May 15, 2008

Worth reading (and a funny read too):

7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened

I've discussed the first on their list before, but it really bears repeating.

#7.The Business Plot

The Plan:
In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we're talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one.

How did that work out?
A good rule of thumb: never trust a man named Smedley to run your hostile military coup for you. Besides being no fan of fascism, Smedley Butler was both a patriot and a vocal FDR supporter. Apparently none of these criminal masterminds noticed that their prospective point man had actively stumped for FDR in 1932.

Smedley spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. Everyone he accused of being a conspirator vehemently denied it, and none of them were brought up on criminal charges. Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did at least acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy, which ended up never getting past the initial planning stages.

Though many of the people who had allegedly backed the Business Plot also maintained financial ties with Nazi Germany up through America's entry into World War II.
Other things covered in the list:

#6 The July 20 Plot (Operation Valkyrie to kill Hitler)
#5 Operation Ajax (Britain and American influence in overthrowing the democratically elected governor of Iran and installing the Shah - that really worked out well for everyone didn't it.)
#4 The Gunpowder Plot (how Guy Fawkes gave us that cool V for Vendetta comic and movie)
#3 The Tuskegee Experiment (You listen to Rev. Wright and think he's insane to think that the government would drug blacks? Read about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to learn more about where he's coming from.
#2 Operation Snow White (How Scientology broke infiltrated many parts of the US Government to destroy anything anti-Scientology)
#1 Project MKULTRA (you know the one where our tax dollars were used to drug our citizens? Now we just do it to terror suspects).

Give it a read.

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