The Reality Illiteracy of those who Mock Conspiracy Theorists

by Anthony Wile
Daily Bell
January 29, 2012

From Social Psychological and Personality Science (SPPS), a journal from the independent publisher Sage Publications, comes an article that has predictably seen wide distribution on the Internet. It implies that those who believe in globalist conspiracy theories are illogical – even downright nutty.

The article is entitled  ”Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories” and the thesis of the article is that people who believe in conspiracy theories eventually become so immersed in them and so mesmerized that they do not realize they are holding contradictory beliefs.

“Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement.” (SPPS Abstract)

“Conspiratorialists” become so distrustful of “government” and “authority” that they will impute any and every kind of malevolence to them.

Thus it is that people can claim, on the one hand, that Osama bin Laden is “dead” and died years ago, while simultaneously claiming that bin Laden remains alive and that US and Pakistan government authorities are not being truthful about him and his physical state.

Of course, I’ve never run into anyone, who claims that bin Laden is ALIVE. But it’s true that here at the Daily Bell we’ve run articles explaining that bin Laden probably died years ago. See, for instance, “Osama bin Laden is Dead Again?”

The SPPS article would likely have you believe this is an outrageous conspiracy theory. But given that FOX news ran a report on bin Laden’s death in 2001, and given that Pakistan’s former president Benazir Bhutto herself claimed that bin Laden died in the early 2000s (supposedly as the result of an assassination), it doesn’t seem so far-fetched to speculate that bin Laden didn’t die as the result of a US raid in 2011.

But that’s almost minor stuff. Articles like this, despite their scientific patina, are deeply illiterate. Why so? Because invariably such articles won’t deal with the bedrock financial illiteracy of current economic and political paradigms.

Imagine if the world were based on lies. Well, unfortunately, that’s the truth. The lies go far beyond “who shot JFK” or whether the US government was directly or indirectly involved in 9/11.

When one uses the logical framework of Austrian, free-market analysis to analyze the Way the World Works in the modern age, one inevitably comes to the conclusion that modern society is built around fundamental untruths.

The first one is economic: It is the idea that central bankers can efficiently and effectively set the price of money. They cannot.

Every time central bankers decide on how much money to print or where short interest rates should be, the decisions are “fixing” prices – and price-fixing never works. Price-fixing distorts economies and causes a wealth shift from those who create it to those who don’t and may not know what to do with it. Over time, aggressively mis-priced money causes first recessions and then depressions.

The second lie is that laws and regulations are necessary and that they can save society from “anarchy.” In fact, anarchy is only the absence of government. That’s the real definition. And absence of government does not necessarily imply “chaos.” Just as setting interest rates fixes the price of money, so every law and regulation is a price fix as well, preventing someone from doing something within the context of the marketplace. This also constitutes a wealth transfer.

One can have a perfectly adequate and satisfying society without formal government, certainly without the kinds of intrusive and murderous governments we’ve got today. History is full of examples of societies that flourished with at least minimal government, especially societies where power truly flowed from the bottom up.

The third lie is that government is essential for purposes of defense and defending its citizens. But a quick survey of modern wars shows a disturbing tendency of governments – especially certain Western governments – to foment the very wars that citizens believe they’re being protected from.

War is the “health of the state” – the way that those in power consolidate their hold while punishing their enemies using phony pretexts having to do with “treason” and “leaking classified information.” Sound familiar?

It is what we call the Internet Reformation that has gradually shed light on the fundamental untruths permeating modern society in both the developed and developing world.

The Internet, like the Gutenberg Press before it, is a revolutionary device that has allowed people access to information that was hitherto denied or covered up, especially in the 20th century when the power elite‘s control over society was perhaps at its apex.

A conspiracy likely DOES exist. The Internet easily reveals not just facts that illuminate it, but also PATTERNS that show the same command-and-control strategies implemented throughout history, over and over.

Read Full Article…

U.S. Regards its citizens as Terrorists

Government uses scare tactics to play people against each other and teach them how to tattle tale.

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
July 21, 2011

The artificial imminence of a terrorist attack against the United States continues to be the tool of choice for the U.S. government to provoke fear among its citizens. After the false-flag attacks of September 11, the government blamed Arabs and Muslims indiscriminately and told people to watch out and report any suspicious activity. The definition of suspicious or ‘out of the ordinary’ activity, however, was not specified. Neither was specified the reach of any potential attack, nor any credible information of an attempt to cause harm to the nation.

A decade later, the United States government has proven conspiracy theories correct. The whole security apparatus created before and after 9/11 was meant to be used on citizens, not elusive boogie men hiding in a cave or under a bed somewhere. The failure to carry out their policies of societal control through the menace of terrorism, obligated the government to change plans and, earlier rather than later, turn the homeland security machinery against the citizenry. Now, the threat of an attack perpetrated by a brown-skinned man somewhere in the 50 states has been downplayed to re-focus the attention towards the common middle-class, hard-working citizen.

Even though terrorists exist, the real measurable threat of an attack by Muslim or Arab terrorists is so miniscule that security experts such as Wayne Madsen, historians such as Webster Tarpley and former intelligence operatives such as Bob Chapman and Ray McGovern usually compare the likelihood of an attack with getting hit by lightning or dying during a bee attack. As it has been widely proven, the government not only cannot provide any hard evidence on an imminent attack on U.S. soil, but also has admitted to creating false threats to support the implementation of policies that violate well established constitutional rights such as privacy, the right to own and bear arms, assembly, protest in public places, and so on, using as an excuse the false premise that any ‘out of the ordinary’ citizen activity implies the potential threat of a terrorist attack.

Recently, townships in Phoenix and Arkansas have banned citizen gatherings without a municipal permit and tried to harass the mayor and other citizens who were in the process of revealing the out of control federal power grab occurring all over the country. Bureaucrats in those states and all over the nation have the backing of local police chiefs who either let the feds take over their towns in exchange for a larger federal budget for their police force, or side with the violators as a consequence of their ignorance.

While in previous opportunities the Department of Homeland Security has flashed its military-like capabilities to detain and apprehend citizens deemed as suspects -without any kind of legal basis- now, the government is trying to ‘alert’ the population about the threat that members of the middle-class, war veterans and minority citizens present to society. In a recent video issued by the U.S. government, the so-called ‘authorities’ profile every single type of person, but emphasize that the threat may come from white middle-class Americans. The first actor in the video psy-op sponsored by FEMA and Homeland Security, portrays a supposed caucasian terrorist who sprays can paint on a security camera to hide the arrival of a van carrying who knows what. In the sequence, an African-American man calls police to denounce what he calls ‘suspicious activity’. The video follows with pictures from previous terrorist attacks which ironically were carried out by the very same government such as the Oklahoma City bombing. This version of the facts often labeled as a conspiracy theory is supported by people like Major Edward A. Dames, an Army veteran of the United States. Dames said that there is a power group which intends to run another terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, similar to the attack of the 90’s. The Major has identified the location of the possible attack as 210 Park Avenue, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Read the testimony of ex-military here.

In other sections of the video, people can see a caucasian man dropping a backpack with what appears to be an explosive device, while another man observes through an office window. For anyone who is not familiar with psychological operations, this is the way terrorist tell you what their next move will be. In other words, it is very likely the next terrorist attack on United States soil will be a truck bomb inside a federal building, an explosive device on some city corner or any of the other forms shown in the video. The exposure of the public to these kind of scenarios guarantees that the masses will believe the government when it comes out to say that the latest terrorist attack was carried out by white man who left car bombs or explosive devices somewhere to kill police, federal workers or their neighbors who lived or worked around the corner.

The most recent video created by Homeland Security is part of a campaign labeled as “See something, say something”, which has a budget of at least $10 million. Although the denouncement of possible terror attacks is painted as ‘patriotic’ and government officials often wrap themselves with the flag, history shows that urgent calls from governments to pass legislation to spy on its citizens or for citizens to spy on themselves result in the installation of what many call a Police State. History points us to specific examples. Requests to abolish civil and constitutional rights were followed by dictatorial regimes in communist Russia, Nazi Germany, communist China, Chile in the 70’s and 80’s, Brazil, Cuba up until today, and so on.

What is more alarming on this day and age is not that governments such as the American attempt to portray and blame its own citizens as terrorists; this is a historical fact. The novelty on calls from governments to ‘help avoid imminent attack’ is that in their propaganda, government officials label almost any form or dissent or traditions as Terrorism. That is why people who speak about the Constitution or constitutional rights are now suspects of terrorism. People who support non-establishment political candidates are identified as potential terrorists. People who display stickers or banners calling for the reduction in the size of government are stopped, searched and sometimes issued tickets for expressing their political or even religious beliefs.The list also includes Ron Paul supporters, gun owners, gold bullion enthusiasts, and anyone and everyone who opposes government policies.

Read the details of this policy in the Report entitled: MIAC Report: The Modern Militia Movement. Additionally, the government has hired pastors and priests to teach his followers to submit to government guidelines. This plan was implemented with Executive Order 13397: The Churches as Government Agencies.

U.S. Government Ordered Media not to question 9/11 Official Story

Washington’s Blog
June 14, 2011

It’s big news that the Pentagon Papers have finally been released by the government.

But the statements from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about 9/11 have not been covered by the corporate media.

As Fire Dog Lake’s Jeff Kaye writes today:

The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions …

Similarly, Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski – who blew the whistle on the Bush administration’s efforts to concoct false intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – wrote(page 26):

I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.

Several months after 9/11, famed news anchor Dan Rather toldthe BBC that American reporters were practicing “a form of self-censorship”:

There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions…. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.What we are talking about here – whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not – is a form of self-censorship.

The head of CNN agreed:

There was ‘almost a patriotism police’ after 9/11 and when the network showed [things critical of the administration’s policies] it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and “big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’

Keith Olbermann said:

You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble …. You cannot say: By the way, there’s something wrong with our …. system.

Former Washington Post – and now Huffington Post – columnist Dan Froomkin wrotein 2006:

Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . .

There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.

If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers.

I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter – whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way.

The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, Seymour Hersh, said:

“All of the institutions we thought would protect us — particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress — they have failed. The courts . . . the jury’s not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn’t. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that’s the most glaring….Q: What can be done to fix the (media) situation?

[Long pause] You’d have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You’d actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn’t think you could control. And they’re not going to do that.”

Veteran reporter Bill Moyers criticized the corporate media for parroting the obviously false link between 9/11 and Iraq (and the false claims that Iraq possessed WMDs) which the administration made in the run up to the Iraq war, and concluded that the false information was not challenged because:

“the [mainstream] media had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked.”

Of course, the corporate media is always pro-war. Since 9/11 provided a justification for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere, the mainstream media doesn’t want to question the government’s version of events.

As Tom Brokaw notes:

All wars are based on propaganda.

What Does Ellsberg Say?

Ellsberg saysthat the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11:

Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today’s American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take [former FBI translator and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations [which Ellsberg calls “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”].As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who “sat on the NSA spying story for over a year” when they “could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome.”

“There will be phone calls going out to the media saying ‘don’t even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,'” he told us.

* * *

“I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to ‘How do we deal with Sibel?'” contends Ellsberg. “The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn’t get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told ‘don’t touch this . . . .'”

He supports a new 9/11 investigation.

He says that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. (Here’s some of what that whistleblower says.) He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11.

And he says that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of those in office, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see this and this).

Alternative Media Is Not Much Better

It is not just the corporate media.

I have had the owners of highly-regarded alternative media companies confide in me privately that they don’t believe the government’s version of 9/11, but that are scared of discussing it publicly because they don’t want to be tarred-and-feathered for discussing “conspiracy theories”.

Even writers like Glenn Greenwald – who are good on so many issues – won’t touch it.

Of course – as Ellsberg points out – “Secrets … can be kept reliably … for decades … even though they are known to thousands of insiders”. Indeed, the whole label “conspiracy theory” is just an attempt to diffuse criticism of the powerful.

People used to understand this. As the quintessential American writer Mark Twain said in a more rational age:

A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public.

Of course, as thousands of top American military officers, counter-terrorism officials, intelligence officers, congressmen, structural engineers, and others have publicly said, the government’s story about 9/11 makes absolutely no sense. See this, this, this and this. And family members of people who died on 9/11 – and many New Yorkers – want a new investigation.

But you’ll never hear that in the corporate media.

USAToday Advertises Chemtrailing as a tool to stop “global warming”

Suddenly spraying people with aluminum, barium and other deadly chemicals is a great way to end an inexistant emergency

One more main stream loud speaker concedes to the “conspiracy theories” about people being sprayed on like cockroaches

USAToday
March 4, 2011

Scientists call it “geoengineering,” but in plain speak, it means things like this: blasting tons of sulfate particles into the sky to reflect sunlight away from Earth; filling the ocean with iron filings to grow plankton that will suck up carbon; even dimming sunlight with space shades.

Each brings its own set of risks, but in a world fretting about the consequences of global warming, are these ideas whose time has come?

With 2010 tying as the world’s warmest year on record and efforts to slow greenhouse gas emissions looking stymied, calls are rising for research into engineering our way out of global warming — everything from launching solar shade spacecraft to genetically engineering green deserts. An international consortium of 12 universities and research institutes on Tuesday, for example, announced plans to pioneer large-scale “ocean fertilization” experiments aimed at using the sea to pull more greenhouse gases out of the sky.

Once the domain of scientists’ off-hours schemes scrawled on cocktail napkins, such geoengineering is getting a serious look in the political realm.

“We’re moving into a different kind of world,” says environmental economist Scott Barrett of Columbia University. “Better we turn to asking if ‘geoengineering’ could work, than waiting until it becomes a necessity.”

A National Academy of Sciences‘ best estimate has global warming bumping up average temperatures by 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions that are largely responsible, most from burning the modern economy’s main fuels, coal and oil, look set to continue to rise for the next quarter-century, according to Energy Information Agency estimates.

“That’s where geoengineering comes in,” says international relations expert David Victor of the University of California-San Diego. “Research into geoengineering creates another option for the public.”

Geoengineering takes its cue from the natural experiment that actually had made the only dent in global warming’s rise in the last two decades — the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, which blasted more than 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide 21 miles high, straight into the stratosphere. The stratosphere suspended those sulfur particles in the air worldwide, where the haze they created scattered and reflected sunlight away from the Earth and cooled global atmospheric temperatures nearly 0.7 to 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit in 1992 and 1993, before finally washing out, according to NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies estimates. Firing about half that much sulfur into the stratosphere every year for 30 years would help stabilize global warming’s rise, National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Tom Wigley estimated in a much-debated 2006 Science journal report.

Humanity would effectively become addicted to sky-borne sulfates to keep the cooling on track. The tradeoff is that rain and snow patterns would likely shift, a 2008 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study found, consigning hundreds of millions of the poorest people on the planet in Africa and Asia to recurring drought. Read Full Article…

Related Articles:

Chemtrails: The Consequences of Toxic Metals

There’s a mini ice age coming

1000+ Scientists Dissent over Anthropogenic Warming

Pentagon Controlled Propaganda Placement on CSI NY

Infowars.com

A primetime CBS show that aired last week featured a notable example of so called “propaganda placement”, where a talking point is inserted into the plot in order to shape public perception, often at the behest of the government.

CSI NY’s episode entitled “Point of View” featured a character who researches “conspiracy theories”, such the deliberate dispersal of potentially dangerous chemtrails into the atmosphere.

First the character, a professor, is labeled”odd”, then “anti-American”, before finally he is revealed to be a “domestic terrorist” hell bent on releasing a biological weapon in New York.

The following is a partial transcript of dialogue from the show:

CSI detective: “I have a little intel on Professor Scott; he has a history of espousing various conspiracy theories; sharing them with his students got him into a little trouble.”

Professor’s friend: “Every university has a least one unconventional professor.”

Second CSI detective: “Oh come on Payton, this guys ideas here are totally anti-American. Look at this; water fluoridation, tsunami bombs, chemtrails…

First CSI detective: “What are chemtrails?”

Third CSI detective: “Some people believe that vapor exhaust from aircraft are actually dangerous bio-chemicals dispersed into the air.”

Friend of the professor: “Which only proves that the professor is a little odd.”

Watch the video here.  (the above dialogue begins at around 24:40)

Call me a rabid conspiracy theorist, but the episode happens to coincide with a State Department guide that dismisses a range of “conspiracy theories”, including the use of depleted uranium by U.S. forces in Iraq as existing only “in the realm of myth”.

But the government cannot inject plot lines into TV dramas – that’s simply a baseless conspiracy theory, isn’t it?

Unfortunately no, it is not. As we covered in depth last year, in just one publicly announced instance, shows on all the major networks in the U.S. were infested with plot lines and talking points aimed at promoting “service and volunteerism”, as well as other topics high on the priorities list of the Obama administration.

One of those shows, according to the Entertainment Industry Foundation, was CSI: NY on CBS.

The week that followed saw many subliminal messages, as well as overt talking points, inserted into shows on all the networks.

Neither was this the first time the corporate networks prostituted their integrity and handed over control of their content to the Obama administration. Back in June 2009, ABC News mimicked the likes of Communist China and North Korea by completely turning its news coverage over to the government and excluding any dissenting opinions to promote President Obama’s health care agenda.

The use of the chemtrails talking point in CSI: NY is interesting given that the dispersal of sulphur containing aerosols into the atmosphere is a practice that has beenproven to have been undertaken, and is a regular part of controversial discussions concerning geo-engineering the planet in the face of climate change.

Of course, you’re not supposed to know that, you’re just supposed to think it’s a crazy conspiracy theory espoused by nut case anti-American terrorists who want to kill you with bio weapons.

Could this be a latest example of propaganda placement be a manifestation of Obama’s information czar Cass Sunstein’s all out war on “conspiracy theories”? Or is that just another conspiracy theory too?