Conspiracy Theories

At the beginning of the year, a plane crashed into the ocean just after taking off from Beirut airport.  It was a tragedy.  Most people aboard the Ethiopian Air flight were Lebanese headed back to Africa where they had started businesses, or girls heading home after working as househelp here in Lebanon.

The wreckage of the plane was said to be just a few miles off shore.  At first they were saying it was in shallow water, but then they discovered that it was actually near the bottom of a very deep underwater cliff.  A few days later they came back to say that it was indeed in the shallow water.  It took several weeks to find the black box….. which gave everyone around here several weeks to come up with some pretty crazy conspiracies.

It’s no surprise that in a country with such a history of war and crooked politicians that the straight answer is never readily accepted, and it was really interesting to see that firsthand in the discussions about the plane crash.  Even though the plane took off in a ridiculously crazy storm, most don’t accept that it was truly just a tragic accident.

I was at a women’s meeting at church last month, and we spent a good half hour discussing all the theories.

Here are just a few things I heard….

The reason it took so long for them to find the black box is because all the politicians had to get their stories straight first.

Many were saying that some members of Hezbollah were supposed to be on the plane, so it was shot down by our neighbor to the south (they ended up switching flights last minute to attend a cabinet meeting, which only fueled this rumor).

When the control tower talks to the pilot, the pilot is supposed to repeat the direction and say “roger” and a certain call sign.  The pilot, just before the crash, only said “roger,” not the call sign, so someone must have been in the cockpit with him.

At the time of the meeting, the only bodies that had been recovered were from the business class.  I didn’t quite get the significance of this, but apparently that meant something.

One of the ladies was talking about how in a car crash, sometimes you have to use the jaws of life to cut open the metal, and that is how the plane looked, which of course, means some kind of conspiracy!

I also found out that in every airport in America, they do full body scans now – and the scanner can see you “just like Adam and Eve,” but can’t see your face.  :)

They found the black box and I think the conclusion was that it was pilot error that caused the crash, but that hasn’t seemed to stop the theories.  Just today, Caleb found a news article on a Lebanese news site we read.

The headline: “Internal Security Forces says no signs of drugs, poison in bodies of crashed plane crew.”

posted by: nicolette