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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (2628)	10/22/2003 9:02:35 AM
From: Scoobah	Respond to of 22250

Gusttave, go do some real homework before repeated the filth you pick up in the sewer of hate and demagogery.

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (2628)	10/22/2003 7:28:20 PM
From: rrufff	Respond to of 22250

Here's a "cut and paste" that you are your buddies will love. thestatesman.net Diana and Elvis shot JFK... ...then made good their escape together. As former British royal butler Paul Burrell produces yet another Diana conspiracy theory, CAROL MIDGLEY says such nonsense satisfies a psychological need to make tragedy bearable DID YOU know that Diana, Princess of Wales, isn’t dead after all? That the terrible car crash in the Alma tunnel in Paris was an elaborate hoax to enable the Princess and Dodi Fayed to fake their own deaths so that they could live in blissful isolation for the rest of their lives? Think about it, we never actually saw her body, did we? That’s why her coffin was closed on the day of the funeral. Not buying that conspiracy theory? Well, don’t worry. There are plenty more to choose from. An estimated 36,000 Diana conspiracy websites were set up after the Princess died six years ago – breathtaking by anyone’s standards. Many survive. Hypotheses range from pure James Bond (“it was all an MI6 plot to protect the monarchy”) to farce (”it was a fiendish murder cooked up by the world’s florists to sell lots of flowers”). Now Paul Burrell, Diana’s former butler, claims in a new book that the Princess predicted her own death in a car crash to add to the pile. Apparently, she was so frightened of the “dark forces” surrounding the Palace that 10 months before her death she wrote Burrell a heart rending letter which she begged him to keep as an “insurance policy”. Of course, we journalists are now busy cooking up our own theories as to why this letter has suddenly appeared now. Yes, it’s a great story but isn’t it odd that it should emerge just when Burrell is publicising a potentially lucrative book? If he really believed this to be true, shouldn’t he have mentioned it in passing to detectives investigating the crash all those years ago? Whatever you believe, the furore surrounding yesterday’s story proves one undeniable truth. The public’s desperation for conspiracy theories is no less dimmed than when we were putting Elvis on the moon 25 years ago. And JFK was the victim of a CIA assassination plot. The Moon landing was faked. Eleventh September was a Jewish plot to turn world opinion against Israel’s Muslim enemies. Diana was pregnant at the time she died and the palace couldn’t bear the thought that she might marry an Arab. When horrifying, historic events shake our world, we seek to make sense of them by creating shadowy theories which, however sinister, are preferable to the cold fact that sometimes random accidents happen. It feeds our insecurity to believe that a princess, with all her wealth and bodyguards, could be killed by something as arbitrary and mundane as a traffic accident. Psychologically, we need conspiracy theories to make the tragedies of life more bearable. And the Internet helps feed the global paranoia. Dr Patrick Leman, of Royal Holloway University of London, has conducted research into the psychology of such theories. “When a big event happens we prefer to have a big cause,” he says. “It upsets our view of the world if there isn’t a significant, powerful explanation.” Volunteers were asked to give scores up to 150 according to how strongly they believed that President Kennedy and the Princess of Wales were the victims of assassination plots, that the Aids virus HIV was created in a laboratory, that the European Union was trying to take over the UK and that the government was covering up the existence of aliens and suppressing information about toxins in food. The Kennedy scenario returned an average score of 86, the EU 60, Diana 57, aliens 49, Aids 38 and toxins 95. “People are becoming more likely to believe these conspiracy theories, and I think it has got to be to do with people feeling increasingly divorced from institutions of power,” Leman says. “If you really want to believe something, you can always find ways to support it and doubt the evidence in front of you.” And the Diana letter? Thus far it is unclear whether the Princess had proof of her claims or was merely suffering from a persecution complex. But we do know one thing. At £17.99 a copy, Paul Burrell’s book is going to make him a lot of money. And that’s not theory, it’s fact. — The Times, London.