much conspiracy-theory thinking. The CIA gets blamed for anything and everything, much of false and outright deranged.

It's funny you say that...[0]

[0] https://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-memo-1967-cia-coined-weapo...

> The CIA gets blamed for anything and everything, much of false and outright deranged.

I guess people in 1953 said the same.

Know knows what will be admitted/acknowledged in 70 years?

> It's not unreasonable to trace the Sunday's horrors in Israel to that event in 1953.

Israel doesn't care if their neighbors are islamic dictatorships, military dictatorships, or democracies, they work hard to keep them all as weak as possible.

There was basically an era in US foreign policy where "communism bad" was the single guiding principle.

If someone wasn't communist, they got our support. It didn't matter if they were bloodthirsty monsters or if they were even more anti-American than the communists.

If someone seemed to even be tilting red, they get undermined and sometimes even overthrown either directly or through us backing one of the previously mentioned anti-communist forces.

There really was no other principle at work beyond "communism bad, USSR bad," and we made a lot of devils' bargains in that era on the theory that the enemy of our enemy is our friend. It's a great example of monomania and paranoia guiding bad policy.

The only thing I can say in defense of people from that era is that everyone thought WWIII was around the corner and we were going to all get nuked anyway. It was a really paranoid time.

Of course the communism part worried them but they already started thinking about it after losing control over the iranian oil.

Control of oil was a huge thing but that in the end boiled down to geopolitical positioning vs. the USSR. Oil equals economic might, and control of oil also means the power to turn the oil spigot off and harm the economy.

The Cold War really dominated all foreign policy thinking in that era. Everyone else was seen as a chess piece up for grabs by either the US or the USSR.

I'm really not defending it. I think a lot of terrible decisions were made during that time. But it is useful to understand why.

> CIA’s leadership is committed to being as open with the public as possible

I think it would be a very bad intelligence service if this was true.

That's where the "as possible" qualifier comes in.

I literally started laughing when I read that. Suuuure, I'll believe Spooks who lie for a living when they say they are going to as open as possible.

A great book on this topic is The Devil's Chessboard, which focuses on the nascent CIA and Allen Dulles.

“As possible” are two words doing some serious heavy lifting.

> Then they've got a long way to go.

I'd love to see a realistic treatment on where the line of 'possible' lies for an intelligence org. They're already one of the most open intelligence orgs in history.

They're not strictly an intelligence organization. They have a large operational detachment. Which is what _allowed_ them to interfere in the operations of foreign governments in the first place.

If they were in fact, _just_ intelligence, there might be a point here. As it is, they're a rogue agency that needs to be completely disbanded. Never in my life have I felt that I owe any part of my safety as an American to these thugs.

The CIA gets unfrair treatment, partly I think because they are held to the same standards by the public as say the FBI. This is what intel agencies do though. They are not there for democracy, political agenda, law enforcement,etc... they are like the military, as you pointed out they do heinous things.

But the part that irks me the most is your incorrect insinuation that they did what they did on their own. They acted on behalf of the american people and their elected leaders. Much like how the US military also did heinous things in times of war (as any military would).

The CIA is partly a paramilitary organization, sanctioned by the american people. Like any such agency they harm civilians and interfere in foreign governments' politics and economy.

Why does the US need to repair our reputation? Unless by repair you mean remind the world who to be afraid of. We do not live in a nice world where everyone gets along. The US government and military (and the CIA) have no obligation to the world, their obligations are entirely to protect the american people and economy.

Look at the unresr and strife in american society today. This is with a good economy! Look at the mass global migration to the US, civil rights changes,etc... they all happened because of post world war 2 prosperity, if you think all these rights and niceties can be kept under a crashed economy I'd have to respectfully disagree. In any other century in history, a country like the US would be inavding and decimating continents by now. When the CIA intervenes, it is because their leaders were hostile towards the US.

My challenge to you is if you are willing to face the chaos of a poor/powerless america and hope the alternative power-vaccum fillers would be nicer. China for example literally has police stations in western countries to crush dissent and I shouldn't need to say much abour Russia's election interference (and China!), if they were in the US's place, how would you think they would react to a hostile Iran in 1953? Even now, Russian mercenaries are toppling African governments left and right!

My point is not to morally justify anything but to plead for perspective here.

> Why does the US need to repair our reputation? Unless by repair you mean remind the world who to be afraid of. We do not live in a nice world where everyone gets along. The US government and military (and the CIA) have no obligation to the world, their obligations are entirely to protect the american people and economy.

I won't try to reason with you using notions of "morality", or "doing the right thing", cause you are clearly not looking at the world like that. So how about repairing the US reputation, cause you don't like terrorists flying airplanes into buildings? The violence of terrorists attacks is not justified, but it is entirely expected for when a country acts like this. Imperialism will always face opposition and struggle, and anybody that supports it is helping to generate violence, both to oppressed people, and to the opressors themselves (or their inocent civilizians) when oppressed people fight back.

You shouldn't use moral arguments because there is no dispute there. Wat in general and extrajudicial killings are immoral yet that's how civilizations exist. The US at least attempts to avoid war and conflict by using its fear as a deterrent, which is why i commenter about the world fearing the US.

> So how about repairing the US reputation, cause you don't like terrorists flying airplanes into buildings? The violence of terrorists attacks is not justified, but it is entirely expected for when a country acts like this.

Again with the "justified". You don't see much terrorism after afghanistan's invasion right? My sticking point there is that the US shouldn't have helped them rebuild. This is a conflict between horrifically violent parties who have no chance of sorting things out diplomatically. The US will never stop supporting israel and abandon an ally, Israel is there to stay, they're not abandoning their historical homeland which is no longer historical because Israel has been a country for almost 80 years now. Violence is all that's left. And wouldn't you prefer violence that involved minimal civilian casualties?

If that means the CIA playing "dirty" decimating one country and leaving them in shambles as a lesson to the rest, is it not worth it? In a world where other countries think the US is nice and docile more civilians die. In a world where countries are terrified at the thought of the US military or IC thinking about them, much less civilians die and suffer.

The violent understand only violence as a language of negotiation.

> Imperialism will always face opposition and struggle

Oh please with that b.s., did the US colonize any arabic country? What was colonized for al-qaeda who were besties with the CIA to do 9/11? You think becoming a coward and abandoning your allies who are surrounded by genocidan enemies will satiate the murderous terrorists.

Do you even undersrand that according to their extremist views, they have no desire to co-exist with you in this world? If they had the power, they would invade the whole world and decapitate all unbelievers. Why do you think ISIS was invading Iraq and Syria? America already pulled out! Their propaganda was to take over the levant and the world.

You think these terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters! That's not the case.

Their intifada against the US is not because they are oppressed but because people who have the same faith as them are oppressed in palestine. Neither palestinians nor most of Israel's neighbors have an interest in a two state solution. Victory in these terrorists minds is not liberation of palestine but the genocide of jews and christians in the middle east.

They have no interest in accepting their former land has been give away to the jews, not because the jews kicked them out but because their ancestors kept getting invaded by the ottomans then the british. It was not palestinian land that was given away, it was british land. It was as much palestine land then as it is today. Like it or not, this is not imerialism but a country being created as a result if an occupation, much like how america was created after native american land was invaded. Just about every country in the world is a result of one group invading a land that does not belong to them, countries are built on blood and ill-gotten gains. I suggest you cede native american land (if you are american, canadian, australian) before you ask israel to give up their only home.

The palestinian people are oppressed because generations of hatred and raising their kids to dream of murdering their neighboring jews has put them in a corner where they either get oppressed or there is another jewish holocaust.

If they were willing to accept history and move on to negotiate their own free and peaceful country that accepts the right of Israel to exist and if the muslim world as a whole decided to stop dreaming of genocide the palestine would be free.

Put it a bit differently: I would prefer another 9/11 and invading another middle eastern country than not support Israel's right to existence. I don't support their incursions into the westbank or treatment of palestinians in general though. If any of Israel's neighbors could, they would have killed them off. Even Iran taunts israel with a nuclear holocaust all the time.

So I suggest you pick a side, terrorists who kill babies for fun or not so nice Israelis who are willing to negotiate coexistence with their neighbors.

I suggest you think long and hard about the outcomes to civilians and how much pain and suffering results in the side you pick.

> China for example literally has police stations in western countries to crush > dissent and I shouldn't need to say much abour Russia's election interference > (and China!), if they were in the US's place, how would you think they would > react to a hostile Iran in 1953?

If Russian or China had organized that coup you would never hear the end of it. You would hear scalding criticism in every western newspaper and rightly so. Just because other countries do horrible things does not excuse the actions of the CIA.

Criticism will be there but it would be hypocritical. I can support ukraine's defense for example but I can't say from a morally authoritative perspective that Russia is so horrible. Every country is an invasion away from ceasing to exist. That's why militaries and alliances exist. That's why NATO exists.

The US has been trying to do something similar as NATO in the pacific but they are not doing well picking sides there. Look at most of western China for example, it was not China 80 years ago, it was all a result of invading and incorporating other countries like Tibet. I mean, western media will act high and mighty but this is just the reality of the world. This was the context under which the Korean and Vietnamese wars were fought by the US. Empires keep expanding until they collapse, this is still true today.

I just like to remember what empire I live in and that partly thanks to war averse folks like you, we do try to avoid and minimize war and invasions but also spend a crapton of money into a military that serves as a deterrence of wider scale global conflicts, wars and instabilities. The CIAs actions don't need to be excused because the CIA does not act on its own. It acted on your behalf if you are an american (my behalf too). And I for one support electing level headed leaders who would look at classified information I don't know and then decide what the CIA would do on my behalf.

On your behalf, or on behalf of individual US companies, regular or (especially) Military "defence" contractors?

    The company responded by intensively lobbying the U.S. government to intervene and mounting a misinformation campaign to portray the Guatemalan government as communist.

     In 1954, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency deposed the democratically elected government of Guatemala, and installed a pro-business military dictatorship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

Exactly how many democracies has the US toppled through fear that the "socialist leaning" elected people's government might not buy American or fully align with the US hegemony?

How has that played out for the US in the long term (this thread, for example, being about Iran).

On our behalf. Whether or not the american people elect politicians that are corporate puppets is irrelevant because they vote anyways and accept the legitimacy of their government.

The US public is very much pro-business. In every election cycle you almost never see the economy and jobs being less than #1 and #2 topics. Even the very fact that you are criticizing the govenrment, I suspect is a result of a good economy, perhaps you would be wondering why we are not invading someone if things were much more dire? Most people would and have too.

> How has that played out for the US in the long term (this thread, for example, being about Iran).

A better question is how might it have turned out otherwise. I don't see any war with Iran for example.

> Exactly how many democracies has the US toppled through fear that the "socialist leaning" elected people's government might not buy American or fully align with the US hegemony?

As empires go, are you saying the US is doing worse here? Colonisation would have been the first choice by any other historical empire. America can pretty much manifest destiny our way into the rest of the world you know.

I mean, it's actually thanks to more level headed folks like you that doesn't happen. If it were up to me, they would get a tomahawk for so much as spelling America wrong. But don't worry, you will get your way, China and much of the world has forgotten what world wars were like and the CIA thanks to the changing views of the US public has gone soft. It will be you or your children that will pay the price. The CIA is a paramilitary org that "nips it in the bud" as they say, except even that offends your sensibilities so let's go back to full on century long back and forth warring with nukes, drones, slaughterbots and ML now!

There's a comment very much packed with odd assumptions.

I generally agree with everything you said, but it seems to me that the biggest criticism of the coup in Iran is that it did not ultimately wind up serving American interests effectively. The coup installed a US-favorable Shah for a few years where oil could be obtained cheaply and then we got decades of a theocratic government actively funding American enemies all over the world.

Oh, and we did this to a country that we had given nuclear power to.

Evaluating the CIA's move on the rubric you've set out does not produce a passing grade!!

The problem is, the US changes administrations every four years. By far the late 60s and 70s lacked supporting of these friendly regimes, with vietnam and all and then carter really messed up a lot countries by his non-interference (but maybe that's what americans wanted at the time?).

The intent may have been good but regimes don't self-sustain without their original support easily. Unwillingness to finish what they started and taking half-measures to avoid pissing off the american public I think was their real fault. Even in recent years, Israel was more than willing to start a fight with Iran before they matures their nuclear program but it is the US fearing involvement that is holding them back. Maybe in a few years the world would have to deal with Iranian ICBMs. What happens when they try to nuke tel aviv? Does the US nuke Tehran? Is that better than what Israel would have done?

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