politics | Skeptical Humanities

This Week in Conspiracy (9 Sept 2012)

September 9, 2012

Apparently, the entire Internet did not appreciate the meaning of last week’s conspiracy-related snark. What I was trying to say was that you should not take conspiracy theories at face value because they are often unreliable. So I’m going to do another week, and I would very much appreciate it if the entire Internet would give me its full attention. Surely that is not too much to ask? Please try to keep up, Internet.

A document suggests that FDR knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. A DOCUMENT!?! Of course, it’s something signed by FDR telling his generals to park all of the fighters in the middle of the runway so the Japanese could strafe them. Maybe an order directing the Admirals of his beloved Navy (of which FDR was once Secretary) to stow their ammunition ahead of the anticipated attack. Nope! It’s a story from the daughter of a guy who said that that he talked with FDR about the impending attack. Hearsay twice removed. Technically I guess that’s a document. Oh, there’s also some low-level bickering about decoding methods that doesn’t mention FDR.
The President cracks wise about the Birthers.
That did not take long. A full-length documentary about the James Holmes conspiracy.
“HAARP is down, I repeat HAARP is down.” This, of course, means that all weather is suspended until further notice.
Chuck Norris warns of 1000 years of darkness is Obama is re-elected. If it means that I don’t have to see Chuck’s face for the next millenium, then I’m totally voting for Obama. Perhaps we could get a thousand years of silence too? *hopeful eyelash flutter*
I read pretty good, but I am not sure how Richard Gage ended up in this letter to the editor. Maybe it was written by Grandpa Simpson.
2 fighter jets escorting a UFO! Make sure to read the redditors’ hilarious comments about this one:

The Reptilians’ undersea base has been destroyed, according to the Andromeda Council. Thank goodness. It seems that David Icke has not yet gotten the message. (It’s an old video he reposted after the destruction of the base.)
Bigfoot hunting academic lives in his own private Idaho.
HOLD ON! WHAT THE HELL IS THE ANDROMEDA COUNCIL?!?! That is all.
Government’s plan to aid mentally ill veterans and their families is JUST LIKE HITLER’S!!!!rage!!!!
Vigilant Citizen has still not caught on to the possibility that the music industry might be using the Illuminati motif to, you know, generate buzz in the not-think-so-well-o-sphere. In related news, if you want to see the worst movie analysis ever, watch this video.
9/11 truther deaths and the post hoc ergo hoc fallacy.
Steven Greer is still talking. Why won’t it stop?
Well, it’s about time that the UN got on with the conquering and exterminating. They’ve been planning it for YEARS! The article is called, “UN Termination Ships Preparing to Set Sail Worldwide,” and the source is http://www.AmericanHolocaustComing.blogspot.com. This is a good example of 1) the Christian variety of the NWO conspiracy and 2) how not to use confidential sources.
Interstellar racism from the disturbingly melted wax figurines at Exopolitics: “Glyphs Affirm Pleiadians as Extraterrestrial Originators of the Australian Aboriginals.” If you can’t trust a glyph, well, what can you trust?
Gordon J. Gianninoto wonders if Obama is going to announce Planet X and the ET presence. His planet X is between the earth and the sun, which, uh, would be orbitally impossible to keep hidden because we’d all see it either right before sunrise or after sunset. Unless his Planet X is Venus or Mercury, but really, how much of a bump in the polls could Obama expect from announcing the discovery of Mercury? Come on, people.
When English teachers go bad. Every factual assertion this guy makes about 9/11 is dubious. But I’d like to give Brent Harold a single solid thump to the nose before I’m done with his endorsement of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth movie: “The brain trust of engineers and academics who question the official version of 911 seems at least as impressive as the large majority of scientists who stand behind climate change science.” OK. I know 90 percent of professional climate scientists are behind the anthropogenic climate change model. How do Gage’s numbers compare? Well, there are 1.5 million engineers in the US. Assuming that all of the “building professionals” who signed Gage’s petition were US engineers (and they are NOT), that would be 1700+ engineers. So, when I’m wildly generous about how many engineers have signed on, about 1/10 of 1% of engineers think that this is a viable hypothesis. This could only be more fringe if I used the actual numbers of engineers who signed. I know English professors are notoriously bad at math, Brent, but this is embarrassing.
Here’s the poor sonofabitch who answers the 2012 mail for NASA.
Man, I need to look at this climate science denial/conspiracy theory belief study! But who has the time?
Ah, reddit doesn’t suffer credulousness lightly. See their headline for the climate deniers’ response to the previous story, for instance.
Is there a massive pyramid at Area 51?

Nope.

Cliff Kincaid says that George Soros (the boogeyman that conservatives use to terrify their children into obedience and from whom I receive my instructions daily) “started the Akin controversy,” as opposed to Akin, who basically said that rape doesn’t cause pregnancies. It’s despicable buck-passing.
We Are Change continues to be almost too embarrassing to watch. They almost make me want to defend Condoleezza Rice. Almost. Also, they interviewed Grand Master Flash.
Everyone remembers 9/11 in their own way. AE911Truth does it by irritating people.
Bob Saget on 9/11 Truth. The comments are positively perplexing.
“Fox’s Dick Morris: Clinton “Wants Obama Defeated” But Won’t Say “Because His Wife Is A Hostage … They’ll Kill Her If He Loses“”
From our friends at the indispensable Rational Wiki, an annotated version of Sovereign Citizen classic “Citizen’s Rule Book.” Love it.
Wanna see something really racist?! ME NEITHER!
Oh! It’s so cute! A communist conspiracy! I miss those.
In what I shall now use to teach the “slippery slope fallacy,” a guy named Roscoe says that federal student loans could lead to a Holocaust.
Via my former student @AlwaysStandOut, “10 Creepy Conspiracy Theories.” If you master these, you’ll have a pretty good handle on the field.
My new favorite video ever: Apollo astronauts being painfully honest with moon landing denialists:

Gais! Gais! People from Portland are going to have really gross teeth! Let’s sit back and watch.
Jonathan Kay interviewed by some guy. My fellow Americans, we’re scaring the Canadians.

Twit of the week:

Alex Jones, who just couldn’t be more of a scam artist:

My gut tells me #Gold is only going up. Call Midas Resources & Ask about the ‘Alex Jones Specials’ 800-fwe-f2w7 — Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones)

As Carl Sagan said in the reading I just assigned my students, “I try not to think with my gut.”

That’s what I have. We’ll have another episode of the Virtual Skeptics live on Wednesday night at 8:00PM Eastern. Keep your eyes here or watch for the #virtualskeptics hashtag.

RJB

3 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, academia, history, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (3 Sept 2012)

September 3, 2012

The summer has almost ended. In the morning, I teach my first class in Wisconsin. I’m teaching two different syllabi this semester, the first time I’ve done that in a while. I’m teaching 2 sections of “Conspiracy Theory” and a section of “Extraordinary Claims.” The extraordinary claims course will be for more developmental writers, but it is still a seminar class, which is fun.

As you might imagine, I have been rather busy over the last few days, getting things together for the class and so on. Add to that the fact that my smart phone (where I first pick up most of my leads for this feature) committed suicide this week, and you will see that my offerings are somewhat limited. Nevertheless we persevere!

News flash: Joseph Farah is still a creep. This time he calls the Southern Poverty Law Center a hate group. Ah, the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” defense. How…piquant. Of course, he shouldn’t have linked to the article he was talking about, since the SPLC article is far more nuanced that Farah acknowledges and shows that Farah in fact declined an interview. Sue them or shut up, Joe.
When Obama did an AMA on reddit, which clogged the site, people accused the White House of sockpuppetting. The person who posted the so-called softball question has come out.
It looks like the Republican National Convention platform committee did in fact adopt the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory.
Sigh. “West Nile Virus ‘Outbreak’ Justifies Spraying Toxic Chemicals onto Citizens.” It’s tiresome to endlessly have to explain that toxicity depends in part on dosage. I would say, however, that 41 people dying counts as an “outbreak” in my book, and not an ” ‘outbreak’ “.
Veterans are disappearing into Nazi-like psychiatric centers!
WAL-MART IS THE LAW!
You want to know why returning to the gold standard is such a colossally bad idea? The Atlantic wants to tell you.
Is Ron Paul a Masonic Jew? The Red Pill Factory (not connected to “Big Pharma”) wants to know.
It’s hard to believe that Ron Paul wasn’t just handed the keys to the White House outright, amirite? Take the following article from the Daily Paul, which was so frantic that they ran out of title: “Expected Mass Arrests Of Banksters And Affiliated Government Officials by Military, Sheriffs, Militia For Committing Treason And.” (To be fair, this was voted WAY down by users.)
At David Icke’s site, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. No, that’s the real name of the post.
Why in the World Are They Spraying is now out. I saw the world premier of “What in the World Are They Spraying” in Atlanta a few years ago, but I’m pretty sure you can watch the sequel without knowing what happened in the first one. I saw the first one and had no idea what was going on.
Breathtaking bigot Laurie Roth: Obama and Islam Taking Over America–Just as Planned.
Al-Jazeera reports on the conspiracy theories that have dogged Obama.
I don’t know who Bill Whittle is, but I instantly dislike him (dude, look up FERPA). Take his coverage of Barack Obama, and then look at what the Daily Show did to the premise of this weird screed:

Joe Paterno conspiracy theories.
It seems there is a new academic paper out on the type of people who deny climate change…but in the news coverage I do not see “genuinely misinformed,” which gives me pause. Guess I must read this sucker myself.
Popeye at Federal Jack, who once “called me out,” argues, NYC was not hit by a hurricane on 9/11, therefore 9/11 was an inside job. Of course, no hurricanes at all hit the STATE of New York that year, but the important thing was that NYC was not hit on September 11th. Because that’s how evidence works. (My reply to Plopeye is here.)
The Romney campaign threatened “to drop a PR A-Bomb on Ron Paul’s name and legacy.” Why they’d do that after Ron Paul already has is beyond me.
Jonathan Kay: France’s investigation into Arafat’s death is catnip for conspiracy theorists.
Rep. Allen West showed a film at the RNC that claims that the so-called “Ground Zero mega-mosque” is part of a plan to impose Sharia on the US.
NO. This is not how you do it, Ruth Manuel-Logan. You don’t get to recite a litany of debunkings of the “CIA created crack” conspiracy theory and end your article with: “What do I say? The U.S. government is pretty proficient at covering up what they don’t want us to know, so the jury is still out as far as I’m concerned.” You’re essentially saying, “I have no evidence. But fuck that.” Try thinking, please. It’s soooo satisfying.
Salon and SPLC join forces in reporting on the claim that Hurricane Isaac was brewed up by the Dems. Of course, Alex Jones thinks it’s being used to acclimatize us to having the military in our streets.
I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of this case of militia members in Georgia killing one of their own.
Arizona, I’m pretty sure you are why Canada is scared of us. Arizona GOP happy to say they don’t want American baby-killing Middle Eastern Moooslims in the state, like, at all. Not even legally. The rationale seems to be that if they put on big sombreros you can’t tell the difference between them and Mexicans.
Ha ha! Robert Scheaffer (whose book I picked up at TAM) lays bare the CSI-CIA connection!
The award for the classiest comment of the week goes to Jason Bermas, who twot upon hearing that Arlen Specter’s cancer had reappeared:

Is this the end of cover up establishment Warren Commission Puppet Arlen Specter? http://t.co/XACbCEkx – Jason Bermas (@JasonBermas)

Headline of the Week:

A Bald Woman In A Red Dress Wants The Alleged Aurora Shooter Released Into Her Custody

That gem was closely followed by this one from the Village Voice blog:

Donald Trump Makes An Ass Of Himself In Florida, Surprises No One

Twits of the Week:

Not only does Obama’s birth certificate not exist, OBAMA DOESN’T EVEN EXIST. #eastwooding — Paul Fidalgo (@PaulFidalgo)

Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox)
8/30/12 5:33 PM
Uh, the Ron Paul people are putting on black armbands.

(Unfortunately, it was later reported that Ron Paul was in fact still alive and healthy.)

That’s all for now, people! Now, where do I pick up my big government shill check?

FYI, we have another edition of the Virtual Skeptics coming up this Wednesday at 8:00PM Eastern in our Google+ On Air hangout. As far as stories go, we’ve scooped the most popular skeptic podcast two weeks in a row. We’re going for a three-fer!

RJB

4 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, critical thinking, fun, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (26 Aug 2012)

August 26, 2012

I am reliably informed that another week has passed and that it is time for another dumpster dive into the week that was weak. Lots of stuff competed for the top spot on the list this time around. Let’s have at it.

This week Mitt Romney, in the words of Jonathan Kay, “blew the Birther dog whistle.” Here’s Slate’s take on the birther joke. International press caught wind of it, and the Obama campaign, of course, pounced on it like a frolicsome puppy.
In Texas, a judge recommended preparing for the civil war/UN invasion that would come when Obama was reelected. He should be institutionalized and kept well away from the bench. The UN denied any such plans and twirled its evil mustachio, but we know that the UN troops are actually training down the road in Minneapolis. For the record, however, I would support the invasion and occupation of Lubbock.
Todd Akin, or as he is known in the House, “The Honorable Mr. Angry Sperm Fighting Secretions Guy,” blamed the liberal media for his plight. The problem is, of course, that the entire Republican party, including some of the insane ones, wanted him to step down.
What if the town of Eureka were a real place…on the Moon? A breakaway civilization?
Here’s a ripe little slice of hell: Scientologists for Ron Paul at the RNC.
Smug conservative is smug. Also, pushes increasingly popular idea that George Soros is funding…everything.
From my new departmental colleague Michael J. Faris comes a report of the always level-headed Rush Limbaugh blaming Obama for the hurricane bearing down on Tampa.
CNN: New Swift-Boaty film “silly.”
God, the IntelHub is such a yawn. But the military does actually have a problem with racism and some of its vets do seem to link up with other racists while in the service. Tim McVeigh comes to mind.
Pussy Riot was deceived into breaking the law by U.S. NGOs.
Here’s someone taking a page from Michelle “I’ll Put Anyone At Risk For an Imaginary Point Especially If They Are Swarthy Also I Scare Children” Bachmann’s book. Jonathan Kay, again, also had a take on this.
Monica Crowley is a moron. This is not an ad hominem. This is a conclusion.
After the Republican Convention, sheriff outfit owner Joe Arpaio is hosting Britherpalooza.
Also in the broiling hell hole that is Arizona, employees at a water treatment plant have failed to fluoridate the municipal water for 2 years.
“Be it here resolved that Ron Paul is basically a dink.”
Exopolitics.org never fails to deliver the goods: “HAARP-Chemtrails WMD Exposing a Spiritual Mass Mind-control and Planetary Assault“. I wish I got to put such talk titles on my CV.
A Sovereign Citizen is running for Sheriff in NH, Josh Bunting reports. This is the same guy who is cool with using deadly force to stop abortions. I don’t know if he’s talking about shooting the doctors or the mothers, one of which would be quite ironic.
“Since the tragic event at Cinema 16 in Aurora, Colorado, I have been working like a woman possessed to document the evidence which connects this tragedy to the London Olympics.”
I checked. Not a Poe. Planned Parenthood gets kids hooked on sex to sell them abortions. With hilarious party favors. (Warning: this video should not be watched without children present):

A fun little article about the Satanic Illuminati’s control of the music industry, correctly, I think, going way back to Robert Johnson and even earlier for the roots of the story.
It’s true. Julian Assange has woven a gigantic conspiracy theory surrounding his rape charge. David Allen Green has done an excellent take-down of the conspiracy theory, which has earned him the twitter-ire of the devout.
Director Tony Scott faked his own death.

TWIT OF THE WEEK

An embarrassment of riches this week, really.

The Onion ‏@TheOnion
Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked http://onion.com/RNPcUe #InFocus

David Allen Green ‏@DavidAllenGreen
Already woo-woos are disputing both the shadows and flags of Neil Armstrong’s funeral service.

Tom Dullemond ‏@Cacotopos
Today it is every person’s solemn duty to punch a moon-landing-hoax conspiracist. #RIPNeilArmstrong

And then there was this guy:

Murad Merali ‏@OhSweetArabia
400+ died today in Syria but they get NO recognition. A man dies who supposedly went to the moon is everywhere. Our society is diabolical

The response to Mitt’s birther joke was swift on the Internet:

Mitt Romney: “I’m not racist for bringing up Obama’s birth certificate. I’m just PANDERING to racists. Totally different.” — Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat)

Mitt Romney: “No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. They only do that to demean black people, which I am clearly not.” — Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat)

Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff)
Rush Limbaugh loved Mitt Romney’s birther joke. That’s like John Wayne Gacy raving about one of your clown paintings.

BREAKING: Tampa is reporting a serious shortage of tin foil. #p2 #uppers — Joseph J. Santorsa (@Marnus3)

Oh, what the hell. Let’s just make this the “All Jon Kay, All the Time” edition of the roundup.

“@JosephFarah: County plans no-church zone http://t.co/5deqws64 R we still living in USA?” Ha! this from guy who led Ground 0 mosque freakout — Jonathan Kay (@jonkay)

And that’s all for now. I’m going to go pick deer ticks off myself after my birdwatching romp in the woods this afternoon. Now that I don’t have to wear a “Live Strong” bracelet anymore, perhaps I should consider putting a flea and tick collar around my wrist?

RJB

2 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (19 Aug 2012)

August 20, 2012

What ho! The Virtual Skeptics has gotten off to a real whiz-bang of a start. It streams live at 8:00PM Eastern on Wednesday nights. It’s like Meet the Press, but with chupacabras.

But not all of the free, live content in the world could keep me from plucking the ripest lowest-hanging fruit from the tree of conspiracy and hurling it at your head. So, head’s up!

From the Daily Mail, which is known for such things, testimony that TWO alien spaceships crashed in Roswell.
Gawker collects some excellent conspiracy theories related to the Olympics and includes a really nifty graphic. (Anybody else notice how not blown up the Olympics were, conspiracists’ speculations not withstanding?) Also, Iran claims that the Olympics are a Zionist plot or something.
There’s my boy! Vigilant Citizen, surprise sur-freaking-prise, finds that the opening ceremonies were full of occult symbolism.
While we’re doing lists, how about a round up of some economic conspiracy theories analyzed by Business Insider? And PBS covers the relationship between the Fed and the Treasury.
Here’s a humdinger! Obama plans for a military takeover in October, which, you know, duh, but you should see the elaborate preparations!

We have mass graves dug all over America for the planned killing of millions of the Middle Class of America. We have had a large number of guillotines that have been shipped to America. Chopping off of heads is the Islamic way of killing off your enemies. We have secret federal concentration camps set up all across America. C.I.A. and other intelligence sources are supposed to help engineer terrible economic conditions in America for October to help stir up the people to mass discontent, rioting in the streets, etc. and this gives Obama the legal excuse to place America under martial law. Foreign soldiers are already arranged to help mass disarm the American people of all their guns. Homeland Security for example has already been notified to prepare for massive uprisings in America in October.

The US has developed a weapon that takes away spirituality.
Factcheck.org looks at the conspiracy of Obama’s “sealed records” and finds them complete bunk. Meanwhile, Rep. Allan West tells the White House, “We’ll show you ours if you show us yours.“
The Iron Paw of the New World Order. (Funny.)
The male birth control pill is part of a eugenics plot, presumably to cull the rich white people who can afford it, I imagine.
Want to manufacture rage? Take hints from this article about the hidden racism in an Obama campaign letter.
Not a conspiracy, but found at perhaps the nuttiest conspiracy theory site out there: “Are indigo children natural time travelers?“
This week, Truther Rosie O’Donnell had a heart attack. It was probably the same heart-attack machine that killed Breitbart.
Director Tony Scott was killed by the Illuminati for ridiculing them.
Is a broken streetlight connected to a global plot? (Amusing.)
You might want to read this legal write-up by David Allen Green about myths regarding Julian Assange’s extradition. Green’s column is usually quite solid and interesting.
Michael Shermer writes about why people believe conspiracy theories; the comments are interesting, as they always are. There was a reply to this at Before It’s News (which I may have to use in class), which opens with this line:

The mocking of conspiracy theories in the American press and Western media is based on the simplistic argument that reason is on the side of the government and officialdom, not on the fringe of society and civilization.

The AFA has blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for the Family Resource Council shooting. In the last paragraph, they make it clear that they just want to get off the “hate group” list. Maybe they should try not being such horrible fucking people, AFA. God forbid people judge you for blaming gays for the Holocaust.
By the way, Mark Potok of SPLC had an op ed in the NYT about the threat hate groups pose.
So, uh, Canada…could you guys not let Russia invade us? kthxbai.
Sorry. I meant the UN.
Did the Boehner blame the drought on Obama?
This NBC report discusses the idea that a UFO has been seen over a South Pole research station, but I have also seen Nibiru blamed.
Dame Janet Suzman puts Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance in their proper little ignominious place about Shakespeare conspiracies.
Megadeath’s Dave Mustaine says Obama staged the “Dark Knight” shootings and says they are a cover for gun control legislation. Also is a loon. Furthermore, if this guy is right, then Obama has to be either working for the Mossad or the ADL, because, as Hank Williams, Jr. said on stage last week, this is exactly what a Muslim would do. And it totally explains why one of the ER nurses who responded to the shooting had to be drowned.
Of course, Mustaine has only pissed off Nikki Sixx. You better look out, Dave. He’ll umlaut you.
Why do government agencies with security teams need standard issue bullets? IntelHub asks questions so tough only FoxNews can answer them. Josh Bunting covered this too. Actually, Rand Paul, who I find utterly odious, made a funny joke about this one, but ThinkProgress has no sense of humor.
“Why in the World Are They Spraying?” premiered at a chemtrial conference in L.A.
Secret document reveals the staggering dullness of Bilderberger meetings.
Jason Bermas (creator of Loose Change) has a new movie coming out, and judging by the trailer it’s filled with failures and fear.
A FOIA dump finds Alex Jones all over it.
The Pussy Riot church protest was actually a State Department stunt.
Wife of 9/11 Commission member killed in accident. So of course it was an Illuminati hit.

Conspiracy Theory of the Week:

My favorite report of the week came from the venerable Weekly World News:

“The One Percent Buy Out the Illuminati“

That’s it for this week! Check out the Virtual Skeptics this Wednesday at 8:00PM Eastern! Pip pip!

RJB

1 Comment | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, history, literature, politics, Uncategorized, Virtual Skeptics, who was shakespeare | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (12 June 2012)

June 22, 2012

I’ve been sitting around Atlanta for weeks waiting for classes to start. To keep myself occupied, I’ve been combing through the conspiracy literature, reading for my upcoming class on the Cold War, and generally puttering about contentedly. I also watched a disturbing amount of Deadliest Catch (which is “any Deadliest Catch,” by the way).

Currently, I am up in Minnesota, where I failed to find a house for the next semester. I met members of my new department in Eau Claire, WI, which was delightful, and I have a jump on how to think about my upcoming class. So that was productive. I also hit n00b night at the Minnesota Skeptics and met some of the people who live in my electronic friend box. But not all the squeaky cheese in the world would keep me from bringing you up to speed on the weak that was weak! Perhaps delay me for a week or two, but that’s it.

Man Skydives Through Chemtrail (ht rationalwiki.org)
Last week, Ron Paul announced what has been obvious to the rest of us…always. He announced that he’s not going to be the Republican nominee. His followers went 5 types of ballistic. Alex Jones begged Paul to not destroy himself. Then Rand Paul, who is still a Republican Senator, announced he would support the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney. Paulites went ballistic, accusing him of being a sellout, of being a traitor, of every political calumny possible a political calumnist, if that is a word. But then the InfoWars group came up with a nice narrative that explained everything: The Bilderbergers threatened to assassinate Ron Paul, forcing Rand to support the Bilderberger candidate. The source for the assassination story, as discussed last week, was Jim Tucker’s backside. Meanwhile, Steve Shives, who I don’t know, really nailed down the creepy failure of a movement that Ron Paul leads after he was bombarded with the full force of that movement’s collective idiocy. Take Luke Rudkowski, for instance, who we was on vacation in DC this week and confronted (which I think means “was ignored by”) Rand Paul. This was only days after the IntelHub praised Rand for his take on airport security: ”The TSA’s Number One Enemy: Rand Paul: http://t.co/1kh3uwBJ #TSA #RandPaul #GOP #tyranny #RonPaul — IntelHub (@IntelHub)” Just wait until they find out he collects social security! Of course, the Paulbots are suing the GOP for intimidation. Guys, you’re not a political movement. You’re Scientology.

Or how about Mark Dice’s reaction?

Mark Dice (@MarkDice)
6/8/12 1:27 AM
And Rand Paul announced it on #SeanHannity‘s show!!#ScrewRandPaul.

AMERICANS STORM STREETS AGAINST OBAMACARE: Overflow of Republicans Back Up the Sewers. This made the list because of the conflation of the New World Order, which is an imaginary entity, to the ComIntern, which was real but, let’s face it, never really had a chance here after the Depression ended. And even then…
Here’s one that missed the mainstream news cycle: The Russians set off a nuclear weapon in Michigan last week, the first of a series of attacks that will set off the New Madrid Fault and destroy Chicago. 1) The fault in Arkansas/Tennessee. 2) Michigan was nuked? 3) This warning dictated by “Yahweh, yea Jehovah, Most High God” to Linda Newkirk. You know, God used to write Bibles, but now he’s slumming it on Before It’s News. How the Almighty have fallen, eh? (The nuke story seems to be making the rounds after a crowd-sourced radiation tracking site showed a spike near South Bend at ridiculous numbers. It seems to have been a wonky geiger counter. Doubtful News has an able write up and explanation.)
Alex Jones and other people continue to cite a fake magazine to prove that the editors were in on 9/11.
Bono’s ruthless atrocities against poor people continue.
Yay! Trystero is real!
Why you don’t want to wake up the sheeple.
World911truth.org, in their write up of an international fugitive who says he’s being framed but probably just shot his wife in the head, miraculously manages to independently author most of the contents of his wikipedia article.
David Allen Green discusses the misuse of language of witch hunts. It seemed relevant.
Arthur Goldwag looks at the intersection of creationism and conspiricism.
The last time the Bilderbergers will be mentioned this year: Tony Sobrado has an explanation of the Bilderbergers’ role in the global economy.
Bob Tuskin news brief: “Circumcision is Trauma Based Mind Control.” He says, “It might sound crazy.” There’s no “might” about it, Bob.
Bill Donohue worries about the gay agenda:
Ironically, Mike Adams publishes an article about how to spot a sociopath.
At the same time, WND founder and birther Joseph Farah loses his lawsuit against Esquire for defamation over satirical blog post. He is now legally a laughingstock. And Joseph Farah. Farah gets a double mention this week because he is just completely without use or shame or decency, when he ups the ante on the Obama story, now speculating about Obama’s mama. He’s a toilet goblin.
BBC tries to convince people that 7/11 conspiracy theories aren’t real. Conspiracy theorists call it a “hit piece.”
Dear Arizona: Your choice of Secretary of State makes you a punchline. He’s clearly never heard of FERPA? All school records are private and have been since 1974 :

“So if there was weird stuff going on,” he said, “I actually think it was happening back in his college days because I think he has spent $1.5 or $2 million through attorneys to have all of the college records and all of that stuff sealed. So if you’re spending money to seal something, that’s probably where the hanky panky was going on.”

Speaking of pigs, Stephen Colbert uncovers the gay vegan agenda behind the Hamlet the pig video.
The birther conspiracy continues, by the way, with the discovery of a document that proves that the document discovered doesn’t mention Barack Obama!
Russia Today reports that the Director of the CIA beat up his deputy in front of Obama.
9/11 Truthers freak out when they are compared to alien abductees and Bigfoot hunters by Stephen Colbert. Actually, I saw something similar at TruthCon last year. 9/11 Truthers had been invited to appear alongside UFO disclosure advocates, but the Truthers did not want to appear crazy.
Russian and America are racing to retrieve an underwater UFO that resembles the Millenium Falcon. Don’t we already have dozens of crashed UFOs, guys? What is old is new, I suppose?
The Feds are planning to raid summer concerts and confiscate Gibson guitars. This is the deal: For the second time in a couple of years Gibson Guitars has been raided by the Feds under suspicion of illegally using protected imported woods. Gibson has spun it as the Obama administration persecuting the company and released a warning that the gummint might confiscate the instruments of touring musicians who bring their guit-fiddles across the border. It was shameful corporate conspiracy mongering, and I will never buy a Gibson new ever again, even though I prefer the sound of a Gibson guitar to my mother’s own voice. Of course, even if the confiscations were true, it would be the fault of Gibson of selling their customers a product made from illegal source wood. In this version of the conspiracy theory, it seems that the Feds are going to…what, start a bigger concert riot than Axl Rose ever dreamed of? Horsefeathers. And you can quote me on that.
Future fellow TAM humanities panelist Amy Roth tweeted a link to an article about an independent study that says the TSA’s backscatter scanners are safe. IntelHub: “Nuh-uh!“
Meanwhile, in measured caution: “Fukushima Update: Contamination Alert For All Lifeforms Pulled From The Pacific.” This is a persistent story that feeds on scientific illiteracy. See for example: The Fukushima power plant now a nuclear weapon.
Jesse Ventura is suing an actual SEAL who claims he deservedly kicked the former Governor’s ass. (Ventura was in underwater demolition, not actually a SEAL.)
A prankster made up a story about the Governor of Hawaii forging the President’s birth certificate at Kinko’s. As a result, bozos behaved in a decidedly bozo-like manner. Idiocy increases exponentially when idiots gather together in front of the Federal Reserve.
Adam Kokesh, Luke Rudkowski, and Mark Dice come out from under their bridges to troll Washington, D.C. Take their excursion to the Federal Reserve, for instance. (Notice how nice the cops are and how even the dogs ignore them.) While they were in D.C., they bothered people in line for the National Archives. They presented people with the declassified “Operation Northwoods” proposal. They didn’t mention that the guy who proposed it lost his job shortly thereafter.
Gay marriage on military bases will…what, exactly? I don’t know what the security risk is here, but small-minded Louisiana bigot Rep. John Fleming seems to invoke security when he objects to the idea.
Bill Gates and the World Health Organization ominously want to vaccinate the poor children in the world. Yep.
It’s nice to see the pan-Africanists making nice with the white nationalists in opposition to the Jews. (facepalm)
David Icke just got demoted in my book by posting a video about Elie Wiesel conning the world. I think that he is a very smart and talented guy who has gone off the deep end (not his fault), but he has flirted too consistently with racist America militias to be left off the hook entirely.
A sort of corollary of Icke’s belief that the moon is a spaceship is Zen Gardner’s interpretation of a study of lunar nanoparticles, which he seems to think might be evidence of an engineered moon. Nano is the new quantum. Ha!
And micro is the new nano. Micronukes in the WTC, courtesy of IntelHub.
In confirmation that the world is absurd, Glenn Beck just got a big bump in pay, $100 million over 5 years.
A kind of crummy list of Eurozone conspiracies.
Really? “In his own words?” Kurt, do you know what words mean?
Yay! Arctic death camps for American traitors! I call dibs on a bunk by the window!

Twits of the Week

This has become a favorite feature-within-a-feature for me. I get a lot of joy/agony out of the twitterverse. Here’s agony:

#DefineObamaInOneWord Satanist — Kn0Wledge[!] (@An0nKn0wledge)

Here’s joy:

In KENYAN. // RT @UberFacts “Barack Obama has read every Harry Potter book to his daughters.” — BillCorbett (@BillCorbett)

Here’s some unintentional irony, in tweet form:

Dear Occupiers who hate me, just remember I was at the #BilderbergProtest aka #OccupyBilderberg for four straight days. Were you? — Mark Dice (@MarkDice)

Anyway, Eve and I are both going to be appearing at TAM in a few weeks, and my classes have started up again. I will do my best to keep the conspiracy coming!

RJB

3 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, history, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

New Conspiracy Guy post up at CSI site

June 21, 2012

My most recent “Conspiracy Guy” column is up at CSI. It’s called, “Tim McVeigh’s Must-Read List: The Turner Diaries.” As always, I encourage comments here, as the CSI site does not offer that option. It’s a pretty goddamned awful book I’m discussing with a pretty goddamned good scholar, Tom Lolis.

RJB (codename: Defiant Taco)

1 Comment | humanities, literature, mass media, politics | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (3 June 2012)

June 4, 2012

Eve and I are back from a whirlwind tour of Savannah, GA, and the whole time I was there I kept thinking how screwed I would be if a tsunami hit. We did ghost tours (ouch), we kicked around tide pools, and I got my first mild sunburn in years. Meanwhile, the Bilderbergers were meeting in Virginia, attracting every damned nut with a enough coin, or enough chutzpah to beg enough coin, to go and protest. This week in conspiracy was a week in Bilderberg conspiracy theories.

This year, in keeping with their reputation for secrecy, the Bilderbergers put their entire attendance roster up on the web, and they were covered in the Washington Post.
The best/worst part of the whole affair was the live streaming of the protests. Lots of screaming, lots of grandstanding, not a lot of effect.
Even the clownish WorldNewsDaily got in on it.
The Guardian gets it right. The Bilderberg protests were really more of an Alex Jones promotional event. Take for instance the fact that the Chantilly hotel was closed to everyone. This universal ban is reported by Jones as: “Alex Jones Banned from Bilderberg Hotel, Calls for Press Mob.”
The Daily Fail gets it wrong, quoting one of “Jones’s sources” as saying that machine gun nests were going up on the premises of the hotel.
Technocrats on the rise at Bilderberg meeting. Apparently, Dr. Praugh, it does take a rocket scientist to make a good guess about the agenda at the Bilderberg meeting.
Jesse Ventura reprinted a goofy press release to the media about the Bilderberg meeting.
IntelHub reported that the Bilderbergers were planning a fake bomb threat. It never happened. The IntelHub does not take down the stupid baseless story and continues to wonder why nobody takes them seriously. Well, that and this headline: “Bilderberg Building Security Perimeter Around ENTIRE Westfield Marriott” (That’s what a “perimeter” does, ding-dongs.)
Mark Dice is stopped in the police station parking lot after doing a couple of strange things (ignoring a no-entrance sign, filming the back of a police station lot, etc.) and has a cry about it on his live stream. God, conspiracy theorists named Mark Dice are unpleasant.
Alex Jones bullhorned the Bilderbergers at night to keep them awake:

Alex serenades the NWO with “In Your Eyes.”

CRIPPLE FIGHT!! “Glenn Beck Ignores Bilderberg, Attacks Alex Jones.”
What Infowars pushed as the “Occupy Bilderberg” theme is so densely packed with goof that not even light can escape it:

Some of the biggest fake news was that the Bilderbergers were discussing ways to off Ron Paul. (The number of Ron Paul signs in front of that hotel was significant.) The source for this is an “unnamed insider” working for Big Jim Tucker, who is still not dead from heart failure somehow and has been following the Bilderbergers since I was knee-high to a horny-toad:

The one that struck me as the second-dumbest allegation was made by a guy who was arrested and then said that he was forcibly to be vaccinated under penalty of being denied bail. When I first got the tweet, I replied:

Bob Blaskiewicz ‏@rjblaskiewicz

@kr3at That was funniest thing I’ve read all day. Ha!

I got a response:

Alexander Higgins ‏@kr3at

@rjblaskiewicz Actually happened, his arrest is up on YouTube. They told him take a TB vaccine or be held until your trial

My analysis? Well, usually this might be the type of thing that we could verify. We could look at the arrest record. We could draw blood from the guy (who is a veteran) and see if his TB antibody count goes up over the next few weeks. TB vaccine is not routinely given in the US and is not a part of the standard military vaccine schedule. Of course, when you look at the video, the arrest is not there, and the “forced vaccination” is not shown. The guy is being interviewed by Luke Rudkowski, who will believe almost anything.

One of the places that TB thrives is in prisons–Russian jails, for instance, are rife with TB, and the bacteria jumps between all those people in close contact with one another. In fact, some police departments give a Mantoux TB skin test to every single prisoner. This means that they give you a scratch with a protein associated with TB, and if your body reacts, you may have TB. This is completely different from being injected with the vaccine, as that is a live, though attenuated, bacterium. I can’t find anything that says that this is standard operating procedure at the Fairfax police station, but it may well be. The scratch test is administered far more often than the vaccine; the scratch test seems far more likely than the vaccine. So, you know, shut up, Luke.

This Week in Plain Old Conspiracy

A Louisiana paper ran an ad this week claiming that the President and Democrats want to murder Christians. I refuse to believe that the saviors of the republic will be such hysterical ninnies.
Alex Jones debuted a social network for imbeciles, planet.infowars.com.
Ancient Aliens come from Satan. Finally, I find common ground with conspiracy theorists.
Here’s a new one: H.G. Wells was an architect of the NWO. I presume they don’t mean the hot H.G. Wells from Warehouse 13. Also, the wikipedia symbol is a really oblique reference to the Tower of Babel.
This week, the CDC denied that zombies exist, which of course can only mean one thing…ZOMBIES!!!!! You can track the zombie apocalypse here.
OneRadioNetwork posted a completely useless form that they advise people DEMAND that their doctors sign before administering a vaccination. The woo is strong in this one. If a doctor doesn’t sign in, it might be because it is total crap.
Crazy birthers go crazy after CNN calls them crazy.
Ron Paul supporters plan to have a not-victory party at the Republican Convention. This is after Mitt Romney is reportedly nowhere near taking Texas for the Republican nomination. Godlike Productions goes one further and reported that Ron Paul defeated Mitt Romney for the nomination. (A hat tip should go to Eve, by the way, who quipped: “AND he won the Democratic nomination.”)
The Canadian published these sentences:

A Philadelphia witness reports that he or she saw a UFO on 22 May 2012 according to testimony supplied from UFO Sightings Daily.

The kind of UFO which the witness showed is consistent with the “lights” described in the “Book of Revelation” which the ancient Pagan Gnostics linked to an alien orchestrated “false flag” scenario designed to lead into the New World Order.

Liked the title, disliked the content: “The Paranoid Style of American Governance.”
The Denver Post gets birther coverage wrong, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
Even veterans, whose holy feet never touch the ground, can be conspiracy peddling dinks.
When I saw the headline that “drones had been shot down over Texas” I imagined that they were those newfangled police drones that everyone is scared of. Nope. It’s just a couple of hillbillies shooting down their own toys at close range.
This should have been the week of radioactive tuna conspiracies, since higher levels of radioactive cesium were found in US waters in migrating tuna that were presumably off the coast of Japan during the Fukushima disaster. Conspiracists freaked out, but the levels are still way below danger threshold standards in Japan and the US.
A concerned Arizonan’s pleas to his fellow voters to keep his state’s politicians off of the Colbert Report.
Trump continued talking this week. And Romney did not publicly call for him to grow up and act like an adult, which I consider a failing.
Politifact checks out Birther claims. All of the pants are on fire. All of the pants.
A Washington Post columnist demands that Mitt Romney prove he’s not a unicorn. Bill Maher starts up a “wifer” conspiracy.
Pravda, apparently still a thing, says that the USA uses sex to control the world.
Animal Planet creates, airs unwatchable mermaid conspiracy show.
A shout out to the Among The Truthers website of Jonathan Kay, whose book of the same name was the one I wanted to write. The bastard.
According to David Icke: “11yr Old Boy Now Dictating US Policy as Gen. Dempsey Calls for ‘Use of Force’ in Syria“
A Masonic Lodge was vandalized in Phoenixville, PA with “an profane, agrammatical screed.” I don’t know about you, but I’d consider the author a suspect.
The We Are Change People are completely crackers. Take the headline: “CNN Founder Ted Turner Calls For 100 Years Of Forced Sterilizations, Abortions.” Tell me where Ted Turner uses the word “forced abortions” or “forced sterilizations” in this clip, because I’m not hearing it. You aren’t journalists so much as you are self-humiliation machines, posting videos of your fail for the amusement of your betters (basically everyone). If you weren’t so horrid to everyone, I might feel sorry for you.

Headline of the Week

It comes from The Guardian, and is more of a subtitle:

“Protesters at Bilderberg up their game: ‘What do they want? Hegelian dialectics! When do they want it? Now!’”

It was closely followed by a headline from the Weekly World News:

“Zombies vs. Cannibals: The War is On!”

Twit of the week:

A lot of goofy things were flying this week. Very quotable. Take Steve Martin’s comment:

When you see a White Supremacist interviewed, you are immediately impressed at how they are so…so…supreme. — Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo)

Jon Ronson (who was on the DisinfoCast this week) tweeted about a conversation he had with a cab driver:

3m jonronson ‏@jonronson Taxi driver last night. Used to be a whale hunter in the Antarctic…now he writes about “the history nobody knows about”…

3m jonronson ‏@jonronson …like how “Bilderberg and the Trilateral commission are the secret world government” I said, “EVERYONE has heard of that.”

2m jonronson ‏@jonronson He looked annoyed that I’d heard of the thing nobody has heard about. He said “in 100 years the Jews will rise up and take over. Yes? YES?”

jonronson ‏@jonronson I shrugged and said, “well I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”

There was this nugget from Bilderberg, which is so true, since Luke Rudkowski is not a reporter:

Truth Excavator ‏@TruthExcavator FAIL: Mediaite calls @Lukewearechange “a reporter working for Alex Jones” http://bit.ly/KlBS6k #OccupyBilderberg #MSM #Media #Bilderberg

The Center for Inquiry had a good one this week too:

CFI On Campus (@CFIOnCampus)
6/3/12 1:05 PM
“Skeptics Censor Skepticism of Paul Offit’s Book” Apparently, we at CFI are puppets of big pharma. @center4inquiry ow.ly/bj9h0

The Truth Excavator needs a derivative hashtag timeout, I think:

9/11 Truth Spring And Bilderberg Spring http://t.co/06zVwXw1 #OccupyBilderberg #Bilderberg #BilderbergSpring #TruthSpring #September11 — Truth Excavator(@TruthExcavator)

Sean Carroll found something unpleasant in his hotel:

The hotel I’m staying at is hosting an Oath Keepers meeting. The gun-toting wing of Ron Paul Nation. http://t.co/njQSzyTO – Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll)

This one made me happy:

Illinois rep EXPLODES on the House floor! IT’s ALL FALLING… http://t.co/sxmvEQAb – 911truth (@911Truth)

But legislators aren’t the only things exploding this week:

B4IN Featured (@B4INFeatured)
5/30/12 4:03 PM
2012 Firearms & Ammunition Sales Exploding bit.ly/M8r0JE

Conspiracy Theory of the Week

I like this one because I’m a U2 nut. Bono is the frontman for global genocide:

That’s it, people. More is coming. More is always coming.

RJB

8 Comments | conspiracy theory, critical thinking, mass media, politics, UFOs, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (27 May 2012)

May 27, 2012

It’s been a sporadically busy week, moments of frantic activity followed by stretches of soul crushing boredom that would kill weaker bloggers. I should have something coming up at the Swift Blog in the next few days, and Eve and I filmed the first episode of a new online video series for the Independent Investigations Group–Atlanta and Doubtful News called, The Week in Woo, which is a survey of goofy news. The “pilot” is very brief, and I do not expect to be able to keep working on it once we move to Wisconsin, but we’d like to bequeath the show to IIG-Atlanta. Here’s a brief, quick-and-dirty clip that basically shows off our virtual set, made by Mark Distler of Abrupt Media.

But all the digital wizardry in the world can’t stop the never-ending, crushing torrent of conspiracy theory. So let’s have at it:

Zen Gardner sees the word “1000″ in a couple of speeches a few decades apart, and says: “SEE! ILLUMINATI PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE!”
Not only are conspiracy theorists writing new pledges, but they are authoring 10 New Anti-Truther Commandments, which in no way makes them sound like “nut jobs, cranks, and paranoid schizophrenics.” No way.
Turns out that Greg Laden is the Masonic Harvard Antichrist, just as we suspected all along.
“Is 2013 the Real 2012?” (head-desk)
Here’s a video full of fail: Anonymous declares war on the Matrix.
Chrononaut confirms President hyper-jumped to Mars. Robert Schaeffer, who told me about the exopolitics site, has an article about the possible motivations behind the site owner. Stunningly, it’s not unfettered mental illness! Do these chrononauts jump using HAARP, which now manipulates time with photoshop?
Eric Jon Phelps needs to voluntarily limit himself to one modifier per noun:

“First is the pope’s “Holy Roman” 14th Amendment, cartel-corporate, socialist-fascist, socialist-communist, de facto American Empire, the de jure government of the 14th Amendment American “National” Republic founded in 1868 having been cleverly replaced with a de facto Emergency War Powers government by an executive order of that wicked Masonic president, Commander-in-Chief FDR, on March 6, 1933.”

Too-mentally-ill-to-assist-in-her-own-defense-during-her-espionage-trial, Susan Lindauer talks about the mass roundup of Americans and the plans of the Dungeon Masters. When did Gary Gygax become evil?
Dear Occupy Movement (or people who think they represent the Occupy Movement), never associate yourselves with people who want to blow up bridges, OK? And don’t claim those people as your own. Ever.
Kansas. The Worst State, also known as the “Fuck Muslims State.”
Run away! Spicy Mexican Jihad!
Iron Sky premiered in Germany.
Is Israel (sigh) training birds to spy on Turkish farmers? Or are banded birds migrating?
A bit about the hideous rehabilitation of the John Birch Society.
What is your US Internment Camp Classification? I’m “Dead Sexy Displaced Person.” And why are the FEMA camps on Russian islands?
Eating organic foods is linked to moral depravity–a study proves what I’ve always thought about that nut Mike Adams!
The Southern Poverty Law Center released a list of the most dangerous wingnuts, and I got to tell you, I’ve followed a lot of these people for years. 4 of them are associated with WorldNetDaily, which is considerate of them, making my research that much easier.
The Atlantic profiles the worthless Donald Trump and his birtherism.
NASA asks international agencies to keep the US moon landing sites intact by avoiding them. Conspiracy theorists claim that this is proof we never went to the moon. I claim that it is evidence that most conspiracy theorists are already there.
A list of words that are likely to get you snooped on by Homeland Security was recently released. It indicates that the phrase: “A standoff between fundamentalist Pakistani Hazmat teams and ebola-plagued North Korean hostages in Ciudad Juarez has been cancelled because the Tsunami Warning Center received a denial of service attack from Cyber Command,” will bring my website lots of extra hits from the Feds. Hi, guys!
Here’s a sentence that ought to get you followed by the Feds: “Orly Taitz promotes Alex Jones’s interview with Jerome Corsi.”
Here’s a highly suspicious report of an assassination plot agianst the Dalai Lama. The Chinese response? “Isn’t it foolish to take action against Dalai at such an old age?”
David Icke reports that Miami Beach Police deny having arrest quotas for Memorial Day weekend. In another story, he gets something right: the “tradition” of the Olympic torch was established during Hitler’s games in Berlin. What he gets wrong is that people are worshipping the Olympic torch. He, like these people, sees the Olympics as something religious.
Who wants a little vaccine-denialist rock? Me neither!

But when you visit these musically-damaged antivaxxers, check out the hate they are spewing on David Gorski! Keep it up, Dr. Gorski!
This week in irony, “North Korean Film Exposes Western Propaganda.”

The Attorney General of Arizona for bringing more shame on the already shameful state of Arizona. In front of the whole world.
This one made me stop and think, even though it came from HuffPo, where ideas go to be stillborn. White Supremacists and the War on Women.

Twit of the Week:

ben goldacre (@bengoldacre)

5/23/12 6:18 PM @jonronson @aperks these shadowy global one world government conspiracies get a bit samey after a while.

Ain’t that the truth, Ben?

Conspiracy theory of the week:

The staggering inanity of this headline wins hands-down this week: “Greece dead center of earthquake fault whirlpool vortex. Lines up with Whirlpool Galaxy M51.”
“Stephen King Shot John Lennon” wins second prize.

That’s it for now. As always, I have a couple of irons in the fire, so stay tuned!

RJB

3 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, humanities, mass media, politics, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

This Week in Conspiracy (11 May 2012)

May 11, 2012

Things are looking up. Last week I accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position in Wisconsin, so at the end of the summer, the home base of Skeptical Humanities is going to be shifting northward. This does not mean, however, that I am going to be able to let the goofers of the world off the hook. Indeed, I will likely dive into it with more zeal than ever since I am less likely to overheat way up there than I am in Atlanta.

Here’s a new one! Gangsta rap was introduced in the 1990s in order to drive up returns on the music industry’s investments in the private prison industry! Clever. Convoluted. Implausible. I like it.
America’s missing 40 trillion dollars? And sunk it into underground excavation?
Unanswered questions that PROVE that the Titanic was deliberately sunk! (Hilarious.)
Here’s an old one! PrisionPlanet release a document that they say authorizes “Red Dawn” style reeducation camps. In fact, the DOD merely updated their MP field manual. (Read the Preface.) NewsWithViews picked up on it, and they can confirm that unidentified people of uncertain credentials believe…whatever NwV happens to believe.
Ahhh. Madonna and Elvis’s Illuminati link! This is a textbook case of how not to do research, by the way.
Ah, Godwinning the Obama Presidency never gets old.
LOOK! In the sky! A JewFO!!!!!!
Matt Smith is a REAL TIME TRAVELER!

See?

Guy on Internet the great shift coming in Dec 2012. Will he revise his thesis now that a Mayan calendar that goes past 2012 has been discovered?
Rand Paul is afeared of the TSA.
Finally, someone putting forth a reasonable argument against the moon landings. I’m sorry I meant, obsessive and bonkers argument. My bad.
Fun little article on conspiracy theories and comic books.
UFO circling the sun or cosmic ray?
You know where I want to be in November of 2013? Dallas. Without Jim Marrs.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins says that Obama’s birth certificate is a legitimate issue. I don’t think that he really believes Obama’s a “furriner,” but the cynical use of conspiracy is only destructive, and it makes him just that much more of a worse person.
Ach! I can’t believe I missed the CSPAN discussion of “false flags” with Jonathan Kay! Grr. I must watch the whole thing when I have a minute!
Oh, the Bilderbergers are meeting soon, in Virginia again, where Alex Jones may have his power shut off…sinisterly!! This has spawned the Occupy Bilderberg movement. The only plus side is that I get to see Jesse Ventura panhandle. Hey, Gov! Don’t you make enough to kick in a little coin?
FoxNews: “Ron Paul is bigger than most people realize.” Apparently, he’s 5’10″, which is really rather large for a leprechaun. Is it fucked up that this showed up on The Daily Paul because someone thought that the media was trying to make him look smaller? No, actually. This is apparently normal for them, it seems. Looks like Paul delegates at the Republican convention should bring official tasters for them so they don’t get poisoned.
Twisted little tick and sheriff outfit owner Joe Arpaio is getting sued by the Justice Department for alleged civil rights violations.
IntelHub contributor finds false flag hints in an episode of Sherlock. Spoiler: It’s idiotic.
Ah. ChemTrail Truth. When you put “truth” in your name, I stop listening.
We Are Change San Antonio learns the hard way that fascism shows up in short pants on bikes.
The only witness to Breitbart’s death disappears. This stupid story is going to outlive me, unless the cops can debunk it.
America is preparing to welcome its Russian occupiers, some 30,000 to 100,000 Russian troops who will arrive within the next 7 months or so according to the CIA, or some guy who heard from the CIA.
Dick Morris and Sean Hannity discuss the coming NWO and somehow are not admitted for psychiatric evaluation.
IAEA member killed in Iran in a car accident. Assassination or OMIGOD THE TRAFFIC IN IRAN IS UNHINGED!?! (Video.)
White nationalists arrested for planning a race war in Florida. And also in news that would set Chip Berlet’s teeth on edge, a white supremacist in Idaho who is running for sheriff hosts friendly neighborhood cross-burning, and another white supremacist with political aspirations, this time in Arizona, seems to have killed 4 people and himself. All this while the Golden Dawn (neo-Nazis) in Greece earns a number of seats in the Greek parliament. Oh, and are threatening their rivals.
There’s that damned sun destroying the world again. So, why is the ISS reporting sun entities and are we shooting energy beams at the sun? I’m putting together a file on these stories.
Is Orly Taitz as bad a dentist as she is a lawyer? A recent decision by the California Court of Appeals “point out about 147 things that were wrong with Taitz’s filing.” Also, she should sue more people.
LOOKOUT! (another) MASS EXTINCTION EVENT IMMANENT FROM FUKUSHIMA! What bothers me is not these people don’t understand radiation, rather that they are promoting the consumption of potassium iodide, a real drug with a very, very limited use (blocks radioactive iodide contamination from being absorbed into the thyroid, and that’s ALL). It’s a drug with risks with no possibility of benefit.
World Net Daily claims that the endtimes are here (again). Hack failure Aaron Klein has an article titled, “Not Kidding: Obama Has New ‘Atrocities Czar’.” Samantha Power is the new head of the White House’s new Atrocities Prevention Board. Dipshit. Of course, they also recently published this paragraph:

Through the influence of a Rosicrucian-Masonic brotherhood, Washington D.C. seems to be constructed to be the capital of Francis Bacon’s vision of the New Atlantis, which is likely to become the center of the New World Order. On the back of the dollar bill we read the words Novus Ordos Seclorum, which means New Order of the Ages or New World Order. These words are found below an Egyptian pyramid with the all-seeing eye of Lucifer above it, inside of a smaller pyramid. This occult symbolism signifies that in the New World Order, a Luciferian elite will rule the masses; or to use the terminology of the Fabian socialists like H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, a scientific elite. This is the restructuring that is going on in America right now.

An interesting write up at Media Matters for America that focuses on an idea being pushed on the right that the media failed to “vet” Obama during the last election cycle, a narrative with distinct conspiratorial undertones. I would say that the entire right was blindsided by Obama’s rise and victory. They really were focusing on Sen. Clinton.
Vigilant Citizen finally came up with something genuinely creepy, but still seems surprised that a Betty Boop film about secret societies might refer to…secret societies:

This week in wild-assed speculation, you know those grave liners in South Georgia that are supposed to be waiting for the FEMA camp victims, or whatever. Well, someone saw them heading North (really, there is no other direction for them to go in this country), which of course means that they are going up for the bodies that will be pouring out of Chicago during the NATO summit.
Charlotte Iserbyt, whose name is an anagram of “breast or tetchily,” is freaking out because she thinks that Maine’s public education is essentially becoming “socialist/communist education workforce training.”

Twit of the Week:

Yeah, this one. It’s like the worst kickstart ever:

@MarkDice

I will go to #Bilderberg2012 if you help fund my voyage. A Chipin donation box is up on http://MarkDice.com. Use PayPal. Thanks in advance.

Mark did leave a couple of unpleasant presents in my twitter feed this week. Another one is:

@MarkDice
We only know the new #UnderwearBomber was a #CIA agent because someone leaked it to the #AssociatedPress. There are good people in gov.

It sounds like the CIA is annoyed that the news got out, but think of their position: is the entire support structure behind the operation now blown, as well as…how many other covers? Are now other lives in jeopardy I can see why they might be miffed.

Visibility911 made a valiant effort this week, though:

@Visibility911
It’s just plain old nauseating how @BarackObama is trying to grandstand over killing Osama bin Dead For 10 Years.

Conspiracy Theory of the Week:

Without a doubt the conspiracy theory of the week is the notion that the CIA staged a fake underwear bombing scare. The evidence is, of course, the fact that the bomb-makers assigned an informant to deliver the bomb. And then he informed, as it were. It’s all the rage, and the media illiterate are flailing about in their own ignorance exultantly under the delusion that everything that they always believed about the CIA staging domestic terrorism was true. The IntelHub (sigh) it was a “corporate media manufactured story [that] was literally a NON EVENT.” There is a difference between making a bomb and being handed a bomb, ding-dongs. Go out and show that the CIA made the bomb and you’ll get Pulitzers. Really.

UPDATE! This wins. I must strip the IntelHub of the only award it ever earned. I saw this minutes after I posted and felt compelled to revise. A concerned citizen from Nebraska gives her view of Dutch gays who like watching people perish, as well as p-e-n-i-s homiciders and anus-licking gay child molesting genociders who go to Gender Studies, but because only because they are gay like Hillary Clinton. She also talks about why college kids need their own doom rooms, when Canadian corpse funguses come from gay ruptured instestines, while Roman bathhouse orgiers watched Christians be eaten at the Colosseum, so that gays cuss sadistically after gaying each other sexually and before committing treason and their children rape each other hetero all day when they aren’t told not to and Judas was a homo:

I’m out of here. I’m going to try to get these back on a more regular schedule in the next week or two. Meanwhile, check out some of my other work which is popping around the web. I recently posted about Ancient Aliens at Skepchick; I wrote about using fiction (specifically Carl Sagan’s contact) to teach critical thinking over at the JREF Swift Blog (the first of many posts on teaching and skepticism); and my next article should be up at the CSICOP website shortly.

RJB

2 Comments | conspiracy theory, critical thinking, history, humanities, mass media, politics, UFOs, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

Bob on the BEASTcast talking about the Denver Airport

April 30, 2012

Last week I was interviewed by the BEASTcast about the Denver International Airport conspiracy theory, as well as a good bit about the humanities and skepticism. That interview is out today.

Thanks to Josh Bunting for the opportunity to speak with him. I enjoyed it very much!

RJB

Leave a Comment » | conspiracy theory, critical thinking, history, humanities, language/linguistics, literature, politics | Permalink
Posted by Bob

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New Conspiracy Guy post up at CSI site

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Bob on the BEASTcast talking about the Denver Airport

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