Skeptical Humanities

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

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2012 at 10:05 pm and is filed under 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, history, mass media, politics, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.