Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies For Dummies

Al Qaeda Wants Iran to Stop Spreading 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

2011-09-28T12:09:00.003-04:00

From ABC today, it seems that al Qaeda is sick of the "Truthers" as well.

The terror group al Qaeda has found itself curiously in agreement with the "Great Satan" -- which it calls the U.S. -- in issuing a stern message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: stop spreading 9/11 conspiracy theories.

In the latest issue of the al Qaeda English-language magazine "Inspire", an author appears to take offense to the "ridiculous" theory repeatedly spread by Ahmadinejad that the 9/11 terror attacks were actually carried out by the U.S. government in order to provide a pretext to invade the Middle East.

"The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al Qaeda was behind 9/11 but rather, the U.S. government," an article reads. "So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?"

Though Iran was the first of the two to use the "Great Satan" as a synonym for the U.S., the author claims that Iran sees itself as a rival for al Qaeda when it comes to anti-Americanism and was jealous of the 9/11 attacks.

[snip]

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. was behind the 9/11 terror attacks, recently during the somber observance of the tenth anniversary of those attacks and then again in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last week. That speech triggered a walk-out by the U.S. and several other delegations.

Inspire is an English language online magazine reported to be published by al Qaeda.

No, I won't bother linking to it.

Britain's 'Air Force Ayatollah' Is Holocaust Denier

2011-08-09T01:55:00.006-04:00

The top academic at the Royal Air Force academy in Cranwell, UK, has become something of an embarrassment to RAF top brass. Dr. Joel Hayward is a new Zealand-born convert to Islam, and the dean of the college at Cranwell. (He's is actually employed by King’s College, London, which runs academic courses at Cranwell, and not the RAF.)

It seems that Hayward is a longtime Holocaust denier, along with writing a recent article in an Islamic magazine criticizing his own military's actions in Libya and Bosnia.

From the Daily Mail, Ayatollah of the RAF by Ian Gallagher:

Dr Hayward has previously expressed remorse after appearing to claim that far fewer Jews were killed by the Nazis than generally thought and that the gas chambers of the Holocaust were British propaganda.

In another article recently he likened Churchill to Mohammed.

The magazine article on Libya was published under the headline ‘The West runs the risks of its good intentions (and inconsistencies) leading to distrust’.

Dr Hayward wrote: ‘When western aircrafts began to destroy tanks and a downpour of missiles wrecked Libya’s air force and air defence system, various leaders congratulated themselves for preventing an “atrocity” or “slaughter” - evocative words which conjured up images of a Srebrenica-style massacre [the 1995 killing of Bosnian Muslims].

‘Yet we do not know that his army would have “slaughtered” civilians in a Srebrenica-style massacre.’

Dr Hayward also takes issue with the UN Security Council resolution authorising ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians from the dictator’s forces.

Describing the resolution as ‘elastic’, he says: ‘Strangely, that resolution condemned human rights abuses and torture to which the world (and the UN) had turned a blind eye for decades.’

His views and behaviour have caused disquiet among senior officers at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, where he is the most senior academic and taught Prince William.

In a letter to The Mail on Sunday entitled The Air Force Ayatollah, one senior officer expressed concern that Dr Hayward was focusing more on ‘Islamist activities that are nothing to do with the RAF’.

He also accused him of giving Muslim cadets preferential treatment and making other students take a ‘softly, softly line when writing about Muslim terrorists/Islamist extremists’.

Another officer claimed cadets and lecturers ‘are in fear’ of expressing anything that might be construed as anti-Muslim sentiment. ‘Anyone who fails to follow the line that Islam is a peace-loving religion is hauled into his office for re-education,’ he said.

Last night Dr Hayward said he did not ‘recognise’ the allegations.

The Mail on Sunday understands that Dr Hayward’s views have embarrassed RAF chiefs, who feel that while he is entitled to his opinions, it was unwise for him to air them in a Muslim magazine.

Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, former chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: ‘I am delighted that the dean is not restricted in what he can say, as he would be in Islamist societies.

‘However, I very much hope that his views don’t conflict with any of his professional duties when teaching Her Majesty’s officers.’

It is not the first time the New Zealand-born academic has attracted controversy. In 2000, he was accused of denying the Holocaust after the publication of a thesis he had written in 1993 questioning the number of Jews killed. He claimed the idea of gas chambers being used was propaganda invented by Britain, the US and Jewish lobbyists. He has since expressed remorse over the ‘mistakes I made as an inexperienced student’.

Dr Hayward has frequently challenged claims of Islamic aggressiveness. Most recently, he wrote on the subject for the Cordoba Foundation, described by David Cameron as a front for the Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood. In that article, Dr Hayward likens the prophet Mohammed’s inspirational qualities to that of Sir Winston Churchill. He said Mohammed had to go to extra lengths – just as Churchill did in the Second World War - to exhort his people to believe in victory and fight for it.

Dr Hayward was appointed to RAF Cranwell in 2007, but was investigated the following year over complaints of ‘harassment and bullying’. It is not clear what became of the investigation.

Scientology Runs Afoul of Russians

2011-07-05T09:28:00.000-04:00

A regional court near Moscow has decided that books and brochures by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard constitute extremist material, and have now been officially banned from circulation in Russia for inciting hatred. The appeals case came in the wake of nearly two dozen Scientology essays by Hubbard which were removed from the nationwide ban list back in April

From The Moscow Times, "Scientology Literature Declared Extremist":

The Shchyolkovo town court, at the request of local prosecutors, ruled that Hubbard's book "What Is Scientology?" and "several other" brochures "call for extremist activities" and include "humiliating characteristics" of people depending on their social status, the statement said.

Hubbard's essays are "aimed at forming an isolated social group" whose main task is to "fight the rest of the world," it said.

The works should now be placed on the Justice Ministry's federal list of extremist materials and banned from distribution in Russia.

Inciting hatred can be punished by up to five years in prison.

Sammy Hagar & the Aliens vs. Hugo Chavez & the Martians

2011-03-22T16:36:00.008-04:00

It's been quite a week, and it's only Tuesday.

Sunday was Alien Abduction Day. And there you sat with nothing about it on your iPhone calendar. Rocker Sammy Hagar marked the auspicatory occasion by telling MTV that he was abducted by space aliens 20 years ago.

From the UFO Digest website:

“I saw a ship and two creatures inside of this ship… And they were connected to me, tapped into my mind through some kind of mysterious wireless connection,” explains Sammy Hagar in his new book, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock. The brief memoir, whose release coincides with "Alien Abduction Day", is not the first instance in which the former Van Halen singer has offered public disclosures of ET contact. A new report from a Vancouver audio lab suggests that Sammy Hagar was covertly communicating about alien abduction as early as 1991. A secret message encrypted backwards in Mr. Hagar's 20-year-old remarks stating how “Aliens abducted me,” is the subject of a new Secret Message Report – Podcast Edition episode, produced in Vancouver by Vancouver UFO Examiner, Jon Kelly.

Next up: Today is World Water Day—Who knew? To celebrate, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez muses that capitalism destroyed a once-great civilization. On Mars.

From Reuters:

"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.

That's just silly. Everybody knows it was really a tragic Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator accidental detonation.

(Poster from the 2008 Alien Abduction Festival, sponsored by HappyWorker.com)

The New Doomsday Bunkers

2011-03-09T17:29:00.003-05:00

Underground bomb shelters and survival bunkers were all the rage in the 1950. As apocalyptic 2012, oil and food riots, and other "end is nigh!" hysterical predictions continue to rise, there's money in them thar hills for manufacturers of a new generation of reinforced holes in the ground,

From the Secret World of Doomsday Shelters:

If suppliers' reports are a gauge, the market is small but growing. Unlike 1950s-era fallout shelters and newer aboveground "safe rooms," meant to protect against storms and home invasions, bunkers are buried at least 6 feet under, in part to shield occupants from nuclear radiation.

You can buy a bare-bones shelter for $38,000 uninstalled or spend tens of millions of dollars — and a surprising number do — on a lavish, custom-made subterranean sanctuary.

Bunker builders cite a long list of client fears, from war and terrorism to megastorms and epic earthquakes. But the customers themselves aren't talking. "Secrecy is their defense," says shelter manufacturer Walton McCarthy, of Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas. Shelter owners don't want neighbors and strangers pounding on the entry hatch in an emergency, he explains.

Also, many have installed shelters without building permits. While city and county authorities may disagree, McCarthy maintains that his prefabricated shelters fall outside building codes. "These have no foundations, so technically don't come under building code. They're self-contained and are not hooked up to the grid."

To sidestep nosy neighbors and building authorities, contractors may disguise the projects as swimming pool installations. "The hole is dug on Friday," McCarthy says. "We get there Friday at 5, by Monday it's in, and the neighbors can call whoever they want."

The home-bunker movement probably is not large. In 30 years, Radius has sold 1,100 shelters, from the six-person variety to ones big enough for 500. McCarthy says that business has doubled in the past five years, though, and that he's planning to nearly quadruple his 58-person work force and add a second plant.

In the market? See these:

Hardened Structures
Missile Base Silos for sale
Severe Weather Pods and Deep Earth Bunkers

UK Releases 8,500 Pages of UFO Material

2011-03-06T02:13:00.004-05:00

The British government has released the biggest document dump of UFO files in history. The U.K.'s Ministry of Defense and The National Archives have released about 8,500 pages of UFO-related documents and more dating from the 1960s up through 2005.

From ABC News.

The archives can be seen here.

Obama To Make UFO Admission (!)

2011-01-11T05:15:00.002-05:00

Michael Cohen at All News Web (sounds legit, doesn't it?) is reporting that President Obama will be announcing to the world that the U.S. has been visited by UFOs.

No, really.

All News Web has received information from government insiders close to the US President that Barack Obama has been given the go ahead to make an important "off the cuff" announcement regarding UFO visits and US contact with aliens.

Allegedly DARPA has given this move the green light. The comments by the President will be made within the next month.

Our sources claim this will not be outright admittance of UFO visits and contact with aliens, however the comments will come as close to admittance as any President has to date and will be made in the context of a speech on an entirely different matter.

From what we understand The President will concede that there is 'some evidence' to suggest aliens might have attempted to contact Earthlings.

All of this is said to be part of a warm up program leading to eventual outright admittance of knowledge of UFO and alien visitation by major world governments within three years.

Looks like donating all that pelf to the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee paid off.

Laugh while you can, monkey boys.

History Channel Won't Air Kennedy Series

2011-01-10T05:31:00.001-05:00

The Hollywood Reporter and other sources are relating the role of members of the Kennedy clan in squelching the History Channel's miniseries, The Kennedy's. On January 7th, AETV networks announced the long-awaited and not inexpensive 8 part show was not appropriate for the network. The official statement from AETV was, "after viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand."

As opposed to Ice Road Truckers, Pawn Stars, Ax Men, MonsterQuest, Top Gear, and American Pickers.

The series stars Greg Kinnear as JFK and Katie Holmes as Jackie Kennedy, and was helmed by 24 co-creator Joel Surnow.

But why was it killed at History? The program's script was vetted for accuracy by History Channel's folks, but Kennedy apologists leapt upon the association of "conservative" Surnow with the project. Why, it almost sounds like a conspiracy...

None of History's advertisers or sponsors complained about the miniseries. But behind the scenes, members of the Kennedy family strongly lobbied AETN to kill the project since it was announced in December 2009, according to a source close to the situation. In recent weeks, those efforts intensified.

AETN is owned by a consortium including the Walt Disney Co., NBC Universal and Hearst. The source said that Disney/ABC Television Group topper Anne Sweeney, who serves on the AETN board and is said to hold tremendous sway over its decisions, was personally lobbied by Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy. Caroline Kennedy has a book deal with Disney's Hyperion publishing division, which announced in April 2010 that it will publish a collection of previously unreleased interviews with the late Jackie Kennedy timed to the 50th anniversary of the first year of JFK's presidency this fall.

Caroline has agreed to edit the untitled book, write an introduction and to help promote it, including making an appearance on Disney/ABC's Good Morning America, among other outlets.As part of the promotion for the book, Caroline is expected to reveal some of the 6.5 hours of previously unheard audiotapes of the former First Lady that form the basis of the book.

But that level of cooperation might have been unlikely if History had gone ahead with the Kennedys project, which was championed by AETN president and CEO Abbe Raven and History and Lifetime president and general manager Nancy Dubuc.

Kennedy scion Maria Shriver also has close ties to NBC Universal, where she worked for years as an employee in its news division. She is said to have voiced her displeasure with the project to outgoing NBCU execs Jeff Zucker and Jeff Gaspin. Gaspin serves on the AETN board, as does Scott Sassa for Hearst.

Shriver also is a friend of Sweeney, who serves on the board of the Special Olympics, founded by Shriver's mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Sweeney and Shriver both attend the same church in the Los Angeles area, and a source said Shriver criticized the Kennedysproject to Sweeney after a leaked early script was attacked in the New York Timesas "vindictive" and "malicious" by a former JFK aide (though the final shooting script is said to have been vetted for accuracy by History's in-house historians).
A rep for Sweeney referred THR to the AETN statement. AETN declined to comment further.

According to the UK Telegraph:

Among the most controversial parts of the film were scenes depicting JFK as a "sex fiend" and telling his brother of his need to sleep with women other than his wife.

The hope is that Showtime will pick up the show. In the meantime, it will air in Canada. See the trailer here.

Mayan Calendar Mania: 729 Days and Counting

2010-12-23T16:10:00.002-05:00

And now the Mayan calendar "End of days" mania begins. But two years out is an awful long time to be camping in the Pyrenees. And who sent the Mayans picture postcards from France?

Of course, the whole problem with eschatological predictions is what do you say the next morning when it didn't happen?

From a syndicated Newscore article today:

Armageddon-fearing pilgrims were flocking to a village deep in the southern French hills after a countdown was started to the end of the world, which stood Thursday at a mere 729 days to go.

Followers of the Mayan calendar believe the mountain in the Corbieres hills overlooking the village of Bugarach, east of the Pyrenees, was endorsed by aliens as a safe place to survive the demise of civilization.

The countdown began Tuesday, exactly two years until Dec. 21, 2012 -- the movement's assigned Judgment Day.

The mythical status bestowed upon the 4,045 foot high rock above Bugarach has inspired legends since the Middle Ages and attracted generations of hikers.

But the French locals were left bemoaning the sudden deluge of New Age pilgrims, who they accuse of setting up camp in the village to cash in on the fears of impending doom.

"It may be necessary to call in the military to control the crowds," said Bugarach mayor Jean-Pierre Delord, who anticipated "chaos" in the next 24 months. His deputy, Gilbert Cros said the new influx "gives us a bad image."

Police said they were looking into crowd control plans, while Miviludes, a state agency that tracks dangerous cults, said it was keeping close watch on the village and the “apocalypse movement."

Charlotte Bank of America Murals

2010-12-21T01:29:00.007-05:00

And you thought the Denver Airport had creepy murals.

"The Vigilant Citizen" over at the In Pursuit of Happiness blog has a loopy study of the "shocking" frescos at Bank of America's Corporate Center (originally the NationsBank Corporate Center) in Charlotte, North Carolina. Created in 1992 by artist Benjamin Long, the paintings are described as centering around themes of “making/building, chaos/creativity, and planning/knowledge in a “daring blend of abstract and realism, set off with touches of gold“.

Naturally, Mr. Vigilant believes they are full of occult, alchemical and Masonic symbolism, which he then connects back to—you guessed correctly—the Denver Airport murals.

The Vigilant Citizen bills his site with the tag line "symbols rule the world, not words nor laws," and he's the same navel gazer who peered deeply at the Chilean mine cave in and rescue in October and discovered it all to be a symbolic Masonic cornucopia.

A video about the Bank's fresco and their creation by Ben Long can be seen here.

JFK: Oswald's Coffin and A Secret Service Agent's Book

2010-12-21T01:12:00.005-05:00

A couple of stories this past week for JFK conspiracists to chew on.

First, Lee Harvey Oswald's original wooden coffin was sold at auction for $87,469.

According to the LA Times,

Oswald's body was exhumed from Fort Worth's Rose Hill Memorial Park on Oct. 4, 1981, to resolve a dispute between his widow, Marina Oswald, and his brother, Robert Oswald. They had argued over a conspiracy theory that alleged that Kennedy's killer was actually a look-alike Russian agent who had taken Lee Harvey Oswald's place.

Dental records and other physical features proved that Oswald was indeed in the grave. But the coffin, damaged by water, was replaced with a new one before his remains were reburied.

Funeral home owner Allen Baumgardner, who had assisted in the original embalming of Oswald, kept the old casket, along with an erroneous death certificate and the 1963 funeral home log book. On Page 525 are the details of the original $573.50 mortuary fee and $135 cemetery plot. Oswald's coffin cost $300, and the leaky vault that enclosed it was $200.

And Gerald Blaine, a formet Secret Service officer who was a part of JFK's security detail, has just written a new book about his experiences before and after the assassination. In The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence, he and other agents take the *shocking* viewpoint that Oswald was the only shooter, and acted alone. We live in a strange world where that is considered the radical concept.

From an article in the Contra Costa Times:

Blaine, 84, said he went years without talking about JFK's death -- not even to his family.

"I didn't want to bother the family," he said, "and I didn't know how to deal with it. I found out that was consistent with every agent who worked for President Kennedy. Not one of them talked about it."

Blaine is certain that Lee Harvey Oswald worked alone. His marksmanship skills were more than adequate, and he perfectly fit an assassin's profile.

"He had psychiatric problems when he was a young man," Blaine said. "He had problems in military service and problems holding down a job. He even had a problem when he tried to defect, and he had a marriage that failed.

"Also, about a month or two before taking a shot at the president, he took a shot at a general in Texas. The bullet just missed, but it was traced back to Oswald's rifle."

Kennedy was shot while riding in an open-top car -- a president rides only in bulletproof vehicles today, Blaine said -- but that was in keeping with his personality. He wanted to see and be seen by the people.

The fateful Dallas appearance marked the last of several southern stops, including Tampa, Fla., San Antonio and Houston. Earlier in the trip, Secret Service agents rode on the back of the presidential limousine, which likely would have obstructed Oswald's aim. Kennedy stopped that.

"The president told us, 'I've got to use my political style, and my political style is to be among the people, to greet them and have them be able to see me,' " Blaine said.

The assassination still torments the former agent, but what makes matters worse is what he regards as misrepresentation of what he knows to be true.

"How many of you saw the movie 'JFK'?" he asked, referencing a film that reinforced conspiracy theories. "Unfortunately for our youth, that seems to be their history book.

"An article last month in USA Today said 82 percent of young people between 18 and 29 believe that President Kennedy's assassination was a conspiracy. "

He said he has no illusions of transforming the doubters, but he hopes his book, which includes input from fellow agents, will at least put facts on the table.

"If we make history out of the wild stories," he said, "you'll never trust history again." Blaine said he knows the truth about what happened in Dallas. He's had to live with it for 47 years.

Did a UFO Crash in the Alps?

2010-12-11T17:54:00.003-05:00

The Austrian Times reports that a man spotted a "glowing fireball" cruising across the sky in the Tyrolean Alps last week, according to the German Central Research Centre for Celestial Phenomena (CENAP).

The centre quotes the man as saying: "I saw an extremely bright fireball cruising in the sky from east to west. It was much brighter than Jupiter. A long time went by before it eventually disappeared. I think I heard a hissing sound at the end."

CENAP, which is based in the city of Mannheim, has called on other eyewitnesses of the alleged sighting to come forward. The group of hobby researchers did not say whether the quoted witness caught the incident on camera.

This comes on the heels of news that an Ukrainian group of UFO researchers planned to build a monument in the memory of aliens who perished while trying to establish contact with humans.

Oleksandr Nalysman, a spokesman for the Berdychiv-based group, told local media contacts with alien civilisations were an "indisputable fact". He said: "We don’t pay enough attention to the fates of visitors from other planets who died on earth."

My, how those technologically advanced civilizations who can travel hundreds or even thousands of light years do seem to have trouble with the actual landing bits. How can aliens hope to open diplomatic relations with us lowly Earthlings of they keep smashing into mountains and deserts?

When You Wish Upon A Star

2010-12-02T14:56:00.007-05:00

If you live in the Islamic Republic of Iran and you are the sort of person who believes there is a Jewish Conspiracy at work in the world, Google Earth has given you more fodder for your perennial nervousness.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Regardless of whether it was happenstance or an act of architectural subterfuge, government officials in Iran were incensed this week when they discovered the outline of a Star of David atop the roof of the headquarters of Iran Air, Al- Arabiya reported on Monday.

The six-pointed star was discovered by an eagle-eyed Google Earth user recently, over three decades after the building that houses the national airline of the Islamic Republic was constructed by Israeli engineers.

Israel and the Shah’s Iran maintained good ties until the Islamic Revolution of 1979 ended the relationship. Before 1979, Israel brokered arms deals with Iran, and there were regular flights between Teheran and Tel Aviv.

Once the existence of the Star of David was reported in Iranian media, government officials called for the immediate removal of the apparently offensive Jewish symbol.

Hard to say whether it was an intentional Easter egg (to mix in a third religious metaphor) left by Israeli engineers 30 years ago, or just a coincidental artifact of the building's design.

Meanwhile, Oye!Times reports that, back in August, some sharp-eyed gazer discovered to their horror that a newly constructed monument to the Revolution in downtown Tehran was covered with hundreds—hundreds!—of Stars of David, causing outrage and calls for its demolition. Probably a more rational solution than forcing everyone who gazes upon it to pluck out their eyeballs. No one knows if it was intentional, or just dumb luck of using geometric patterns.

Photo from an Iranian blogger showing how to spot the offending symbol.

Happy Hanukkah.

"The Secret World" Dark Days Are Coming

2010-10-12T06:54:00.005-04:00

"Imagine if every myth, conspiracy theory and urban legend was true."

Thus begins the preamble for Funcom's new online multiplayer game, The Secret World. The game invites you to "Join the Illuminati, the Templars or the Dragon - the three secret societies that pull the strings of our world. Work your way to the top, earn titles and rewards, and play a key role in the battle for world domination."

Take the online initiation and discover which secret society you are best suited to join.

Mine was the Templars.

And you figured I'd be the Illuminati.

(H/T to Rob Mountain)

Big Week For UFO Stories

2010-09-30T15:07:00.002-04:00

Driving back home from Valparaiso, Indiana last night, I caught Richard "Face On Mars" Hoagland on Coast To Coast. He's always good for a chuckle (Apollo crews recovered a severed C3PO-like robot head on the Moon and have spent the last 40 years trying to communicate with it. That kind of stuff.)

But it did come out in the course of the talk that three UFO stories hit the mainstream news last week, and not just college kids spotting glowing objects shaped like blunts over their dorms. These involved things at a slightly higher level. And Hoagland is convinced they all point to a struggle in the closed rooms of government over whether to finally admit to the public that Earth has been visited by aliens, and the slave ships are on their way.

On September 21st, Guy Consolmagno, a trained astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican observatory, told the Guardian newspaper that he would happily baptize an alien, “no matter how many tentacles it has.”

From Pope's Astronomer Would Baptize Aliens:

Though he concedes the odds of finding and communicating with other intelligent life is essentially zero, Consolmagno would welcome the event. “Any entity -- no matter how many tentacles it has -- has a soul,” he said. Asked whether or not he’d baptize an alien, Consolmagno replied: “Only if they asked.”

A financial scandal at the Vatican's bank also erupted last week, and Hoagland naturally sees some sort of connection between the two. A juicy scandal would effectively shove this "important" leak about the Vatican admitting there are aliens to the back page.

Next up was an announcement that the United Nations has named 58-year-old astrophysicist Mazlan Othman, the current head of the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), as an envoy for any future extraterrestrial contacts.

From UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens:

The United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth’s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.

Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.

During a talk Othman gave recently to fellow scientists, she said: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.

"When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”

Then on September 23rd, the National Press Club hosted a presentation by retired air force personnel who made the claim that UFOs have been neutralizing US nuclear missile sites for decades.

From Aliens Are Monitoring Our Nukes, Worry Ex-Air Force Officers:

Captain Robert Salas was on duty in Montana in 1967 when a UFO shut down the nuclear missiles on his base. And he's hardly the only one to make such a claim.

On Monday, six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about similar events at the National Press Club, all centering around unidentified flying objects and nuclear missiles. They plan to urge the government to publicly confirm the incidents, stating that they were ordered never to discuss the events.

"We're talking about unidentified flying objects, as simple as that," Salas told FoxNews.com. "They're often known as UFOs, you could call them that," he added. Salas, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch officer, will host the event along with researcher Robert Hastings, author of "UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites.

According to the pair, witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby.

Then there's the news that the SETI program has been shut down (no, it hasn't - most of it is privately funded) and that giant "ark ships" are headed towards Earth right now! According to Pat Parrinello at Bombshock,

At the present time the object(s) are beyond the orbit of Pluto. It is estimated that the objects are in the neighborhood of 150 miles across by 30 to 50 miles wide. Not long ago a Russian Mars probe photographed an object fitting this description just before it was destroyed for unknown reasons. Later, an American Mars probe was destroyed just before it reached that planet.

The people that were associated with SETI are in a unanimous opinion that, yes, we are not alone in the universe. A few of those people are now continuing SETI with private funding. However, reports indicate that some antenna sites have been taken over by government and those antennas in particular are heavily guarded.

It is reported that the US Navy in conjunction with the NSA are attempting to keep the public unaware of what is going on. A few people who are in the know are concerned that the Navy, as a first line of defense may be attempting to convert the antennas for military purposes. It is a fact that some frequencies in the microwave band have been known to affect UFO’s and destabilize their propulsion systems. It stands to reason that such measures may be true in light of Ronald Reagan’s statements about the need for the star wars program and his inference that we may soon have to face something from “out there!”

Finally, a so-called "Goldilocks Planet" has been detected ("This one is juuuuuust right!") that might be able to sustain life. From the AP story Could 'Goldilocks' planet be just right for life?:

It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star - 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.

Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between - in the land of constant sunrise - it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."

The astronomers' findings are being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday.

The planet circles a star called Gliese 581. It's about 120 trillion miles away, so it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. It may seem like a long distance, but in the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is "like right in our face, right next door to us," Vogt said in an interview.

Not exactly a vacation spot. And in spite of zero evidence of any kind of thing even remotely qualifying as "life" being discovered on any other spinning rock in the universe apart from our own, co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz made the somewhat remarkable remark, "It's pretty hard to stop life once you give it the right conditions."

Or the imagination, for that matter.

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Over Geronimo's Skull

2010-09-06T01:05:00.005-04:00

A longtime story goes that Yale University's famously secretive Skull and Bones Society has in its windowless campus home, known as the Tomb, the skull of Apache chief Geronimo. Back in early 2009, descendants of Geronimo attempted to sue Skull and Bones, Yale, and the federal government for the return of the warrior's skull. Because Geronimo’s grave was originally on a U.S. military base, the plaintiffs also named President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of the Army Pete Geren as defendants in the suit. Under the theory of never sue anyone poor or not famous. But on July 27th, a District of Columbia judge dismissed the case.

The plaintiffs were 20 descendants of the legendary Native American chief, and their attorney was Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, whose previous client list has included Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic.

The story goes that back in May of 1918, a group of Bonesmen were all serving in the Army together at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, site of the mouldering remains of the Apache chief who had died in 1909 from pneumonia. It's no secret that S&B prides itself on its creepy collection of frat house decor, and the skull of an Indian chief whose name is synonymous with intoxicated white people jumping off cliffs would make a dandy addition to their "tomb." So (allegedly), Prescott Bush (father of George H.W., and grandfather of George W.), Henry Mallon, Ellery James and Charles C. Haffner, dug up the grave and stole the skull, a few bones, and a horse bit, and spirited them off to the Skull & Bones Tomb at Yale. Over the years, they have (allegedly) been in a glass display case.

The Skull and Bones "Tomb" on the Yale campus.

The Geronimo skull is a longstanding piece of Skull & Bones folklore, but several members of the (alleged) grave robbing team gave conflicting accounts of the raid. Towana Spivey, director of the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark and Museum, is quoted as saying he has never believed the story. Still, there is a skull in the S&B Tomb in New Haven known commonly as Geronimo.

This public imbroglio started back in 2007 when Harlyn Geronimo of Mescalero, New Mexico, wrote to President George W. Bush for help in returning the skull of his great-grandfather. Bush didn't bother to answer, and the lawsuit followed. During the 2004 presidential race, Bonesmen Bush and Deomocratic nominee John Kerry both reacted to questions about the secretive society (one of about a dozen on the Yale campus) by saying that it was so secret they couldn't talk about it. Obviously, Bush admitting the chief's skull was in the Tomb would be in violation of the Society's oath.

From "Judge dismisses Apache suit against Skull and Bones" in the Yale News on August 9th:

If [Clark] had won his case, he and his clients would have dug up the grave at Fort Sill, and if, as the story about Prescott Bush suggests, some of the remains had been missing, they would have turned to Yale and Skull and Bones.
Before anyone can take legal action against the U.S. government, the government must consent to the proceedings by waiving its sovereign immunity. District Judge Richard W. Roberts said he dismissed the case because the plaintiffs had failed to establish why immunity should be waived in this case. He also said that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), under which the prosecution was suing for ownership of the remains, only applies to burials, grave robberies and other incidents that took place after it was passed in 1990 — making the act irrelevant to this case.
But Clark said he does not think Roberts is correct on this last point.
"It doesn't seem like that act would have much relevance if it cut off everything before that date," Clark said.
Still, Clark said the fact that he tried to take the case straight to court, without first arguing his clients' claim to their ancestor's remains in front of the relevant government agencies, might be why the government never waived its immunity. Clark said he pursued litigation first because it was the fastest route, allowing him to take on all relevant parties — those in the government and those in New Haven — at the same time. Now, he said, he and his clients will turn to agencies in the executive branch and the Department of Defense that they previously tried to bypass. He added that he will eventually reopen his cases against Yale and Skull and Bones if need be, but not until after the Fort Sill remains are exhumed.
Yale has said it does not possess the remains, but that it cannot say whether the secret society — a separate entity — might have them. A representative of Skull and Bones has declined to comment on the matter.

Russian Scholar Says US May Be Cooking Russia With Secret Ray

2010-08-17T19:41:00.007-04:00

So now evil American scientists are apparently cooking the Russkies with our secret death ray. The US is not the only place that swims in the shallow waters of conspiracism, not by a long shot.

A June 30th article from Radio Free Europe, "Russian Scholar Warns Of 'Secret' U.S. Climate Change Weapon" by Ashley Cleek:

A Russian political scientist has claimed the United States may be using climate-change weapons to alter the temperatures and crop yields of Russia and other Central Asian countries.

In a recent article, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Culture Foundation, wrote, "At the moment, climate weapons may be reaching their target capacity and may be used to provoke droughts, erase crops, and induce various anomalous phenomena in certain countries."

The article has been carried by publications throughout Russia, including "International Affairs," a journal published by the Foreign Ministry and by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

In an telephone interview with RFE/RL, Areshev appeared to back off from claims he made in the article, saying that he was merely positing a theory.

"First of all, I would like to say that what I wrote in that article, even the citations, does not in any way claim to a be final truth. It is, if you will, speculation, in other words, the definition of an hypothesis," Areshev said.

Moscow is currently sweltering under record temperatures. On July 29 Moscow suffered its hottest day ever, with temperatures hitting 39 degrees.

[snip]

In the article, Areshev voiced suspicions about the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP), funded by the U.S. Defense Department and the University of Alaska.

HAARP, which has long been the target of conspiracy theorists, analyzes the ionosphere and seeks to develop technologies to improve radio communications, surveillance, and missile detection.

Areshev writes, however, that its true aim is to create new weapons of mass destruction "in order to destabilize environmental and agricultural systems in local countries."

Areshev's article also references an unmanned spacecraft X-37B, an orbital test vehicle the Pentagon launched in April 2010. The Pentagon calls X-37B a prototype for a new "space plane" that could take people and equipment to and from space stations. Areshev, however, alleges that the X-378 carries "laser weaponry" and could be a key component in the Pentagon's climate-change arsenal.

The Pentagon was not immediately reachable for comment.

H.A.A.R.P. is the more manageable acronym for the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program facility near Gakona, Alaska. Constructed in the 1990’s, HAARP’s official purpose is to study the effects of electromagnetic energy on the ionosphere. The way it accomplishes this is to direct 3.6 million megawatts of electricity into a transmitter and pump it out of an antenna straight up into the atmosphere, and to take readings from satellites. The effect seems to be that the ionosphere gets toasted by the beam of energy, similar to the effects of solar flares, albeit in a very tiny way (since 3.6 million megawatts is a pinprick compared to the electromagnetic energy hitting the earth from the Sun). That’s the 10¢ explanation of the official mission.

Conspiracists say that the military designed HAARP with a far more sinister intent. It is claimed that the facility is a weapon being developed to knock out enemy satellite and radio communication by bombarding the atmosphere with massive electromagnetic waves. Or worse. Some have claimed that the 1993 power blackout in the northeast United States and Canada was triggered by a blast from HAARP.

In the 1980’s, physicist Bernard Eastland proposed technology similar to what was built at HAARP as part of the so-called “Star Wars” defense shield (known in military circles as the less Hollywood-ish Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI). Eastland built upon the theories of famed electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla and proposed a high frequency, electromagnetic “shield” that could be used to electronically jam incoming Soviet nuclear missiles and knock out enemy satellites. When the government actually built HAARP, they claimed Eastland’s patents were not used, in spite of the similarity of the basic principles.

That has not silenced critics who claim that HAARP is quietly sitting up in Alaska just waiting to be used by the military as a “death ray.” The belief is that the mild doses of electromagnetic pulses sent into the ionosphere are merely test firings, in anticipation of the really big jolt. A few of the very nervous have suggested that HAARP could direct its rays anywhere on Earth, and can be used to do anything from create major weather catastrophes on demand or cause earthquakes, to causing mass brain damage on a global scale by frying brain cells.

It should be noted that HAARP is not technically a U.S. military research site, and has a large complement of civilians working on the property. However, the project IS managed by a division of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Defense Department’s super high-tech “gee whiz” office that works with industry and universities to develop sophisticated technologies that might have a defense application (like the Internet, before Al Gore claimed it for himself).

More Canadian Radio - CFAX 1070AM in Victoria

2010-08-10T14:09:00.006-04:00

I'll be interviewed this afternoon by David Dixon at CFAX 1070AM in Victoria B.C. It will air at 5:40pm PST. Hear it at www.cfax1070.com

More about conspiracy theories and the Bilderbergers.

CKNW 980AM in Vancouver Tuesday Morning

2010-08-09T23:58:00.005-04:00

I'll be appearing on CKNW AM-980 in Vancouver Tuesday morning at 10AM PST, talking with reporter Michael Smyth on the Bill Good Show about the Bilderberg Group.

British Columbia's Premier, Gordon Campbell, was a delegate at this year's Bilderberg conference in Spain. Mr. Campbell is essentially the equivalent of a state governor in the United States, and a dustup in the press has expressed the usual gamut of fear, outrage and controversy over anything that is connected to the Bilderbergers. In Campbell's case, they are zeroing in on his $6,400 travel expense, but there is also the usual paranoia over why the premier of a seemingly small potatoes Canadian province would get invited to hobnob with this impressive super-secret group of New World Order masters. Sounds like some folks in Vancouver have an inferiority complex. If I were Campbell or a resident of BC, I'd be miffed that there is an attitude that they are just too insignificant to be hanging with the big noises in the Bilderbergers.

Campbell was among the 130 invited folks to the June gathering in Sitges, Spain, along with Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, former U.S. treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I spoke with Michael Smith on Monday and he quotes me in his article this morning. See Airfare is on record, but premier's discussion isn't.

National Review Online - "The Corner"

2010-08-09T17:30:00.000-04:00

National Review Online has a running editorial blog called "The Corner", where the regular editors and contributors to the biweekly conservative magazine post their daily and hourly observations, as the news may dictate.

Last week they announced that they were hunting recommendations for a logo for the top of the web page. My submission is featured this week.

When asked what my inspiration was for the design, I quoted Jefferson: "To place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent." It doesn't get much plainer than a "right turn only" sign, with dark clouds to the left, and a brighter future to the right.

Anyway, it will be on their website all this week. It's my little brush with the late William F. Buckley, Jr.

The Aaron Burr Conspiracy

2010-08-08T01:14:00.000-04:00

In the summer of 1806, America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, received a long and disturbing letter out of Nashville from Andrew Jackson, who would one day be president himself. Jefferson’s mail pouch had been bulging for more than a year with ominous letters warning him about his former Vice President, Aaron Burr. There were rumored plots to create a new empire carved out of the Western territories, including the newly acquired lands of the Louisiana Purchase, with Burr as its emperor. Some of the letters had been signed, and some had been anonymous, but all of them were disturbing. It was the one from Jackson that finally got Jefferson’s full attention.

Aaron Burr had been Jefferson’s first-term vice-president, but it had not been a happy marriage. The presidential election of 1800 had been the first and last Electoral College tie – Burr and Jefferson had gotten exactly the same number of votes. In the earliest days of the United States, presidential candidates picked their vice-presidential running mates, but it was a gentlemen’s agreement, something understood. The actual election was a true popularity contest. Whoever got the most votes was president, and the second place candidate became vice-president, regardless of party affiliations.

Jefferson had run for president on the Democratic-Republican ticket, and had picked Burr to be his vice-presidential running mate. But when the votes were counted, they’d gotten exactly the same amount of electoral votes. Constitutionally, that meant the tie had to be decided by the House of Representatives. The House had to vote and revote until at least one elector changed sides and the tie was broken. Jefferson was furious because Burr knew full well he was meant to be vice-president. If he wanted to be president, let him serve four years as the ‘Veep’ like his predecessors had. But instead of bowing out with a short and gracious speech, Burr kept quiet for weeks, with one deadlocked vote after another. After an incredible 36 ballots, one weary elector finally changed his vote. Jefferson was declared the winner, and Burr’s political career was officially dead – he had little choice but to go get buried. Traditionally, the second-place guy got to pass out his own share of perks and appointments, but Jefferson, scalded to the core, shut him out completely. Not a single plum political office would be Burr’s to give over.

Then came his infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton, leader of the Federalist party, and very nearly George Washington’s surrogate son. As young men, both attorneys in New York, Hamilton and Burr had been very nearly friends. But as the years passed, for a variety of reasons, they became bitter enemies. (For the juicy details, read historian Thomas Fleming’s absolutely riveting book, Duel.) After an exchange of letters that started with a remark of Hamilton’s about Burr to an acquaintance over dinner, the fur started flying, the seconds were drafted, and at dawn on July 11^th, 1804, the two men rowed across the Hudson to Weehawken, New Jersey, where dueling was still legal, and shot it out. Both men fired at about the same instant – Hamilton missed, and Burr didn’t. It took Hamilton an agonizing day and night to die, and when he did, the city of New York was overwhelmed with the sort of grief they’d only expressed at the death of George Washington. With dark talk of a murder indictment, Aaron Burr decided to absent himself from the scene.

Meanwhile, Jefferson’s star was rising. In 1803 he had acquired the crown jewel of his administration, the Louisiana Purchase. He had doubled the size of the country overnight, without firing a shot; all he had to do was write a check. Sixteen million is what he paid, or a measly 3 cents an acre for 828,000 square miles, give or take a mile or two. In fact, when Robert Livingston, our man in Paris, expressed confusion over the exact borderlines, the wily Talleyrand, Napoleon’s foreign minister, merely shrugged and said, “You have made a noble bargain, and I assume you will make the most of it.” We did. In the long run, there was no way the weakened Spanish could go on holding the Floridas in the East, as well as Mexico, Texas, etc. in the West, when we had just bought everything in between. And the real jewel in this crown was the rich trading port of New Orleans.

So Jefferson was riding high. The Constitution was amended to get rid of the president/vice-president popularity vote problem in time for the 1804 elections, and Jefferson ran for a second term, this time dumping the disgraced Burr as his running mate. Between the 1800 election fiasco, killing Hamilton, and several other political missteps, the once-prominent Burr had destroyed his political influence in the East. He decided the real golden opportunities were in the West. But he had no intention of starting all over again at the bottom. In fact, what Burr had in mind was to start at the top – all the way at the top. In the spring of 1805, Burr traveled to Pittsburgh, built himself a very comfortable flatboat (2 bedrooms, kitchen with fireplace – like a water-borne Airstream) and headed 2,200 miles down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, stopping incessantly along the way to check out the land militarily, and to make contacts. Initially he traveled incognito, under the startlingly unsubtle nom de treason Aaron King.

From what historians can gather, Burr had a Plan A, B, C – maybe all the way to Z. England’s King George just about dropped his tea set when he read a little missive in 1804 from his American contacts that the vice-president of the United States had just offered to betray his country if Britain would give him some ready cash and a few frigates to help him steal the West from the U.S. government. This was Plan A, Burr’s favorite, although as time passed, it was clear that Britain’s king either wasn’t real interested, or didn’t trust him. (Gosh, how could you not trust him?)

Plan B was a plot to get cozy with the Spanish, and set up some sort of alliance with them, where he’d get to be emperor over a new kingdom carved out of the Mississippi Valley, in exchange for being their solid ally against the constant encroachments of the new American nation into remaining Spanish holdings.

Plan C also involved holding hands with the Spanish, but no kissing, by enlisting their aid before he betrayed them and led his hardy band of frontiersmen into either Florida or the West to carve out a new empire for himself. He had lots of other plots, but these were the major ones, including Plan Q, which involved a scheme to cheat his greengrocer on the bill.

During his first two visits to Nashville, (Nashville was a popular jumping-off point from land to river traffic) Burr had thoroughly charmed Andrew Jackson, Tennessee’s most important figure, courting him like a prospective bride. He’d also hit on Jackson’s Achilles’ heel, because he knew that Jackson wanted the British, the Spanish, the French, the Indians, and everyone else out of the West; it belonged to us. So Burr’s talk of making war on Spanish occupiers found an interested pair of ears. Everything he said fell on interested ears. Burr was doing what all overthrowers of nations do, right out of the Machiavelli playbook – he was rambling around looking for men with money and power, particularly if they had a bone to pick with the present administration. And though they would stand up in federal court and lie their heads off, the documentary evidence proves that Burr had succeeded in gathering about himself a corps of such men, all ready to move upon receiving his coded signal.

Burr was very good at sizing up his intended victim and saying what they needed to hear in order to end up on his side. Everyone who wrote about their encounters with the man spoke of his eyes, shining eyes so dark they appeared to be black, and so intense that they seemed to draw people in against their will. But he had the smooth tongue of a lawyer, as well. Many times, for example, he implied that he had a sort of unofficial official blessing for his plans to drive Spain out of either Florida or the West, or both. Well, after all, he was the vice-president, or had been until a few months before. Why wouldn’t you believe him? And they did, for a time, anyway.

But as Burr faced various setbacks, his talk grew more daring and ever more treasonous. To several prospective shills he spoke airily of taking over the West, as if it were a done deal, and then of turning his army about to invade and take Washington, D.C.; he even spoke of assassinating Thomas Jefferson. Which brings us back to Andrew Jackson’s letter to the president. Jackson brilliantly outlined in great detail what he thought Burr’s scheme was. He also mentioned a “certain general,” never by name, as being Burr’s vital henchman in the plot. Probably he used no name because he had only rumor and surmise to go on, with no direct evidence. But everyone knew the general he was talking about.

James Wilkinson had been an American officer during the Revolutionary War. So was the courageous and glory-hungry Aaron Burr. Strangely enough, both young men had fought in the Quebec campaign under America’s most notorious traitor, Benedict Arnold. Maybe it was something in the water. Anyway, in 1787 Wilkinson was out of the army, and planning on becoming a merchant as well as freelance adventurer. In that year he left Kentucky with a flatboat full of hams and tobacco, headed for New Orleans. During this brief period, before Napoleon got it back, New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory belonged to the Spanish. When Spanish officials refused him a passport, a tactic they’d been using lately to strangle American trade, Wilkinson brazenly left without one, bribing his way downriver.

When he finally arrived in New Orleans, the purpose of his trip became clear. He went straight to the Spanish territorial governor and said the people of Kentucky were sick of being denied access to the river, and sick of the Federalists in New England who didn’t care, so long as their Atlantic merchant ties with Europe were safe. He said that the West was ripe to do what the 13 colonies had done before them – declare themselves a separate nation. Wilkinson then offered himself up with all the subtlety of a five-dollar hooker to be a Spanish agent in Kentucky, working toward a rebellion perhaps, but a rebellion that would be allied with Spain. He was promptly put on Spain’s payroll, and given the name in government correspondence of “Agent Number 13.” How James Bond-y can you get?

Some people are just born plotters, and this was something Wilkinson and Burr recognized in one another almost at once. As for this scheme in the West, they’d been plotting it literally for years, sending long coded letters to one another, meeting in the dark of night, etc. That kind of thing is bound to get out, even if people don’t know just what it is you’re plotting. Personalities aside, it was an element of fate that, within ten years’ time of selling himself to Spain, Wilkinson would find himself not only back in the army, but the commanding general over all of America’s land forces. Ironically, in 1804 he was even promoted to the territorial governorship of the northern Louisiana Territory that he intended stealing.

But in the late autumn of 1806, the traitorous General Wilkinson had reached the point of no return. He’d given his fealty to the United States government, to the King of Spain, and to Aaron Burr. And there he sat, upriver from New Orleans, facing a force of Spanish soldiers on the eastern side of the Sabine River, the side that supposedly belonged to America. They were obviously getting ready for a showdown over the border, perhaps even an attempt to take back territory that we’d bought in the Louisiana Purchase. Wilkinson was ordered from Washington to stop them by force if they tried, this Spanish army whose possessions in America he’d sworn to protect. Wilkinson was also supposed to wait where he was for Aaron Burr’s forces, gathering on Blennerhassett Island in Virginia to make their trip down the Ohio and Mississippi to meet up with him. Then they would cross the lines to meet the Spanish officers with whom Wilkinson had remained chummy, and together they would invade New Orleans, cutting the heart out of the Louisiana Purchase, and betraying Jefferson. Well, it might work.

Yet, Burr’s constant delays, for lack of funds, had given Wilkinson too much time to get cold feet. When Burr’s letter came, proclaiming that the attack was not some far distant dream date, but now, Wilkinson decided to re-think the matter. If he betrayed Aaron Burr and gave him up to the president, he would have the government’s eternal thanks. And if he made out to the Spanish that Burr had been planning to double-cross them, that Burr had been their real enemy all along, but on-the-ball Wilkinson had been there to stop him from stealing Spanish territory, he’d be a hero with his Spanish paymasters, as well. He decided this would be a better plan all around, and betrayed the man who’d been his close friend and brother-in-arms since the revolution. Nice guy.

So, Wilkinson wrote to Jefferson to tell him all about it. Of course, he had to be a little vague, since if he wrote too much, someone might have the common sense to ask, “Hey, how do you know so much about it?” He gave over just enough information about the “widespread conspiracy” of which he’d been a part to finally propel Jefferson to take action. The president sent the Virginia militia to go downriver and arrest Burr and his men. Being the dead of winter, and being short on funds, Burr hadn’t been able to raise quite the force he’d wanted, but they’d all met and set out for the grand adventure, unaware that the feds were in hot pursuit. They finally caught up with him in Natchez, Mississippi, tantalizingly close to New Orleans. Burr toyed with the idea of defiance, until he discovered that Wilkinson had betrayed him. At that point, he hid his weapons, claimed to be leading an innocent party of settlers to land he’d purchased in Louisiana, then gave himself over to the territorial governor of Mississippi without a fight.

Burr’s trial took place that summer in Richmond, Virginia. By another simple twist of fate, Aaron Burr ended up with the most subtle legal mind of the century sitting the bench in his case – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall. In those days, federal judges were expected to “ride the circuit,” handling federal cases all over a particular jurisdiction, in the same way that other magistrates did. Although Richmond was Marshall’s home, he was the circuit judge to whom the case happened to fall. This would take the trial beyond merely interesting. Marshall was a first cousin to President Jefferson, as well as being his mortal political enemy. Of course, this didn’t mean Burr was automatically going to walk. First of all, Justice Marshall was too honorable for that. And second, Burr happened to be the murderer of Marshall’s close political ally and friend, Alexander Hamilton. This one was going to get weird.

And it did get weird, with a dream team for both the prosecution and the defense who spent days on end arguing legal points, with famous lawyers drafted onto the jury who interrupted to ask questions of their own, and a crowd so large that the trial had to be moved to the House of Delegates in the Capital building; the crowds still spilled onto the steps and the street, standing on anything handy to get a peek through the windows. It was your basic, O.J. Simpson-style three-ring circus. But unlike Judge Ito, John Marshall, always calm and controlled, did not let any of the sideshow throw him. His instructions to the jury interpreting the Constitution stated that he saw no evidence of an “overt act” of treason, nor had the state produced the necessary two witnesses to such an act. Therefore, he did not see that Burr could be convicted of “levying war” against the United States, as the law was written. The jury agreed, but delivered a somewhat queer verdict – they said they found that the charge had not been proven, and so had no choice but to declare the defendant “Not Guilty.” This harked back to British common law, in which a middle-road verdict of “Not Proven” is sometimes permissible. But Burr and his attorneys were not happy, asking that the addendum to the “Not Guilty” verdict be stricken from the official record. It was. Burr was a free man.

Jefferson, of course, was livid, but he had his share of satisfaction. Burr would never again hold public office, and for the rest of his life would be marked a traitor. He spent the next two decades before his death quietly practicing law in New York. But if Burr got off in court, he paid in other coin. He was a widower with no son, although a ladies man to the end, but his closest relationship was with his daughter Theodosia, a girl he’d raised from the cradle to think like a man. She was his official hostess and closest confidant. The two were inseparable, and historians have often pondered just how close their relationship was. But within a few years of the trial, his beloved grandson Aaron, the heir apparent, died of a fever. On the heels of that tragedy, his treasure, Theodosia, would be lost at sea, attempting to travel home to New York because she was so fearful over her father’s grief about the loss of her son. Burr was alone, and would remain so until his death in 1836 at the age of 81.

Oliver Stone Apologizes For Hitler and Jewish Remarks

2010-07-27T15:12:00.003-04:00

So is Oliver Stone channeling Dr. Josef Mengele (as depicted by Gregory Peck in "Boys From Brazil")?

Stone has issued an apology after remarks during an interview in which he said Hitler was a "scapegoat". He went on to babble, ‘Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.’ Asked why he focused so much on the Holocaust, Stone said: ‘The Jewish domination of the media.‘There's a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***** up United States foreign policy for years.’

All of this brouhaha is a clumsy attempt to promote his 10-part Showtime series, Secret History Of America. And there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Meanwhile, the very deep thinking Mr. Stone is moving on to tackle another philosophical and vital issue. Wall Street 2, for which he has been paid millions, will reveal the earth-shattering message that greed is bad.

Bosnian Man Bombarded by Aliens

2010-07-27T13:38:00.003-04:00

Radivoje Lajic, who lives in the Bosnian village of Gornji Lajici, says his house has been hit six times by falling meteorites in the last few years, and he's pretty sick of aliens targeting him.

According to an article on www.metro.co.uk:

Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that all the falling rocks he has handed over were meteorites. They are now trying to work out what exactly it is about his house that particularly attracts them. The strikes always happen when it is raining heavily, he says, never when there are clear skies.

Lajic has his own explanation, of course. After the fifth rock struck his house, he said: 'I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit six times has to be deliberate.'

50-year-old Lajic has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house to protect it from the alien bombardment - which he funded by selling one of the meteorites to a university in the Netherlands.

'I have no doubt I am being targeted by aliens,' he adds. 'They are playing games with me. I don't know why they are doing this. When it rains I can't sleep for worrying about another strike.'

Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies for Dummies Makes Prestigious List

2010-07-19T20:53:00.004-04:00

Our book has achieved international status and is now well known in many spheres. First came the news that it was being used in a class at Harvard University about conspiracies. Now comes another singular honor. The Georgia Center For The Book, a library and literacy service program, has named what are, in their view, the 20 funniest book titles:

Cheese Problems Solved – P.L.H. McSweeney

The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories – Alisa Surkis

The Potatoes of Bolivia – J.G. Hawkes

How to Avoid Huge Ships – John W. Trimmer

Reusing Old Graves – Douglas Davies

Walled Up Nuns & Nuns Walled In – Lancelot Holland

Bombproof Your Horse – Jack Pelicano

Harnessing the Earthworm – Thomas J. Barrett

People Who Don’t Know they’re Dead – Gary Leon Hill

How Green Were the Nazis? – Franz-Josef Bruggemeier

Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them – Roger Welsch

Weeds in a Changing World – C.H. Stirton

Across Europe by Kangaroo – Joseph Barry

Drilling a Straight Hole – Nancy Janicek

Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers – (author not listed, perhaps for good reason)

How to Read a Book – Mortimer J. Adler

How to Write a How to Write Book – Brian Puddock

The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America – Julian Montague

Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies for Dummies – Christopher Hodapp and Alice VonKannon

And their choice top choice for the funniest title:

Cooking with Pooh.

The gutless authors of Cooking With Pooh are hiding behind a corporate name of "Mouse Works," as well they should, so I think they should be disqualified. But it's nice to come in second for something.

Personally, I have to object and say that Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies for Dummies is nowhere as chucklesome for a title as The Complete Idiot’s Guide To The Kennedys by Steven Strauss.

The Georgia Center for the Book has become the largest non-profit literary presenting organization in the Southeast and one of the largest in the nation. It is an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Now No One Can Save Us From Aliens

2010-07-05T20:01:00.004-04:00

Fairfield, Connecticut resident Dane Eisenman's one man attempt to save the world from an alien invasion has been thwarted by the local constabulary. It seems that he responded to a classified ad for a .30-06 rifle about a month ago and told the seller that he intended to use it to fend off an alien invasion that occurs once every 36,000 years.

According to an article in the Hartford Courant:

The seller was unsure if Eisenman was referring to space aliens or illegal aliens, [police sergeant] Perez added. Sgt. Perez said Eisenman told the seller of the rifle every 36,000 years, aliens who live under the sun come to Earth to kill humans, and he needed to be prepared because "They're going to be coming soon."

After the sale of the rifle, the man reported Eisenman to police. Sgt. Perez said Eisenman, who is a convicted felon, is legally prohibited from buying or owning a hand gun or rifle.

Eisenman turned himself into police thursday morning and was charged with charge of criminal possession of a firearm. He will be arraigned in Bridgeport Superior Court on July 9.

Just as a completely unrelated point of interest that no one but me will care about, The Hartford Courant is NOT named after a fruity blackberry with seeds that get stuck in your dental work (that's a currant), but was founded in 1764, and is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. Courant is a Dutch word for newspaper.

One Man's Secretive, Global Dominating Cabal Is Another Man's Fish Fry Club

2010-06-18T13:41:00.005-04:00

On June 12, the RogueGovernment.coms website breathlessly reported that a prominent member of the We Are Change NYC activist group, a so-called "9/11 truther" organization that regularly peddles New World Order conspiracy theories in its materials, is in fact, a Freemason. Craig Fitzgerald (right) is seen here posing with his Scottish Rite 32° certificate.

In the video Truth To Power, created by Connor Boals and Evan Wexler, Brother Fitzgerald is seen admitting his Masonic membership ("a 32nd degree Mason, but not a Shriner"), and then goes on to denounce the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations for conducting their meetings in secret. This seeming contradiction is just too much for the folks at www.RogueGovernment.com.

The article calls it "a complete insult to the viewers intelligence." Not the "truther" movement, mind you, just the part about a Freemason being a prominent spokesman for it.

The article goes on to post photos of Brother Fitzgerald throwing up gang signs or holding his arms in a certain way, which they hilariously describe as "Masonic gestures." Cruising anti-Masonic websites, you'll frequently come across photos of men shaking hands, labeled hysterically as "secret masonic handshakes."

The nervous NWO conspiracists just aren't dealing well with a Mason being in their midst. Brother Fitzgerald may very well be a pillar of the community and a perfect gentleman—I've never met him. Unfortunately, some of his so-called "Truther" compatriots seem to regard his Masonic membership as a disqualifier for their trust.

Author Lee Rogers promises to keep digging for more information on Fitzgerald and the "significance of his admitted ties to the Masonic order." We await his findings breathlessly. No doubt they will be as well-reasoned as most of the claims of the "9/11 Truth movement."

Denver Airport Just Got Even Weirder. If that's possible.

2010-06-03T21:57:00.004-04:00

Conspiracists have long suspected there is something sinister about the Denver airport. Maybe it's the swastica-shaped runways.

Or the miles of subterranean tunnels that could be hiding anything from captured UFOs to internment camps for political prisoners. Then there's the really overt weirdness, like secret messages embedded in the terrazzo floors, or the Masonic "control panel" in the main terminal announcing it as ground zero for the New World Order™.

Or the downright creepy murals depicting women, children and doves being slaughtered by a bizarre soldier in a gas mask and wielding a scimitar.

And of course there is the 30 foot tall blue Satanic horse out front, with glowing eyes, whose artist died while sculpting it.

Now comes the latest in Denver's attempt to scare travelers witless. To mark the arrival of a traveling exhibit of the treasures of Egyptian King Tutankhamen, the airport has installed a 26-foot tall, 7-ton concrete statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the Dead.

Yeah. Good choice for travelers already spooked about getting on a plane.

Anubis is often shown in Egyptian illustrations attending to the mummies of the dead Pharaohs, or protecting their tombs. In the Book of the Dead, Anubis measures the heart to determine the worthiness of the deceased before they may enter the Underworld. If you believe the airport sits on a secret underground bunker, this takes on new and creepy symbolism that will undoubtedly make you consider connecting through Dallas/Ft. Worth instead.

Calling all Eschatologists: Signs of the Apocalypse in Greece?

2010-06-03T15:01:00.004-04:00

More proof that The End is Nigh. As if Greece hasn't had enough troubles lately, now it is plagued by a rain of toads on the Egnatia Highway about 12 miles outside of Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki.

From Frog horde is latest Greek plague:

On Wednesday, a horde of frogs caused a two-hour closure on one of Greece's major highways near the city of Thessaloniki. The city's traffic police chief, Giorgos Thanoglou, told the Associated Press that the "millions" of frogs were probably looking for food. Three accidents resulted, as drivers attempted to dodge the hungry hoppers.

Bilderbergers meet in Sitges, Spain June 4-7. No, you're not invited.

2010-06-03T12:12:00.008-04:00

The infamous Billderberger conference opens tomorrow in Sitges, Spain, at the Hotel Dolce, surrounded by its usual cloak of secrecy, police tape, and barricades to reporters. Just the possibility of seeing of Henry Kissenger in a speedo is enough to keep me away.

The Guardian's Charlie Skelton comments in Bilderberg 2010: Plutocracy with palm trees:

Another year, another Bilderberg. The first "participants" (as the delegates are known) won't be arriving until Thursday, but already the Hotel Dolce in Sitges is buzzing with anticipation. This Catalan seaside town hasn't hosted an event as large and politically sensitive as Bilderberg since the legendary 2008 Foam Party at the Mr Gay Sitges awards night.

Last year, Bilderberg was held in Vouliagmeni, on the coast just south of Athens. The Greek minister of finance attended, the minister of foreign affairs, and the governor of the National Bank of Greece. A few months later, Greece was bankrupt and Athens was in flames. So … good luck, Madrid!

The group was created in 1954 by Polish exile named Joseph Retinger and Prince Bernhard in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, and is named after the hotel that they met in that first year. With Greece in an economic meltdown, and whispering around the world that the European Union could be nosing around for a good divorce attorney, it's probably no secret what's first on the Bilderberg agenda this week. The EU was partially cooked up as an idea at Bilderberg conferences in the 1950s and 60s as a way to prevent further sequels to WWI and II. The group may have some spirited discussion this year, since the EU has now violated Article 104b of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that created the Union with its bailout of Greece:

“The Community shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of any Member State, without prejudice to mutual financial guarantees for the joint execution of a specific project”.

Oh well. These little agreements. You make them, you break them. We did the same thing here with Prohibition.

Each year, 100 or so government, economic, and business leaders are invited to meet and talk freely without the pesky interference of the news media (or their own constituents). Between 30 and 35 are permanent members of the group, and the remainders are invited based on their ability to influence society through government, economics or culture. The list of attendees is made public (have a look, have-a-lookers), and members of the press may attend, but may not report on proceedings. Minutes are kept, but they don’t contain the names of who said what, only what was spoken.

The group is undeniably an elite collection of movers and shakers, and what they say behind closed doors is kept a secret. Conspiracy addicts see this as an evil plot for one-world government, yet the group proposes no legislation, issues no policy statements, and takes no votes. The participants regard it as an opportunity to chat informally with people who are their international peers without every word being scrutinized on the nightly news. Their rule of silence is strictly enforced, and squealers get booted to the curb.

According to Graham Keeley in the London Times ("Secretive Bilderberg Club ready for protests"), keynote address is being given by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister:

The Piigs — Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain — are of concern to the Bilderbergers. . . (They) are nervous that the erosion of the euro could nudge the world back into recession while public services cuts could trigger unrest and radicalise the political climate.

Plenty to talk about at the Dolce, then. The Bilderberg protesters, sure that they can smell a good old fashioned capitalist conspiracy, will be holding fringe meetings in the town. The hunt will be on to find a chambermaid ready to ransack hotel litter bins for evidence that evil work is afoot. It has been easier to get nuggets of information out of Bilderberg since hotel staff started to read Dan Brown and talk about the illuminati.

Masonic Book Club: John Robison's 'Proofs Of A Conspiracy'

2010-05-03T18:10:00.001-04:00

Since 1970, The Masonic Book Club has been surprising its members with reprints of obscure and frequently long out of print books. The club has always been quirky. Pay your $20 dues and forget about it, and sooner or later, the annual book arrives in the mail without fanfare. Well, today the 2009 edition arrived. As I said, quirky.

This year's book is John Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies, written in 1797. Robison was Professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, the secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Freemason. Along with being influential in the early study of physics, he is also noted for the invention of the siren, and work with James Watt on an early steam powered automobile—arguably making him responsible for the police car, in case you were looking for someone to blame.

Robison became disillusioned by the horrors of the French Revolution and its aftermath, as well as the participation of French Freemasons and the Bavarian Illuminati (as well as other similarly themed fraternal, philosophical and esoteric groups). Proofs of a Conspiracy was an attempt to point out the culpability of these groups, as well as to make a disctinction between good and virtuous English and Scottish -derived Masonry, as opposed to evil, sneaky and untrustworthy Continental Masons. As he says,

"It has accordingly happened, that the homely Free Masonry imported from England has been totally changed in every country of Europe, either by the imposing ascendancy of French brethren, who are to be found every where, ready to instruct the world; or by the importation of the doctrines, and ceremonies, and ornaments of the Parisian Lodges. Even England; the birth-place of Masonry, has experienced the French innovations; and all the repeated injunctions, admonitions, and reproofs of the old Lodges, cannot prevent those in different parts of the kingdom from admitting the French novelties, full of tinsel and glitter, and high-sounding titles."

Unfortunately, most readers missed Robison's distinction between what we regard today as regular, recognized Craft Freemasonry that takes no political or religious position, versus the very political and anti-religious brand that grew up in France and Germany in the 18th century. Even today, the mostly unrecognized Grand Orient of France remains politically active. Their motto, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité," became a cry of the Revolution, until it turned back upon them, and their own members became victims of the mob's rapidly changing whim.

Robison's book, along with Abbé Augustin Barruel's 1797 Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Jacobinisme, are the two most influential works that created the modern day conspiracy theory, and both allege conspiracies of "secret societies" in an orchestrated plan for an anti-monarchial, anti-clerical new world order. The books would set off an international fear of "Illuminism," and in the fledgling United States, President Thomas Jefferson was eventually seen by some as the chief infiltrator. Modern NWO conspiracy theories, no matter who gets trotted out as the sinister, all-seeing, all-knowing boogeyman, can all be traced back to these works. The players - Jews, Commies, Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, Neocons - may change over time, but the script is always straight out of Robison or Barruel.

That said, Proofs of a Conspiracy is a fascinating snapshot of a time when the world went mad. Men like Robison searched for reasons why France executed 17,000 with trials, 12,000 without, and another 300,000 or so, counting Vendee and their battles with Austria. It couldn't have been national insanity. It had to be orchestrated by someone. And Europe's Masons and the Illuminati seemed to be the likeliest choices. It is also fascinating for Freemasons to see the struggle that went on for the soul of the fraternity on the Continent, as the "higher" Eccosais (what became the Scottish Rite) degrees introduced Rosicrucianism, mysticism, and decidedly un-Masonic influences into the mix.

The Masonic Book Club edition is a hardback facsimile of the third edition published in Philadelphia in 1798. The type is light in places, but certainly quite readable, and I always prefer these to new typeset reprints.

Be sure to check out the Book Club's store, as they are offering many of their 39 previous books for sale.

Happy Birthday, Illuminati!

2010-05-01T06:30:00.007-04:00

It's May Day again, when Communists everywhere take to the streets and celebrate the Russian Revolution. It's also the birthday of the Bavarian Illuminati, formed as the "Order of Perfectibilists" by Adam Wieshaupt on May 1, 1776, in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.

We'll celebrate today by quoting the late Robert Anton Wilson in his 1977 comic novel, Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati:

"The Illuminati have been credited with managing the French and American revolutions behind the scenes, taking over the world, being the brains behind Communism, continuing underground up to the 1970s, secretly worshipping the Devil, and mopery with intent to gawk. Some claim that Weishaupt didn't even invent the Illuminati, but only revived it. The Order of Illuminati has been traced back to the Knights Templar, to the Greek and Gnostic initiatory cults, to Egypt, even to Atlantis. The one safe generalization one can make is that Weishaupt's intent to maintain secrecy has worked; no two students of Illuminology have ever agreed totally about what the "inner secret" or purpose of the Order actually was (or is . . .).

"There is endless room for spooky speculation, and for pedantic paranoia, once one really gets into the literature of the subject; and there has been a wave of sensational "ex-poses" of the Illuminati every generation since 1776. If you were to believe all this sensational literature, the damned Bavarian conspirators were responsible for everything wrong with the world, including the energy crises and the fact that you can't even get a plumber on weekends."

March and April are Dummies Months

2010-03-01T23:35:00.001-05:00

Pardon a shameless bit of capitalistic promotion, but it's one that ultimately helps you. The good folks at Wiley Publishing have had a regular program every year at this time, and March has officially been "Dummies Month" . Buy a Dummies book or audio set and get a $5 rebate (up to two per family). But this year, the term has been extended until the end of April. That means two Dummies Months in a row!

Now that means you can buy one or two Dummies books with a purchase price of $6.99 or more, on any subject (not just ours) between March 1st - April 30th, 2010, and get $5 smackers each delivered to your majestic manse's mailbox direct from the publisher.

Now obviously we would like you to take this opportunity to plunk down your hard-earned pelf and procure our books: Freemasons For Dummies, The Templar Code For Dummies, and Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies. Think of it as an economic stimulus package. We do have a poodle to support, after all. But there are more than 1,300 Dummies titles out there, and we would certainly understand if you already own ours...

You can download a pdf of the rebate form here.

Harvard Offers Conspiracy Class, Recommends Dummies For Text

2010-02-24T13:28:00.005-05:00

Harvard University's Extension School (their version of night school) is offering an introductory class on Conspiracies, and has made Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies a required textbook.

From the online description and syllabus:

Extension Home > Courses > Social Sciences >
Conspiracy
SSCI E-132 Conspiracy (22156)
Spring term

William Henry Anderson, MD, Lecturer on Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

Class times: Mondays beginning Jan. 25, 7:35-9:35 pm.

Course tuition: noncredit $600, undergraduate credit $900, graduate credit $1,800.

Syllabus
This course examines conspiracies, both real and imagined: their origins, development, and consequences. What psychobiologic factors, personality traits, and social institutions predispose individuals to this perspective? What parts have been played by sects, secret societies, and political parties? How are these beliefs formed, and how may they be supported or refuted? Prerequisite: introductory course in biology, psychology, or anthropology. (4 credits)

Interesting to note the four books on the required reading list:

• Barkun, M. A. Culture of Conspiracy, 2003. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Burnett, T. Conspiracy Encyclopedia, 2005. Penguin Group (USA).
• Hodapp, C. and A. von Kannon. Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies for Dummies, 2008. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
• Vankin, J. and J. Whalen. The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, 2004. New York: Citadel Press.

New "Secret Society" Forms at University of Virginia: THE TEN

2010-02-16T22:40:00.002-05:00

The University of Virginia in Charlottesville has had a long love affair with secret societies. A stroll through the Thomas Jefferson-designed campus reveals the most notable secret campus groups' symbols painted on buildings, sidewalks or stairway risers: the letter Z and the number 7.

Now, a new group wants to form a secret society of their own, and they have used the internet to find recruits.

THE TEN have borrowed Kabbalistic symbolism, and announced themselves by way of a website. Interestingly, instead of being an invitation-only organization like UVa's own secretive "The Seven," "IMPs," and "Z" societies, or Yale's Skull & Bones, THE TEN are actively seeking applications. The website's banner lists its goals as "to protect self-governance and elitism practiced rightly; to reignite students' absent strength of spirit; and to chide the insufficient and debauched elements."

The group was reported on in the University's The Cavalier Daily:

THE TEN hopes to accept members who will improve the state of elitism at the University, according to the e-mail and Web site.

“Elitism on [the University] Grounds isn’t practiced rightly,” the anonymous society member stated. “There’s a difference between the elitism that guides the Honor Committee and various fraternities on Grounds and the elitism that guided the true, honorable gentleman of the past. We believe the best should carry themselves as the best — but that if the weak and childish carry themselves as the best, something is wrong. It’s not arrogance — it’s elitism practiced rightly, when the best are honored and adored, and competition breeds better and better members of society.”

Visit THE TEN website, and be sure to get your application in by March 10, 2010.

Happy 18th Birthday, HAL

2010-01-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

"I am a HAL 9000 Computer. I became operational at the H—A—L plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January, 1992."

Skull & Bones Ballot Box Skull For Sale

2010-01-05T23:20:00.003-05:00

Christie's in New York is auctioning a human skull modified for use as a ballot box, reputedly from Yale's Skull & Bones senior society. According to an AP article today,

The skull is believed to have been owned by Edward T. Owen, who was graduated from Yale in 1872 and went to become professor of French and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin. The word THOR is etched into the skull; it may have been the nickname given to Owen or another society member.

The skull is being sold with a black book, inscribed with Owen's name, the year 1872 and the numeral 322, a reference to the society's year of inception and to the death of the orator Demosthenes in 322 B.C. It contains the names and photographs of about 50 Bonesmen, including Taft, who became the 27th president of the United States; Morrison Remick Waite, who became U.S. chief justice in 1874; and William Maxwell Evarts, who served as U.S. secretary of state and U.S. attorney general.

The skull and crossed bones are expected to fetch between $10,000 and $20,000 and goes on the block January 22nd.

The official lot notes and description from Christies:

LOT 157/SALE 2287
A SKULL-AND-BONES BALLOT BOX
AMERICAN, 19TH CENTURY
Together with a small black book listing member names inscribed Edward T. Owen. 1872. on one side and 322. on the other, along with approximately 50 photographs
The skull: approximately 7½ in. high, 17½ in. wide, 10 in. deep

Lot Notes
Founded in 1832 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, Skull and Bones is thought by many to be one of the oldest and most prestigious secret societies in the United States. The symbolism of the skull and cross bones is synonymous with this group as its name is derived from the symbol itself. The present lot, with hinged flap on top of the skull was said to have been used as a ballot box during society meetings or displayed in the Society's headquarters at 64 High Street in New Haven. The inscription on the right cross bone Thor could be a name which would have been assigned to a member upon induction. Accompanied by approximately 50 photographs of society members and a small black book inscribed with names (which were published until 1971), the present lot provides a rare glimpse into the society which has been linked to many influential figures and leaders at Yale University and in this country.

(Thanks to Adam Kendall for the 'heads up'.)

"Conspiracy Theories: History for Losers"

2009-12-27T02:29:00.003-05:00

David Aaronovitch has a column in the Wall Street Journal from December 19th about the modern popularity of conspiracy theories. He is a columnist for The Times of London, and the article was adapted from his upcoming book, Voodoo Histories: the Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.

From A Conspiracy-Theory Theory:

We live in age of conspiracies, or rather, we are more aware of conspiracy theories than we used to be. Theories involving the hidden hand reproduce on the Internet and instantly jump borders. Giving the stories plausible heft are the exotic sites and TV stations now beaming everywhere, their studios, anchors and Web sites looking as professional and reliable as those of CNN, ABC News or the BBC. Channels such as Russia Today, Iran's Press TV and Al Jazeera pass on theories involving the supposed "real stories" behind world affairs to millions. Globalization not only assists with the spread of conspiracy theories, but because it causes such rapid change—in migration, jobs, security threats and the way we live—it leaves people desperate for clear, comforting answers. It is better to think that someone is in charge of everything than that the world is more often prey to accidents, madness and coincidence. That's why movies are full of dastardly but brilliant plotters, and hardly anything happens by chance.

[snip]

Even where conspiracy theories are not momentous, and may sometimes be physically (if not intellectually) harmless—such as with the gorgeous slew of nonsenses that prefaced "The Da Vinci Code," involving Templars, secret priories, hidden treasures and the bloodline of Christ—they share certain features that make them work.

These include an appeal to precedent, self-heroization, contempt for the benighted masses, a claim to be only asking "disturbing questions," invariably exaggerating the status and expertise of supporters, the use of apparently scholarly ways of laying out arguments (or "death by footnote"), the appropriation of imagined Secret Service jargon, circularity in logic, hydra-headedness in growing new arguments as soon as old ones are chopped off, and, finally, the exciting suggestion of persecution. These characteristics help them to convince intelligent people of deeply unintelligent things.

Casting for New History Channel Series

2009-11-25T20:47:00.001-05:00

DECODED, a new series from the History Channel, is searching for a "Lead Investigator."

From the casting page website:

This series is going to uncover the hidden or little known origins of iconic American symbols with an active investigative approach. To do this we need somebody with a strong background in history and symbology who looks past the obvious and is excited to delve into the mysterious. These investigations will be IMMERSIVE, ACTIVE, PHYSICAL and ACADEMIC. We are looking for a real-life Robert Langdon.

Our investigator needs to have great interview skills, a lust for the subject matter and the desire to explore both each subject matter both physically and mentally.

The program is being produced for HISTORY by Go Go Luckey Entertainment.

NASA Debunking 2012 Doomsday Rumors

2009-11-09T18:48:00.001-05:00

NASA wants us all to know the world will not end on 12/21/2012, despite what Coast-To-Coast guests and the movies tell you.

According to this AFP story today:

The doomsday scenario revolves claims that the end of time will come as an obscure Planet X -- or Nibiru -- heads toward or collides into Earth.

The mysterious planet was supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, according to claims by pseudo-scientists, paranormal activity enthusiasts and Internet theorists.

Some websites accuse NASA of concealing the truth on the wayward planet's existence, but the US space agency denounced such stories as an "Internet hoax."

"There is no factual basis for these claims," NASA said in a question-and-answer posting on its website.

If such a collision were real "astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye," it added. "Obviously, it does not exist."

"Credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," NASA insisted.

See "Ask An Astrobiologist" on the NASA site talking about Nibiru.

And a 2012 FAQ here.

If you've seen the extended preview for the new movie "2012," it has its share of "Holy crap!" moments, with a tidal wave sweeping the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier across Washington D.C. and flattening the White House (there's got to be a grassy knoll/Oswald metaphor in there somewhere), and the signature shot of the dome of St. Peter's basilica crashing down and rolling into the lens as it squishes thousands of Catholics in the square.

Of course, it's okay for the important iconography of Christianity to be seen smashed to bits, Director Roland Emmerich admitted in an interview last week to scifiwire.com:

"Why ... don't [we] have the church fall on people's head?" Emmerich said. He added: "The whole Vatican kind of tips and kind of rolls over the people. It said something, because in the story, some people ... believe in praying and prayer, and they pray in front of the church, and it's probably the wrong thing, what they would do in that situation."

It also features the sculpture of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro crumbling to pieces, "Because I'm against organized religion."

But Emmerich was thinking of something even more explosive: the Kaaba, the cube-shaped building at the heart of Mecca, the focus of prayers and the Islamic pilgrimage called the Hajj; it is one of Islam's holiest sites.

Really?

"Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit," Emmerich says. "But my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. ... We have to all ... in the Western world ... think about this. You can actually ... let ... Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out."

Got it. Christians will turn the other cheek when you insult them and depict their sacred places being destroyed, but those kill-crazy Muslims will shank your insulting Salmon Rushdie atheist butt. Now THAT'S a stand-up guy.

CERN: Sabotage From The Future?

2009-10-20T11:23:00.003-04:00

Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland just can't seem to get a break, what with explosions, glitches, breakdowns, and just last week, a scientist arrested for being an Al-Qaeda terrorist. Now, Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto are proposing that the super collider may be sabotaging itself to keep us from finding something we shouldn't.

Is someone traveling back in time from the future to keep scientists from doing something catastrophic?

Read it here: A Particle God Doesn't Want Us To Discover

Some Mayans Claim 2012 Won't Be What It's Cracked Up To Be

2009-10-12T01:34:00.003-04:00

The Associated Press, in an article by Mark Stevenson, is reporting that some Mayans are insisting that 2012 will not be the end of the world.

Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it?
Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.
At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared.
"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."
Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.
A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.
But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"
It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades - the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or "Planet X." But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.
One of them is Monument Six.

Read the rest here.

Move Over Mickey: Switzerland's Erich von Däniken Land Has Reopened

2009-09-25T00:59:00.008-04:00

Remember Erich von Däniken? If you grew up in the 1970s, you couldn't escape him. His book, Chariots Of The Gods? was a huge hit, alleging alien visitors not only walked the Earth over the millennia, but also left a fossil and artistic record of their presence.

What I have somehow managed to miss over the last few years was the construction of an entire amusement park, based on von Däniken's ideas. According to its website, Mystery Park, located in Interlaken, Switzerland "present(ed) the unexplained, yet real phenomena found in various historical and archeological sites around the globe."

When I say I missed it, it's partially because I never got as far as Switzerland. And partially because it opened in 2003 and closed three years later.

Major pavilions included:

Vimanas, which depicted ancient flying machines that supposedly appear in ancient artwork from India, and ancient orbiting space cities. Anciently.
Maya, which would have been the E-ticket ride to be on when the world comes to an end in 2012.
Contact, a pavilion that presented the odd "cargo cults" of New Guinea that arose after World War II—isolated tribes of people who saw allied soldiers as aliens who came in bizarre flying machines, and imitated (and perhaps venerated them as gods) after they left.
Orient, which explored the great pyramid at Giza.
Megastones, like Stonehenge and other lesser known sites.
Nazca covered the famed lines in Peru.
And much more.

After its opening, Mystery Park was called a "cultural Chernobyl" by Antoine Wasserfallen, a member of the Swiss Academy of Science and Technology. Apparently the public agreed. Its original incarnation was a financial catastrophe.

Apparently the property was purchased this year by a new promoter, and it reopened in May 2009. The season ends in November.

Bear in mind, von Däniken once said, “I am not a scientific man, and if I had written a scientific book, it would have been calm and sober and nobody would talk about it.”

Will Travolta leave Scientology?

2009-08-08T00:49:00.004-04:00

Reports have been circulating that John Travolta's depression over the January death of his 16 year old son Jett has led to his disenchantment with the Church of Scientology. Scientology does not accept the science behind autism, and members whose children have the disorder are not allowed to treat its symptoms with anything other than the church's programs.

Naturally, a high-visibility, deep-pocketed, celebrity member like Travolta cannot be allowed to walk away from Scientology's clutches without a struggle, especially after 34 years. So, allegedly, the rumors have already been leaked that the church allegedly has blackmail files that reveal the actor to allegedly be a closeted homosexual. Nothing that could be traced to the church, naturally, just you know, rumors. Nothing substantiated, naturally, just the alleged possibility that they might have files that detail this ugly secret. Allegedly.

It's been a gang-up year for Scientology. Two of its top executives dove overboard and went public—Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to ever leave the cult, and Amy Scobee, who helped create Scientology's celebrity network that specializes in setting up promotions involving the cult's high-visibility stars like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Lisa Marie Presley and Kirstie Alley. All three gave extensive interviews to the St. Petersburg Times in June. Now Travolta may be slipping away.

Coverage of the Travolta story keeps growing, and an extensive article in The Daily Mail seems to wallow in the homosexual allegation side of the tale. But it also gives a glimpse of just how Scientology has benefitted lavishly from Travolta's wallet:

Travolta is also known to have pumped millions of his own fortune into its new Superpower Centre, being built at Scientology headquarters in Clearwater, Florida.

According to insiders, he has reached the rank of Operating Thetan VII, one rung below the most senior position in the Church, which adheres to the teachings of controversial 1950s science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

The author bizarrely claimed all humans are descended from Thetans, space aliens who were banished to earth 75 million years ago.

At great expense, Travolta turned another of Hubbard's novels, 'Battlefield Earth,' into a disastrous 2000 film.

But to reach such an exalted level within Scientology, Travolta, insiders say, has had to submit himself to years of so-called 'auditing', during which disciples are connected to primitive lie-detectors and subjected to hours of questioning about their innermost secrets.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Hollywood's obsession with the secret sect, talk in the smarter salons of gossip-hungry Tinseltown is now all about what Travolta might have divulged during these sessions.

However, Travolta's personal representative Paul Bloch spoke to People magazine. "There's no change in the relationship between the Church of Scientology and John," says Bloch. "He is a member and it's as it was, now and forever."

Forever's a long time. But it makes one wonder if Scientology's celebrities are required to sign the same kind of billion year contracts the church's Gold Base Sea Org workers have to agree to?

"Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura" Debuts This Fall

2009-08-04T02:22:00.003-04:00

THR.com website today is announcing that TruTV (formerly CourtTV) will debut a TV series called "Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura" later this year. Seven episodes (how appropriately symbolic) have been ordered.

From the website:

The decision to pick up to series "Conspiracy Theory," originally ordered as a pilot last fall, came after a preview of the project received "positive response" at the network's upfront presentation to advertisers, truTV exec vp and general manager Marc Juris said.

In "Conspiracy Theory," former Navy SEAL, wrestler and Minnesota governor Ventura explores the mysteries behind modern-day conspiracies.

40th Anniversary of Moon Landing Resurrects Hoax Theories

2009-07-20T14:19:00.005-04:00

On July 20th, 1969, the whole world stared into their television sets and watched blurry, flickering, black and white images as Apollo 11’s lunar excursion module, nicknamed “The Eagle,” descended from orbiting around the Moon and touched down on the Sea of Tranquility. In 1960, deep in the heart of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, President John F. Kennedy had upped the stakes in the “space race” between the two superpowers by proclaiming that the U.S. would land a man on the Moon “before this decade is out.” Apollo 11 had managed to pull it off with just months to spare.

It was truly the technological achievement of the century, and perhaps the greatest milestone in the annals of mankind. And yet, the day after astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left the first human footprints on another world, there were those who didn’t believe it was possible. One woman interviewed by Newsweek proclaimed that she didn’t believe it because she didn’t think her TV set could pick up a transmission from the Moon. A rumor began to spread across the countryside: Maybe the Moon landings had been staged.

Bear in mind that, from a sociologist’s viewpoint, the 1970’s were a time of rampant distrust of the U.S. government because of the Vietnam era, the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and subsequent resignation of President Richard Nixon, along with a general hippie-era dislike of the Establishment. It was unfortunate timing that the greatest technological accomplishment of mankind came along at one of the most cynical periods of history. It's curious to note that, depending on whose poll you look at, somewhere between 70% and 85% of Americans believe that this planet has been visited at some point by extra-terrestrial forms of life, and the overwhelming majority believe that the government has been hiding it from us. Yet, in a poll just this year in Britain, 25% of those questioned don't believe men ever walked on the Moon.

Various claims have been made over the last three decades about ways in which the Moon landings might have been faked, and why. Some of the more common ones include:

· NASA’s first manned test flight of the Apollo space capsule and Saturn-series rocket resulted in a tragic fire that killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. In a test on January 27th, 1967, fire broke out in the oxygen-rich cockpit, and the three men died within 17 seconds. The claim goes that the fire set the program back so badly that the Moon landings had to be completely or partially fabricated in order to make it look like the U.S. had achieved its goal on time.

· Some have claimed that the Van Allen radiation belts that surround the earth were far too deadly to allow Apollo spacecraft to pass through without killing the astronauts inside. Most scientists (including their discoverer Dr. James Van Allen) reject this claim, since radiation poisoning is dependant upon the amount of time a person is exposed, and Apollo astronauts passed through too quickly to have received a dangerous dose.

· Conspiracists claim that the astronauts were launched into low Earth orbit, and that the Moon landing was videotaped in a studio. Then, after the appropriate amount of time, the orbiting Apollo spacecraft splashed down, all on international television.

· According to some conspiracists, Stanley Kubrick, hot on the heels of directing the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which contained the first realistic and convincing special effects depicting spaceflight ever put on film, was brought from England to direct the Apollo 11 telecast. Anyone who knows anything about the famously temperamental and perfectionist director knows what a howler this claim is. Others have claimed that special effects were created by 2001 effects artist Douglas Trumbull in a studio in Huntsville, Alabama, home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

· A variation on the claim is that only some of the six successful Moon landings were faked, while NASA had extra time to work on its faulty technology. Apollo 13’s almost fatal accident was staged in order to refocus a bored public on NASA’s need for greater funding. And Apollo 17, the final mission to the Moon, was the only authentic trip, because it had a civilian crew member who couldn’t be threatened or bought off.

· The 1978 film Capricorn One added fuel to the hoax claims, by telling a fictional story of NASA faking a landing on Mars, while filming the events in a studio – using spacecraft virtually identical to the Apollo missions.

There is too much evidence and far too many participants in NASA’s Apollo program to convince the overwhelming majority of people that the Moon landings were anything but authentic. The Apollo missions involved $30 billion in federal dollars, and 400,000 employees with nary a squealer in the bunch. That has not prevented a small cottage industry of authors from crying “hoax.” The 842 pounds of lunar rocks returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts over the course of six missions is not proof to them. Conspiracists claim unmanned NASA missions brought the rocks to back Earth before Apollo 11 ever launched, or they were simply cooked up artificially in a high-temperature kiln.

In spite of piles of photographic and physical evidence, this conspiracy theory hangs on, first promoted by late author Bill Kaysing. He was a librarian at Rocketdyne, an early NASA supplier, and claimed (without proof) that the space agency never had the expertise needed to actually land men on the Moon. He further alleged that the Apollo 1 astronauts (and later the Challenger Space Shuttle crew) were murdered because they were about to reveal the “truth” about NASA. Kaysing claimed that the astronauts were actually in the Nevada desert putting on the “moonwalk show” during the day, and hanging out with strippers and Las Vegas showgirls at night – requiring years of psychological therapy before they could get over the guilt of duping the public.

Amateur filmmaker Bart Sibrel has taken a more confrontational approach to the issue. In 2002, he accosted Buzz Aldrin in front of a Beverly Hills hotel, demanding answers to his questions about the so-called Moon landing “hoax,” calling the astronaut a “coward, a liar and a thief.” Aldrin reacted in a less than Socratic method over the controversy and busted Sibrel right in the kisser. Other Apollo astronauts have characterized Sibrel as a “stalker.”

A new round of Moon landing "hoax" claims have resurfaced in the last few weeks with the announcement by NASA that the original videotapes of downloaded and encoded video transmissions of the Moon walk were recorded over on subsequent missions to save money (!).

The first time men from Earth stepped onto a new world had a profound effect on Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and both men grappled long and hard with their public and private reactions to an event that the whole world was watching. There are two little known items about Aldrin, in particular. Professional atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair had sued NASA for violating church/state separation by allowing government-employed astronauts to read from the Book of Genesis during Apollo 8’s Moon orbiting mission in 1968. So, on his own, Aldrin (a Presbyterian) privately gave himself Communion when Apollo 11’s Eagle landed. Aldrin is also a Freemason, and he carried a special document proclaiming the Moon as being under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Texas of Free and Accepted Masons. Which means the Masons control not just the world, but the Moon!

Adapted from Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies

Was Michael Jackson Done In By The Freemasons?!

2009-07-06T16:03:00.005-04:00

Well, I never saw this one coming.

It seems that Jackson's live-in doctor, Dr. Conrad Murray (left), who is at the center of the controversy over drug injections, is alleged to be a Freemason.

According to a Fox News report:

The money was one of the main reasons Murray decided to go on tour with Jackson, says Rev. Floyd Williams, 80, who is Murray's friend and patient. Murray had developed a booming concierge business — he was jetting off to see patients in New York and Washington while building his practice in Las Vegas. Three years ago, Murray joined the Freemasonry (sic), the international fraternal society that dates back to the early 17th century. His friends say this new network galvanized his growing side business.

Note what appears to be a Masonic officer's collar resting on Murray's shoulders. There's no knowledge at this time whether he is a member of a mainstream lodge, a Prince Hall lodge, or one of the literally hundreds of irregular, unrecognized "grand lodges" that are scattered around the country. (The Prince Hall research group, the Phylaxis Society's Commission on 'bogus' Freemasonry lists at least 8 irregular, unrecognized "grand lodges" with Las Vegas addresses). No one knows yet, but I'm certain the world's news organizations are hot on the trail of this.

Welcome to everybody who has Googled "Freemasons killed Michael Jackson!" in search of the Masonic conspiracy. And members of the press, please, buy our books. If everybody else is going to cash in on Jackson's death, we might as well get some of the swag too.

(Photo from the Fox website)

NASA Moon Landing Video Rediscovered In Australia

2009-07-03T02:15:00.003-04:00

For years, the original videotapes of the first landing on the Moon on July 20th, 1969 have been lost. NASA's only official, surviving recording of the event was a grainy, 16mm telecine film off of a TV monitor. But the elusive 2" videotapes downloaded at the Australian radar station at Parkes Observatory have at last been rediscovered, misfiled and mislaid.

According to the Daily Express:

The television images the world has been used to seeing of the historic moment when Neil Armstrong descended down a ladder onto the moon’s surface in 1969 is grainy, blurry and dark.

The following scenes, in which the astronauts move around the lunar lander, are so murky it is difficult to make out exactly what is going on, causing conspiracy theorists to claim the entire Apollo 11 mission was an elaborate fraud.

However, viewers have only ever seen such poor quality footage because the original analogue tapes containing the pictures beamed direct from the lunar surface were lost almost as soon as they were recorded.

Instead, a poor quality copy made from a 16mm camera pointing at a heavily compressed image on a black and white TV screen has been the only record of the event.

The Sunday Express can now reveal that the missing tapes containing the original high quality images have been found.

If the visual data can be retrieved, Nasa is set to reveal them to the world as a key plank of celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the landings next month.

The tapes show in much more detail than almost anyone has previously seen the surface of the moon beneath the patriotic symbol of the US flag.

Crucially, they could once and for all dispel 40 years of wild conspiracy theories.

India To Put Population Into Database

2009-06-27T17:41:00.003-04:00

The Mail Online reports today that India will place all 1.1 billion of their citizens in a national identification database. This will be the second largest such personal database in the world, after China.

According to the article:

The government believes the scheme, which will be finalised over three years, will aid the delivery of vital social services to the poorest people who often lack sufficient identification papers.

It also sees the scheme as a way to tackle increasing amounts of identity fraud and theft and, at a time of increased concern over the threat of militant violence, to boost national security and help police and law officials.

Like Britain's £5billion ID cards plan, due to roll out in 2011/12, India's scheme is not without controversy.

Observers have raised questions including how the cards will actually improve the delivery of services and also concerns that the scheme could be disruptive.

In an interview in The Independent today associate fellow of the Asia programme at Chatham House, Charu Lata Hogg, said: 'It cannot be denied that the system of proving identity in India is complicated and confusing.

'But a system of national ID cards can technically introduce a new route to citizenship.

'This could be used as a security measure by the government which leaves migrant workers, refugees and other stateless people in India in limbo without access to public services, employment and basic welfare.'

Scientology Skewered By St. Petersburg Times

2009-06-24T01:07:00.006-04:00

Scientology leader David Miscavige

On Sunday, the St. Petersburg Times began a three-part series detailing old and new allegations against the Church of Scientology, focussing on David Miscavige, the creepy heir to Scientology's founder, science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. What makes the article explosive is that several of Scientology's top officers have walked away and gone public with their stories. Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the cult, are speaking out for the first time. Also speaking to the paper are Tom De Vocht who oversaw the church's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater for many years, and Amy Scobee, who helped create Scientology's celebrity network that specializes in setting up promotions involving the cult's high-visibility stars like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Lisa Marie Presley and Kirstie Alley.

The article by Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin at long last fills in the gaps concerning some of the most notorious allegations made against Scirntology, because Rathbun and Rinder were at the top of the management chain of Sea Org, the inner circle that runs the massive international operation. They allege Miscavige's violent attacks against Scientology members and managers, and reveal the strategy used by Scientology to muscle the IRS into reinstating its tax exempt status after cult members, including Hubberd's wife, were convicted of breaking into IRS offices and stealing government documents.

None of their information is especially new. What is new is who is making the statements and allegations.

The article is massive. And there's more to come.

Scientology was created in the 1950s by California science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, as the “religious” extension of his self-help method Dianetics. The OT III level (“Operating Thetan”) is part of the Church of Scientology’s “Advanced Technology” teachings. For the first time in the many levels of costly church teachings, once members reach OT III, it is revealed that the universe is 4,000,000,000,000,000 years old (that’s four quadrillion). Astronomers believe it’s a little younger – between 10 and 20 billion, but who’s to say for sure? In the final analysis, the red meat of the advanced spirituality of OTIII is really a space opera.

L. Ron Hubbard said in 1967 that humans have an alien implant in their brains called the R-6 Implant, and that it was “calculated to kill” anyone who attempted to tinker with it. We’ll risk it. OTIII goes on to reveal that humans are inhabited by spiritual life forms known as Thetans, who were brought to Earth by Xenu, ruler of a Galactic Confederacy of 26 star systems. Xenu paralyzed billions of these beings and flew them to Earth (known in this saga by its earlier name, Teegeeack) aboard DC-8 aircraft powered by rocket engines, about 70,000,000 years ago.

Xenu, so the story goes, stacked these beings around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls were scattered around Teegeeack, er, Earth, and were absorbed into the bodies of living people. These “Body Thetans” continue to inhabit humans today, and cause illnesses, as well as mental and emotional instability. The higher levels of Scientology attempt to teach members how to eliminate the effects of the Thetans, or even drive these Thetans out of their bodies. (These descriptions come from former Church members and leaked documents – Scientology spokesmen say these accounts are taken out of context and are meant to ridicule the Church.) Because of the psychological basis of Scientology’s methods, the religion is adamant about its followers refusing psychiatric care from the mainstream medical community.

Depending on which source you read, it costs as low as $30,000 or as high as $360,000 to enter into the higher levels of the religion, and members are forbidden to discuss their progress or the materials they have studied, even with each other. Presumably, only after you’ve lost enough free will, common sense and cash are you ready for the awesome truth about Xenu and the Thetans. The Church regards its scriptures as copyrighted “trade secrets,” threatening prosecution and prison for anyone who dares to publish them – the only religion we’ve ever heard of to do so. If only Jesus had possessed the foresight to copyright the New Testament! The right attorneys could have sued the Protestants back to the Stone Age and avoided all of those Counter-Reformation headaches.

Okay, so what makes all of this a conspiracy? For 25 years, the Internal Revenue Service regarded Scientology’s various operations as a commercial enterprise, and not a church worthy of tax exempt status. So, in the 1970’s Scientology went on the attack against 136 government agencies, foreign embassies, and organizations critical of the church, in what they called Operation Snow White. Using as many as 5,000 church members as agents worldwide, Scientologists went on the warpath, especially against the IRS in order to destroy reports and records critical of the church, and to pressure the Feds into granting the church tax exempt status as a bone fide religion. Scientologists infiltrated the IRS and other agencies, and engaged in theft of government documents, wiretapping and conspiring to create smear campaigns against government employees. While Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard avoided prosecution as an “un-indicted co-conspirator,” his wife Mary Sue didn’t, and did hard jail time for following his orders. Eleven church officials were convicted in U.S. Federal court in 1979, and seven more in Canada in 1996.

So did it work? Well, in 1993 the IRS changed its mind and granted tax-exempt status to the Church of Scientology and its various connected entities, along with castigating foreign countries that didn’t follow suit.

You tell us.
===================================

UPDATE

The rest of the paper's special report can be found here:

http://tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/#story_anchor

Inside the Mind of the Holocaust Museum Shooter

2009-06-10T16:18:00.000-04:00

When conspiracists take their delusions to the ultimate level and act upon their fantasies, the objects of their obsessions often walk unknowingly right into their crosshairs. Such is the case of today's Holocaust Museum incident in Washington DC and the sick mind of 88-year old James W. von Brunn, who pulled his car up to the door of the museum, walked in with a rifle, and proceeded to start shooting. Dead is security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns. More would have been killed without the quick action of two other guards who shot von Brunn in the head.

Amazingly, the same madman walked into the Federal Reserve with a shotgun in 1983, determined to "arrest" the Jews who he was convinced control world banking. That incident landed him in federal prison for 6 1/2 years.

Von Brunn is a good, old-fashined race hater and Holocaust denier. The judge who sentenced him? A Jew. The jury who found him guilty? Jews and Negroes. In the mind of a messianic whack job who's convinced of his own conspiracy theories, no jury should have convicted him, because he was saving the white race.

While it's still online, take a peek into the mind of someone who sees conspiracies everywhere. His website is here, at holywesternempire.org It advertises his book, "Kill The Best Gentiles," descripbed as

A new, hard-hitting exposé of the JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool by James W. von Brunn.

Here are 350pp of FACTS condensing libraries of information about the Talmud, Democracy, Marx, Genetics, Money, Aryans, Negroes, Khazars, The Holy Bible, Treason, Mass-media, Mendelism, Race, the “Holocaust” and a host of suppressed “bigoted” subjects, all supported by quotations from many of history’s greatest personages. Learn who is responsible for the millions of Aryan crosses covering the world’s battlefields. Why our sons and daughters died bravely but in vain. Learn why the “browning of America will alter everything in society from politics and education to industry, values and culture.” (TIME 4-9-90).

Learn who has committed treason - and must be brought to justice! This carefully documented treatise exposes the JEWS and explains what you must do to protect your White family...

In his bio, he describes himself: "During WWII he served as PT-Boat captain, Lt. USNR, receiving a Commendation and four battle stars. For twenty years he was an advertising executive and film-producer in New York City. He is a member of Mensa, the high-IQ society."

Proving that even a genius can be a certifiable madman.

Pat Robertson's Own Secret Society

2009-06-07T14:42:00.005-04:00

Evangelical icon and media mogul Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson has made millions of dollars over the years with his Christian Broadcasting Network, his many books, and even his own weight loss plan. His program, the 700 Club, presents a strong conservative Christian message twice a day to millions of fans around the world. Robertson was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister in the 1960s, but voluntarily dropped his credentials in 1987 when he ran, unsuccessfully, for the Republican Party presidential nomination. He is the founder of the Christian Coalition and his views heavily concentrate on eschatology. Robertson is especially interested in the important role he believes will be played by the Jews in Israel during the End of Days, and is a strong supporter of Israeli military policy. This is in sharp contrast to the majority of conspiracists who believe the Jews are a force for evil in the world.

What makes all of this interesting is that Robertson wrote a book in 1991 called The New World Order. In it, he dragged out the usual parade of Masonic/Illuminati/Jewish world government accusations, and “borrowed” extensively from discredited sources like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was a curious set of accusations to make against a people he seems to regard as integral to the Christian Apocalypse. But what was more perplexing were his attacks against Freemasons, particularly since his own father, Senator Absalom Willis Robertson, was a Virginia Freemason. He was raised in Buena Vista Lodge No. 186, joined Rockbridge Royal Arch Chapter No. 44, and served as a District Deputy Grand Master (according to a letter the Senator personally wrote to the Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction in 1941).

None of these pesky details kept The New World Order from being the #1 best selling religious book of 1991. Somewhat unbelievably, the Zionist Organization of America awarded him in 2002 as an unwavering friend of Israel.

Clearly they hadn’t read his book.

Robertson doesn’t have any quandaries about being a member of a secret society himself – the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP) is an invitation-only, closed door group that meets three times a year at undisclosed locations to discuss ways to influence U.S. government policy. In 2003, CNP executive director Steve Baldwin boasted to ABC News that "we control everything in the world."

Patterned after the more infamous Council on Foreign Relations and founded in 1981 by Left Behind author Tim Lahaye, its membership list is not available to the public. Providing the original funding for the group were Nelson Baker Hunt (billionaire son of billionaire oilman and John Birch Society promoter H.L. Hunt), businessman and one-time murder suspect T. Cullen Davis, and millionaire William Cies, all from Texas.

“The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before or after a meeting,” reads one of the cardinal rules of the CNP, according to a long article on the website of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (not that I don't think THOSE guys go too far either).

On the one hand, liberals in the media seem to be shrieking "Yipe! A Christian!" over this group. On the other hand, guests may attend meetings only with the unanimous approval of the organization’s executive committee. Members are told not to refer to the group by name in e-mail messages. Anyone who breaks the rules can be expelled. Guest speakers almost never release the text of their speeches at CNP meetings. In fact, virtually everyone questioned in the aforementioned ABC piece refused to comment on the group, or even acknowledge its existence.

So what is Pat Robertson trying to hide?

Belizean Grove

2009-06-05T13:12:00.008-04:00

Secret societies aren't just the realm of old boys anymore. An article on Politico today reveals that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a member of Belizean Grove, an elite and little-known women’s group.

From the article:

Founded nearly 10 years ago as the female answer to the Bohemian Grove — a secretive all-male club whose members have included former U.S. presidents and top business leaders — the Belizean Grove has about 125 members, including Army generals, Wall Street executives and former ambassadors.

Sotomayor’s membership in the New York-based group became public Thursday afternoon in a questionnaire submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Since then, the group has been deluged with press calls, said its founder, Susan Stautberg, who explained that “we like to be under the radar screen.”

The group — which on its website describes itself as “a constellation of influential women who are key decision makers in the profit, nonprofit and social sectors; who build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships in order to both take charge of their own destinies and help others to do the same” — hosts periodic meetings around New York, as well as an annual off-the-record three-day retreat in Central or South America at which its members attend cocktail parties with U.S. diplomats and host-country officials and participate in panel discussions on public policy and business affairs.

One wonders how closely the Belizeans ape their male counterparts—burning of a symbolic effigy of the outside world and its cares, non-stop drinking, public urination, drag shows, planning world domination...

Time will tell if this group is little more than a post-graduate college prank, a Gen-Y version of the Red Hat Society, or a good excuse for a warm weather winter junket to the Caribbean. Or if it really does become a ladies' version of the Bohemian Grove.

So Much For that Multi-Million $$ Secret Bunker

2009-05-18T00:06:00.006-04:00

Joe Biden's big fat mouth, as seen from space.
Joe Biden mouthed off at the annual Gridiron Club Dinner yesterday, while surrounded by reporters, and disclosed the location of the top secret Vice-Presidential bunker used by Dick Cheney. He thus rendered its expensive and secret construction, designed to save his own life during an attack on Washington, the next best thing to worthless. Now everybody knows it's under the Naval Observatory in northern Washington DC, where the Vice President's residence is located.

According to Fox News, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift couldn't resist flapping her gums when she heard the story:

Biden "said a young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment."

Clift continued: "The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn't be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall."

In December 2002, neighbors complained of loud construction work being done at the Naval Observatory, which has been used as a residence by vice presidents since 1974.

The upset neighbors were sent a letter by the observatory's superintendent, calling the work "sensitive in nature" and "classified" and that it was urgent it be completed "on a highly accelerated schedule."

Not that this is a huge surprise, as anyone who tried to look at satellite photos of the Naval Observatory on Google between 2002 and 2006 knows it appeared as little more than a photographic smudge until the worksite got relandscaped. But it would have been nice to know that Biden had learned to shut his cake hole on national security issues. Secrecy over secure government installations isn't just a game. He needs to be reminded that loose lips can be blown clean off by a truck bomb parked at the driveway checkpoint these days. And with the North Koreans and Iranians working on their own ICBMs in their respective basements, the Russians aren't the only ones that can make use of his yukking it up with cheap cracks about the previous administration that wind up telling the world where to target their bunker busters.

Now that the cat's out of the bag, I guess it will become a worthless tourist stop, much like the now un-secret Congressional bunker at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.

Was Thomas Jefferson a Member of the Illuminati?

2009-05-01T21:20:00.002-04:00

Evidence usually cited to peg Thomas Jefferson as a member of the Illuminati is based on one letter he wrote to Bishop James Madison in January 1800. The letter is frequently quoted out of context, leaving out the part in which he makes it clear that he knows nothing about the order, apart from what he had just read in Abbé Augustin Barruél’s book, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism ( Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Jacobinisme), published after the French Revolution (the spellings are Jefferson’s):

“I have lately by accident got a sight of a single volume (the 3d) of the Abbé Barruel's Antisocial Conspiracy”, which gives me the first idea I have ever had of what is meant by the Illuminatism… Barruel's own parts of the book are perfectly the ravings of a Bedlamite. But he quotes largely from Wishaupt whom he considers as the founder of what he calls the order… I will give you the idea I have formed from only an hour's reading of Barruel's quotations from him, which, you may be sure, are not the most favorable. Wishaupt seems to be an enthusiastic philanthropist. He is among those… who believe in the infinite perfectability of man. He thinks he may in time be rendered so perfect that he will be able to govern himself in every circumstance, so as to injure none, to do all the good he can, to leave government no occasion to exercise their powers over him, and, of course, to render political government useless… Wishaupt believes that to promote this perfection of the human character was the object of Jesus Christ… I believe you will think with me that if Wishaupt had written here, where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavours to render men wise and virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose.”

It should be pointed out, as an aside, that the Bishop James Madison to whom the letter was written was not President James Madison (they were cousins). But for a dose of extra irony, there is actually a secret society called the Bishop James Madison Society at William and Mary College in Virginia. Started in 1812, it is the second oldest secret society on the W&M campus. The only older one is the Flat Hat Club, to which Thomas Jefferson belonged.

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Goes YouTube

2009-05-01T18:29:00.003-04:00

In 1887, a Freemason named A.F.A. Woodford found an “ancient” ciphered manuscript dealing with Kabbalah and tarot in a London bookshop. A note was attached directing anyone who deciphered the manuscript to contact a certain Fraulein Ann Sprengel in Nuremburg, Germany. Woodford supposedly did so, along with fellow occult-minded Masons S. L. MacGregor Mathers and William Wynn Westcott, and they received permission from their mysterious German contact (known in the Order as Soror Sapiens Dominabitur Astristo) start a Rosicrucian society in England. This group formed the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

A Temple was started in London, called Isis Urania, and attracted occultist Arthur Edward Waite (who popularized Tarot cards in the 20th century), poet William Butler Yeats, authors H. Rider Haggard and Bram Stoker, playwright August Strindberg, artist Edward Munch (painter of the famous “The Scream”), Aliester Crowley and many other famous personalities of the period. Crowley would later leave the organization and start a legal war by publishing the rituals of the Golden Dawn in his magazine.
A second, “inner order” also existed, called the Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis, and from the name, it’s clear that it derived at least part of its inspiration from Rosicrucian philosophy. All of this activity seems to have been driven by the belief of a small clot of men who felt that Freemasonry wasn’t secret enough or occult enough, and that the fraternity had somehow forgotten its roots in Rosicrucianism. Most Masonic scholars and researchers challenged the theoretical Rosicrucian origin of Masonry then, and still do today.

The movers and shakers of the major occult movements all seemed to know each other in the later years of the 1800’s and into the early 1900’s. Sooner or later, fights would break out and one group would accuse the other of not doing rituals properly or of making too many innovations in an “ancient” practice that was made up the previous year, and away they’d stomp in a huff to go start a new group. This is what we like to describe as the “ten guys chanting in their socks in the living room” syndrome. This is why it is so important to bear these circumstances in mind when reading “definitive” books from “high-ranking” sources in these organizations. They seemed to be in a constant state of esoteric tantrums and running off to start a new group.

Golden Dawn splintered into various factions (the Independent & Rectified Rite of the Golden Dawn and the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, to name two) when it was revealed in 1914 that the manuscript the Order was founded upon was a hoax, and the fictitious Fraulein Sprengel was nowhere to be found. There remain at least a half dozen modern groups all claiming to be authentic descendants of the original Order today. Not surprisingly, there have been lawsuits and allegations of trademark violations, which seems to be the fate of so many esoteric organizations the world over.

This past week, a series of YouTube videos have appeared online, depicting ceremonies of the Golden Dawn. Curiously, they come not from pranksters seeking to expose their rituals, but from the Order itself. The group doing the posting is called the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega, and is based in France. Their website explains that their order is in fact the one and only descended from Mathers:

"Due to fakes and pretenders, S.L. MacGregor Mathers renamed the Golden Dawn as the ‘Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega’ already over a hundred years ago, keeping the Golden Dawn only as the Alpha et Omega’s outer order.

Today the internet is flooded with groups wanting a free ride on our reputation by calling themselves ‘Golden Dawn.’ We believe the real deal is important because your time and money is too important to waste.

S.L. MacGregor Mathers’ Alpha et Omega is the one and only Golden Dawn order continuing the lineage and original mission of the order – to give you the keys to effective life-mastery."

Their membership page can be found here.

The Real Illuminati

2009-05-01T01:53:00.010-04:00

Today marks the founding of the Bavarian Illuminati on May 1st, 1776. It lasted less than eight years, and its membership was very, very small. Many other groups followed, even to the present day, claiming the mantle of the original Illuminati, or having that moniker stuck on them without their having asked for it. In fact, in the alternate universe of the Internet, accusations about the “vast influence” of this little-known secret society get thrown around constantly.

With the May 15th release of the big budget film of Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, it's worth examining who the real Illuminati were, where they came from, and just why their legacy continues to capture the public imagination.

The Dan Brown version of the Illuminati

Dan Brown resurrected the Illuminati for his first Robert Langdon novel, Angels & Demons, like so many others have, as little more than a bogeyman. Using the Illuminati allowed Brown to engage his characters in Enlightenment-style diatribes about the supremacy of science over religion. In the end (stop here if you haven’t read it), it turns out that the mysterious head of the Illuminati, Janus, has perpetrated a hoax, and resurrected the name of the Order as a diversionary tactic to hide his own individual treachery. It’s a favorite Brown tactic – use the bad guy to spout your most controversial ideas, so you have a back-door escape hatch.

“The brotherhood of the Illuminati is also factual,” says Dan Brown’s “Author’s Note” in Angels & Demons. Not the way he wrote it, it isn’t. Brown’s fictional Illuminati was supposed to have been a group of scientists who rebelled secretly against Church dogma in the 1500’s. According to his story, scientists who failed to knuckle under to Church teachings and demands were arrested, tortured, branded on the chest with a super-special branding iron identifying them as members of the subversive group, and their bodies tossed into the streets of Rome as a warning. According to Brown, astronomer Galileo Galilee was a member, and they met secretly in an underground Church of the Illumination. Eventually, in the 1600s, the Illuminati became dedicated to the toppling of the Church and Christianity itself. They became Satanists, and were referred to as Shaitan, the Islamic word for Satan, by the Catholic Church. Breathlessly, Langdon describes them as the “world’s oldest and most powerful satanic cult.”

Brown uses a clever device in his books, dressing up old, secret and often fictional societies to get in his licks against the Church. The history of Catholic abuses, mistakes and injustices is long, exciting and sad enough, without Brown exaggerating them to an absurd degree. And one thing is for certain: the one thing the Illuminati was not was “satanic.”

The Age of Enlightenment, a period that lasted roughly throughout the hundred years of the 1700’s in Europe and America, was an intellectual, scientific and philosophical movement all rolled into one. It was a time when the scientific method of experimentation and reason replaced the more superstitious attitudes of the Middle Ages, a time of revolution, scientific discovery and invention. The very term Enlightenment was chosen as a contrast to the Dark Ages, and light and illumination became a metaphor for knowledge and republicanism (meaning governments free of kings, popes and their “divine rights”). In fact, late medieval adepts at alchemy or the sciences were sometimes called “the Illuminated Ones.”

The first group to be associated with the term Illuminati (“Illuminated Ones”) were known in Spain as the Alumbrados. Appearing in the late 1400’s, not much is known about this sect of Christian mystics. They apparently believed in trance-like meditation to the exclusion of all other thoughts in order to commune with God, and they developed decidedly un-Catholic beliefs, such as the notion that female adepts copulating with priests released souls from Purgatory. Not surprisingly, the Spanish Inquisition came crashing down on the Alumbrados like a ton of evangelical bricks.

What really brought down the wrath of the Church on the Alumbrados was their belief that Man could achieve enough perfection through meditation and prayer to become sinless. Where they got into hot water was the belief that, if you achieved sinless perfection, you would no longer have to fast or even pray, and you wouldn’t have to deny your physical body anything anymore. Your mind would become divine, so whatever you did with your body was of no consequence. See if your wife buys that story.

A French group appeared in the early 1600’s known as the Illuminés, and they seem to have been an offshoot of the Spanish Alumbrados. But these groups have no real connection to the Illuminati that is at the center of so many conspiracy theories today, apart from the same name.

The Bavarian Illuminati – Short Life, Long Legacy
In 1776, just before the Continental Congress declared American independence from England, on the other side of the world a new “secret society” that was to become the Illuminati was born in Ingolstadt, Bavaria. First called The Perfectabilists, the group was the brainchild of a young university professor named Adam Weishaupt.

The man who would found the Illuminati had an unlikely background for the leader of such a radical organization. He was born in Ingolstadt in 1748. When his father died seven years later, Adam was placed in the care of his godfather, Baron Johann Adam Ickstatt*, who was curator of the University of Ingstadt. The University was a Catholic school, and the majority of the administration and teaching staff were Jesuit priests.

Weishaupt kept things in the family, and graduated from the University in 1768. He spent another four years there as a tutor, and in 1772 he was made a full professor of civil law. What makes all of this important in his development is that, a year later, Pope Clement XIV had an explosive disagreement with the Jesuits, and completely dissolved the Order. As a result, the young Weishaupt was appointed to the chair of canon (Catholic) law, the first non-Jesuit and layman to have the position in almost 100 years.

What made his appointment ironic is that Weishaupt was unquestionably anti-Catholic, on the quiet. He spent years studying the philosophies and beliefs of the free-thinking Enlightenment writers, and had no patience with superstition, miracles or sacraments. Unfortunately, he was in the sticky situation of earning his livelihood at a Catholic university, teaching canon law as proscribed by the Vatican!

Spartacus and the Areopagites
On May 1st, 1776, he formed his secret society, with just five original members. Weishaupt had a big goal in mind for such a small bunch. He believed that a group dedicated to mutual aid, intellectualism and philosophical free thought could help change the world by influencing the movers and shakers of society.

But a peaceful change was not really what Weishaupt had in mind. In order to change society, kings and princes, as well as church leaders, all had to be, well, gotten rid of first. These were the foes of his brand of enlightenment and republican thinking. And, of course, because he and his four young friends saw themselves as being superior to most of the common herd, they would remain in control of this new, improved society. In addition, at first anyway, they had no interest in recruiting anyone much over the age of 35 or so, because such “old” men were too creaky and set in their ways. This would change over time, as they discovered they needed important, well-placed men who were already in positions of some influence, to infiltrate the military and halls of government.

Because of his position at a Catholic university, which would undoubtedly be less than ecstatic over one of its professors writing anti-Catholic essays, he and his organizers communicated using code names. At least two of the other four members, known as the Areopagites, were students at the university, known by their secret names Ajax and Tiberius. Writing as “Spartacus,” Weishaupt outlined a secret plan to infiltrate the Freemasons’ lodges, and then overthrow governments of nations and churches, take over the world, and create a new world order of tolerance and equality.

It was as simple as that.

The name of the organization itself changed over time, from Perfectabilists, to the Bees, and finally the Illuminati. In code, it was represented by a point within a circle. The symbol was meant to represent the Sun illuminating all bodies in its orbit.

A Masonic connection?
In 1777, Weishaupt joined a Masonic lodge, Munich’s Lodge Theodore of Good Counsel(Lodge Theodore von der guten Rath)*, and began looking for like-minded brethren to recruit into his circle of the Illuminati. Unlike the overwhelming majority of so-called secret societies that sprung up all over Europe in the 1700’s, Weishaupt’s Illuminati was definitely not preoccupied with occultism, mysticism, esotericism or hidden knowledge. At least, not the medieval, alchemical kind of stuff that groups like the Rosicrucians were hunting. In fact, anything that seemed to have been influenced by Judaism, Kabbalah, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, was not allowed to seep into the Illuminati rituals.

What there was plenty of was secrecy. An overwhelming stress was placed on the memorization of ciphers – secret writing codes. As the years progressed, Illuminati members were instructed in how to mix poisons, prepare for suicide in case of discovery, and even how to construct “infernal machines” in which to hide their secret papers – explosive boxes that would self-destruct if tampered with. The Illuminati created groups of members who were to infiltrate Masonic lodges and take control of them. Called the Insinuators, they quickly invaded the membership of Munich’s Lodge Theodore of Good Counsel, and totally controlled it by 1779.

A friend of Weishaupt’s, Baron Adolf Franz Friederich Knigge, was a well-known diplomat and Freemason in Bavaria and assisted him with developing ceremonial rituals for the new Illuminati, based on the Masonic model – sort of. He became a member of the Illuminati in 1780.

Eventually, Knigge crafted 12 degrees in all for the group. There were three degrees for new members: Novice, Minerval and Illuminated Minerval. With its new structure finally in place, and Knigge’s help in recruiting prominent and influential members, the Illuminati started to catch on. The German poet Johann Goethe became a member. In a relatively short period of time, the group attracted at least 2,000 members in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Italy and France.

The Congress of Wilhelmsbad

In 1782, a curious event occurred in the town of Wilhelmsbad, billed as a Congress of Masonry. Freemasonry had developed very differently on the European continent than it had in Britain and the Americas, and it had taken some strange and sinister turns, especially in the German states. Delegates came to the conference from Austria, France, Italy, Holland and Russia.

Between the Illuminati’s growing influence in Masonic lodges on the one side, and another German group called the Rite Of Strict Observance on the other, mainstream Freemasons were alarmed about the direction these new groups were taking them. Freemasonry had been developed to enhance society by taking good men and improving their character, making them better citizens. Masonic secrecy was simply a demonstration of honor among its members. But these new groups were something different, with a militant obsession over secrecy, and almost no interest in any of that character building malarkey. More than a few disgruntled Masons went home convinced they had to do something to stop this new movement.

The Illuminati cracks up
At the same time, the Illuminati was starting to crack from within. Weishaupt had become bolder in his professional life, and his Catholic students at the University of Ingoldstadt were being increasingly subjected to his anti-Catholic tirades. Knigge became convinced that Weishaupt was really a closet Jesuit spy, and came to completely distrust him. He handed over all of his Illuminati material in 1784 and stalked out of the order. Other defections soon followed for different reasons.

Several ex-members went to the Duchess of Bavaria, Maria Anna, with Illuminati documents and a membership list. Confronted with clear evidence of a group that was actively gunning for their regal positions, she took it to her husband, the Duke of Bavaria, Carl Theodore. As monarch of Bavaria, he quickly enacted a law forbidding any and all groups, clubs or societies that hadn’t been authorized by the state, and a year later clarified his position by naming the Illuminati specifically as the group he was really after. Weishaupt soldiered on, creating a flurry of anti-Catholic and anti-monarchial pamphlets. The Duke at last issued arrest warrants against him and the Areopagites in 1785. *

Weishaupt fled Bavaria to Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg in central Germany, but left behind his incriminating papers, outlining the Illuminati’s ambitious, if bizarre and downright silly, plans for world domination. They were widely published throughout Europe to expose the Illuminati and to flush out other members, many of whom were in government, military and university positions. A large number of them wound up in prison, and more were banished from Bavaria altogether.

The Bavarian Order of the Illuminati died officially in 1785, and its secrets and Evil Plans For World Domination™ were discovered, published and ridiculed, eventually worldwide. It was never popular, and the movement died out completely by the end of the century. But the phantom of the Illuminati survived in the public’s memory. Because of its ties to many European Freemasons of the period, the two groups became intertwined in the public imagination.

As for the Illuminati’s founder, Weishaupt himself became so obscure that the date of his death is not known for certain. Some say 1811, and others say 1830.* He wrote several apologetic treatises about the order over the years. And he promised to never, ever, ever try to take over the world again. Cross his heart.

Illuminati in America?
The life and death of the Illuminati in Europe has been well documented, and many of the organization’s papers were greatly publicized after Weishaupt fled Bavaria. But the Illuminati’s time span coincided with the early days of the fledgling United States, during and immediately after the American Revolution. Trustworthy records of the group’s activities in America – if indeed there were any – are difficult to come by.

George Washington was sent a copy of John Robison’s book, Proofs Of A Conspiracy, warning him of the spread of Illuminism, and the possible infiltration of Freemason lodges (of which Washington was a member). He wrote, “I believe notwithstanding, that none of the Lodges in this Country are contaminated with the principles ascribed to the Society of the Illuminati.” In a follow-up letter he explained that he did not

“…doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of seperation)."

It has been alleged by some researchers that a Columbia Lodge of the Illuminati was started in New York City in 1785. Over the next four years, allegedly, as many as 14 more Illuminati lodges sprung up in the 13 states, including one in Virginia that supposedly counted Thomas Jefferson as a member. But there is no proof whatsoever that such lodges ever existed.

The supposed Columbia Lodge of the Illuminati has been claimed to have been the fraternal refuge of New York Governor Dewitt Clinton, newspaper editor and future politician Horace Greeley, and New York politician Clinton Roosevelt. Roosevelt himself, it has been claimed over the years, used the philosophy of the Illuminati in his 1841 book, Science Of Government Founded On Natural Law. He was a distant cousin of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and there are some who claim that the book is a blueprint for both Karl Marx’s 1848 Communist Manifesto and FDR’s socialistic New Deal programs of the 1930’s. Those looking under the rug for a conspiracy claim that the Illuminati, through Clinton Roosevelt, created Communism along with FDR’s New Deal programs. And as icing on the cake, it was FDR (who was also a Freemason, by the way) who put the All-Seeing Eye and the unfinished pyramid on the back of the U.S. one dollar bill. Which are, as any good conspiracist knows, symbols of the Illuminati. Or the Masons. Or both. We forget which, since the All-Seeing Eye in a triangle that appears in the U.S. Great Seal actually started out in the Rennaissance as a Christian symbol for God, and appears in 16th century Catholic church paintings.

Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome

(Adapted from "Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies")

*See the comments for some corrective notes.

New Government Drug Experiments on Veterans

2009-04-30T16:12:00.003-04:00

Shades of the past. A report today in the Washington Examiner reveals that US government researchers are injecting "drug-addicted veterans" with cocaine.

Can anyone say MK-ULTRA?

The DEA has granted more than 6,000 licenses to scientists to use illegal drugs over the last 25 years in experiments done through the Veteran's Administration. Millions in taxpayer dollars have been spent to give addicts drugs like crack, morphine and IV cocaine.

According to the VA's acting director of R&D, Timothy O'Leary (no irony intended there, I'm sure), the program is an attempt to find medicines that will block cocaine absorption in the body.

Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' Sequel Due September 15, 2009

2009-04-20T14:54:00.000-04:00

Dan Brown's new novel, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, now called The Lost Symbol, is due in stores September 15th. The publishing world heaves a sigh of relief. All those bookstores don't have to close now, and everybody can come back to work.

The Guardian.co.uk is reporting today that:

The long-awaited novel – one of the most anticipated in recent publishing history - will be called "The Lost Symbol," and will take place over a 12-hour period. No more details were given about its content, but persistent rumours have suggested it will be set in Washington DC and will focus on freemasonry. It will be published on 15 September with an initial print run of 6.5 million copies – the largest first printing in publisher Random House's history.

"This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey," said Brown. "Weaving five years of research into the story's 12-hour timeframe was an exhilarating challenge. Robert Langdon's life clearly moves a lot faster than mine."

Undoubtedly, previous reports over the last six years that it was to be called "The Solomon Key", and the subsequent flooding of the market of similarly named books influenced a title change. And there are no details yet as to whether Brown will follow through on his long-announced plans for the book to involve Freemasonry.

But we'll know in September.

Speaking of the Symbolism in the Great Seal

2009-04-20T13:58:00.001-04:00

(By Michael Ramirez)

The Denver Airport

2009-04-20T04:40:00.008-04:00

One of the murals at the Denver International Airport, painted by Leo Tanguma.

Face it: anyone who has flown ever since the 9/11 attacks know that airports are Beelzebub’s satanic stock yards, where passengers are treated like so much cattle. Communities can spend all of the millions of dollars they like in an effort to fill these massive spaces with soothing artwork and soaring terminal designs, packed with wall-to-wall retail shopping and fast food Valhallas. It doesn’t matter. Air travel has been made miserable, and airports are places to be avoided. But one airport in particular has attracted the attention of a wide range of conspiracists who see something sinister there, and it’s even worse than TSA cavity searches over forbidden shampoo bottles, corkscrews and nail clippers.

When Denver, Colorado outgrew its old Stapleton Airport, the city and county government decided to think and build big. They went 25 miles out of town and built a facility that takes up twice the landmass of Manhattan. The airport was designed with the future in mind, and is the largest airport in the U.S., the third largest in the world. As with any project of this size, there was much consideration given to the decoration and design of the terminal, and its unique roof line was made to represent the conical peaks of the Rocky Mountains. But it was the artwork inside that first attracted curious groups of the very, very nervous. And then more accusations started pouring in.

Here are some of the peculiarities noted by researchers:

• Evil words – Some conspiracists have pointed to words cut into the floor as Satanic or Masonic: Cochetopa, Sisnaajini and the baffling Dzit Dit Gaii. It turns out that these are actually Navajo terms for geographical sites in Colorado. The other creepy terms often pointed to as evil references, Braaksma and Villarreal, are actually the names of Carolyn Braaksma and Mark Villarreal, artists who worked on the airport sculptures and paintings.

• Creepy murals – We don’t know art, but we do know that a soldier wearing a gas mask, stabbing a dove with a scimitar and waving a gun over a river filled with women carrying dead babies is not really the sort of thing to uplift our spirits while dashing for a far gate on a short layover. Other bizarre images include a scene with caskets featuring a dead Navajo woman, a dead Jewish woman and a dead African-American woman. Artist Leo Tanguma wrote explanations of his personal, if odd, inspirations for the paintings, describing them as depicting scenes of violence and tragedy being overcome by peace and harmony.

Then of course, there's always the satanic blue horse sculpture with glowing red eyes that welcomes visitors.

• Masons and the New World Order – There is a dedication marker in the airport that is clearly inscribed with the square and compasses of the Freemasons, along with listing the involvement of the two Grand Lodges of Freemasonry in Colorado. All of this is mounted over a time capsule sealed during the dedication of the airport. Some claim that this is a futuristic “keypad” with some unknown purpose. Spookier to them is the notation of an organization called the New World Airport Commission.

The New World Airport Commission, says Denver Airport officials, was a group of local businesses that organized the opening ceremonies of the facility, and they chose the name because Denver was aiming to create a “new, world-class” city and airport. The Freemasons participated in laying the “capstone” (the last, finishing stone) of the airport project. This is by no means unusual. Masons have been laying cornerstones, capstones, and memorial markers for public buildings for almost 300 years. As symbolic heirs of the stonemasons’ guilds of the Middle Ages, modern Masons created a cornerstone ritual that has been used in public ceremonies that have included the U.S. Capitol Building, the Statue of Liberty, bridges, churches, university buildings, court houses, and the Tacoma Dome. Conspiracists think this is creepy. On the other hand, we don’t hear them grousing about the new wave of Feng Shui “space clearing” ceremonies popping up everywhere these days, consecrating everything from municipal buildings to nail salons.

BTW, the "control panel" is actually a braille inscription of the capstone text, so blind people can read it without crawling on their hands and knees.

• Masonic Great Hall - Another claim is that the large portion of the terminal is called the Great Hall, and is named after a room found in Freemason lodges. There may be Masonic buildings in the world with assembly rooms or dining areas referred to as Great Halls (London’s comes to mind), but it is by no means a common term in the overwhelming majority of Masonic buildings. It’s frankly a more common term in castles, from Chinon to Disneyland.

• Nazi Runways – Most modern airports wishing to utilize the most efficient runway designs are built these days with two parallel runways. Not so in Denver. Looked at from above, there’s no denying that the runways radiate like twisted spokes from the terminal building, and they do seem to resemble a swastika. Conspiracists claim this is either a fascist message to secretly show off the totalitarian power of the New World Order, or that it is an occult depiction of the old Germanic rune for power.

• Secret Underground Base – This is the most common charge against the Denver Airport, that it is built over the top of a massive, secret underground military base. The airport was budgeted to cost $1.7 billion, but came in closer to $5 billion when all the dust cleared. While it was built on a site chosen for its flat setting, millions of tons of earth were moved around the property, giving credence to the claim that something huge was being built underground. Bear in mind that the airport was over-designed, to be flexible for decades, to be easily expandable, and to use the very latest in technology – which created a nightmare of technical glitches throughout the first years of operation. Miles of tunnels were dug for underground trains between terminals, and for a troublesome subterranean baggage handling conveyor system that took years to get operating properly. In addition, there are other tunnels for a huge fuel pipeline system to pump jet fuel to gates instead of relying on tanker trucks. Part of the justification for all of this underground infrastructure is because Denver gets whacked with major snowfall for much of the winter, and the more that can be handled underground instead of dealing with snow, the more efficient it will be.

Conspiracists cry balderdash. They say there is a multi-level, subterranean base run by the New World Order, or the government, or both. One Alex Christopher claimed to have worked in the tunnels under the airport, and described what appeared to be vast holding areas for prisoners, strange nausea-inducing electromagnetic forces, and caverns big enough to drive trucks through, presumably filled with helpless political prisoners.

League of Lady Conspiracists

2009-03-29T21:05:00.005-04:00

Your Sunday evening entertainment is here from the League of Lady Conspiracists.

As If 9/11 Never Really Happened

2009-03-27T00:34:00.003-04:00

The New York Port Authority has decided to embrace the mantra of Change. The new tower rising from the ashes of 9/11 was supposed to be called "Freedom Tower."

But that's so 2001, so George Bush era, so jingoistic, so "politics of hate." Can't have that.

So the NYPA announced today that the tower will simply be called One World Trade Center.

Why not, since the new administration won't use the term "terrorists," or "enemy combatants," then it'll be pretty simple to erase the 9/11 attacks from the collective consciousness by the time the new building is up in 2012. After all, without terrorists, no one really knocked down the towers. (Terrorist acts are now called "man-caused disasters" by the audacious hopeful in Washington).

All down the memory hole.

Last Weekend of Dummies Month

2009-03-26T21:28:00.001-04:00

Excuse the intrusion of crass economics, but March is officially "Dummies Month," and there are just a couple of days left.

Buy one or two Dummies books on any subject (not just ours) before March 31st, 2009, and get $5 direct from the publisher. In addition, the Wiley folks will also send along another $5 mail-in rebate form for any Dummies book purchased in June, July or August 2009.

Obviously, we like you to take this opportunity to scoop up our books: Freemasons For Dummies, The Templar Code For Dummies, and Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies. But there are more than 1,300 Dummies titles out there, and they are all part of this offer.

You can download a pdf of the rebate form here.

Do it now before the government nationalizes the book business...

Suddenly Everybody Wants A Global Currency

2009-03-26T18:25:00.005-04:00

Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was just as shocked as most of us when Treasury Secretary and tax dodge Timothy Geithner sat in the Council on Foreign Relations meeting yesterday and said he was "open" to a proposal by China to replace the dollar with a new global currency. China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan called for a global currency on Tuesday.

Kazakh's President Nursultan Nazarbayev last week floated his own air biscuit on the topic (proposing the acmetal), and Vladimir "You Can't Take the KGB Out Of The Boy" Putin said Russia would push for a new global currency at the next G20 meeting in London on April 2nd. Now the UN has suddenly poked its head up and is pushing for a new global reserve currency system to replace the dollar, as well. So, China, Russia, and now the UN are circling like buzzards, watching our youthful, energetic and woefully under-qualified president tread water.

Congresswoman Bachmann lept into the fray yesterday after Geithner's remarks. From her website:

In response to suggestions by China, Russia, and other countries around the world calling on the International Monetary Fund to explore a multi-national currency, U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (MN-6) has introduced a resolution that would bar the dollar from being replaced by any foreign currency.

“Yesterday, during a Financial Services Committee hearing, I asked Secretary Geithner if he would denounce efforts to move towards a global currency and he answered unequivocally that he would," said Bachmann. "And President Obama gave the nation the same assurances. But just a day later, Secretary Geithner has left the option on the table. I want to know which it is. The American people deserve to know."

Asked today about a currency proposal from China at a Council on Foreign Relations event, Secretary Geithner stated he was open to supporting it. Despite attempts to clarify his remarks later in the day, the unguarded initial response calls into question his true intentions.

Although Title 31, Sec. 5103 USC prohibits foreign currency from being recognized in the U.S., the President has the power to engage foreign governments in treaties, and the President is principally responsible for the interpretations and implementation of those treaties according to the Constitution. As a result, legislation prohibiting the President and Treasury from issuing or agreeing that the U.S. will adopt an international currency would need to come in the form of a Constitutional Amendment differentiating a treaty used to implement an international currency in the U.S. from other types of treaty agreements.

All of this talk of replacing the dollar with a new global currency system has suddenly occurred in the span of less than two weeks. And we'll see if Bachmann's resolution even comes to the floor for a vote. Not likely.

Keep President Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's remark in mind as the coming weeks unfold:

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

Indeed.

The Council on Foreign Relations is a think tank, a non-partisan organization made up of American and global leaders dedicated to educating policy makers, journalists, business people and students about international cultures, economies, policies and defense issues.

First started in 1917, the Council was formed of New York history and political scholars, assembled by President Woodrow Wilson. Their mission was to provide Wilson with guidance about post-World War I foreign policy. While Wilson had originally envisioned a British and American group of academics and diplomats, the Council eventually consisted of just over 100 New York manufacturers, attorneys and bankers, presided over by Nobel Peace Prize winner and then Secretary of State, Elihu Root.

The CFR publishes Foreign Affairs magazine, and their website lists their notable members, along with meeting dates and locations. It’s self-proclaimed goal is to increase America’s understanding of the world, and to contribute ideas to U.S. foreign policy. Annual reports on a wide array of topics are available to anyone.

These lofty goals are regarded with great suspicion by conspiracists, who frequently claim that the CFR, like the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, is creating the policies that will lead to a one-world government – the New World Order. After Geithner's remarks this week, those suspicions will only grow.

Jonah Goldberg: Paranoid Style for Thee But Not For Me

2009-03-26T05:43:00.004-04:00

Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism, has a great piece today about how the hand is on the other foot now for conspiracy theorists these days. It's the natural ebb and flow of perennially nervous ideologues. Neither the Right nor the Left has the corner on the conspiracy theory market.

From Paranoid Style for Thee But Not For Me:

I love how liberals — who have been pushing to Europeanize American social policy for generations — are suddenly aghast and contemptuous when conservatives complain that liberals want to Europeanize American social policy, just as the liberal effort starts to succeed.

But I just have a hard time listening to liberals grow suddenly high-brow and Ivy League serious about the paranoid style of the American Right. Where were these people for the last eight years when abject paranoid hysteria consumed the left flank of liberalism and threatened to capsize the entire enterprise? There are certainly elements on the Right that are prone to such things, but there are also elements on the Left that are just as prone to it. I will stack Naomi Wolfe up against any John Bircher. Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, the folks at ANSWER, Ward Churchill, are no less conspiratorial than your typical right-wing conspiracy theorist and some of them are not only worse, but far more accepted by the liberal establishment than their opposite numbers are by the conservative establishment.

Why do the Tim McVeigh types count against the Right, but the Black Panthers never against the Left? Why aren't liberals troubled by Rosie "Steel Never Melted Before Before Bush" O'Donnell but wigged out by Michael Savage? When Spike Lee floated the idea that the Bush administration blew up the levees to flood New Orleans, where was (the New Yorker's George) Packer & Co's hand-wringing then? When Randall Robinson proclaimed at the Huffington Post that blacks — and only blacks — were being forced to eat the flesh of the dead in the wake of Katrina, why did no one dust off their Hofstadter? Where was The New Yorker when a Greek Chorus of dunderheads claimed that a cabal of perfidious bagel-snarfing neocons were, like the Elders of Zion of yore, scheming to undo all that is good in the world? Where were they when Hollywood buffoons were producing Broadway plays depicting the very same neocons shouting "Hail Leo Strauss!"

Bilderbergs Meet In Athens May 14-16, 2009

2009-03-25T20:25:00.005-04:00

The Bilderberg Group was started during the Cold War to increase understanding between world leaders of Europe and the United States. The group was created in 1954 by Prince Bernhard in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, and is named after the hotel that they met in that first year. The theory goes that the World Wars that had started in Europe could be averted in the future if leaders of those countries had a chance to meet and get to know each other in an informal setting. Each year, 100 government, economic, and business leaders are invited to meet and talk freely without the interference of the news media (or their own constituents). Between 30 and 35 are permanent members of the group, and the remainders are invited based on their ability to influence society through government, economics or culture. The list of attendees is made public, and members of the press may attend, but may not report on proceedings. Minutes are kept, but they don’t contain the names of who said what, only what was spoken.

The buzz among conspiracists is that no one can become President of the United States without being a Bilderberger. Both President Bushes, John Kerry, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Steven Spielberg, as well as Tony Blair and a list of equally well-placed European notables, have attended past meetings. The group is undeniably an elite collection of movers and shakers, and what they say behind closed doors is kept a secret. Conspiracy addicts see this as an evil plot for one-world government, yet the group proposes no legislation, issues no policy statements, and takes no votes. The participants regard it as an opportunity to chat informally with people who are their international peers without every word being scrutinized on the nightly news. Their rule of silence is strictly enforced, and squealers get the boot.

According to the Greek newspaper Elefterios Tipos, the Bilderbergs will meet May 14th-16th in Athens. GR Reporter in Greece lists some of the invitees this year:

In the list of invited guests are the Queen of Netherlands Beatrix, the Spanish Queen Sophia, and diplomats from the rank of the US National Security Council James Jones. Also among the invited are ministers of foreign affairs like the Turkish one Ali Babacan, who will get the chance for a tête-à-tête meeting with the Greek minister of foreign affairs Dora Bakoyanni. Except for political figures, the meeting will host representatives of giant companies like Domenico Siniscalco from “Morgan Stanley”.

The hotel is apparently none of our business.

Kidvid by Hamas: Palestinian Mickey Mouse Martyred

2009-03-25T17:58:00.006-04:00

Farfour, the Palestinian Mickey Mouse, is "martyred" by Israeli intelligence on "Pioneers Of Tomorrow"

This is actually from 2007, and the Palestinians clearly got spooked by the notorious legal team of the Disney organization: Kill Farfour, or there will be no Disneyland in Gaza. Eisner is brutal.

The martyred mouse was replaced by his cousin Nahoul the Bee, who encouraged all children to join the Jihad, and one little girl who wanted to be a journalist so she could photograph "Jews killing Farfour and little children." And then there's Assud the Jew-eating rabbit, whose loving message ("I will finish off the Jews and eat them, Allah willing!") is presented onscreen inside of a big, loving heart.

Britain Releases UFO Documents from 1987 to 1993

2009-03-25T03:09:00.006-04:00

Britain's Ministry of Defence has released the third installment of documents on UFO sightings. The 12,000 documents in this latest batch contains 1,200 sightings of possible UFOs between 1987 and 1993. They are available from the British National Archives website for the next 30 days for free.

According to the National Archives site, reports include:

In November 1989, RAF Wattisham in Norfolk received 'One of our most unusual UFO reports'. An unidentified female was approached by a man who claimed to come from another planet, similar to earth. During the ten-minute conversation, the man claimed his race was responsible for creating crop circles and also explained he felt it was important for contact between the two peoples to occur. As she ran home, the woman heard a loud buzzing noise behind her, and turned to see a large, glowing spherical object rise steadily until out of sight.

In December 1992, two air traffic controllers at Heathrow airport reported seeing a black inverted boomerang-shaped UFO from the airport control tower early in the morning. One week earlier, numerous witnesses in Louth, Lincolnshire, reported seeing three lights which appeared to be attached to a large triangular craft.

Previously released documents can be found here.

Iranians Allege Harry Potter Part of "Ziono-Hollywoodist Conspiracy"

2009-03-19T13:02:00.005-04:00

Well, it appears that the film critics of Iran have decoded the very deepest secrets of the Harry Potter films—that they are part of The Ziono-Hollywoodist Conspiracy™. The Daled Amos blog today has posted an Iranian television program that explains it all for you. It appears that Iran has also discovered YouTube.

According to Iranian film critic Sa'id Mostaghasi,

The Harry Potter film portrays all these theories and especially the theory of witchcraft, which originates in the Kabbala. After all, the Jewish Kabbala is a school of thought which is full of secrets and witchcraft. It's roots are in ancient Egypt. These theories originate from a rabbi, or magicians of ancient Egypt, and were passed down to the Knights Templar.

Meanwhile, Egyptian television is suggesting that Starbucks needs to be shut down, not because $4 coffee is an outrage, but, according to this commentator, because their logo depicts Queen Esther of Persia, who is "the Queen of the Jews."

Nothing like using 21st technology to spread the very finest in 12th century thinking.

Shamrock Day? SHAMROCK DAY?!

2009-03-18T01:15:00.002-04:00

The Waco Tribune is reporting that there is a move afoot to rebrand St. Patrick's Day with the culturally deranged moniker "Shamrock Day."

No lie. St. Patrick shoved down the Memory Hole. Of course, no mention that the Irish saint was reputed to use that non-offending shamrock as a visual aid for teaching pagans about the Holy Trinity.

According to the piece,

"Card shops have banners proclaiming the occasion; the Disney Channel is using the term; and some places in this country have changed the name of their community celebrations of Celtic heritage to the “nonoffending” terminology . . .

. . . the organizers of Shamrock Day celebrations, such as the Habitot Children’s Museum in California, cite the need for “cultural diversity to our audience without broaching religious boundaries.”

I need a beer.

One World Currency: Introducing the "Acmetal"

2009-03-12T16:37:00.004-04:00

Kazakh's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has an idea that what the world really needs is a single world currency. Now, Kazakh is hardly a hot spot on the map of Illuminati/NWO/World Control franchises. But his idea has caught on with some old familiar faces, like the architect of the European euro, Nobel-prize winner Professor Robert Mundell.

Nazarbayev answer to the pesky pastiche of worldwide pelf is called the 'acmetal,' an atrocious and unglamorous noun that combines the Greek word "acme,'' meaning peak or best, and "capital.'' Acme, of course, being the company Wile E. Coyote purchased his diabolical supplies from to thwart the elusive Roadrunner. If you will recall the history you learned from cartoons, Acme products always failed.

From the Australian Online today:

Nazarbayev, speaking at an economic forum in the glitzy new capital he has built on the Kazakh steppe, defended his proposal for the "acmetal'' world currency saying it might "look kind of funny'' but was not.

And he received intellectual support from the Canadian economist Prof Mundell, who helped lay the intellectual groundwork for Europe's single currency.

"I must say that I agree with President Nazarbayev on his statement and many of the things he said in his plan, the project he made for the world currency, and I believe I'm right on track with what he's saying,'' Prof Mundell said, adding the idea held "great promise''.

Mr Nazarbayev and Prof Mundell urged the Group of 20 leading developed and developing economies to form a working group on the proposal at their summit on the global economic crisis in London on April 2.

"We should deliver our thoughts and the thoughts of this conference to the leaders of those countries,'' Mr Nazarbayev said, referring to the G8 and G20 nations."

Of course, Nazarbayev is used to getting his way. He was the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Kazakhstan, running for president (unopposed) when the country was declared independent from the fallen Soviet Union in 1991. he's been the strongman in charge ever since. And two years ago, the Khazahk parliament passed a Nazarbayev-forever constitutional amendment that will allow only him to seek reelection as long as he wants the job. It is believed he has personally raked in a billion dollars (or is it acmetals?) by skimming oil revenues into his private bank accounts, and his country has been criticized as highly corrupt.

Still, he has pulled off the delicate balancing act of running a Muslim nation on Russia's back door steppe that isn't much threatened by its former landlord, along with embracing capitalism in a very big way, fueled largely by oil money.

Big Week for Global Warming & Climactic Change Carnival Barkers

2009-03-08T14:27:00.006-04:00

It's been a big week for the perennially indignant Global Warming/Climate Change crowd.

Last weekend's "largest ever demonstration for civil disobedience over climate change" in Washington DC, featuring NASA scientist Jim ("Coal plants are factories of death") Hansen, along with hundr...thous...no, millions of protesters, was threatened by predictions of 12 inches of snow. Actually, less than a thousand showed up in the snowstorm to hear such working class heroes as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. call for energy company executives to be in jail "for all eternity." The protest was held at the gates of the Capitol Power Plant with the goal of "shutting down" their coal-fired boiler. The plant opened as usual Monday morning.

Columnist Christopher Booker reports that Britain's Met Office, which has been one of the UK's biggest sources of global warming hysterics for two decades, was forced to admit that this was Britain's coldest winter in 13 years. This after predicting that 2007 would be the warmest year on record globally (whereupon global temperatures plummeted 1° Celsius and wrecking all of those predictive computer models), and stubbornly sticking to their guns with a similar prediction for 2009.

Brendan O'Neill's column on Spiked-online.com reports:

This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it’s being organised by the university’s Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how ‘denial’ is a product of both ‘addiction and consumption’ and is the ‘consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility’. It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas – to interrogate, analyse and fight over them – but to tag them as perverse.

Leading green writers have welcomed the West England get-together to study the denying masses. One eco-columnist says the conference might generate ideas for dealing with those who are ‘pathologically’ opposed to the environmental movement..

At the Wall Street Journal's California Economics conference, Nobel prize collector Al Gore refused to answer questions from reporters, but was questioned during his presentation by the audience. Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” asked for the opportunity to debate Gore over his many global warming claims of urgency to curb greenhouse gasses. Gore declined the offer.

“I want to be polite to you,” Mr. Gore responded. But, no. “The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue,” he said. “It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake,” he added

.

How dare anyone question him? He wouldn't have become an ex-senator worth over $200 million and an investor in a private equity firm that stands to make billions on its environmental scare tactic investments if he didn't know what he was talking about!

What got very little press, unfortunately, was the Heartland Institute's 2009 International Conference on Climate Change this weekend in New York. It's theme was "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really A Crisis?" Eight hundred were expected to attend the conference, including more than 70 presenters:

•Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic and of the European Union. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he declared, “Environmentalism and the global warming alarmism is challenging our freedom. I’m afraid that the current crisis will be misused for radically constraining the functioning of the markets and market economy all around the world.”

•American astronaut Dr. Jack Schmitt--the last living man to walk on the moon--a geologist Ph.D. who has contended he has seen “too many of [my] colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming.”

•William Gray, Colorado State University, who claims global warming alarmists have hijacked the American Meteorological Society.

•Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s leading experts in dynamic meteorology, especially planetary waves.

•Stephen McIntyre, primary author of Climate Audit, a blog devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data. He is a devastating critic of the temperature record of the past 1,000 years, particularly the work of Michael E. Mann, creator of the infamous “hockey stick” graph. That graph--thoroughly discredited in scientific circles--supposedly proved that mankind is responsible for a sharp increase in greenhouse gases.

•Arthur Robinson, curator of a global warming petition signed by more than 32,000 American scientists, including more than 10,000 with doctorate degrees, rejecting the alarmist assertion that global warming has put the Earth in crisis and is caused primarily by mankind.

•Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

•Roy Spencer, University of Alabama at Huntsville, principal research scientist and team leader on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
Don Easterbrook, professor of geology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, who will present new data showing “the most recent global warming that began in 1977 is over, and the Earth has entered a new phase of global cooling.”

Of course, the fact that Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune's moon Triton and other bodies in our solar system show identical warming trends with the Earth couldn't possibly mean the Sun has anything to do with climate change.

And here I thought Al Gore said the debate was over?

March is Dummies Month

2009-02-26T19:21:00.002-05:00

Pardon a shameless bit of capitalistic promotion, but it's one that ultimately helps you. March is officially "Dummies Month," and the good folks at Wiley Publishing have a regular program every year at this time. Buy a Dummies book or audio set and get a $5 rebate (up to two per family).

That means you can buy one or two Dummies books on any subject (not just ours) between March 1st - 31st, 2009, and get $5 smackers each delivered to your majestic manse's mailbox direct from the publisher. In addition, the Wiley folks will also send along another $5 mail-in rebate form for any Dummies book purchased in June, July or August 2009.

Now obviously we would like you to take this opportunity to plunk down your hard-earned pelf and procure our books: Freemasons For Dummies, The Templar Code For Dummies, and Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies. Think of it as an economic stimulus package. We do have a poodle to support, after all. But there are more than 1,300 Dummies titles out there, and we would certainly understand if you already own ours...

You can download a pdf of the rebate form here.

Yes, I know, I just excoriated Ron Howard and Sony Pictures for their own promotion techniques. But at least we're up front about it. (smile)

Angels, Demons, the Illuminati, and Why You Shouldn't Get Your History From Movies

2009-02-25T16:59:00.006-05:00

Blurring reality and fantasy helps to sell books and movies, but the art of modern movie pimping takes it to a new level. And the real trouble is when the public gets its history from movies. Thanks to Oliver Stone's excremental movie JFK, the belief that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy is today considered to be the whacked out, drunken crazy talk instead of the other way around. Millions think the deadly bullet had to be a magic one, or that the grassy knoll had teams of sharpshooters all over it. And Clay Shaw is still attempting to figure out how to file a lawsuit from his coffin.

So now comes another new movie attempting to rewrite history. In a way not as egregious as a piece of Stone's dreck, but in other ways, more so. The film based on Dan Brown's novel "Angels & Demons" is threatening to be in theaters this May. Sony pictures has released what is masquerading as a pseudo-docu-featurette about the Illuminati, as a lead up to the release of the picture, and so far, it looks to be another Catholic bashing exercise, like its source material was.

Now, I was in the film business long enough to know that shameless whoredom is a Hollywood way of life, and pumping your pimp hand for your picture to ensure a socko opening weekend is what it's all about. And yes, I know, the only thing worse than standing on a chair and shrieking "Eeek!" over a fictional movie is shrieking "Eeek!" over the fictional novel it's based upon. Nevertheless, in this particular case I have to shout "Tripe!" when tripe is served. And this one dishes up a whole platter of it.

Dan Brown is fond of alleging that the organizations mentioned in his books are real, and then he goes on to not bother with telling a single truthful thing about them. Over the years, it's become patently obvious that Dan Brown was whacked across the hands with a ruler by some stern nun during his formative years, and the real hoary, multi-headed Jabberwocky that terrifies him out of his sound sleep in a soggy sweat every night is the Catholic Church. That's okay. Writing can be therapeutic, but I would think he could take some of his new-found millions and just hire a good Freudian. Or Jungian. Whichever works.

The point is, Dan Brown's vision of the Illuminati has precisely zero to do with the real Bavarian Illuminati. If his book had just been spine out and lobbed into the cut-out bin after three months of lackluster sales, nobody would care. But that's not what happened. Angels & Demons eventually sold by the boatload, and the result is that literally millions of people think this is what the Illuminati were.

The official Angels & Demons website has a scene from the movie of Langdon explaining who and what the Illuminati supposedly were, followed by this text:

"Shrouded in mystery for nearly 500 years, The Illuminati began in the 1600's as a secret society of scientists, artists, architects and doctors whose theories and discoveries put them at odds with the dominant Catholic Church. For fear of persecution, members of the Illuminati, which means "enlightened ones," meet in secret while publicly growing in influence and stature by quietly infiltrating governments and major institutions...
As a warning to others, the Church apprehended four scientists and branded them on the chest with the symbol of the cross to "purge them of their sins" [an event Brown calls "La Purga"] before publicly executing them..."

Utter crap.

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks appear in the very brief "Illuminati Featurette", and here's what they go on to claim:

Ron Howard: "The Illuminati was formed in the 1600s. They were artists and scientists like Galileo and Bernini, whose progressive ideas threatened the Vatican."

Tom Hanks: "The Illuminati, they were pushing knowledge, um, and they had a pretty, pretty august group of people.

Ron Howard: "The early Illuminati were persecuted by the Church. They were hunted down, even executed, and driven underground."

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon: "There wasn't a powerful organization on Earth they didn't penetrate, including the Vatican, by hiding in plain sight."

It seems that no one who writes about the Illuminati—from Brown, to David Icke's alien reptilian lizards, to Texe Marrs' unintentionally hilarious Codex Magica, to the peddlers of the "Five Illuminati Jew Bankers" myths and the ZOG believers—has the slightest interest in the true organization that did exist, and then really was disbanded.

The real, live, authentic Illuminati was a blip, a literal footnote in history, and I'll be posting about them later this week. But no, Dan Brown's Illuminati has nothing to do with real life.

They didn't start in the 1600s.

Galileo and Bernini weren't members.

There was no "La Purga" in connection with the Illuminati.

Stay tuned.

Holocaust-denying Bishop Gets the Boot From Argentina

2009-02-24T13:09:00.007-05:00

Argentina has done something the Vatican has yet to do. They've punted Catholic bishop Richard Williamson to the curb.

Williamson had been excommunicated for 20 years, along with three other members of the ultra-conservative Society of St. Pius X who had been consecrated without Vatican approval. But German-born Pope Benedict XVI didn't know what a firestorm he'd created by lifting Williams' excommunication in early February. Because the British bishop was a longtime Holocaust denier. In January, a Swedish television station aired a November interview in which Williams claimed that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust and only 200,000 to 300,000 were killed, not 6 million. "There were no gas chambers."

This isn't a new development with Williams. As far back as 1989 when he was at a seminary in Winona, Minnesota, he was quoted as saying that "Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism." He made the claim that "the Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new state of Israel."

In letters and interviews, he has claimed Jews and Freemasons ("Judeo-Masons") have caused "changes and corruption" in the Catholic Church, referring to "Jewry" as enemies of Christ, and has supported the belief that the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion are an authentic outline for world domination by Jews. In the Swedish interview, he cites the long discredited (and patently ridiculous) claims of Fred Leuchter and the so-called "Leuchter Report" as 'proof' that there could have been no Nazi gas chambers.

Holocaust denial is illegal and punishable in Germany by imprisonment. Regensburg District Attorney Guenther Ruckdaeschel said authorities were investigating whether the remarks can be considered "inciting racial hatred."

In January, Williamson sent a letter to the Vatican, saying, “Amidst this tremendous media storm stirred up by imprudent remarks of mine on Swedish television, I beg of you to accept, only as is properly respectful, my sincere regrets for having caused to yourself and to the Holy Father so much unnecessary distress and problems." Note the lack of actually recanting his views. Many of his tamer views can be read on Dinoscopus, his personal blogsite.

The pope has now demanded that Williamson recant his views before he can be recognized as a Roman Catholic bishop, but after spending 20 years under excommunication before this, it's hard to see this as much of a threat to his vocation. Meanwhile, the Society of St. Pius X, which has long argued forcefully against the reforms adopted by the Second Vatican Council in 1965, is attempting to keep Williamson away from them—they've had enough trouble over the years without salting a Holocaust-denying bishop into the pot. On February 9th, they sacked him as head of their Argentina seminary in Buenos Aires. That in turn set off Argentina's Interior Ministry's mechanisms for showing Williamson the door and bestowing upon him the Order of the Boot.

On the way to his plane back to London, the peace-practicing bishop raised his fist at a local reporter, and shoved him into a pole. Nothing like turning the other cheek.

"Skull and Bones" Society Sued By Geronimo's Family

2009-02-20T01:03:00.006-05:00

Descendants of the Apache chief Geronimo are suing Yale University's Skull and Bones Society for the return of the warrior's skull. According to the Yale Daily News, twenty members of Geronimo's family are suing federal government officials, Yale, and Skull and Bones.

The story goes that back in May of 1918, a group of Bonesmen were all serving in the Army together at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, site of the mouldering remains of the Apache chief who had died in 1909 from pneumonia. It's no secret that S&B prides itself on its creepy collection of frat house decor, and the skull of an Indian chief whose name is synonymous with intoxicated white people jumping off cliffs would make a dandy addition to their "tomb." So (allegedly), Prescott Bush (father of George H.W., and grandfather of George W.), Henry Mallon, Ellery James and Charles C. Haffner, dug up the grave and stole the skull, a few bones, and a horse bit, and spirited them off to the Skull & Bones Tomb at Yale. Over the years, they have (allegedly) been in a glass display case.

The Skull and Bones "Tomb" on the Yale campus.
Because Geronimo’s grave was on a U.S. military base, the plaintiffs have also named President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of the Army Pete Geren as defendants in the suit. Under the theory of never sue anyone poor or not famous.

The Geronimo skull is a longstanding piece of Skull & Bones folklore, but several members of the (alleged) grave robbing team gave conflicting accounts of the raid. Towana Spivey, director of the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark and Museum, is quoted as saying he has never believed the story. Still, there is a skull in the S&B Tomb in New Haven known commonly as Geronimo.

This public imbroglio started back in 2007 when Harlyn Geronimo of Mescalero, New Mexico, wrote to President George W. Bush for help in returning the skull of his great-grandfather. Bush didn't bother with a response, hence the lawsuit (I will avoid any use of the term "warpath"). During the 2004 presidential race, Bonesmen Bush and Deomocratic nominee John Kerry both reacted to questions about the secretive society (one of about a dozen on the Yale campus) by saying that it was so secret they couldn't talk about it. Obviously, Bush admitting the chief's skull was in the Tomb would be in violation of the Society's obligation. Now, the courts will attempt to find out.

English Translation of Illuminati Weishaupt's "Diogenes Lamp"

2009-02-17T22:34:00.006-05:00

Speaking of the Bavarian Illuminati, Diogenes Lamp ("Die Leuchte Des Diogenes") by Bavarian Illuminati founder Adam Weishaupt has just been published by the Masonic Book Club.

I am not really about trashing the work of others, and if someone has done good solid work and been a little sloppy in its presentation, I'm not such a tweedy, patches-on-the-elbows sort of critic who snorts insults through my tendrils of pipe smoke. But the truth is that this volume is a disgrace.

The two introductory sections are written by "Sir knight Mark Bruback." (See photo) Just from a purely technical standpoint, the text is loaded with spelling and formatting errors (and the most irritating elementary school convention of using "&" instead of "and"). While he would have done service to readers by discussing in a rational manner the modern day Illuminati accusations of alarmists like Lyndon LaRouche and David Icke, referring to them only as Mr. LaDouche and Mr. Icky is appallingly juvenile.

There is no explanation about "Sir knight Mark's" role in bringing this text to light, other than a brief allusion to his procuring the German translation services of Amelia Gill, or why he was chosen to write this appalling introduction. Indeed, it would have been nice to know Ms. Gill's background and translating experience, because Bruback's errors and inappropriate goofiness call into question the accuracy of the Weishaupt text itself. And Bruback's inclusion of lines from Aleister Crowley's Thelema writings for no apparent reason adds an OTO element to the book that comes totally out of left field.

One of the biggest benefits of the previous editions from the MBC was the production of hard-to-find older works, enlightened by a modern, well-written preface. By publishing this volume under the imprint of the Masonic Book Club, it calls into question their editorial judgement and expertise in a very big way. (And could they have picked a more unreadable typeface to print this in?)

The Bavarian Illuminati writings have never been available in English, as incredible as that may seem. With all of the Illuminati hysteria that has occurred all the way from the Illuminism scares in the 1790s, through Robert Anton Wilson's reintroduction of the Illuminati in his peculiar and satyrical trilogy, along with Icke's own "reptilian" brand and LaRouche's anti-semitic version, it has taken the threat of a movie based on Dan Brown's Illuminati story Angels & Demons to at last bring forth this one small volume of authentic Illuminati philosophy.

Bear in mind that "Die Leuchte Des Diogenes" was originally published in 1804 in Regensburg, long after Weishaupt was chased out of Bavaria and the Illuminati was exposed as a group of anti-clerical and anti-monarchial revolutionaries who were infiltrating Masonic lodges. Their organizational documents were well publicized by the Bavarian government (again, we have no English translations of these, even though they exist). So Diogenes Lamp may simply be Weishaupt's weepings on what might have been, and why the Illuminati was really just a lovable bunch of harmless fuzzballs.

The text of the work itself turns out to be—nothing special. It is a distillation of Enlightenment philosophy, relying on quotations from other writers and philosophers and darlings of the period. No irony that Weishaupt would have more than a few quotes from Shakespeare's "misunderstood" characters of King Richard II and Brutus, given his recent troubles in his home country. But again with a problem of this edition: why translate the Weishaupt German text, but leave as untranslated long quotes from French and Latin sources?

I know there are texts that actually lay out the Illuminati's rituals and organizational structure that researchers would love to have available in English (and not just John Robison's descriptions of them, or Albert Mackey's and Abbe Barruel's descriptions of Robison's descriptions...) The Illuminati has been erroneously tied to the Freemasons by anti-Masonic critics for 200 years, and I was applauding the publication of this book before I saw it. The good news is that we at last have the first book of authentic Illuminati writings translated into English. The bad news is it's this one.

Robin Carr retired last year from the Masonic Book Club, and I realize there's a steep learning curve for any new management team. And the publishing business has its own special hurdles to overcome. One of the biggest raps against the club over the years was the total lack of communication to members. You simply sent in your money, and eventually a book would come. Hopefully, this will be addressed, and I hope next year's selection is an improvement over this one. The Masonic Book Club has a good reputation from the past, but this volume is a step backwards.

New "Angels & Demons" Trailer

2009-02-17T22:18:00.006-05:00

Sony has released a new, longer trailer for the upcoming "Angels & Demons" movie, based on the Dan Brown book. A&D flips the order of the stories, making it a sequel rather than a prequel.

Details, details.

The film is due in theaters May 15th, 2009, and will help to make the Illuminati a household word. If it follows the book, too bad the very fictional Illuminati of Dan Brown's imaginings has nothing to do with the very real, original Bavarian version created by Adam Weishaupt in the 1700s.

Details, details.

BTW, Sony is threatening an even longer "extended cut" of the Da Vinci Code movie for Blue Ray on April 28th.

Ku Klux Klan Suspected In Killing of Initiate

2009-02-17T16:37:00.006-05:00

The Associated press is reporting that an Oklahoma grand jury is considering charges against eight suspected Ku Klux Klan members arrested in the death of an Oklahoma woman.

According to the story:

Police have said Cynthia Lynch, 43, of Tulsa (photo above), was recruited to join a Louisiana-based KKK group over the Internet and was shot to death in November when she tried to leave an initiation. Police have said the group's leader, Raymond Foster, 44, killed Lynch.

He has been booked on a second-degree murder charge. Seven others, including Foster's 20-year-old son Shane, were booked on obstruction of justice charges.

The grand jury will begin hearing the case Wednesday, said Rick Wood, a spokesman for the District Attorney's Office in St. Tammany Parish, north of New Orleans. He would not give any details on what evidence may be presented.

Authorities said at the time of Lynch's killing they believed she had a falling out with head of the group, referred to alternately as the Sons of Dixie or the Dixie Brotherhood. She is believed to have been shot to death on or about Nov. 9.

Investigators said they found weapons, Confederate flags and six Klan robes at the campsite where Lynch was killed.

Earlier stories quoted St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain saying Lynch was supposed to be initiated and then return to Oklahoma to find other members for the white supremacist group. According to a Times Picayune article from last November, the group is considered to be a small, wannabe Klan organization, and it's unclear if there are any other members beyond the eight arrested. But as Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said, "It's easy to dismiss these people as lunatics, the fringe of the fringe of the fringe, and while that's often true, that doesn't mean they're not capable of killing someone or in some cases a great many people."

Andrew Jackson Threatened by John Wilkes Booth's Father

2009-01-27T13:34:00.007-05:00

Andrew Jackson's statue in Washington DC's Lafayette Square.
One of the 14 known Masonic presidents. All five statues in the park just
north of the White House depict Freemasons.

Presidential assassination threats and theories have abounded over time, but perhaps the oldest one lurking in the shadows of uncertainty for 175 years has finally been proved to be true. According to an article in Sunday's Knoxville News Sentinel, Dan Feller, the director of the Andrew Jackson Papers Project at the University of Tennessee, has determined that President Andrew Jackson's life was threatened by none other than the father of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, actor Junius Brutus Booth.

Was the whole family just one big presidential conspiracy theory?

Junius (right) was a famed, London-born, Shakespearian actor, who was known for flamboyant behavior. On July 4th, 1835, he wrote an angry letter to President Jackson, concerning a high-profile trial of a group of pirates, led by two men named De Ruis and De Soto. Apparently it was the O.J.Simpson trial of its day, and it was heavily covered in the newspapers (See "Trial of the Twelve Spanish Pirates of the Schooner Panda, a Guinea Slaver"). The two men had been sentenced to death, and Booth obviously objected.

Brower's Hotel, Philadelphia
July 4th, 1835

You damned old Scoundrel if you don't sign the pardon of your fellow men now under statutes of Death, De Ruiz & De Soto, I will cut your throat whilst you are sleeping! I wrote to you repeated Cautions so look out or damn you I'll have you burnt at the Stake in the City of Washington.

Your Master
Junius Brutus Booth

You know me! Look out!

Admittedly minor stuff compared to today's typical flame wars on forums and blogsites. And at that time, there was no law that prohibited threatening the President of the United States. Frankly, it's probable the 7th president would have beaten Booth's brains out before the actor had a chance to slit his throat. Jackson had already squared off with a potential assassin earlier that year. A man named Robert Lawrence had approached Old Hickory on the steps of the Capitol, and pointed a pistol at him. The gun jammed, and Jackson chased him down with his cane.

The letter from Booth has been believed to have been a hoax for decades, but a recent study by the University of Tennessee has finally judged it to be genuine, based on handwriting analysis, paper comparison and other closely matching notes known to have been written by Booth the same week from the same Philadelphia hotel where he was staying.

The letter had long been believed to have been a forgery, and had been mislabeled by the president's staff as being anonymous.

Dan Feller, history professor and director of the Andrew Jackson papers project, along with Research Assistant Professors Tom Coens and Laura-Eve Moss, will appear in a segment of PBS' "History Detectives" with host Tukufu Zuberi later this summer, and discuss the letter and the project to determine whether or not it was genuine.

More information at the University of Tennessee website.

We devote an entire chapter of Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies to presidential assassinations and conspiracy theories.

Browner: Obama's Socialist Climate Czar

2009-01-12T14:59:00.006-05:00

The now severely debunked global warming scare still has a friend in the new president, who has appointed his own "Climate Czar" (why do we still insist on using Russian monarchial terms for these jobs?), Carol Browner. But it turns out Browner is one more on the bandwagon for a global government, and a self-confessed Socialist.

According to the Washington Times today,

"Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group's congress in Greece was still available."

Happy Birthday, HAL

2009-01-12T00:22:00.000-05:00

"I am a HAL 9000 Computer. I became operational at the H—A—L plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January, 1992."

Oak Island's Latest Plotters: The Freemasons!

2008-12-29T04:03:00.006-05:00

Self-described "Oak Island Treasure Hunter" Keith Ranville believes he has discovered a Freemason connection to the tantalizingly frustrating Oak Island "Money Pit" complex. On his blog entry at something called the Oak Island Treasure Mystery Canadian Journal of New Research, "Oak Island Masonic Connection," he outlines an explanation for the island's stone triangle and the direction it points. Unfortunately, he gets the supposed Masonic ritual wrong. Ranville alleges that the story of Hiram Abiff has the Temple's architect entering Solomon's Temple complex from the North before being confronted by the ruffians.

But what's a little quibble like this when looking for treasure?

He goes on:

If you look at the oak island stone triangle, it points in the northern direction this would be the entrance of the triangle (temple). The line through the stone triangle would be the ruler (Jubela) south entrance. The west of the stone triangle is the square (Jubelo) west entrance. East of the stone triangle would be the the setting maul tool (Jubelum) east entrance and final direction. Further east of the oak island stone triangle, would be the burial of whomever was in center of the oak island stone triangle (Hiram Abiff or someone anointed as him). It only makes sense that you would bury a triangle figure' in a triangle plot, this would be the birch island triangle, found east of the oak island stone triangle (right angle to right angle). The place of the oak island stone triangle, found south of the money pit, was a place of ritual, most likely masonic. [Um, yes, most likely...] The oak island area may have been a area that many mystic people visited and performed there [sic] rituals and gave offerings. [Based on what?]

The oak island theory's get deeper as the treasure mystery deepens, these are exciting times for oak island. [I feel a tingle up my leg already.] I am not a freemason [Color me astonished.], but I find them mysteriously interesting, there [sic] basic symbols caught my attention' a long time ago. And I believe there [sic] secrets are encoded in the basic understanding of there [sic] symbolism. It is canny [huh?] that Hiram Abiff was killed by two directional tools, then by a blunt tool at the end of his demise, this probably explains the line through the oak island stone triangle and a right angle square, as a significant clue in solving the oak island mystery.

Did you get all that significance?

BTW, Ranville has a Paypal link, in case you wish to donate to further fund his new research. It seems the Oak Island Treasure hunting business hasn't quite paid off yet. But any day now...

Is Exeter, NH the East Coast "Roswell"?

2008-12-26T14:28:00.000-05:00

A multi-part article in www.seacoastonline.com (Part 1 is here) relates accounts of UFO sightings in and around Exeter, New Hampshire, dating all the way back to 1693, when the town was founded by upstarts booted out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

According to a journal quoted in today's article, describes the "Incident at Exeter":

"In this year (1639) one James Everell, a sober, discreet man, and two others, saw a great light in the night at Muddy River. When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton, and so up and down about two or three hours. They were come down in their lighter about a mile, and, when it was over, they found themselves carried quite back against the tide to the place they came from. Diverse other credible persons saw the same light, after, about the same place."

Modern sightings have been reported since the 1970s (possibly from nearby Pease AFB), although one group of blueberry pickers from Newton reported a UFO in a field with "little beings" collecting soil samples.

Even Congressman Dennis Kucinich (who—is this a punchline?—had a UFO encounter while visiting Shirley MacLaine's house) quipped during the presidential campaign he was going to open a campaign office in Roswell, NM and Exeter, NH.

(Photo: Andrew Ulery, manager of Exeter's "Loaf & Ladle" points to the location where he saw a "glowing orb" in the sky, using an umbrella left in his restaurant by Barack Obama during the primary season. No, really.)

UFO Group Pressures Obama To Release X-Files

2008-12-01T15:05:00.001-05:00

An organization calling itself the Extraterrestrial Phenomenon Political Action Committee (X-PPAC) has written to the President-Elect and demanded that he "end the six-decade truth embargo regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race".

The group is asking Obama to insist on a "full briefing from your military services and intelligence agencies regarding what they know" as well as open congressional hearings "to take testimony from scores of government witnesses who have already come forward with extraordinary evidence and are prepared to testify under oath."

X-PPAC believes they have at least two champions in Obama's incoming White House staff. Both John Podesta, who is running Mr Obama's White House transition team, and Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, who is expected to secure a cabinet post, have both professed public belief in UFO sightings.

From an article in the Telegraph yesterday:

Of course, us shape-shifting reptilian Freemasons will put a stop to THAT.

When he was the White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, Mr Podesta led a project to declassify 800 million pages of intelligence documents. In a press conference, still available to watch on the YouTube website, Mr Podesta said: "It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon."

Gov Richardson, a former presidential candidate and fellow UFO aficionado, has written a forward to a book on the so-called Roswell Incident in New Mexico, where campaigners believe an alien spacecraft crash landed near the town of Roswell in 1947 and that the corpses of humanoid aliens have been kept hidden under lock and key by the government.
He has called for full disclosure by the Pentagon of what really occurred and reiterated his belief that there had been a "cover-up" during a presidential debate last year.

The campaigners, who want the truth "out there", believe that the British Government's decision to declassify thousands of UFO sighting documents this year has made it untenable for the US to maintain its policy of non-disclosure.
Only last week a US Air Force pilot, Milton Torres, whose testimony was released from the British archives, appeared on US television explaining how he was ordered to shoot down a large UFO over the UK in 1957 and then silenced by military officials, who told him never to speak of the incident.

Stephen Bassett, Executive Director of the Extraterrestrial Phenomenon Political Action Committee, expects to have gathered 40,000 signatures via email and fax by Mr Obama's inauguration day on Jan 20 in support of his calls for openness.

France's Sarkozy calls For "New World Order"

2008-07-12T15:12:00.001-04:00

France's president Nicolas Sarkozy has called for a New World Order, under the aegis of the United Nations:

The United Nations should avail itself as an instrument for a "new world order of the 21st century," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday in his first address to the General Assembly. Sarkozy, who won the presidency this year on a strong reform platform to modernize France, urged the world body to embark on programmes ranging from equal wealth distribution to fighting corruption in his speech full of references to France's past revolutionary ideals.

"In the name of France, I call upon all states to join ranks in order to found the new world order of the 21st century on the notion that the common goods that belong to all of humankind must be the common responsibility for us all," he told the General Assembly.

The UN should ensure access for all human beings to vital resources, such as water, energy, food, medication and knowledge, he said. He called for "more morality" in "financial capitalism" and a fairer distribution of profits, earnings in commodities, raw materials and new technologies.

"There must be a change of mindset and behaviour," Sarkozy said in a long list of demands to the international community.

There MUST, must there?

Book Bargain

2008-06-18T05:42:00.000-04:00

Only the publishing Gods understand why some books go on sale and others don't.

Out of the blue, I noticed today that Amazon has slashed the price of Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies For Dummies down to a paltry $11.29. I will confess that's cheaper than I can buy it from the publisher myself. And if you order over $25 worth of stuff at one time, the order is eligible for free shipping.

They are also doing a package deal with Templar Code For Dummies, both books for $24.88.

I have lots of time to stare into the intertubes today.

My doctor informs me I have pneumonia.

This thrills me to my very core.