history | Skeptical Humanities

Women of the Viking Age Kicked Ass, But That Doesn’t Mean They Were Vikings

September 7, 2014

In the last week, a number of websites have informed their readers that recent scientific evidence shows that roughly half of Viking warriors were female. Tor.com proclaims, “Better Identification of Viking Corpses Reveals: Half of the Warriors Were Female,” while Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing declares that “Half the Remains of Slain Vikings in England Are Female.” Wow, cool! How is it possible that we didn’t know this before? Well, according to Emma Cueto of Bustle, it’s because of evil sexist scholars. Her post boasts the level-headed title, “Women Viking Warriors Existed, Confounding Sexist Scientists Everywhere.” She claims that sexist archaeologists have used sexist assumptions to come to sexist conclusions rather than looking at the actual data:

After all, if archeologists [sic] are letting their sexist assumptions affect the way they collect and classify data about the past, that has some pretty troubling implications. For instance, when people argue in favor of “traditional” gender roles, they often cite history, saying that since this is how things have always been, clearly it’s natural and therefore right.

I’d like to see an example of a modern archaeologist saying that something is natural and right because it was common in the past: “Well, human sacrifice is traditional. It’s been practiced for millennia. So I’ve slaughtered a couple of the slower diggers to appease the gods. What? Stop looking at me like that!”

Human Sacrifice: Traditional, Therefore Required*

Cueto continues:

And if we are imposing our own ideas about gender back onto the past, that’s not only bad for the modern fight for gender equality, but it’s also just bad science.

So if archeologists could stop making sexist assumptions and maybe start being thorough researchers, that would great. Sound good, guys?

She’s right: doing thorough research is important; looking at as many types of evidence as possible is important. Scholars in all fields should stop imposing their own ideas about gender onto the past, and they should look at the actual data.

It is especially ironic, then, that she appears to be imposing her ideas about gender roles and gender equality onto the Viking Age and that she hasn’t looked at the data. That is to say, neither she nor many of the other writers seem actually to have read the scholarly article that inspired them.

They seem not, for instance, to have noticed its date of publication: 2011. Even the USA Today and Jezebel articles that actually get cited and quoted are from 2011. It’s not entirely clear why this story has been resurrected, although it may have something to do with the popularity of the History Channel’s series Vikings, which features a shield-maiden named Lagertha.

Photo: Jonathan Hession,
The History Channel
NOT A REAL VIKING WOMAN!

The actual scholarly article, “Warriors and Women: The Sex Ratio of Norse Migrants to Eastern England up to 900 AD” by Shane McLeod has nothing to do with female Viking warriors. It only tangentially relates to warriors at all. He’s talking about migrants, early Norse settlers. His focus is very narrow: Norse burials in eastern England from the latter half of the ninth century. Specifically, he discusses Scandinavian burials contemporary with the incursions of the Great Heathen Army (865-878) and a second army that rampaged in the 890s. Considering the narrow focus, it’s dangerous to extrapolate the data to the entire Viking world.

Extrapolation is even more dangerous when we consider that he is discussing fourteen burials. Fourteen. According to osteological examination, seven of the skeletons** were male, six were female, and one couldn’t be sexed because it was a juvenile. This data suggests that there may have been a higher percentage of female settlers during this period than has previously been assumed. It was commonly believed that males–warriors–came first. After they claimed land and began to settle, Norse women began to join them in larger numbers, while many Norsemen married Anglo-Saxon women. McLeod isn’t the first to suggest that more women arrived earlier than was previously thought, although he provides some data to support his contention.

The sample size is, however, tiny. And his findings don’t necessarily contradict the idea that there were many intermarriages between the Norse and the Anglo-Saxons or that more Norse women arrived later.

Here are some things the article doesn’t say: McLeod never says that any of the remains belong to “the slain.” He never claims the female migrants were warriors. Indeed, he refers on several occasions to women and children who accompanied the armies. So where does this whole “warrior woman” thing come from, and what’s up with the sexist archaeologists?

Well, he points out that the sex of Viking Age human remains is often determined by looking at grave goods (this is true of other pagan burials as well). He believes that grave goods may not always be a reliable indication of sex, and he focuses instead on remains that have been sexed by an examination of the bones. And this is fair enough. All data should be taken into account: both grave goods and osteological examination.

Of the fourteen burials he discusses, most of the male remains were found with items traditionally associated with male burials, and most of the female remains were found with items traditionally associated with female burials. There are two exceptions. One is a double burial, a female with the juvenile of undetermined sex. These two were buried with “sword hilt grip, shield clamps, knife” (Table 2, p. 345). Of course, we don’t know which of the grave’s occupants was the proud owner of these items. Another woman was buried with “axe, seaxes, sword pieces in mortuary” (Table 2, p. 345).

So, that’s it–that’s the big sexist scandal. Now, there are a few things to keep in mind. For one thing, osteological examination isn’t always possible. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough bone evidence. And osteological evidence can also be problematic. In fact, McLeod does a good job of showing exactly how difficult it is to make many determinations when dealing with very old human remains. Not only is the sex of the remains a problem, so is determining date, establishing whether the remains are really Norse, etc. So, yes, consider the bone evidence, but don’t ignore the evidence of grave goods. The article does not reveal some sort of nefarious sexist scandal in the field of archaeology.

So are the few women who were buried with weapons warriors? Possibly, but it’s difficult to say for sure. We don’t really know why they were buried with these items. Were there female Vikings? Well, the Vikings Wiki certainly things so:

Shield-maidens were women who chose to fight as warriors alongside the other Viking men in the pagan Scandinavia.

They took part in warfare, and they played vital strategic roles in the battlefield, where the shield-maidens were either part of the front-lines in their shield-wall formation, or were the ones who helped close the gaps in their defense by picking up the shields of the fallen and holding them up themselves. Scholars like Britt-Mari Näsström suggest that sheild-maidens [sic] where transsexual women who where adapted as warriors to fit in.

Wow, that’s super-specific. And there’s absolutely no evidence for it. Shield-maidens are often associated with valkyries, who were mythological semi-divine women–not real, historical warrior women. Lagertha, the shield-maiden from Vikings, may have started out as a goddess or giantess. Lagertha, along with several other warrior women, also appears in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum, but these are all within the realm of legend rather than history. Saxo also disapprovingly presents them as transgressing normal female behavior, and they are ultimately defeated. Also in the realm of legend is Hervör of Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks.

In semi-historical works, there are a few women who take up weapons. Freydis, the daughter of Eirik the Red and sister or half-sister of Leif Eiriksson, has a great warrior moment in the Saga of Eirik the Red. She has accompanied Thorfinn Karlsefni to Vinland. When the Norse retreat after an assault by the Skraelings (Native Americans), Freydis derides them for cowardice. Because she is heavily pregnant, she falls behind. When confronted by Skraelings, she picks up a sword from a dead man and slaps it against her breasts. This action scares off the Skraelings. She is not, however, a Viking warrior.

Scandinavian women of the Viking era (particularly Icelandic women) had more rights than many other European women, and Old Norse literature is filled with strong, interesting, powerful, influential, respected, and occasionally villainous women, but most of them are not warriors. Judith Jesch, Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham, argues that women who took up weapons were rare in medieval Scandinavia:

Like most periods of human history, the Viking Age was not free from conflict, and war always impacts on all members of a society. It is likely that there were occasions when women had to defend themselves and their families as best they could, with whatever weapons were to hand. But there is absolutely no hard evidence that women trained or served as regular warriors in the Viking Age. Valkyries were an object of the imagination, creatures of fantasy rooted in the experience of male warriors. War was certainly a part of Viking life, but women warriors must be classed as Viking legend.

Swedish archaeologist and skeptic Martin Rundkvist agrees that warrior women were very rare during the Viking Age, and he argues that osteological sexing tends to support the evidence of grave goods:

[F]urnished burial is strongly gendered and this correlates with osteological sexing. Looking at richly furnished graves, you get weapon burials and jewellery burials, so dissimilar that you have to seriate them separately when you build chronology. The stuff they tend to share are things like pots and table knives. Almost always the weapon graves contain male-sex bones and the jewellery graves contain female-sex bones.

Every once in a very long while you get a jewellery grave with a single piece of weaponry in it, or vice versa. But in most cases those are cremation graves where it is impossible to know if (to pick a 6th century case from my dissertation about the Barshalder cemetery) the heavily armed cavalry man was buried with a dainty bead necklace around his neck or if his wife just put it on the pyre next to his feet as a parting gift. So it seems that if a few women were buried as warriors, their grave goods would be likely to be 100% weapon-gendered, not mixed.

Like Jesch, he agrees that women in rare circumstances may have fought to protect themselves, but that these were not Viking women:

Did any women ever fight? Yes, I’m sure some did, particularly when threatened by male warriors, as would have been an unfortunate fact of life in that barbaric age. But the ones who joined an armed retinue, lived the ideal warrior life and went to Valhalla must have been vanishingly few.

Finally, he argues that whether there were women warriors in the Viking world has no effect on gender issues today. He does not believe that tradition should guide contemporary actions. Clearly Dr. Rundkvist is not the sexist straw archaeologist that Cueto set up. He ends by saying,

The past is not our mirror and archaeology must resist attempts to use its results or bend its interpretations for political purposes today.

He clearly agrees with Cueto that archaeologists should follow the evidence and that they should not let “their sexist assumptions affect the way they collect and classify data about the past.” Unlike Cueto, however, he seems to believe archaeologists should follow the evidence even when it suggests that Viking warrior women were largely a myth.

*WickerManIllustration” by Unknown Original uploader was Midnightblueowl at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia; transfer was stated to be made by User:Midnightblueowl.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons –

*The remains were not necessarily complete skeletons. Some came from cremation burials.

Sources:

Foss, Arild S. “Don’t Underestimate Viking Women.” ScienceNordic.

Jesch, Judith. “Viking Women, Warriors, and Valkyries.” British Museum Blog.

McLeod, Shane. “Warriors and Women: The Sex Ration of Norse Migrants to Eastern England up to 900 AD.” Early Medieval Europe 19.3 (2011): 332-353.

Rundkvist, Martin. “Shield Maidens! True or False?” Aardvarchaeology. ScienceBlogs.com.

17 Comments | academia, critical thinking, history, humanities, literature, mythology/folklore, science | Tagged: female warriors, shield-maidens, viking women, vikings | Permalink
Posted by Eve

Shilling for Big History

March 11, 2014

Note: This essay is cross-posted at Skepticality.

Last December, a metal detectorist named Bruce Campbell was plying his retirement hobby in a tidal mud flat on Vancouver Island, when he came across a rare Edward VI shilling. The silver coin was minted between 1551 and 1553, the span of Edward’s brief reign. You’ll remember that Edward was the son of Henry VIII and the half brother of Elizabeth I. The date of the coin has recently fueled speculation about the earliest date that Westerners explored the northern Pacific and the west coast of Canada. If the deposit of the coin is roughly contemporary with the date stamped on it, say within 30 years or so, it would push back the earliest visitation of the coast by the English some 200 years.

The metal detectorist shared his find with an online hobbyist community, and when they recognized the coin, one of them contacted an independent scholar named Samuel Bawlf, who had written about the idea that perhaps Sir Francis Drake had visited the region, and perhaps even made it as far as south Alaska, in 1579, during his eventual circumnavigation of the globe. Bawlf is excited because other 2 other old coins have been found in the area, a 1571 sixpence dug up in 1930 and another coin with a similar date unearthed on Quadra Island, which is nearby. This it seems supports Bawlf’s idea.

To Bawlf.

I honestly don’t know where to begin, so let’s start with who Drake was.

Sir Francis Drake is best known for being a pirate, harassing Spanish galleons in the years before the Spanish Armada. He was extremely successful, seizing the modern equivalent of tens of millions of dollars worth of cargo from the Spanish. It is generally accepted that in the summer 1579, Drake was along the Pacific coast of what is now the United States, and there is much speculation about how far up the coast he made it. There are some fairly good indicators of the extent of his travel; he certainly made it as far as mid-California and might have even made it as far as Oregon (which seems to be about the farthest north that mainstream scholars are reasonably comfortable placing him). The method of placing him comes from ethnographic work deriving from detailed descriptions of the natives, their dress and culture stemming from the trip. During this summer sojourn, he apparently encountered flows of ice. Drake completed this journey by circumnavigating the globe.

The idea that Bawlf puts forward is that Drake was looking for a Northwest Passage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, an endeavor which would have economic and military implications that the rival Spain could not know about. Therefore, at her order, it was a completely secret mission. While on this secret mission, however Drake deposited coins along the way to the natives in the region to show that they had been there in case some other European power showed up. On the face of, this seems incompatible with the idea that it was a super-secret mission that nobody could know about.

Also, there is the matter of how countries staked claims of new territories. While I may not have examined enough, I don’t see examples of Brits claiming territory through depositing coins in the literature–and the idea seems problematic to me as there are other ways that coins could make it to unexplored territory, such as trade. As such, coins alone would not establish a presence. As best I can tell claiming territory during this time is a messy process. It starts with discovery and landing with the intention of making claims of land. The strength of new claims is improved by establishing settlements and colonial government, extensively mapping an area and waterways, setting up commercial ties with natives, initiating exploration of the region, fortification, and active defense. Matters of territorial ownership might also be clarified through negotiation and treaties. Nothing remotely like any of these patterns appears in the historical record until the late 18th century, when Spain and England vied for control of the region and almost went to war over it. If the British staked a claim…they did absolutely nothing with it for 200 years, and they seem to not have invoked Drake’s prior claim to it in the later squabble with Spain.

So, what does the discovery of this shilling tell us? The coin by itself tells us very little. Interpreting finds like this is all about determining context. Without context, the coin tells us only that at some point a coin ended up in the tidal mud. The only hint of context that we have is that on the same outing, according to the Tribune-Review, Campbell found the shilling: “along with a rare 1891 Canadian nickel, a 1960s dime and penny from 1900.” Now, it doesn’t say that they were physically clustered together. That’s frustrating, because if so, we’d be able to say that the deposit was dropped no sooner than the 1960s, which would not require us to rewrite our understanding of the Pacific Northwest. Nonetheless, it was a grand day out for a new metal detectorist.

The hobbyist who contacted Bawlf (named Herbst) about the find speculated about the context:

“You don’t find things like that in Victoria,” Herbst told the Times Colonist. “The fact that it was found in a layer of mud on the foreshore, to me, I recognized that that was probably an ancient aboriginal village down there. … I knew it was possibly significant.”

So, it was probably an aboriginal village, said some guy on the Internet. I spent a little time looking for aboriginal archaeological sites in the region and haven’t had much luck–I know that’s because I am researching outside my area, since Canadian authorities have well established protocols for documenting and reporting finds of archaeological materials including human remains. According to the rough description of the site given in the Times Colonist, that Campbell was poking around at low tide “on the mud flats on the Gorge, just down by Curtis Point.” That seems to place him in the Victoria Harbor region, and that entire promontory of land is the aboriginal home of the Songhee people. There’s comparatively little written about this tribe, though their later history is intertwined with the growth of Victoria. This would likely have been the tribe that Drake would have encountered. I have been able to find no tradition of stories of contact with European sailors in the Songhee tradition before 1790, at which time the Spanish reached the region. The Herbst hypothesis at this point it looks like speculation that is not bolstered by anything, and certainly no evidence is offered. As best I can tell, the coin is being used to argue for the existence of an aboriginal settlement and the aboriginal settlement is being used as an argument for why the coin was there in the first place. This seems shaky.

So the coin is apparently completely out of any independent or meaningful context, at least as far as news reports are concerned. For that reason it does not clarify anything, only become fuel for speculation. An interesting side note about this part of the shore. The area that the coin was found in was a popular area for swimmers at least up until the 1930s. There might be no end to the cultural contamination of the site that might influence what one might find in the area. We should perhaps not be especially surprised if anything that a swimmer or tourist could possibly bring out there ended up there. Coins are small, portable, and completely losable. We are being asked to accept that the true context of these coins are other old coins throughout the region, occasionally on other islands, without convergent supporting evidence that that should be the case.

Another problem that the Drake hypothesis faces (or, in a turn of classic conspiracy theory benefits from) is that the original records of Drake’s travels were destroyed in a fire. But some contemporary accounts remain. None of them indicate travel to areas recognizable as Canada or Alaska. But what about the ice that appears in those early accounts? Does that not suggest that Drake was summering far further north than historians have given him credit for? Well, probably not. Apparently, the dendrochronology of giant redwoods from the years surrounding Drake’s travels suggest that there was little growth in the trees that year, suggesting that the weather was unusually dry or cold. There is therefore apparently no pressing reason to extrapolate from the observation of ice that Drake had to be so far north.

The takeaway of all this, I think, is that the breathless reporting of a single find that overturns the entire known history of a region is to be taken with a grain of salt in much the same way we should avoid concluding that a single observation should completely overturn decades of established science. Of course, it is tempting for a journalist to report the bigger, slightly more sensational story, though it beggars belief how someone could not think that the exploits of Drake and his crew were not sensational enough to hold our interest.

RJB

1 Comment | conspiracy theory, critical thinking, history, humanities | Permalink
Posted by Bob

“Is It Possible?” No. The Vikings Meet Ancient Aliens

July 28, 2013

On April 12, 2013, just a little bit too late for April Fool’s Day, Ancient Aliens aired “The Viking Gods” as episode 11 of season 5. It was a sober and compelling examination of the evidence.

Just kidding. It’s nonsense.

The show features a smattering of real Norse scholars. I don’t know why they are willing to appear on such a show; perhaps they’ve never seen it. I suspect, though, that Timothy R. Tangherlini, Professor and Chair of the Scandinavian Section at UCLA, and Kirsten Wolf, Professor and Chair of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wanted to dispel certain misconceptions about the Viking-Age Norse. Wolf says that, contrary to popular opinion, the Norse “were enormously sophisticated in terms of technology: ship-building, bridge-building, fortress-building….”

Her point is completely valid, of course, but it’s not one you want to make on Ancient Aliens because they are going to seize on any such statements and snatch those accomplishments from the hands of whatever group of humans is being discussed and place them in the freaky, attenuated fingers of little green men. And sure enough, the narrator jumps in to say,

But many researchers remain baffled at how the Vikings became so socially, politically and technologically advanced, especially while living in the cold, harsh environment of the North.

Ancient Aliens has taught me that researchers and scholars exist in a permanent state of bafflement. Still, I suppose it’s better than a state of permanent but unfounded certainty.

Just how were the Norse Vikings able to manage such technological and geographical feats? Are their fortresses and journeys to unknown continents evidence that the Vikings had access to extraterrestrial knowledge? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and believe the proof can be found by examining the religious beliefs of this mysterious people.

I’d like to pause briefly to discuss nomenclature: Norse Vikings? As opposed to what? Chinese Vikings? I also noticed that, although the program mentions some dates, the terms “medieval” and “Middle Ages” are never used. The Vikings are at times referred to as “ancient.” I realize the show is called Ancient Aliens, but do they think we don’t know the difference between ancient and medieval?

Regardless, while I would never diminish the accomplishments of medieval Scandinavians, there’s nothing completely baffling or inexplicable about their technological advancements. Consider their ships: they were superb, but, basically, they were boats. Humans have been building boats since someone first said, “you know, it would be quicker to cross that body of water than to go around it.” Viking ships were built by skilled craftsmen without any input from aliens. Why would aliens need ocean-going ships anyway?

Gokstad ship: built by humans. From Wikipedia

Gokstad ship: built by humans. Source: Wikipedia

But wait, there’s more proof of alien intervention:

An account of the attack on Lindisfarne says the assault coincided with extraordinary whirlwinds, lightning, and fiery dragons crisscrossing the skies. Could these strange events be coincidence?

Well, not the dragons. I imagine they were made up, misinterpreted and/or were exaggerations of some natural phenomenon. The rest of it? That’s just weather. Sometimes weather happens. But you never know. After all, the Vikings were a mysterious people.

The Vikings…flourished from the late 8th century to the 11th century in what is today Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but unlike other ancient civilizations, like Greece, Rome or Egypt, relatively little is known about this mysterious people, as few written records or hieroglyphs have survived.

Okay, there aren’t many hieroglyphs, since the Norse didn’t use hieroglyphs (runes are not hieroglyphs), but as the narrator is saying this, we see on the screen a picture from Flateyjarbók, which, as its name implies, is a book–a huge book, filled with letters and words and even sentences. So important and precious is this book that it was one of the first two manuscripts (along with the main manuscript of the so-called Poetic Edda) that Denmark repatriated to Iceland. A significant proportion of the population went to the shore to greet the ship bearing the two books.

The corpus of Old Norse literature is vast. The Icelanders took to literacy with wild abandon. Admittedly, this material was written down later than the events described–in some cases much later–but quite a lot is known about Viking-Age Norse culture, from their own writings and from the writings of others. They really aren’t that mysterious.

It is true that there are questions when it comes to the mythology. We have limited sources. Some of those sources are difficult, confusing and contradictory. Some of the sources (especially Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum) were written by Christians long after Norse mythology had ceased to be an active religion. They euhemerized, synthesized, interpreted and probably misinterpreted. Consequently, we have limited knowledge about how the religion was actually practiced, and we are probably mistaken in trying to force consistency and coherency onto Norse mythology: beliefs change over time and differ regionally. Ancient Aliens recognizes this problem:

Because little information has survived related to the origin of Norse or Viking gods, modern scholars depend on a pair of Icelandic books written several hundred years after the Viking Age, called the Eddas.

Well, the Poetic Edda isn’t really a book. It is a collection of poems written by different poets at different times. It is called Edda for convenience and in association with the Prose Edda, which quotes Eddic poems extensively. The Poetic Edda was written down after the Viking Age, but probably contains much earlier material.

What’s weird is that, although what they say about the Eddas isn’t entirely accurate, they are correct in their assumption that the Eddas are not a completely reliable source for Viking Age belief. Having sort of acknowledged this, what do they do? They take these stories as absolutely true and accurate accounts of real events because Odin, Thor, Frey and the gang were all aliens. Duh.

Odin, you see, had two ravens named Huginn and Muninn (thought and mind). Every day they flew through the world and then returned and reported to Odin. Or were they ravens? Let’s ask David Hatcher Childress:

Whenever he wanted to observe other worlds, find out what they were doing, he would send these two ravens out, and they would be…like…spy drones or something, and they would go to to these other countries and come back to Odin and report to him what was going on, and it would seem like what Odin had was some kind of spy planes or spy drones that he was sending out, much as we do today.

Or they could be magic birds. Actually, ravens are very intelligent and can be taught to speak. Can they do what Huginn and Muninn were supposed to do? Well, no. They’re special, a god’s magic birds. There is nothing to suggest that there is anything non-organic about them, that they are mechanical or technological.

Given their names, it is also possible to consider them as Odin’s thought and mind (or memory) externalized, perhaps as part of a magical or shamanistic ritual. There is some precedence for this. In the Prose Edda, Snorri tells the story of Thor and Loki’s visit to a giant called Utgarda-Loki. Thor and his retinue face several challenges which they fail miserably. For instance Utgarda-Loki asks Thor to lift a cat. Thor can only get one paw off the ground. Eventually, though, Utgarda-Loki reveals that it was only through magic and tricks of perception that he was able to best Thor. The cat was actually the World Serpent, which circles the world at the bottom of the ocean. Thor had managed to pull it part of the way out.

Thor and the others also directly compete with some apparently humanoid opponents whose names reveal their true natures. Thor wrestles an old woman named Elli, who brings him to one knee. She is actually old age personified. Loki loses an eating match against Logi, who eats the wooden trenchers as well as the meat. Logi means “flame,” which consumes everything in its path. Thor’s servant Thialfi loses a footrace to Hugi. Hugi, like Huginn, means “thought.” As Utgarda-Loki says, “And when Thialfi competed at running with the one called Hugi, that was my thought, and Thialfi was not likely to be able to compete with its speed” (Edda, tr. Anthony Faulkes, Everyman ed.).

But imaginary spy drones aren’t Odin’s only spy technology. He also has his high seat (hliðskjálf) from which he can observe what is going on in the world. According to Jason Martell, author of Knowledge Apocalypse: Ancient Astronauts and the Search for Planet X,

It sounds to me as if Odin was sitting in some type of a captain’s chair in a space ship above the earth, which allowed him to have this view.

To have a captain’s chair in a spaceship, don’t you need to have a spaceship? When the high seat is mentioned, there is nothing remotely spaceship-like associated with it, and again, it isn’t described in a way that makes it sound like anything technological.

But Odin isn’t the only god with pretend alien tech. Thor has a belt of strength. Or is it a bionic exoskeleton? You see, the Norse would have no way to describe a bionic exoskeleton, so the best they could come up with was “magic belt.” If they’d seen the damned thing, and the show suggests that they did, surely they could have come closer than “belt.”

Frey has a magical, foldable ship, Skíðblaðnir. Or is it a spaceship? Well, perhaps, if the Vikings couldn’t tell the difference between something that sails on the ocean and something that flies. It’s not as if they were a sea-going people or anything. Well, perhaps they had no verbs that mean “fly.” Oh wait, they totally did. For instance, they were not forced to say that the ravens (spy drones) sailed on the ocean.

Odin’s spear, Gungnir, is so well-balanced that it will always hit its target. Or as Childress raves,

Gungnir was some kind of high-tech weapon. No matter who he threw it at, it would hit it, like some laser-guided missile or something like that, that just simply could not miss its mark once it had been sent to its target.

This time they have evidence of such amazing high-tech weaponry: the Böksta Runestone, which shows a spear-wielding man on a horse, accompanied by two dogs and two birds. The man might be Odin. And he has a spear. Okay, it doesn’t look like a missile, and you can’t tell that it’s laser-guided, and it looks a lot like a spear. Also, he’s hunting an elk or a moose. I suppose it could be some sort of space-ungulate.

Odin hunts a Space-Moose. Source: Wikipedia

The late Philip Coppens explains the true nature of Thor’s hammer:

It is actually said that this weapon is able to crush mountains. Now imagine a weapon which is able to destroy an entire mountain–the hammer does not cause explosions; it is really the physical force which destroys the object. That is something that today we describe as kinetic weapons.

The scene shifts to NASA Ames where Dr. Peter Schultz of Brown University is working on the Ames Vertical Gun Range. Schultz explains that if it’s really ramped up, “you’ll start melting, vaporizing material. In a sense, this is a kinetic weapon, except we’re not pointing at anything except a target inside the tank.” According to the narrator “the destructive power of this gun displays uncanny similarities to Thor’s Hammer.” Well, they are both powerful, and they both destroy things. So do puppies, but that doesn’t make them extraterrestrial technology.

If kinetic energy weapons and laser-guided missiles (or possibly smart bombs) aren’t enough, Bifröst, the Rainbow Bridge, is a wormhole.

Where did the alien Norse gods get their fabulous stuff? In many cases, from dwarfs. Coppens asks,

[A]re they real dwarfs, or…[are they] somehow more mythical, or whether the label “dwarf” actually stuck to them because they were somehow smaller. And of course today, we often describe the gray alien archetype as dwarfish as well, simply because they are smaller.

Childress also suggests that the Norse dwarfs got their name from their (lack of) height, as if mythological dwarfs were named for dwarfism, rather than the other way around. Aside from being small, dwarfs don’t have that much in common with Grays. According to John Lindow’s Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, dwarfs are “associated with the dead, with battle, with wisdom, with craftsmanship, with the supernatural, and even to some extent with the elves” (100). They are also said to live in the earth, rocks or mountains. Snorri says they were created from the maggots in the flesh of the primordial giant Ymir. They are creatures of the earth, not of the sky. Oh and while the English word “dwarf” has been associated with shortness for a long time, Norse mythological dwarfs don’t necessarily seem to be that small. Or gray. Or large-headed. Or small-bodied.

So where did the Norse gods/aliens go? Well, one might find it suspicious that they seem to have taken their spaceships, spy drones, laser-guided missiles, kinetic weapons, bionic exoskeletons and wormholes and buggered off right around the time the Scandinavians converted to Christianity. Surely there must be another explanation. Let’s look at ship burials. The Oseberg ship burial “revealed for the first time some of the Viking’s burial rituals.” Well, Oseberg was discovered 25 years after Gokstad, but okay.

Is it possible that the Vikings…buried their dead in boats in an effort to help their deceased on their journey to the afterlife?

Yes! Oh my god, YES, that IS possible! They actually asked an “Is it possible” question whose answer is “yes.” Yes, that’s how mythology works.

But wait, there’s more. Martell says “Now this seems very similar to some type of conveyance possibly going into space.” Well, yes, it does seem like that, except that it’s a sea-going ship buried in the ground.

They then describe Valhalla. Like Snorri, they conflate probably separate ideas regarding Valhalla, but they really seize on the description of it as being golden. Giorgio Tsoukalos says,

Valhalla was not a figment of our ancestors’ imaginations, but it might have been some type of an orbiting space station. The reason why I’m saying this is because we have a description of Valhalla: it is an incredible description of a place that has weird attributes.

And Martell just goes ahead and describes it as a “large metallic ship.” How the hell do you go from a “gold-bright” hall of the slain to a “large metallic ship”? It’s not a ship, and it’s not metallic.

Ship burials (and ship cremations), they claim, are supposed to replicate the gods’/aliens’ return to their home world or to the space station Valhalla. But Oseberg also contains sledges. Did the aliens’ return home also involve traversing space-snow? One other thing about Oseberg: its occupants were female. This is never mentioned on Ancient Aliens. In fact, you’d never know that there were Norse goddesses or Norse women based on the program. Anyway, except in unusual circumstances, women didn’t go to Valhalla, so Oseberg doesn’t really fit the weird scenario they’ve created.

Watching this episode, I found myself wondering if these people really believe what they’re saying, or if, in the fifth season, they’ve run out of things to talk about and will just say anything to keep the show going. However, when Bob and I went to the Paradigm Symposium, we both got the idea that these people are true believers, and Coppens did write about a Viking/ancient alien connection.

It’s just so hard to imagine the thought processes that could lead to such beliefs. First, they seem to conclude that human imagination is a comparatively recent invention, and that no one in the past could describe anything they hadn’t seen with their own eyes. Second, they make logical leaps of truly spectacular proportions. And finally, there is the ability to seize on some details, blow them up, and then ignore other details as if they weren’t there. This is particularly noticeable when they discuss the Böksta stone as an example of Odin’s spear. How on earth can they use this to support the laser-guided missile argument? He’s riding a horse (with only four legs; Odin’s steed Sleipnir usually has eight); he’s hunting an elk; he has hunting hounds; one of his birds (spy drones) is attacking the eyes of the elk. He is also accompanied by a human figure on skies, carrying a bow and arrows, possibly Ullr. It’s all sorts of terrestrial. Stunningly ordinary. If the stone does show Odin, it shows him behaving very much like a medieval Scandinavian hunter.

20 Comments | history, literature, mythology/folklore, UFOs | Tagged: ancient aliens, vikings | Permalink
Posted by Eve

For the Love of Yeti, Bigfooters, Read a Primary Source!

October 13, 2012

Earlier this year, I wrote (twice) about an outrage to sense, science, history, folklore, grammar, punctuation and all that is good in the world, called Claws, Jaws and Dinosaurs by “Dr.” Kent Hovind and William J. Gibson. From this book, I learned that Leif Ericson and his men

encountered hairy, ugly giants that uttered harsh cries. This is the earliest recorded encounter with Bigfoot, or Sasquatch….

Since then, I’ve wondered if this is a common argument among Bigfoot enthusiasts. After some investigating, I have discovered that it is not an uncommon argument. This account from the show “Ancient Mysteries: Bigfoot” is typical:

The oldest account of Bigfoot was recorded in 986 AD by Leif Ericson and his men. During their first landing in the New World, the Norsemen wrote about monsters that were horribly ugly, hairy, swarthy and with great black eyes.

It’s almost always Leif Ericson who is credited with discovering not only North America, but also Bigfoot. It’s never one of the later Norse explorers. The year 986 also recurs, as does the description. There are also often references to Leif writing about or recording his encounter. Almost all these details are impossible.

Two sagas deal with the Norse discovery of America: Greenlanders’ Saga (Grænlendinga saga) and the Saga of Eric the Red (Eiríks saga rauða). In both sagas, Leif’s single voyage to the New World is described rather briefly. In both, the most significant things he finds are the grapes and vines which provide Vinland with its name. In Eric’s Saga, Leif sees no animals at all. In Greenlanders’ Saga, he sees salmon (lax) larger than any he had seen before. While large, the fish are not said to be hairy; there is no mention of feet.

The date 986 is very specific, and I haven’t figured out where it comes from. No one knows exactly when the Norse discovered Vinland, but, based on information from the sagas, the initial sighting seems to have taken place around 1000. Leif hadn’t been born in 986, and his father had not yet settled in Greenland. This is important: there is a logical progression from Iceland to Greenland to Vinland.

If the discovery occurred around 1000, it was more or less contemporary with the Christian conversion of Iceland and Greenland. Eric’s Saga claims that Leif accidentally discovered Vinland when he got blown off course traveling from Norway to Greenland on a mission from ~~God~~ King Olaf Tryggvason to convert the Greenlanders. This story is generally agreed to be untrue, but the general time period is probably right. One of the perks of conversion was a shiny new alphabet. Well, okay, a slightly used alphabet. But not even the Icelanders (who took to writing with wild abandon) started writing within a week or two. The stories weren’t written down for centuries after the events described. It is true, of course, that the Norse had the Runic alphabet, but it seems unlikely that Leif schlepped around a supply of big rocks so that he could record a journal or captain’s log.

Absurd as they are, these details appear over and over, sometimes with extra absurdities added on. Rick Emmer, in his book Bigfoot: Fact or Fiction, says:

Vikings led by Leif Ericson made their way to the East Coast of North America in 986 CE. It was there that they reported seeing an “horribly ugly, hairy, swarthy and with big black eyes” (Ericson, Leif. 986 CE) creature. They called the creature “Skellring”. People believe that the creature “Skellring” is what we know today as Bigfoot. But it is possible that the Aboriginals were playing a prank on the vikings by wearing large animal hides. This Bigfoot sighting was the first to be recorded in North America.

I love the way he cites Leif parenthetically as his source, in (almost) proper APA style. One website suggests that Bigfoot were an aboriginal tribe:

[Leif described] encounters with huge hairy men, with a horrible odor and piercing shrieks. L’Anse aux Meadows…is the only known village settlement by the Vikings in this area around 1000 AD. That region was inhabited by Native people from back to 6000 BP. Native people who surely had dealt with the local Bigfoot. Is it possible that the Vikings landed on a continent that had two tribes? One Native American and one being Bigfoot? If and [sic] upright human-like being can manage to stay well hidden from man, showing a good degree of intelligence, then when we refer to Bigfoot, are we not referring to the “other” tribe of the Americas?

A similar account was recorded by the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization:

It is a little known historical fact that the first Sasquatch encounter was perhaps observed by the vikings who settled on the island of Newfoundland in Eastern Canada….Leif kept a record of his journey across the Atlantic, from Iceland to Greenland, and of his experiences whilst in Newfoundland, the last point of land on his voyage. Among his accounts, Leif told of seeing huge hairy men who towered over him and his Berzerker crew (and the vikings are known to have been large men). The “huge hairy men”, according to Leif, lived in the Woods and had a rank odour and a deafening shriek. Apparently, Leif had several sightings of the “huge hairy men” before departing the island.

DESCRIPTION OF CREATURE: Towering height, hairy, man-like, rank smell, deafening verbal tones., The natives of Newfoundland, the Beothuck (now extinct), most likely had similar relations to the Sasquatch like other native bands, especially those of Western Canada (ie Bella Coola). Leif’s accounts spoke of his meeting of a race of men (seperate [sic] from the “huge hairy men”), which were almost certainly the Beothuck.

It should be noted that neither Leif nor the later Norse explorers of Vinland were Vikings: properly speaking, “Viking” refers specifically to raiders. They certainly weren’t Berserkers. While the Norse explorers have become insane, frothing warriors in this account, Bigfoot has become huge, loud, foul-smelling and clearly distinct from native peoples.

So where does the story of Leif and Bigfoot come from? I believe it comes from Peter Byrne’s The Search for Big Foot: Monster, Myth or Man? and he drew on Samuel Eliot Morison’s The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600, though Morison did not mention Bigfoot. Byrne, who appears on the “Ancient Mysteries” program, refers to Morison’s account of the Norse discoveries, particularly:

an encounter by Leif Erikson and his men, during their first landing in the New World, with creatures that were pictured as “horribly ugly, hairy, swarthy and with great black eyes. (Byrne 7)

While Byrne admits that this case is “borderline” and that the “creatures” were probably “simply Indians,” he still thinks it may have been Bigfoot. Why? Because they were hairy:

The Norse word “skellring” is a term of contempt. It means, roughly, a “babarian.” But what caught my eye . . . was the word “hairy.” The Norse were a hairy people themselves, big men with matted hair and beards. Why did they remark on the “skellring” being hairy? Was it because they were very much hairier than the Norsemen, even covered with hair, perhaps? If the encounter had been between, say, Tibetans, who are not a hirsute people, and the “skellring,” one could understand the reference to hairiness. But why the Norse mention? (7)

And what of Samuel Eliot Morison? Morison held a Ph.D. from Harvard University and taught history there for forty years. In his account of the Vinland voyages, Morison essentially retells the two sagas, sometimes conflating them. Although he lists the manuscripts and some editions and translations in his bibliography, it is not clear what translation he is using when he quotes, or if he is using his own translation. It is not always clear what saga he’s quoting from. He includes some information that is definitely false. He says, for instance, that Eric the Red “left Norway for Iceland to escape punishment for manslaughter” (39). Eric’s Saga does say that Eric and his father left Norway “because of some killings,” but in reality Eric would have been a child when his family moved to Iceland, too young to have been involved in the killings. Morison also interprets and embellishes some parts of the sagas. He says that Leif considered Helluland (Flat-Rock Land, here identified as Baffin Island) worthless “after finding no gold in the rocks” (41). As far as I know, neither saga in any manuscript mentions gold or the lack of it in Helluland.

So Morison’s account is eccentric or at least dated. Is there any justification for thinking Leif might have met Bigfoot based on Morison’s book? No. First, Morison mentions no encounters between Leif and any sort of animal or native person. Second, the often-quoted description of what Morison calls the Skrellings (not Skellrings, as Byrne calls them) as “horribly ugly, hairy, swarthy, with great black eyes” (55) is not actually in quotation marks. More importantly, he applies this description to “the natives.” It would take a huge amount of determination and delusion to find Bigfoot in Morison’s account. The Skrælings (the word actually used in the sagas) speak, use weapons (arrows and some sort of catapult), row and presumably build boats made out of animal skin. They also bring a variety of animal pelts to trade. All this is clear from Morison’s account.

As for the description of the Skrælings which inspired Byrne to think of Bigfoot, it’s a pretty close paraphrase of a description in Eric’s Saga:

Þeir váru svartir menn ok illiligir ok höfðu illt hár á höfði. Þeir váru mjök eygðir ok breiðir í kinnum. (chap. 10)

This can be translated as, “They were dark men and ill-looking and had bad hair on their heads. They were large-eyed and broad-cheeked” (my translation). “Illt,” used to describe the Skrælings’ hair, can mean “ill, evil, bad; hard, difficult; close, mean, stingy.” Magnus Magnusson and Herman Pálsson translate it as “coarse.” So the excessive hairiness that so fascinated Byrne is just hair that the Norse considered ugly. And it’s not body hair: the description says they had bad hair on their heads. This description comes from the manuscript Hauksbók. The other manuscript, Skálholtsbók, describes the Skrælings as smáir, small, rather than svartir, black or dark. So the huge, hairy, bigfooty Skrælings were neither large nor particularly hairy.

So how did humans become Bigfoot? Well, first Morison retold the sagas in a slightly odd way. Byrne seized on one word and ignored everything else Morison said, while making several mistakes. Others have dismissed Byrne’s reservations but repeated his mistakes, while adding their own (anyone who uses the word “Skellring” has clearly gotten their information from Byrne, either directly or indirectly). The same mistakes get repeated religiously until they become established fact. And no one, not even Byrne, bothers to look at the actual sagas.

Well, almost no one. One poster at Bigfoot Forums has almost restored my faith in humans. In a thread called “Best Bigfoot Documentaries,” spasticskeptic warns,

[“Ancient Mysteries”] repeats the arguably mistaken claim that the earliest known alleged sightings of hairy manlike beasts in the New World go back to 900-something A.D., with “Leif Erickson and his men.” The textual evidence that they quote is just one English translation, and it differs markedly from nearly all other English translations of this material with respect to the issue at hand. Consult the myriad English translations of the early Norse explorations/settlements of North America and this notion that the Norse encountered “hair-covered manlike beasts” pretty much disappears. I looked into to this at length some years ago because to my mind the quotes in the A&E special were especially promising in terms of establishing a historical record of alleged sightings. Thus, I learned the hard way (through old school research) that the translation quoted by A&E is aberrant.

See, Bigfooters, there are books that aren’t about Bigfoot. Some of them are instructive and entertaining. It is possible to read primary sources and, you know, learn stuff.

References:

“Ancient Mysteries: Bigfoot.” A&E. Originally aired as season 1, episode 1 on 7 Jan. 1994, narrated by John Swanson. Version narrated by Leonard Nimoy aired as season 4, episode 18 on 15 May 1997. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCfF-JLpo4I

Byrne, Peter. The Search for Big Foot: Monster, Myth or Man? New York: Pocket, 1975.

Eiríks saga rauða. Ed. Guðni Jónsson. http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Eir%C3%ADks_saga_rau%C3%B0a (Hauksbók); http://www.snerpa.is/net/isl/eirik.htm (Skálholtsbók)

Emmer, Rick. Bigfoot: Fact or Fiction. Infobase Publishing, 2010. Qtd. in http://elo11g05a.blogspot.com/2011/11/bigfoot-leif-ericsons-sighting.html

Grænlendinga saga. Ed. Guðni Jónsson. http://www.heimskringla.no/wiki/Gr%C3%A6nlendinga_saga

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600. New York: Oxford UP, 1971.

The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. Tr. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson. London: Penguin, 1965.

7 Comments | history, language/linguistics, literature, paranormal | Tagged: bigfoot, cryptozoology, Leif Eiriksson, vikings, Vinland | Permalink
Posted by Eve

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 (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

This Week in Conspiracy (19 May 2012)

May 20, 2012

Oh, things are coming together. NATO in Chicago? Bilderbergers in Virginia? It can’t be a coincidence!

This week in Ron Paul’s inevitable victorious and triumphant march to the White House, he pulled out, which makes this the saddest op ed I have ever read.
From the Abbey Road photo-shoot, demonstrating that Paul was not dead and had only kicked off his sandals. Love it!
Are American high officials issuing cryptic warnings based on Nostradamian predictions to Russia?
Sheriff outfit owner Joe Arpaio, worst sheriff-outfit owner ever?
A review of Iron Sky, which is about space Nazis.
A plot against Hugo Chavez put forward…in a crossword puzzle? (This happens from time to time, that someone thinks that they see special meaning in coincidence. I think it happened a couple of times when codewords relevant to Operation Overlord happened into a cartoon. I’ll look that up when I get a chance and update.)
Birtherism is alive and well. Also, Arizona is a horrible place run by total nuts. Take the announcement that the secretary of state there is asking for evidence from Hawaii that the President is not a foreigner. You, my friend, are a clown. It was also given new life in a statement by Obama’s literary agent in a 1991 pamphlet, which of course has the legal standing of a birth certificate. The best comment on this came from TV’s Frank:

Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff)
5/19/12 12:41 AM
Arizona keeping Obama off state ballot until he presents documentation proving that he won’t still be black in November.

9/11 claimed another victim this week, Donna Summer, who also had a premonition of the attacks.
Definitive proof of vaccine-autism link or unbacked bald assertions? The standards of what counts as “definitive proof” should be kept high, people.
Praying to the extraterrestrials to save us from our corrupt Earthling puppet-masters. This was new for me.
A lot of liberty nuts like to scrutinize the laws governing international waters. Like this liberty nut, who says:

This Creature from the Ocean’s Floor, better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty, has been created and written specifically to undercut America’s sovereignty and move us towards global governance and a New World Order where the constitutional rights of the American people, our national sovereignty and the military power of the United States would be subordinated to the whims of a group of corrupt, unelected, third-world bureaucrats who have no interest in Freedom and Liberty.

Hate groups are on the rise, reports ABC (and SPLC), as the country becomes more swarthy.
Alex Jones got his own page on the ever-rational RationalWiki, and to commemorate this event, I’m going to give you an video of Alex screeching like a monkey, courtesy of the /r/conspiratard folks!

FoxNews is spreading an anti-Soros, democratic-process-confidence-in-destroying conspiracy theory. This is in fact serious stuff that seems to be completely at odds with, you know, civilized life. Put up or shut, Fox. For realzies. And that goes for your multiple assertions that the President dealt drugs.
How’s the war in Chicago going? You know, the one between NATO protestors (?) and the military? NATO seems a weird thing to protest. But it’s an even weirder thing to think that the overlap of the NATO meeting with the upcoming annular eclipse is deliberate, perhaps using the cover of sort-of-darkness to carry out a false flag attack. Or perhaps people are using the NATO meeting to air…other grievances, like economic grievances, or whatever Luke Rudkowski is mad about. Or whatever these guys were mad about. But at least the protestors can shatter NATO. Also, I should note that “agent provocateurs” has been a buzzword tagged to this story.
AE911 is having a re-release party (?) for their Experts Speak Out video, and a tour. How’s that happening?
A “FEMA death camp janitor” trolled Godlike Productions. That was a little amusing. But only a little. Speaking of death camps, it looks like any month now, they aren’t going to open and God will be given all the credit.
A low-level Republican in Mississippi called for the death of homosexuals (using the Bible) on his facebook page.
LIGHTNING GUN!
Orion Talk Radio had a show about the “Raw Milk Freedom Riders,” which in no way shits on the Civil Rights Movement.
DIA spokesperson (who I spoke to a couple of months ago) has hilarious job.
Ah, Australia. They figured out the whole psychological warfare agenda behind the 2012 Olympics.
This week, colleague Rachel Dean-Ruzicka, sent me the worst video ever, “The Kinsey Syndrome,” even though I’ve never done anything to her! It’s more than 2.5 hours of quivering insanity. Enjoy! Because I couldn’t!
I don’t know what this is. Monsanto’s big secret. Somehow.
The difference between conspiracy theory and political punditry is…often very slim.
Vigilant Citizen analyzes the movie 2012. These are always fun. Spoiler: This is insane.
Nut Cynthia McKinney running for high office again. Emphasis on the “high.”

Headline of the Week:

Conspiracy Theorists are known for their subtle understatement. Take what Paul Krugman described as “bank jog” becomes: “BREAKING!!! DOOM ON!!!! Bank Run Greece… NOW!!!!”

Twit of the Week:

This week’s conspiracy themed tweet of the week goes to Melissa Lee, who wasn’t even looking for it:

Dear Roger Ailes, I’ll think about it. -Shadowy Leftist Forces #ActuallyGoFuckYourselfhttp://pic.twitter.com/gKE62iXq

The Conspiracy Theory of the Week:

…is not a conspiracy theory, rather a conspiracy spoof from Comedy Central called: “Birthers Divided on Whether or Not to Get Behind Ridiculous Nonsense.”

That’s it for now. I’m off the clock.

UPDATE! I’m back on the clock. I went back to William B. Bruer’s Unexplained Mysteries of World War II to try to find the reference to the cartoon I mentioned above. Instead, I found a reference to 2 suspicious advertisements in the New Yorker that were investigated by the FBI after Pearl Harbor. When I went to look for a website to link to, now having the ad, I found that some toilet hack had basically plagiarized Breuer’s entire chapter. So enjoy. Still looking for the cartoon reference!
UPDATE AGAIN! Ken has straightened me out on the “cartoon” I was looking for. This was another crossword puzzle, where words like “Omaha” and “Overlord” appeared. The story is here. In appreciation, I include a thank you specifically tailored to awesome Kens:

LAST UPDATE! I SWEAR: Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III pointed out that the authorities got concerned when Lex Luthor rolled out his own atomic bomb in the Superman series. Unfortunately, I do not have any fun MST3K videos about people named Bodsworth, so I will just have to send him my deep thanks! It’s a fun find from yesteryear!

RJB

4 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, history, mass media, 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

This Week in Conspiracy (29 April 2012)

May 2, 2012

It was a good week at Casa Blaskiewicz. Unexpected goodness of all types. On the other hand, I also had to watch Ancient Aliens for a guest post at another site. (TBA) Sort of a wash, really.

When I have something official, I’ll mention it here. Heheh.

Anyway, I imagine it was quite another week in the conspiracy-o-sphere. Not a lot going on, but let’s have at it.

Ah, IntelHub. I wonder if you were based in Australia if the toilet water you are spiraling down in would rotate in the other direction? And if you did, you’d think it was a plot against you. Anyway, they have hopped on the double-decker London Olympics 2012 logo reads “ZION” bus. You know, if you change everything.
Popeye at FederalJack files a CFR proposal for global universal health coverage under “establishing the police state.”
Big Science shill Brian Dunning is mixed into a conspiracy theory video that I imagine has a point. And the answer is that, “Lots of times they are.”
Sharon Hill and I have a kvetch about the reinvigorated Breitbart conspiracy over at Doubtful News, now that a coroner who may of may not have been related to the original unsurprising autopsy has died.
Brandon Hedge, appearing on InfoWars, writes the ironically titled, “Has America Been Crippled by Intellectual Idiots?” which contains the statement:

“The goal of every person I knew during my formative years with a desire to succeed was to one day hold in their hands an official looking embossed document announcing their ascension to the ranks of the intellectually anointed. I was never so keen on the idea.” [No shit.]

Can we give Alaska back to Russia? “Alaska GOP’s new chair: ‘God prevailed’ in victory by Ron Paul supporters.”
Veterans Today asks the hard questions, like, “Were real persons murdered on 9/11?” They are hard questions to ask because most people can’t force the words past the bile in their throat when they think of someone asking it.
America’s least serious sheriff costume owner, Joe Arpaio, is taking his Winnebago full of bullshit on the road.
I mean, really, Southwestern United States, what’s the deal? Is there a drought and you are delirious from thirst or something? Or have contracted plague of the brian? Jeez.
Wow. Someone coined the phrase “Military-Industrial Extraterrestrial Complex.”
Yeah, I’m going to see that this patent question gets cleared up. Meanwhile, drink in this one while me and my patent attorney homeboys prepare to destroy it.
I read David Ray Carter’s book on cinema and conspiracy theory. I liked it.
1 year later, there are still conspiracy theories about Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan.
My god, this list of “likely” ends to the human race is almost a study in how bad humans are at risk assessment. Jeez-IS.
What is it with conspiracy theorists and the sun, FFS? I am going to have to write an article about this one. This one should be called: “THE SOLAR WIND! SHE’S GONE FROM SUCK TO BLOW!“
Here comes the martial law again!
The Russians are coming! To Denver!
Anti-fluoridation candidate runs for office in Austin.
Is Google making Rupert Murdoch Jewish? (Actually, I tried this one, and yeah, it’s what comes up.)
Eric Jon Phelps strings words together: “Jesuit-Ruled Anglo-American White Power Structure Behind Bolshevik Revolution.”
Have the LGM moved on from mutilating cows to mutilating…PEOPLE!?!?! (The simulation of a “human mutilation” that they show seems consistent with the soft tissue damage caused by scavengers, IMHO.)
THE MOON IS YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE! That should be enough of a teaser.
Oh, lord. The Chinese leadership is going to disband this May. And apologize. Especially to the Falun Gong. Ha!
When religions collide! Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth taking their message to the Nation of Islam.
Can you find the appeal to ignorance? It’s in Minnesota.
This just in. Luke Rudkowski still has reading comprehension problems, a chip on his shoulder, and no shame to speak of.

TWIT OF THE WEEK

Twit of the week is @SheepHunter, who totally lost his sh*t this week:

IM FUCKING BORED SICK REPOSTING STUFF SERUCHING STUFF UP BUSTING MY ASS FOR PEOPLE DONT CARE OR HAVE NO INTREST WHAT HAPPINS TO THEM OR THERE FAM BRING IT ON LETS GET IT OVER WITH WE NEED TO BE FREE ONCE AGAIN NO AGENDA21 OR GMO OR CEM TRAILS FEAR ASPERTINE FLURIED WHATER

Decaf, bro. And a dictionary. The runner up was Adam Kokesh:

I’m a professional fucktard. Cursing is my bread & butter. (@YouTube http://t.co/EYErJVsM) — Adam Kokesh (@adamkokesh)

Well, that’s it. I have not been moved to crown a conspiracy theory of the week. But surely something wacky will pop up next week!

RJB

6 Comments | 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, history, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Bob

Skeptical Humanities

Women of the Viking Age Kicked Ass, But That Doesn’t Mean They Were Vikings

Shilling for Big History

“Is It Possible?” No. The Vikings Meet Ancient Aliens

For the Love of Yeti, Bigfooters, Read a Primary Source!

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