Tag: conspiracy

Conspiracy history, not conspiracy theory

As more and more historical conspiracies come to light, the government guard dogs are set on those who have methodically exposed them:

The more information we have about what governments and corporations are up to the less we seem to trust them. Will conspiracy theories eventually destroy democracy?

What if I told you I had conclusive proof that the moon landings were faked, but I had been told to keep it under wraps by my BBC bosses acting under orders from the CIA, NSA and MI6. Most of you would think I had finally lost my mind.

But, for some, that scenario – a journalist working for a mainstream media organisation being manipulated by shadowy forces to keep vital information from the public – would seem entirely plausible, or even likely.

We live in a golden age for conspiracy theories. There is a growing assumption that everything we are told by the authorities is wrong, or not quite as it seems. That the truth is being manipulated or obscured by powerful vested interests.

And, in some cases, it is.

“The reason we have conspiracy theories is that sometimes governments and organisations do conspire,” says Observer columnist and academic John Naughton.

It would be wrong to write off all conspiracy theorists as “swivel-eyed loons,” with “poor personal hygiene and halitosis,” he told a Cambridge University Festival of Ideas debate.

They are not all “crazy”. The difficult part, for those of us trying to make sense of a complex world, is working out which parts of the conspiracy theory to keep and which to throw away.

Mr Naughton is one of three lead investigators in a major new Cambridge University project to investigate the impact of conspiracy theories on democracy.

The lack of faith in democracy has nothing to do with the electorate being provided with more information about the behavior of its government regardless of how accurate that information is. The growing loss of belief in democracy as a system of government is a direct result of the electorate observing that no matter for whom and for what it votes, the ruling elite imposes whatever laws it wants.

And, as it happens, the Conspiracy Theory of History is the only one that can be supported by the historical facts.

My central belief with regards to all the various conspiracies is simple. The only thing you can be completely 100 percent certain of is that the one thing that absolutely did not happen is the government-approved, media-reported Official Story. The one and only thing that makes me suspect that the Moon landings were faked is the way various government employees and officials take the charges so seriously.

Well, that and the fact that Moon landings appear to be the one thing that 40+ years of technological advancement have rendered both more expensive and less possible.

NSA spying is useless

NSA head openly admits the Obama administration has been lying about the effectiveness of the NSA spying regime:

The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.

Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration.

Gen. Alexander and other intelligence chiefs have pleaded with lawmakers not to shut down the bulk collection of U.S. phone records despite growing unease about government overreach in the program, which was revealed in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and committee chairman, told Gen. Alexander of the 54 cases that administration officials — including the general himself — have cited as the fruit of the NSA’s domestic snooping.

“These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all foiled,” he said.

It’s not enough to shut down the spying. These lying bastards to the U.S. Constitution need to be put on trial for treason. The spying wouldn’t be justified even if it had foiled 54 plots, but the fact that the actual number is much more likely ZERO simply underlines that the most dangerous plot against the American people is the plotting being done by federal agents and appointed government officials.

NSA treason

It should be interesting to see how deeply the latest Snowden revelation concerning systemic Israeli spying on US citizens gets buried by the mainstream media:

Since 2009, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been sharing raw signals intelligence (SIGINT), including information about specific US people, directly with Israel’s counterpart to the NSA, The Guardian reported on Wednesday. The British newspaper’s revelation comes once again from the documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to American journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras.

According to the five-page memorandum of understanding, the agreement appears to be a one-way street. Israel, at least as far as this document is concerned, is not obligated to reciprocate….

The NSA knew that the Israelis might be looking at information about
US citizens—but they wanted to make sure that US government employees
weren’t snooped on. According to the document, Israel must immediately destroy any
communication that is “to or from an official of the US Government,”
including anyone from the executive, legislative, or judicial system,
“independent of seniority or position.”

Despite the cooperation, Israel is viewed as more of a “frenemey” than a close ally. The Guardian
also quoted from, but did not publish, what it described as “another
top secret document” from 2008, where a “senior NSA official points out
that Israel aggressively spies on the US.”

It should be informative to learn precisely who at the NSA was responsible for producing this memorandum of understanding. I expect it’s probably a group of Scots-Irish employees who are completely and singularly loyal to the American national interest.

And I’m certain the Israelis have been fastidious about destroying every email to or from a U.S. politician.

Vladimir Putin on Syria

It is tragic when the ruthless leader of Russia makes considerably more sense, and better expresses American national interests, than the President of the United States:

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every
reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition
forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who
would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are
preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in
foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in
America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world
increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying
solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan
“you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling,
and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw.
Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war
continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw
an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would
want to repeat recent mistakes.

At least Mr. Putin has given us a head’s up on what could be the next international false flag: a highly improbable inflammatory attack on Israel by either Iran or the Assad regime that isn’t in response to a US assault on Syria.

Meanwhile, our elected leaders demonstrate that Idiocracy was, indeed, prophetic:

“I almost wanted to vomit,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez, (D-N.J.) told CNN. 

He so totally wanted to hurl. So, we should, like, TOTALLY invade Syria. Because Holocaust. Duh.

“Putin’s NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American”
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 12, 2013

No, Mr. McCain, your presidential campaign was an insult to the intelligence of every American. And the fact that you still have a political career at all is testimony to the corrupt nature of the U.S. political system.

It’s not treason, it’s just free trade

So, the threat from al-Qaeda is so great that Americans have to give up all their civil liberties, while at the same time, al-Qaeda is being subsidized by the U.S. government:

Supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan have been getting U.S. military contracts, and American officials are citing “due process rights” as a reason not to cancel the agreements, according to an independent agency monitoring spending.

The U.S. Army Suspension and Debarment Office has declined to act in 43 such cases, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said today in a letter accompanying a quarterly report to Congress.

“I am deeply troubled that the U.S. military can pursue, attack, and even kill terrorists and their supporters, but that some in the U.S. government believe we cannot prevent these same people from receiving a government contract,” Sopko said.

But even that is less apparently treasonous than the US government directly supplying al-Qaeda, with whom it is supposedly at war, with heavy weaponry.  At this point, it looks as if Obama’s chief legacy will be having been the greatest gun salesman, both foreign and domestic, of all time.

It’s enough to almost make me wish I’d voted for him.

That’s reassuring

The USG declares it will not torture or kill Edward Snowden:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder wrote a letter to the Russian minister of justice assuring the Russian government that the U.S. will not seek the death penalty for National Security Agency leak source Edward Snowden if he is returned to the U.S. Seeking to push back on assertions Snowden made in his request for temporary asylum in Russia, Holder also said in the letter that the U.S. will not torture Snowden.

Of course, this IS the same government that said it wasn’t spying on the entire world’s email and telephone calls. And Eric Holder isn’t exactly the most trustworthy member of that government.

Hiding from the light

MIT is trying to conceal its involvement in the Aaron Swartz affair:

Lawyers representing MIT are filing a motion to intervene in my FOIA
lawsuit over thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the
late activist and coder Aaron Swartz…. MIT claims it’s afraid the release of Swartz’s file will identify the
names of MIT people who helped the Secret Service and federal
prosecutors pursue felony charges against Swartz for his bulk
downloading of academic articles from MIT’s network in 2011.

MIT argues that those people might face threats and harassment if
their names become public. But it’s worth noting that names of third
parties are already redacted from documents produced under FOIA.

I’ll post MIT’s motion here once it’s filed.

I have never, in fifteen years of reporting, seen a non-governmental
party argue for the right to interfere in a Freedom of Information Act
release of government documents. My lawyer has been litigating FOIA for
decades, and he’s never encountered it either. It’s saddening to see an
academic institution set this precedent.

I find it
fascinating to observe how organizations appear to be increasingly disposed to try keeping their
actions against individuals hidden from the public view.  I recently
received an email from the Canadian Regional Director complaining about
how I’d characterized his previous communications with me:

“The membership numbers in the online directory represent our best data. We do not track membership numbers by specific dates.

“I
note that you have misrepresented my answer to your last request on
your blog. Failure to correct this will be considered in reviewing your
response.

“As previously instructed, all further correspondence in this matter should be directed to me.”

As
requested, I replaced what I’d previously written with a direct quote
to avoid any possibility of misrepresentation. However, note that this is what he
claimed to be a misrepresentation of his answer:


“Mr. Johnson informed me that the membership numbers in the online
directory represent the organization’s best data and that SFWA does not
track membership numbers.”

Of course, if that is
misrepresentation, what is one to make of the numerous, shall we say,
less than entirely accurate representations contained in Mr. Johnson’s report to
the SFWA Board?  Will his failure to correct them also be considered by the Board?  Based on his last sentence, I fear I will
likely not be hearing back from the Secretary concerning the number of
members in the organization on the three dates requested, Article V,
Section 5 (c) of the SFWA bylaws notwithstanding.

The Harrowing of the Holy See

Pope Francis takes on the Lavender Lobby: 

A tide of lurid speculation, questionable accusations and possible blackmail attempts is buffeting the Vatican following Pope Francis‘s claim that he is preparing to tackle a gay lobby secretly at work behind the Holy See’s walls.

The new pope’s private comments to a group of visiting South American churchmen,
which caused a sensation when they appeared on a religious website last
week, prompted blushes in the Vatican and unleashed feverish gossip in
Rome regarding the contents of a report on Vatican infighting prepared
last year for Francis’s predecessor, Joseph Ratzinger.

On his
retirement in February, Ratzinger handed his Argentine successor the
dossier, which reportedly describes a lobby of gay, senior churchmen
inside the Vatican, running a network of patronage while fighting off
blackmailers. The pope’s unguarded remarks, which appeared to
confirm the speculation, have fuelled a new round of accusations,
beginning with a convicted paedophile priest, Father Patrizio Poggi, who
last week named nine fellow prelates in Rome as part of a secret band
who used a police officer to supply them with eastern European rent
boys.

It’s long been rumored in Italian Catholic circles that the Catholic hierarchy, and the Vatican itself, have been infested with homosexuals and secret Satanists since before Vatican II.  Many believed that while the Pope Emeritus’s resignation was to permit the next pope to take on that lobby, Cardinal Bergoglio was not his chosen successor for the task.  And there are certainly some Catholics, like Ann Barnhardt, who has reservations about Pope Francis’s ability to do what his predecessor could not:

Here’s the deal. Pope Francis, while the Vicar of Christ gloriously reigning, is not a terribly bright man. What brings Jorge Maria Bergoglio’s intellectual shortcomings into even starker relief is the fact that his predecessor, Benedict XVI Ratzinger is not only a bona fide genius, but also … still alive. Francis is a mediocre intellect, poorly educated, and a member of an order (the Jesuits) that is so far gone that it should be suppressed. Layer on top of this the generation of which Francis is a product: perhaps the most godless, evil, blind generation in human history, and add in the fact that while being poorly educated in the age of the hippy, he has also lived his entire life in South America, which has been more steadily and overtly influenced by Marxism, both in the secular world as well as in the Church, than either Europe or North America over the last fifty years.

Jorge Maria Bergoglio is the first “affirmative action” pope – which is a different thing entirely from nepotism. The College of Cardinals, again, not exactly a collection of the smartest men in the world – remember Tracksuit Timmy Dolan, dinner host of antichrists and celebrant of “gay” Masses, a man whose capacity for intellectual nuance is on par with a box of hair, is not only a cardinal, but the head of the U.S. Bishop’s conference – went into the conclave wanting to elect not the best man, not the brightest intellect, not the most competent manager. No. The criteria were racial and geographical. “Um, we need to have a pope from the Western Hemisphere. We need to have a pope from a Spanish-speaking country. We need to make the Latinos feel good and keep the Latino money flowing, because they are the only ones not contracepting themselves into extinction.”

And, if this culture of stupidity persists, then mark my words: they will elect a black African next time for no other reason than “affirmative action”.

Now, back to Francis’ sermonettes, and defending the press. There is a tremendous uproar on the internet with people cursing the Vatican Press Office for not releasing the full transcripts of Francis’ sermonettes but instead only piecemeal summaries consisting of brief quotes from Francis with press-written prose between the quotes to give context. “Give us the full transcripts!”

The reason they aren’t releasing the full transcripts is because Francis’ sermonettes are so rambling, so incoherent and sometimes so embarrassing in their delivery (verbal ticks like, “eh?” and “right?”) that the Vatican Press Office is trying to protect both Francis and the dignity of the Holy See by taking Francis’ stream-of-consciousness rhetorical sausage and presenting it as something that could maybe pass as steak.

On the other hand, intellectual genius and superlative rhetorical skill are no substitute for a determination and a willingness to give the necessary orders.  So, I suppose we shall have to wait and see.

Datagate goes international

I was catching up on the Italian news this morning and saw that Datagate is what the Italian press is calling the explosive new revelations that the NSA has secret agreements with European countries to spy on European citizens as well. The news is not quite so readily available in English, although Prachi Gupta’s article at Salon is still accessible:

The
NSA has been working with at least seven European other countries to
collect personal communications data, according to Wayne Madsen, a
former NSA contractor who has come forward because he does not think the
public should not be “kept in the dark.” According to Madsen, Denmark,
the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy all have formed secret
agreements with the US to submit sensitive data.

The Guardian reports:

Under
international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified
documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust
level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third
party relationships.

In an interview published last night on the PrivacySurgeon.org blog,
Madsen, who has been attacked for holding controversial views on
espionage issues, said he had decided to speak out after becoming
concerned about the “half story” told by EU politicians regarding the
extent of the NSA’s activities in Europe.

He said that under the
agreements, which were drawn up after the second world war, the “NSA
gets the lion’s share” of the sigint “take”. In return, the third
parties to the NSA agreements received “highly sanitised intelligence”.

The
news could be potentially damaging to countries, particularly Germany,
whose chancellor Angela Merkel has vocally condemned the NSA program
that recently came to light by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

This sounds like Echelon on steroids, dwarfing anything Orwell imagined in Big Brother. Moreover, as La Repubblica reports, the Observer article has already been removed from the web “pending an investigation: 

“Datagate, anche l’Italia collabora” 
Poi il Guardian rimuove la pagina web
Il Telegraph: quella fonte è inaffidabile
Foto Ma l’articolo è comunque finito in edicola

“Datagate, Italy also collaborates”
Afterwards the Guardian removes the web page
The Telegraph[sic]: that source is not found
Photo But the article is nevertheless still on the newspaper stand

Note that La Repubblica mistakenly refers to The Telegraph when the link actually refers to The Guardian.  These revelations should give a massive boost to the growing anti-Merkel forces in Germany, as it reveals her to be a shameless and bald-faced liar.

Spontaneous automotive combustion

The LAPD quickly rules out foul play in the fiery demise of Michael Hastings, investigative reporter:

The Los Angeles Police Department said there appears to be no foul play in the one-vehicle accident that killed journalist Michael Hastings.

The Los Angeles County coroner on Thursday
positively identified Hastings as the driver of a Mercedes that crashed
on Highland Avenue near Melrose Avenue on Tuesday morning. Hastings’ involvement with hot-button stories has led to a
variety of conspiracy theories arising on the Internet over his death.
But LAPD officials said the incident appears to have been an accident
and that no other vehicles were involved. Officials are trying to
determine whether there was a mechanical problem with the car. The
sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was
ongoing….

Hastings was best known for a 2010 Rolling Stone profile that led to the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Hastings was a contributing editor to the magazine.

In related news, the Federal Security Service announced that it suspects no foul play in the recent series of Russian emigrant deaths in the United Kingdom.  Has anyone informed the LAPD that it is only in the movies that Mercedes automobiles explode on impact?

Steve Sailer, who lives very close to the scene, appears to have a few doubts himself:

Nothing to see here, folks, move along, nothing to see here. It’s just
the top investigative journalist of his generation charbroiled in his
new Mercedes, so keep moving. Hey, did you hear about Kim Kardashian?
Now, that’s what I call news.

I wonder if Matt Taibbi is considering a move to Hong Kong?  First Breitbart, now Hastings.  At the very least, he should stay away from Los Angeles.

UPDATE: One of the witnesses said: “It sounded like a bomb going off.  The house shook; the windows were rattling.”