It's going to be a late night

Something is really wrong with me. I'm sure the response most people would have to that statement is, "Of course something is wrong with you. You are one of those conspiracy nuts."

The Formula 1 season has begun and I will be staying up late tonight to watch the race live from Malaysia. I don't even like the course they are racing on this week but I will still be sitting in front of the TV at 2:30 AM just to watch the race. What the hell is wrong with me? I've done this for years and freely I acknowledge that the quality of Formula 1 has been in decline for years. Am I really in that desperate need of a life? Formula 1 is a niche sport in America so perhaps that offers more of an explanation for my behavior than anything else.

Pleasures are few and fleeting in this life so I suppose that my justification of doing this is legitimate in some way. But it still wrecks havoc with my sleep patterns and Monday morning is going to be a real bear.

News - Former US Attorney fired because she knew too much

Madcow Morning News postulates that fired US Attorney in San Diego, Carol Lam, lost her job because she "knew too much" regarding corruption linked to disgraced Sen. Duke Cunningham:

"One plausible explanation why San Diego US Atty. Carol Lam was fired might
be that, in a rapidly spreading scandal which could quickly grow too large
to contain, she already knows too much."

Read more at the MadcowNews website:

http://www.madcowprod.com/03082007.html

News - Bilderberg Group meeting in Istanbul

Illuminati enthusiasts are reporting that this year's Bilderberg Group meeting is to be held in Istanbul from May 31st to June 3rd. As we get closer to the meeting date I'll begin posting some articles about the Bilderberg Group.

Link to Bilderberg.org:

http://www.bilderberg.org/2007.htm#bb2007

Used book stores

It's the spring of 1986 and I am in a used book store in Pensacola, Florida; looking through the piles of paperbacks for reading material. I'm a young 19 year old sailor approaching his 20th birthday and the Navy has not removed my love of the absurd and bizarre. If anything the nearly two years of military service has enhanced those senses and given me a wicked and cutting eye for dark humor as a bonus.

I have a large paper shopping bag to hold the goodies I am finding in the musty stacks and I am about to find a small treasure trove. I strike a pocket of books which once belonged to a radical. Someone who held a deep-seated devotion to their belief system. Someone who supported the most celebrated minds of their movement with purchases of their written works. Someone who explored the farthest range of ideas that this system's dogma could be prescibed to. I found the personal library of a red blooded extreme right winger with highly developed tastes.

Among the books were low-level introductory tracts by Goldwater and Schlaffley. There was a larger volume of more advanced manuals that focused outrage at Communist conspiracies and the evils of popular culture. The goldmine was a selection of the most extreme beliefs; books and pamphlets published by the John Birch Society. Even though I did not have a clue as to the precise nature of what these books meant I could still estimate that I had found something unique in nature from reading the back covers. My instincts told me that this sort of find is rare. Experience has proven to me that my assessment was correct.

Looking back on that adventure I realize just how dangerous it was to jump headlong into muddy waters. Had I been a confused and angry young man I would have had a life changing experience that would have led me down a dark road. Had I been filled with hatred, mistrust and discomfort for people unlike myself I would have become a convert. I didn't verbalize these ideas as I read those books but I suddenly began making connections in my mind that the act of brainwashing is a lot easier than any of us suspect. Just as quickly I understood that if this literature had promoted far-left radical ideas the danger would have been equally great. And the same thoughts applied to odd religious beliefs, citizens movements of shaggy birthright and loose definitions of the nature of morality.

I read only a handful of the books from my score over the next few weeks; the ideas were too overwhelming to soak in all at once, especially for a virginal mind to such wild political and social ideas. But that handful whetted my appetite for the time being. They introduced me to a wider world where there was no line to blur and the horizon stretched farther than I could see. I still have these books in my personal library and I have their companions from the other side of the coin to keep the two sides at bay.

In a few years I would learn about slack and Bob. I would find others who also got strange kicks from the act of exposing themselves to the true outsiders of society, the outsiders with whom there was a distinct possibility that they might draw you into their world and close the door behind the both of you. But for now I only knew that there was an unseen, unspoken and rarely exposed undercurrent that ran through all I could see. I didn't yet know how to look for the signs of hidden currents, but my eyes were now being trained.

The memory hole goodie bag - Pons and Fleischman 18 years later

Exactly eighteen years ago this week the debate began to escalate over the claims of Drs. Pons and Fleischman of achieving cold fusion at room temperature in their Utah laboratory. Imagine for a moment that this claim were to be made today. With steadily rising energy costs, a mainstream acceptance and discussion of global warming and a war being waged in the midst of the worlds main oil suppliers the feedback over such an announcement would be deafening.

The findings of Pons and Fleischman were discredited but they have continued their work non-stop since then. Other alternative energy devices have been developed in obscure workshops worldwide as well as being studied and tested at respected laboratories and research facilities of major Universities and organizations such as NASA and TVA. Even the Griggs Device has found a niche in the pulp wood industry and is in production by Hydro-Dynamics today. Of course the words "over unity" and it's much debated history are not seen in any of their literature or on their web site but this is beside the point and a distraction from what is really important. The point is that an energy efficient, functional and creative device is in production.

We will not wake one sunny morning to news of a breakthrough technology which makes oil, coal and nuclear energy obsolete and worthless. But we are slowly rising with a hangover to a number of technologies which will address our energy and transportation needs. Oil companies are raking in record profits but their added wealth is not trickling down to their own customers. All businesses rely one way or another on the availability of cheap, abundant energy and their bottom line is weakened across the board due to the rising energy costs. They will, one day, implement the devices being developed in the labs because simple economics demand that they be implemented.

There is a long lived and much repeated conspiracy theory which relates to this subject. Since the 1930's there have been urban legends regarding the existence of an engine that runs on water, the classic Water Engine story. The legend promotes the idea that the oil companies took control of this technology and have suppressed it to maintain their control over the energy sector. Variations on this legend also maintain that the oil companies destroyed all records of this technology therefore, it is not just suppressed it is a lost technology and cannot be recreated. David Mamet even wrote a play about this mysterious subject in the 1970's.

In times of heavy handed corporate power reigning over the public, such as what we see today with "Big Oil" and others; feelings of being powerless manifests itself in our consciousness as a society. Even though we haven't seen an uptick in rumors and conspiracy theories regarding a water engine or other groundbreaking alternative energy devices it would not surprise me if we do in the near future. Our urban legends and conspiracy theories are sometimes a comforting way of explaining why things are the way they are.

News - Alger Hiss was innocent

(AP) -- An author who has researched the Cold War's most famous espionage case said new evidence suggests another U.S. diplomat, not Alger Hiss, was the Soviet agent who fed U.S. secrets to Moscow.

More of this article at CNN.com:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/06/alger.hiss.ap/index.html

CT dates: Pick a number from 1 to infinity

Even though Numerology is independent from Conspiracy Theory, it has deep connections and influence in the CT field. The Mayan Calendar, 666, deciphering the 9/11 attacks are a few prime examples. We have three upcoming dates in the month of April which have strong ties to the CT world. April 11th, 19th and 20th.

Here is a quick overview of notable events for each of these dates:

11th

al-Qaeda has shown a fondness for attacks on the 11th.
411 is the American telephone code for Information.
1866 - Carla Ford, future wife of Henry Ford is born.
1814 - 1st abdication of France by Napoleon.
1970 - The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission is launched.
1981 - Ronald Reagan is released from the hospital after John Hinkley's assassination attempt.

19th

1775 - The American Revolution begins at Lexington Common as the famous "Shot heard round the world" is fired.
1896 - Herzl's "The Jewish State" is published.
1909 - Joan of Arc, declared a saint.
1933 - President Franklin Roosevelt announces the United States will leave the gold standard.
1936 - Anti-Jewish riots break out in Palestine.
1947 - The French ship S.S. Grandcamp explodes in Texas City harbor, killing nearly 600 people.
1989 - The center gun of 16" gun turret #2 explodes on U.S.S Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
1993 - Branch Davidian siege ends on the 51st day as their compound burns to the ground. 79 people lose their lives, including 21 children.
1995 - Truck bomb outside Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, kills 168 & injures 800.

20th

121 - Marcus Aurelius is born.
1889 - Adolf Hitler is born.
1912 - Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, dies.
1799 - Napoleon issues a decree calling for establishing Jerusalem for Jews.
1871 - 3rd Enforcement Act is signed, the President can suspend writ of habeas corpus.
1884 - Pope Leo XIII's encyclical "On Freemasonry" is published.
1980 - Cubans begin to arrive in US from Mariel boatlift.
1999 - Deadliest school shooting in US history at Columbine High School, Littleton CO, 13 killed, 24 wounded.

Update (4/11) - News reports are just coming in that al-Qaeda is claiming responsibility for today's bombings in Algeirs. This would add to the list of attacks they have commited on the 11th day of a month.

An introduction

Does the world need another conspiracy theorist who is eager to infect the rest of the population with their twisted enlightenment and insight? Probably not but when has that stopped us before?

When I first dipped my toes in the murky waters of conspiracism in the late 80's, I had no idea the hidden rooms of conspiracy theory were so many or so cluttered. It all began for me with an anonymous pamphlet left under the windshield wiper of my truck while I was shopping in a grocery store in Pensacola, Florida. The year was 1987 and I was only a casual novice of the subject. I knew the general overview of the JFK assassination theory and that was it. But the pamphlet I held in my hands was strange, mysterious and alluring. It claimed in great detail that the Pope was a Nazi who had played a part in the Holocaust.

"What kind of nut believes this?" I thought while reading it in the kitchen of my apartment.

Then the seductive aspect of conspiracy theory appreciation hit me all at once. It's not the "truth", or lack thereof, behind the theory that matters. It's the back story and the passionate attachment we all have to maintain our grasp on reality, or what we want reality to be. How do you reconcile sanity and insanity in a sane and insane world? What do you do when you see connections that no one else seems to see? What do you do when your own beliefs run against the grain of what is accepted as being the truth? What do you do when the world seems out of control and there is no way to bring order? The answer was simple. You write about what you see and believe.

This slim pamphlet held a wealth of rants, obscure references and a volume of data that appeared to have been gathered as the result of a massive research project that tied loose ends together in seemingly unrelated and illogical ways. While I didn't agree with the writer's conclusions I could not escape the voyeuristic pleasure of seeing another person go far out on a limb, and bounce on the slim piece of green wood; daring it to break and daring us to try and stop him.

It's now 20 years on and I've seen the CT world transform before my eyes and I've struggled to make sense of the process. What started as vanity publishing and pamphlet printing many decades ago; conspiracy theory literature turned into kitchen publishing in the late 80's and early 90's. Kitchen publishing turned into static web pages in the late 90's. Static web pages have turned into dynamic forums.

Where are we going next? Has the quality of CT writings improved or been diluted by the web? Who are the Anonymous Cowards? And in this age of vague definitions, a jaded outlook and lowered expectations; is the meaning of the word "truth" in peril?

Time to dig.