Going Online in the Age of Conspiracy Theories

[Douglas Caddy]

Going Online in the Age of Conspiracy Theories
Theatlantic.com
October 21, 2015
By Adrienne Lafrance

From the article: By the 1950s, conspiracy theorists had largely turned their attention to communism. And a decade later, the Kennedy assassination and moon landing both generated enormous conspiratorial buzz. Skepticism of the official account of President John F. Kennedy’s death has, of course, persisted.
One of the more ominous characters visible on the Zapruder film, a home movie which captured footage of the president's assassination in 1963, is known as the umbrella man. Standing along the motorcade route beneath a dark umbrella on a sunny day, this mystery man became an obsession among conspiracy theorists. (He was also the subject of a conference for conspiracy buffs as recently as the 1990s.) Was the umbrella secretly a weapon? Was it a tool for signaling to a gunman? Who was this guy?
He was, apparently, Louie Steven Witt, who explained his actions in a hearing before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. The umbrella was an obscure form of protest—specifically, a reference to appeasement, the foreign policy approach under British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on the eve of World War II. Kennedy’s father, Joseph Kennedy, had been a Chamberlain supporter. “If the Guinness Book of World Records had a category for people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, I would be No. 1 in that position, without even a close runner-up,” Witt said according to several transcripts of the hearing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/going-online-in-the-age-of-conspiracy-theories/411544/

[Poster's note: This is being posted for informational purposes only.]

Edited October 22, 2015 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Deleted.

Edited October 22, 2015 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Poster's note: Is there a conspiracy involved here?

From the article: The center says that the office of Angelina Godoy was burglarized sometime between Thursday and Sunday. Godoy reported that the hard drive contained “about 90 percent of the information” relating to research in El Salvador that is the foundation of a freedom-of-information lawsuit the center filed Oct. 2 against the CIA.
The lawsuit alleges that the CIA has illegally withheld information about a U.S.-supported El Salvador army officer suspected of human-rights violations during that country’s civil war in the 1980s against leftist rebels.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/files-for-lawsuit-against-cia-stolen-in-break-in-at-uw/

[Chris Newton]

Only Godoy’s office was targeted in the break-in and there was no sign of a forced entry, according to the news release. It appeared that the office was carefully searched rather than ransacked and the door was relocked upon exit, “characteristics that do not fit the pattern of an opportunistic campus theft,” the release says.

Poster's note: Is there a conspiracy involved here?

Yes. In your post above it mentions that the office was burgled sometime between Thursday and Sunday. Coincidently:

The break-in coincided with a campus visit by CIA Director John Brennan, who spoke Friday at a symposium at the UW law school. However, Norm Arkans, the UW’s associate vice president for media relations and communications, cautioned against “connecting those dots.”

Is this conspiracy theory?: a) you have a lawsuit against the CIA the CIA Director visits c)the CIA lawsuit data on is stolen on the same day

“What worries us most is not what we have lost but what someone else may have gained,” the center wrote in a news release about the thefts. “The files include sensitive details of personal testimonies and pending investigations.”