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Author Topic: Detecting and Refuting Conspiracy Thinking - Oh really?  (Read 1658 times)
Jordan
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« on: February 10, 2012, 02:06:50 PM »

The difficulty of conspiracy thinking is its pathological character; the problem of conspiracy thinking is the enormous danger of false positives. One way to identify and challenge conspiracy thinking is to evaluate its internal coherence: 'Do these claims even make sense in their own terms?'

I previously discussed the importance of an authoritative common sense about the way-the-world-works in protecting societies from conspiracy thinking. One might call this the 'external coherence' test: are such theories consistent with what you know of how the world works? Think of Barney Frank's response to the loonies: 'On what planet do you spend most of your time?'.

I now see that distinguishing conspiracy thinking (alien abductions, the Birther movement, The Protocols of Zion, etc) from conspiracy detection (e.g. The Protocols of Zion fraud) must also rely on some elementary evaluation of internal coherence: 'Do these claims even make sense in their own terms?'

The difficulty of conspiracy thinking is its pathological character: one can never disprove such a conspiracy even when it is plainly wrong. The problem of conspiracy thinking relates to the enormous danger of false positives. For example, the 'Protocols of Zion', purporting to describe a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, was (and in places still is) widely believed and seems at least partly responsible for the various more or less systematic and horrible purges of Jews at various times and places in the 20th Century, and perhaps still indirectly supports a great deal of the more tacit anti-semitism which continues to this day (25% of Americans in one recent survey believed that Jews were responsible for the financial crisis). The evil that can be caused by conspiracy thinking - in its eagerness to embrace false conspiracy theories -  is clear from history.

This calls for two things. Firstly we need a bullshit detector to identify the cases, and sometimes the people, one should avoid taking at all seriously, while bearing in mind that there can be real and nasty conspiracies, sometimes reaching all the way to the tops of governments (Rwanda, Watergate, Suez, etc). Conspiracy thinkers typically assert that all they are doing is following a skeptical stance to received information. In fact what they are following is a radical epistemic stance of 'possibilism' - anything that is possible deserves equal status and consideration as knowledge. This position completely rejects one of the central concerns and foundations of successful civilisation: the project of cumulatively and collectively enhancing our understanding of how the world works. They ask, 'How do you know the Jews/Free Masons/French government aren't behind this [unusual world event]?' They say, 'It is up to the Official Story to prove itself by disproving every other possibility'. In fact it is the skeptic who has the burden of proving the plausibility of her critique.

Secondly we need to stand up to the nonsense propagated by conspiracy thinkers. What they are doing is not harmless. It is drivel but it is dangerous drivel that can kill people directly, or crowd out and make impossible rational debate (and hence grown-up politics), leading to yet further conspiracy thinking and nastiness.

Since conspiracy theorists often claim that the world actually works quite differently than our common sense tells us, discrepancies there don't necessarily provide a simple way to distinguish bullshit. Internal coherence is therefore a useful independent test since, in principle, it can be used to assess the 1st order sensibleness of a claim even under the charitable assumption that the world is like that. In principle this should also provide an alternative route to criticising conspiracy claims in terms the conspiracy thinkers themselves might accept, since the problem is not that they are stupid, but that they come to foolish conclusions.


"Marxism, Conspiracy, and 9–11" by David MacGregor and Paul Zarembka*

I recently came across this somewhat typical example of conspiracy thinking, unusual only in being published in a peer-reviewed academic journal (what kind of peers, one wonders). The authors claim that, as Marxism has revealed, the grand bourgeoisie are constantly engaged in conspiracies inside and outside of government to further their capitalist interests through "bourgeois terror", such as the US domestic conspiracy to simulate an external attack on the World Trade Centre as an excuse for a profitable war with Iraq. They discuss some grey literature (mainly internet self-published) 'researching' the evidence against the 'Official Story' of 9/11 and assert that a US government-capitalist cabal conspiracy must be the real explanation. The particular claims here are integrated into a Marxist world-view that is clearly compatible with bizarre and massive government-capitalist conspiracy (if not dependent on it), so criticising this conspiracy's external coherence with the way the world really works is not promising. In fact it's the very argument, and attention, these people are dying to get.

But fortunately it's not necessary to even look at external coherence when the internal coherence is so bad. These are basic errors of reasoning at various levels which I think apply to most conspiracy thinking.

1. Problems in the evidence for the Official Story are not evidence for the conspiracy theory
The level of scrutiny brought to the "Official Story" is not replicated for the conspiracy version. In this case the official 9/11 story is examined minutely for any minor inconsistency - the melting points of structural beams, and so on (this seems a common theme - Jewish holocaust 'truthers' frequently go into great detail about the amount of rebar in the concrete ruins of 'alleged' gas chambers). Any such inconsistency is taken to be definitive evidence of conspiracy.

On the one hand there is an explicit commitment to extreme skepticism in that Type 1 errors (believing something which is actually false) must be resisted at all costs. On the other hand this skepticism is only applied to the Official Story. The alternative conspiracy story is assessed under a quite different, though implicit, commitment to avoiding Type 2 errors (missing what is really there) at all costs. This can fairly be described as a commitment to extreme gullibility.

The result is the logical equivalent of claiming that evolution has some missing links and therefore Intelligent Design is true.

2. The possession of a microscope does not make one a scientist.
Although the Official Story is analysed as if it is 'just a theory', with full 'scientific rigour', this is not backed up by anything resembling a scientific attitude but rather a self-serving pedantry. Rigour for the conspiracy theorist means pointing a microscope at certain arbitrary places, rather than any kind of systematic and comprehensive analysis. (This lack of perspective characterises most amateur research - whether 'investigating' climate change theory or criticising research on inequality - although that doesn't necessarily invalidate it.) There is little ability or interest for impartially assessing the quality of sources: any old crap on the internet that fits your view is taken on faith; the findings of Official Story institutions are pre-refuted.

This is a mockery of honest research and reflects a basic misunderstanding of scientific method. Scientists are not only non-conformist sceptics looking to poke holes in conventional wisdom (trying to disprove the hypothesis). They also take responsibility for constructing robust and complete alternative theories that can do better in an overall objective assessment of accounting for the evidence. Scientific scrutiny has a special epistemic status because it strives to be constructive, impartial, and open-minded (though disciplined), but conspiracy thinking is characterised by its close-minded dedication to the truth it already knows, almost visceral distrust of the Official Story, and a search for the right evidence (that supports its view).

3. A house-of-cards
The extravagant claims of the conspiracy theory have a certain plausibility considered individually and in an ad hoc way. I mean that they seem possible, not necessarily probable either in the sense of being probe-able (withstanding rigorous scrutiny) or at all likely. This is the nature of possibilism. But on closer inspection, when one tries to take them seriously as a positive coherent account, they have gaping logical flaws.

Like why pretend Osama and a bunch of Saudis did 9/11 if your plan is to justify invading Iraq? If you're so smart and powerful, why would you have to start a war to make money? Why make it so complicated that so many things could so easily go wrong?

Focussing on particular claims does no better. Why make up a list of fake hijackers using the real names of living people who are left around for journalists to find? Why do something so terribly difficult, risky, and expensive, and then short airline stock? Why plan to blow up 3 WTC buildings but only fly 2 planes into them - what kind of math skills are these all-powerful cabalists supposed to have?

When challenged, conspiricists will always find further ad hoc answers that suit them, but their account grows ever more absurd, unlikely, and contradictory the more you try to fit its pieces together, which is rather the opposite of what one expects of truth. It has a conjunction problem in that when you try to combine the possibilities of each claim the combination quickly becomes wildly implausible. (See here for a good example of such analysis from Mitchell and Webb.)

4. All narrative and no plot
Conspiracy theorists appear to offer so much, but actually fail to say anything very precise at all about what is really going on. In particular, they usually fail to provide a specific account of any of the basic plot elements - crime, criminal, and motive - and the relationships between them. The conspiracy narrative comes first, and motivates a search for the plot - one must take it on faith that it is there. Usually we get a very blurry account of any of it. E.g. for 9/11

The crime itself: faking a terrorist attack and killing thousands of Americans. That's not very precise is it. This was a conspiracy involving presumably hundred of thousands of people, dozens of government agencies, clockwork precision. Can't you say anything more about how it really happened? Nope.

The criminals: The US government and an (international) capitalist cabal. Apart from Bush and Cheney (naming whom is more of an autonomic reflex than a thought process) can you name anyone who was involved? What, not even one low or medium level conspirator?

The motive: capitalist profit, by manipulating a country into war. Certain special people manage to be quite sure of seeing directly to the heart of the truth by looking very hard at the internet and asking themselves that sophisticated non-conformist question: Cui bono? (Who benefits?). But other investigators rarely come to the same conclusion. Nor does it seem a very intelligent starting point in an investigation to assume we are in an Agatha Christie detective novel. After all, cui bono can be asked about Icelandic volcano activity, or World Cup results. Or global climate change theory: those evil science professors are after power and money! or maybe its the Chinese trying to sabotage our economy? or maybe its United-Nations-socialists trying to take over the government and destroy the American way of life? or maybe.....

Indeed cui bono? can be asked of conspiracy theorists themselves. Frankly I'm not surprised to see Marxists publishing this - they'll say anything to get some attention?  See how easy it is? Actually in this case I think it must be true, since it rather suits the point I'm trying to make.

Conspiracy thinkers often assert that what they do is necessary, because there are real and terrible conspiracies in the world that their efforts are necessary to detect. But the trouble is that what conspiracy thinkers produce is so totally nebulous or, where precise, usually demonstrably dead wrong, that they give us no guidance for detecting actual conspiracies! I dispute that we need conspiracy thinking to defend us from false negatives - to protect us from real conspiracies. One is reminded of all those heterodox economists who claim to have predicted the 2007 credit crisis. On looking more closely, they were just saying the same things they always say - 'this neo-liberal economy is unsustainable' - but that is not the same thing as successfully predicting the particular form and course of this particular crisis. Even a broken clock will show the correct time twice a day, but that doesn't mean it is ever right, or helpful.

5. Privileged observer status
This doesn't apply to all conspiracy theorists to the same degree, but many seem to forget that if there really is a gigantic evil conspiracy, it would be out to get them too. MacGregor-Zarembka for example claim to believe that their own government committed mass-murder (9/11) in order to further its agenda of more profitable mass-murder (Afghan-Iraq). And yet they dared to publish the truth? Do they think tenure will protect them? I'm sure they're not stupid, but the remaining options are that they are suicidal, know that no-one will ever take them seriously, or they know deep down that this is bullshit. Their own actions seem in conflict with their thesis.


http://www.philosophersbeard.org/2010/08/conspiracy-thinking-part-ii.html
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Satyagraha
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« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2012, 04:02:05 PM »

Well, for starters....

33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True, What Every Person Should Know…
Posted on Pakalert on October 13, 2010
By Jonathan Elinoff
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/10/13/33-conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true-what-every-person-should-know%E2%80%A6/



Most people can’t resist getting the details on the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. At the same time, many people quickly denounce any conspiracy theory as untrue … and sometimes as unpatriotic or just plain ridiculous.   Lets not forget all of the thousands of conspiracies out of Wall Street like Bernie Madoff and many others to commit fraud and extortion, among many crimes of conspiracy.  USA Today reports that over 75% of personal ads in the paper and on craigslist are married couples posing as single for a one night affair.  When someone knocks on your door to sell you a set of knives or phone cards, anything for that matter, do they have a profit motive?  What is conspiracy other than just a scary way of saying “alternative agenda”?  When 2 friends go to a bar and begin to plan their wingman approach on 2 girls they see at the bar, how often are they planning on lying to those girls?  “I own a small business and am in town for a short while.  Oh yeah, you look beautiful.”

Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning.  To conspire means “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end.”  The term “conspiracy theory” is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from “the people”.

To many, conspiracy theories are just human nature.  Not all people in this world are honest, hard working and forthcoming about their intentions.  Certainly we can all agree on this.  So how did the term “conspiracy theory” get grouped in with fiction, fantasy and folklore?  Maybe that’s a conspiracy, just kidding.  Or am I?

Skeptics are important in achieving an objective view of reality, however, skeptism is not the same as reinforcing the official storyline.  In fact, a conspiracy theory can be argued as an alternative to the official or “mainstream” story of events.  Therefore, when skeptics attempt to ridicule a conspiracy theory by using the official story as a means of proving the conspiracy wrong, in effect, they are just reinforcing the original “mainstream” view of history, and actually not being skeptical.  This is not skeptism, it is just a convenient way for the establishment view of things to be seen as the correct version, all the time, every time.  In fact, it is common for “hit pieces” or “debunking articles” to pick extremely fringe and not very populated conspiracy theories.  This in turn makes all conspiracies on a subject matter look crazy.  Skeptics magazine and Popular Mechanics, among many others, did this with 9/11.  They referred to less than 10% of the many different conspiracy theories about 9/11 and picked the less popular ones, in fact, they picked the fringe, highly improbable points that only a few people make.  This was used as the “final investigation” for looking into the conspiracy theories.  Convenient, huh?

In fact, if one were to look into conspiracy theories, they will largely find that thinking about a conspiracy is associated with lunacy and paranoia.  Some websites suggest it as an illness.  It is also not surprising to see so many people on the internet writing about conspiracy theories in a condescending tone, usually with the words “kool-aid,” “crack pot,” or “nut job” in their articulation.  This must be obvious to anyone that emotionally writing about such serious matter insults the reader more than the conspiracy theorist because there is no need to resort to this kind of behavior.  It is employed often with an “expert” who will say something along the lines of, “for these conspiracies to be true, you would need hundreds if not thousands of people to be involved.  It’s just not conceivable.”

I find it extremely odd that the assumption is on thousands of participants in a conspiracy.  I, for one, find it hard to believe any conspiracy involving more than a handful of people but the fact remains that there have been conspiracies in our world, proven and not made up, that involved many hundreds of people.  It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact.

One more thing to consider, have you noticed that if the conspiracy is involving powerful interests with the ability to bribe, threaten or manipulate major institutions (like the mafia, big corporations or government) then don’t you find it odd when people use one of those as the “credible” counter-argument?  What I mean is, if you are discussing a conspiracy about the mafia, and someone hands you a debunking article that was written by the mafia, it doesn’t seem like it would take rocket science to look at that with serious criticism and credibility.  This is the case with many conspiracies.  In fact, I am handed debunking pieces all the time written in many cases by the conspirators in question.  Doesn’t this seem odd to anybody else but me?

While intelligent cynicism certainly can be healthy, though, some of the greatest discoveries of all time were initially received (often with great vitriol) as blasphemous conspiracy theories — think of the revelation that the earth was not the center of the universe, or that the world was not flat but actually round.

What follows are some of these most shocking modern conspiracy theories that turned out true after thorough investigation by our society.  Some through congressional hearings, others through investigative journalism.  Many of these, however, were just admitted to by those involved.  These are just 33 of them, and I still had a long list of others to add.  There are a total of 33 in this article.  Many of these are listed with original and credible news clips on the matter, as well as documentaries.

1. The Dreyfus Affair:

In the late 1800s in France, Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason based on false government documents, and sentenced to life in prison. The French government did attempt to cover this up, but Dreyfus was eventually pardoned after the affair was made public (an act that is credited to writer Émile Zola).

2. The Mafia:

This secret crime society was virtually unknown until the 1960s, when member Joe Valachi first revealed the society’s secrets to law enforcement officials.  What was known was that organized crime existed, but not that the extent of their control included working with the CIA, politicians and the biggest businesses in the world.

3. MK-ULTRA:

In the 1950s to the 1970s, the CIA ran a mind-control project aimed at finding a “truth serum” to use on communist spies. Test subjects were given LSD and other drugs, often without consent, and some were tortured. At least one man, civilian biochemist Frank Olson, who was working for the government, died as a result of the experiments. The project was finally exposed after investigations by the Rockefeller Commission.

A short video about MK-ULTRA from a documentary called Secrets of the CIA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doh1X_gXyw0&feature=player_embedded



4. Operation Mockingbird:

Also in the 1950s to ’70s, the CIA paid a number of well-known domestic and foreign journalists (from big-name media outlets like Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS and others) to publish CIA propaganda. The CIA also reportedly funded at least one movie, the animated “Animal Farm,” by George Orwell. The Church Committee finally exposed the activities in 1975.

5. Manhattan Project: 

The Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb. The project was led by the United States, and included participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), it refers specifically to the period of the project from 1942–1946 under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the administration of General Leslie R. Groves. The scientific research was directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. 

The project’s roots lay in scientists’ fears since the 1930s that Nazi Germany was also investigating nuclear weapons of its own. Born out of a small research program in 1939, the Manhattan Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion ($22 billion in current value). It resulted in the creation of multiple production and research sites that operated in secret.  With the total involved, this makes it one of the largest conspiracies in history.  Entire towns were built for short periods of time, employing people, all under secrecy and top national secrecy at that.  The government never admitted to it, the media never reported on it, and people had no idea for over 25 years.  Project research took place at over thirty sites across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The three primary research and production sites of the project were the plutonium-production facility at what is now the Hanford Site, the uranium-enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the weapons research and design laboratory now known as Los Alamos National Laboratory. The MED maintained control over U.S. weapons production until the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.

6. Asbestos:

Between 1930 and 1960, manufacturers did all they could to prevent the link between asbestos and respiratory diseases, including cancer, becoming known, so they could avoid prosecution. American workers had in fact sued the Johns Manville company as far back as 1932, but it was not until 1962 that epidemiologists finally established beyond any doubt what company bosses had known for a long time – asbestos causes cancer.

7. Watergate:

Republican officials spied on the Democratic National Headquarters from the Watergate Hotel in 1972. While conspiracy theories suggested underhanded dealings were taking place, it wasn’t until 1974 that White House tape recordings linked President Nixon to the break-in and forced him to resign.

8. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study:

The United States Public Health Service carried out this clinical study on 400 poor, African-American men with syphilis from 1932 to 1972. During the study the men were given false and sometimes dangerous treatments, and adequate treatment was intentionally withheld so the agency could learn more about the disease. While the study was initially supposed to last just six months, it continued for 40 years. Close to 200 of the men died from syphilis or related complications by the end of the study.

9. Operation Northwoods:

In the early 1960s, American military leaders drafted plans to create public support for a war against Cuba, to oust Fidel Castro from power. The plans included committing acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, killing innocent people and U.S. soldiers, blowing up a U.S. ship, assassinating Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees, and hijacking planes. The plans were all approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but were reportedly rejected by the civilian leadership, then kept secret for nearly 40 years.

Author James Bamford, “A Pretext For War”, discusses the declassified “Operation Northwoods” documents revealing that in 1962 the CIA was planning to stage phony terrorist attacks on the US and blame it on Cuba to start a war:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IygchZRJVXM&feature=player_embedded


10. 1990 Testimony of Nayirah:

A 15-year-old girl named “Nayirah” testified before the U.S. Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators, causing them to die. The testimony helped gain major public support for the 1991 Gulf War, but — despite protests that the dispute of this story was itself a conspiracy theory — it was later discovered that the testimony was false. The public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which was in the employ of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, had arranged the testimony.  It turned out that she had taken acting lessons on request of the CIA and was actually the niece of a major politician in Kuwait.  Nayirah was later disclosed to be Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA.  The Congressional Human Rights Caucus, of which Congressman Tom Lantos was co-chairman, had been responsible for hosting Nurse Nayirah, and thereby popularizing her allegations. When the girl’s account was later challenged by independent human rights monitors, Lantos replied, “The notion that any of the witnesses brought to the caucus through the Kuwaiti Embassy would not be credible did not cross my mind… I have no basis for assuming that her story is not true, but the point goes beyond that. If one hypothesizes that the woman’s story is fictitious from A to Z, that in no way diminishes the avalanche of human rights violations.” Nevertheless, the senior Republican on the Human Rights Caucus, John Edward Porter, responded to the revelations “by saying that if he had known the girl was the ambassador’s daughter, he would not have allowed her to testify.”

11.  Counter Intelligence Programs Against Activists in the 60s

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. The FBI used covert operations from its inception, however formal COINTELPRO operations took place between 1956 and 1971. The FBI’s stated motivation at the time was “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.”  According to FBI records, 85% of COINTELPRO resources were expended on infiltrating, disrupting, marginalizing, and/or subverting groups suspected of being subversive, such as communist and socialist organizations; the women’s rights movement; militant black nationalist groups, and the non-violent civil rights movement, including individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the American Indian Movement, and other civil rights groups; a broad range of organizations labeled “New Left”, including Students for a Democratic Society, the National Lawyers Guild, the Weathermen, almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, and even individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; and nationalist groups such as those “seeking independence for Puerto Rico.” The other 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert “white hate groups,” including the Ku Klux Klan and National States’ Rights Party. The directives governing COINTELPRO were issued by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of these movements and their leaders.

This is a documentary on COINTELPRO:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3729458480013375211&hl=undefined#



12. The Iran-Contra Affair:

In 1985 and ’86, the White House authorized government officials to secretly trade weapons with the Israeli government in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages in Iran. The plot was uncovered by Congress in 1987.

13.  The BCCI Scandal:

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a major international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The Bank was registered in Luxembourg. Within a decade BCCI touched its peak, it operated in 78 countries, had over 400 branches, and had assets in excess of US$ 20 billion making it the 7th largest private bank in the world by assets.  In the late 1980's BCCI became the target of a two year undercover operation conducted by the US Customs Service. This operation concluded with a fake wedding that was attended by BCCI officers and drug dealers from around the world who had established a personal friendship and working relationship with undercover Special Agent Robert Mazur. After a six month trial in Tampa, key bank officers were convicted and received lengthy prison sentences. Bank officers began cooperating with law enforcement authorities and that cooperation caused BCCI’s many crimes to be revealed.  BCCI came under the scrutiny of regulatory bodies and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to its perceived avoidance of falling under one regulatory banking authority, a fact that was later, after extensive investigations, proven to be false. BCCI became the focus of a massive regulatory battle in 1991 and was described as a “$20-billion-plus heist”.  Investigators in the U.S. and the UK revealed that BCCI had been “set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection.”

This is a report from July 23, 1991 on the BCCI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak9ug_9yD7g&feature=player_embedded



This is a report from July 8, 1991 on Connections between BCCI and the CIA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVXroOSAqMU&feature=player_embedded



This is a report from March 4, 1991 on the BCCI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVT-7OBe8eo&feature=player_embedded



14. CIA Drug Running in LA:

Pulitzer Prize Award winning journalist Gary Webb exposed this alongside LAPD Narcotics Officer turned whislteblower and author Michael Ruppert, CIA Contract Pilot Terry Reed, and many others.  In August 1996 the San Jose Mercury News published Webb’s “Dark Alliance”, a 20,000 word, three-part investigative series which alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Webb never asserted that the CIA directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, but he did document that the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of cocaine into the U.S. by the Contra personnel. “Dark Alliance” received national attention. At the height of the interest, the web version of it on San Jose Mercury News website received 1.3 million hits a day. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the series became “the most talked-about piece of journalism in 1996 and arguably the most famous—some would say infamous—set of articles of the decade.”

April 6, 1987 Report on CIA Drug Running:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Zo29RssOg&feature=player_embedded



January 20, 1987 Report on CIA Drug Smuggling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5wp9Ew4d_Q&feature=player_embedded



November 19, 1993 Report on CIA Drug Running:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q28NagfegJY&feature=player_embedded



15.  Gulf of Tonkin Never Happened

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is the name given to two separate incidents involving the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964 two American destroyers engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats, resulting in the sinking of one of the torpedo boats.  This was also the single most important reason for the escalation of the Vietnam War.  After Kennedy was assassinated, the Gulf of Tonkin gave the country the sweeping support for aggressive military action against the North Vietnamese.  The outcome of the incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by “communist aggression”.  In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that USS Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese on August 2, but that there may not have been any North Vietnamese vessels present during the engagement of August 4. The report stated “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night…”  In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2. 

In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”  In 1981, Captain Herrick and journalist Robert Scheer re-examined Herrick’s ship’s log and determined that the first torpedo report from August 4, which Herrick had maintained had occurred—the “apparent ambush”—was in fact unfounded.  In 1995, retired Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, meeting with former Secretary of Defense McNamara, categorically denied that Vietnamese gunboats had attacked American destroyers on August 4, while admitting to the attack on August 2.  In the Fall of 1999, retired senior CIA engineering executive S. Eugene Poteat wrote that he was asked in early August 1964 to determine if the radar operator’s report showed a real torpedo boat attack or an imagined one.  In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4, 1964 incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence errors.

November 9th, 1995 New Clip on Gulf of Tonkin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weKmluVfrLE&feature=player_embedded



16. The Business Plot

In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we’re talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one.  Smedley Butler was both a patriot and a vocal FDR supporter. Apparently none of these criminal masterminds noticed that their prospective point man had actively stumped for FDR in 1932.  Smedley spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. Everyone he accused of being a conspirator vehemently denied it, and none of them were brought up on criminal charges. Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did at least acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy, which ended up never getting past the initial planning stages. 

Though many of the people who had allegedly backed the Business Plot also maintained financial ties with Nazi Germany up through America’s entry into World War II.  In 1934, the Business Plot was publicly revealed by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testifying to the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee. In his testimony, Butler claimed that a group of men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a military coup. One of the alleged plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their final report, the Congressional committee supported Butler’s allegations of the existence of the plot, but no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter was mostly forgotten. 

On July 17, 1932, thousands of World War I veterans converged on Washington, D.C., set up tent camps, and demanded immediate payment of bonuses due them according to the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. This “Bonus Army” was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant. The Army was encouraged by an appearance from retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who had considerable influence over the veterans, being one of the most popular military figures of the time. A few days after Butler’s arrival, President Herbert Hoover ordered the marchers removed, and their camps were destroyed by US Army cavalry troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.  Butler, although a self-described Republican, responded by supporting Roosevelt in that year’s election.  In a 1995 History Today article Clayton Cramer argued that the devastation of the Great Depression had caused many Americans to question the foundations of liberal democracy. “Many traditionalists, here and in Europe, toyed with the ideas of Fascism and National Socialism; many liberals dallied with Socialism and Communism.” Cramer argues that this explains why some American business leaders viewed fascism as a viable system to both preserve their interests and end the economic woes of the Depression.

BBC – Whitehouse Coup (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXGUgFXoRu4&feature=player_embedded



The Whitehouse Coup (1933) 2 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGPb6ulVEK0&feature=player_embedded

The Whitehouse Coup (1933) 3 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mav69K2zkgw&feature=player_embedded

17. July 20, 1944 Conspiracy to Assassinate Hitler

Among another 20 some odd attempts, this one was one of the largest conspiracies involving hundreds of loyalists in the highest echelons of Hitler’s inner circle.  Near the end of WWII, things were rapidly going south for Germany and the time seemed ripe for guilt-ridden Nazi officers to assassinate Hitler and overthrow his government. Colonel Henning von Tresckow recruited Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg to join the conspiracy in 1944.  The plot to take out Hitler and then all of his loyal officers was called Operation Valkyrie, based on the belief that no plan can fail if it has a cool enough name.  The plan was to use the Continuity of Government Proceedings during an assassination on Hitler’s life to take over full control of the government in Germany.  The assassination would be blamed on the Nazi SS and therefore allow Stauffenberg to take full control of all aspects of the government.  It almost worked.  In July 1944, Stauffenberg was promoted so that he could now start attending military strategy meetings with Hitler himself. On more than one occasion Stauffenberg planned to kill Hitler at such a meeting with a briefcase bomb, but he always held off because he also wanted to take out Hitler’s two right-hand men, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler. On July 20, he went for it anyway and exploded a bomb inside Hitler’s conference room with a remote detonator. Hitler survived only minor injuries.

18.  Operation Ajax:

For years, Britain had a spiffy trade deal with Iran regarding their prodigious oil fields. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was basically a giant money machine for the Anglo half, while the Iranian half got shafted. That all changed in 1951 when Iran nationalized the AIOC and the Iranian parliament elected Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister. Mossadegh was relatively secular, something that pissed of Iranian clerics, but he was also very nationalistic.  He was a democratically elected, pro American figure but the West saw his nationalizing of the oil fields a communist move(something Mossadegh thought was the right of the people to profit and pay for services in the country with).  Those oil fields were under the control of British Petroleum, but unfortunately Mossadegh overruled this long standing business control.  The United States sent Kermit Roosevelt, FDR’s nephew and CIA coordinator in to figure out the mess.  The best he could come up with was to confront Mossadegh and have him overthrown (assassinated) and this was accomplished by bringing in what the agency refers to as “jackals.”  The United States backed the return of the Shah of Iran, one of the most brutal dictators the country had ever seen and intentionally overthrew years before with the democratic leader, Mossadegh.  Until 1979, that is, when a pissed off Iranian populace finally revolted and replaced the monarchy with an anti-West Islamic Republic.  The result was a violently anti-American revolution lead by the Ayatollah Khomeini which overthrew the Shah and took hostage US Embassy workers, many of whom were involved in the plot with Kermit Roosevelt that installed the Shah.  The planning for the Coup took place largely in that embassy, but Americans were told this was due to the rise of radical Islam and rise of democracy hating Muslims, which of course was far from the truth.

Part 1 of a video done on Operation Ajax history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi-JiM0Ox_8&feature=player_embedded



Part 2 of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdeoktnv8ko&feature=player_embedded


19.  Operation Snow White

Some time during the 1970s, the Church of Scientology decided that they’d had enough.  Apparently, the Church of Scientology managed to perform the largest infiltration of the United States government in history. Ever.  5,000 of Scientology’s crack commandos wiretapped and burglarized various agencies. They stole hundreds of documents, mainly from the IRS. No critic was spared, and in the end, 136 organizations, agencies and foreign embassies were infiltrated.

20.  Operation Gladio

Gladio is a code name denoting the clandestine NATO “stay-behind” operation in Italy after World War II, intended to continue anti-communist resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, “Operation Gladio” is used as an informal name for all stay-behind organizations, sometimes called “Super NATO”. 

The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in sponsoring Gladio and the extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and its relationship to right-wing terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the Years of Lead and other similar clandestine operations is the subject of ongoing debate and investigation. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.  What can we prove about that role?  Thousands of documents, depositions and testimony as well as recorded conversations and admission by the highest levels of government in Italy.  That’s about as credible as it gets, regardless of the CIA’s adamant denial it ever happened.   What took place?  The shooting of innocent civilians, terrorism and assassinations all blamed on leftist communists were actually apart of well coordinated, “black operations.” 

Black operations are typically involving activities that are highly clandestine and, often, outside of standard military protocol.  “The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.”  Black ops missions often fit into the deniable category, a situation in which there is no claim of responsibility for the action, and/or a false flag operation is used to give the appearance that another actor was responsible, or – most often – black operations involve extensive arrangements so as to be able to hide the fact that the black operation ever occurred. Black military operations, or paramilitary operations, can be used by various secret services to achieve or attempt to achieve an unusually sensitive goal. The methods used in black operations are also used in unconventional warfare. Depending on the precise situation in a given case, and the level of authoritarianism of the national government or other responsible party, some tasks will be conducted as black operations, while there are usually other activities that can be admitted openly. Black operations may include such things as assassination, sabotage, extortion, spying on allied countries or one’s own citizens, kidnapping, supporting resistance movements, torture, use of fraud to obtain funds, use of child soldiers, human experimentation, trafficking in contraband items, etc. 

Since 9/11, many black operations and long time unethical standings have been approved for legality in the war on terror.  In other words, since September 11th, 2001, it is no a longer conspiracy for any of this to occur, a simple decision by a top level military or CIA official is enough, without oversight or even one thread of admission by the Government or Private conspirators.  Much of the Black operations today are performed by private contract companies like Blackwater (now Xe).

This is a documentary banned in the United States that was allowed to air on BBC.  It was an investigation into Operation Gladio:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3409375633223151728&hl=undefined#



21.  The Church Committee:

The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee investigated intelligence gathering for illegality by the CIA and FBI after certain activities had been revealed by the Watergate affair.  The Committee uncovered, among many other things, that the CIA had violated its charter to perform only gathering of intelligence. 

For example, the assassinations of Allende in Chile and Mossadegh in Iran. Assassinations against Central and South American leaders and revolutionaries, as well as Africa, Middle East and East Asia.  The list was tremendous.  They even declassified a “Hear Attack Gun” the Agency had made for the use of killing someone without it being detected.  Cancer, car accidents, skiing accidents, suicide, boating accidents, heart attacks, and just plain being shot were common assassination methods.  The hearings, although recorded in full in congressional record, the mainstream media and official policies, is still largely not taught in American schools on recent history.  The American public still has no idea this was ever actually confirmed or even took place.  It is common for people to still refer to any of these assassinations as a joke or made up conspiracy.

Watch this revealing 45-minute documentary below for the description of a former CIA secretary and Congressional testimony on this secret assassination weapon which caused heart attacks:
http://personalgrowthcourses.net/video/secrets_cia



22.  The New World Order

This popular conspiracy theory claims that a small group of international elites controls and manipulates governments, industry and media organisations worldwide. The primary tool they use to dominate nations is the system of central banking. They are said to have funded and in some cases caused most of the major wars of the last 200 years, primarily through carrying out false flag attacks to manipulate populations into supporting them, and have a grip on the world economy, deliberately causing inflation and depressions at will.

The people behind the New World Order are thought to be international bankers, in particular the owners of the private banks in the Federal Reserve System, Bank of England and other central banks, and members of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group.  Now, although this conspiracy theory was ridiculed for years, it turns out that the Bilderberg does meet and requests no media coverage.  They receive no media coverage.  The world’s elite meet every year and it goes largely unreported, for what? 

Discussions at the meetings include the economy, world affairs, war and in general, world policy.  After the financial collapse, the Bilderberg played a key role in proposing that the world prepare for a new world order and have a standard world currency.  This was propsed shortly after by almost all attendees of the Bilderberg meeting.  During the 20th century, many statesmen, such as Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill, used the term “new world order” to refer to a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power after World War I and World War II. They all saw these periods as opportunities to implement idealistic or liberal proposals for global governance only in the sense of new collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve. These proposals led to the creation of international organizations, such as the United Nations and N.A.T.O., and international regimes, such as the Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which were calculated both to maintain a balance of power as well as regularize cooperation between nations, in order to achieve a peaceful phase of capitalism. 

In the aftermath of the two World Wars, progressives welcomed these new international organizations and regimes but argued they suffered from a democratic deficit and therefore were inadequate to not only prevent another global war but also foster global justice. Thus, activists around the globe formed a world federalist movement bent on creating a “real” new world order. A number of Fabian socialist intellectuals, such as British writer H. G. Wells in the 1940s, appropriated and redefined the term “new world order” as a synonym for the establishment of a full-fledged social democratic world government.  In the 1960s, a great deal of right-wing conspiracist attention, by groups like the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby, focused on the United Nations as the vehicle for creating the “One World Government”, and contributed to a conservative movement for United States withdrawal from the U.N.. American writer Mary M. Davison, in her 1966 booklet The Profound Revolution, traced the alleged New World Order conspiracy to the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913 by international bankers, who she claimed later formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 as the shadow government. At the time the booklet was published, “international bankers” would have been interpreted by many readers as a reference to a postulated “international Jewish banking conspiracy” masterminded by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. 

American televangelist Pat Robertson with his 1991 best-selling book The New World Order became the most prominent Christian popularizer of conspiracy theories about recent American history as a theater in which Wall Street, the Federal Reserve System, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group, and Trilateral Commission control the flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and covertly in the direction of world government for the Antichrist.  After the turn of the century, specifically during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, many politicians and pundits, such as Gordon Brown, Henry Kissinger, and Barack Obama, used the term “new world order” in their advocacy for a Keynesian reform of the global financial system and their calls for a “New Bretton Woods”, which takes into account emerging markets such as China and India.

These declarations had the unintended consequence of providing fresh fodder for New World Order conspiracism, and culminated in former Clinton administration adviser Dick Morris and conservative talk show host Sean Hannity arguing on one of his Fox News Channel programs that “conspiracy theorists were right”.  In 2009, American film directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel released New World Order, a critically-acclaimed documentary film which explores the world of conspiracy theorists, such as American radio host Alex Jones, who are committed to exposing and vigorously opposing what they perceive to be an emerging New World Order.

May 24, 1992 Report on New World Order:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdVKZi7u9jA&feature=player_embedded



23. United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA):

The HSCA was established in 1976 to investigate the John F. Kennedy assassination and the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination. The Committee investigated until 1978, and in 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was with no doubt assassinated by a conspiracy involving the CIA.  To this day, many conspiracy deniers are unaware that the Congressional investigation into JFK’s assassination concluded beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was a conspiracy.  What made them come to this conclusion?  Aside from reading the report, many witnesses (some of whom were CIA agents and station chiefs in Dallas that morning) were killed the night before testifying. 

For example, George de Mohrenschildt was a petroleum geologist who befriended Lee Harvey Oswald during the months preceding the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.  He also worked for the CIA.  He also blew his brains out the night before he was to testify to the committee.  The committee also uncovered, among many things, that Oswald left the marines where he learned how to speak fluent Russian (at the height of the cold war).  He was given money by the State Department to travel to Russia where he stopped off in Japan at a top secret US Military facility.  The Warren Commission even mentioned this part.  What most people do not know is that he probably was working in the Cold War infiltrating the Russians as either a “dangle,” “double agent,” or “defector” of some kind.  What is interesting is that upon his return he got more money from the State Department to buy a house and work with an ex FBI Chief and CIA officials in training anti-Castro Cubans for an invasion. 

In Louisiana, where he was working, the CIA was involved in Operation Mongoose, Where Oswald worked under CIA Agent David Ferrie, who killed himself before testifying in a trial on the Assassination as well.  Operation Mongoose worked closely with Southern Mafia figures largely because the casinos in Cuba, which were shut down after Fidel obtained control over the country, were epicenters for control on the island.  The CIA even hired the mafia to assassinate Fidel on many occasions, 3 attempts which failed are common knowledge.  What is funny is that figures who worked very close with Oswald either ended up dead (over 100 of them connected to the assassination died within a few years of unusual circumstances) or they ended up in other conspiracies.  For instance, E Howard Hunt (CIA Agent) confessed to being involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy on his deathbed. 

E Howard Hunt was one of the Watergate Burglars.  Barry Seal, who worked with Oswald and Ferrie ended up being one of the largest cocaine smugglers in the United States during Iran Contra, as a key player for the agency and informant for the DEA.  There is so much more to get into, but there just isn’t enough time.  Oswald’s tax returns are still classified top secret to this day.  Why?  Perhaps he was still getting $$ from the United States, which places him on the payroll.  That money trail leads to figures, many of whom were murdered, that would have blown the story wide open.  For 14 years, most didn’t know this.  The HSCA investigaitons by congress went against the findings of the Warren Commission and both reports are from the same source, Congressional Committees.  Which is true?  Why do we only teach one to our children in school?

December 30, 1978 Report on HSCA Findings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHNQdL9eImM&feature=player_embedded



24. 1919 World Series Conspiracy: 

The 1919 World Series (often referred to as the Black Sox Scandal) resulted in the most famous scandal in baseball history. Eight players from the Chicago White Sox (nicknamed the Black Sox) were accused of throwing the series against the Cincinnati Reds.  Details of the scandal remain controversial, and the extent to which each player was involved varied. It was, however, front-page news across the country when the story was uncovered late in the 1920 season, and despite being acquitted of criminal charges (throwing baseball games was technically not a crime), the eight players were banned from organized baseball (i.e. the leagues subject to the National Agreement) for life.  There are hundreds of other conspiracies involving throwing games, sporting matches and large scale entertainment events. 

It is common knowledge for many, this list would have to go into the thousands if we included all of them.

25.  Karen Silkwood

Karen was an American labor union activist and chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood’s job was making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods.  After being hired at Kerr-McGee, Silkwood joined the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union local and took part in a strike at the plant. After the strike ended, she was elected to the union’s bargaining committee and assigned to investigate health and safety issues. She discovered what she believed to be numerous violations of health regulations, including exposure of workers to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment and improper storage of samples.

She also believed the lack of sufficient shower facilities could increase the risk of employee contamination.  In the summer of 1974, Silkwood testified to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about these issues, alleging that safety standards had slipped because of a production speedup which resulted in employees being given tasks for which they were poorly trained. She also alleged that Kerr-McGee employees handled the fuel rods improperly and that the company falsified inspection records. 

On November 5, 1974, Silkwood performed a routine self-check and found almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium contamination. She was decontaminated at the plant and sent home with a testing kit to collect urine and feces for further analysis. Oddly, though there was plutonium on the exterior surfaces (the ones she touched) of the gloves she had been using, the gloves did not have any holes. This suggests the contamination did not come from inside the glove box, but from some other source, in other words, someone was trying to poison her. 

The next morning, as she headed to a union negotiation meeting, she again tested positive for plutonium. This was surprising because she had only performed paperwork duties that morning. She was given a more intense decontamination. The following day, November 7, 1974, as she entered the plant, she was found to be dangerously contaminated — even expelling contaminated air from her lungs. A health physics team accompanied her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surfaces — especially in the bathroom and the refrigerator. The house was later stripped and decontaminated. Silkwood, her partner and housemate were sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the extent of the contamination in their bodies.  Later that evening, Silkwood’s body was found in her car, which had run off the road and struck a culvert. The car contained no documents. She was pronounced dead at the scene from a “classic, one-car sleeping-driver accident”.

26.  CIA Drug Smuggling in Arkansas

August 23, 1987, in a rural community just south of Little Rock, police officers murdered two teenage boys because they witnessed a police-protected drug drop.  The drop was part of a drug smuggling operation based at a small airport in Mena, Arkansas. The Mena operation was set up in the early 1980's by the notorious drug smuggler, Barry Seal. Facing prison after a drug conviction in Florida, Seal flew to Washington, D.C., where he put together a deal that allowed him to avoid prison by becoming an informant for the government.

As a government informant against drug smugglers, Seal testified he worked for the CIA and the DEA. In one federal court case, he testified that his income from March 1984 to August 1985, was between $700,000 and $800,000. This period was AFTER making his deal with the government. Seal testified that nearly $600,000 of this came from smuggling drugs while working for — and with the permission of the DEA. In addition to his duties as an informant, Seal was used by CIA operatives to help finance the Nicaraguan Contras. The CIA connection to the Mena operation was undeniable when a cargo plane given to Seal by the CIA was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of weapons. In spite of the evidence, every investigator who has tried to expose the crimes of Mena has been professionally destroyed, and those involved in drug smuggling operations have received continued protection from state and federal authorities.

February 20, 1986 report on Mena Drug Smuggling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGrHy198STk&feature=player_embedded



April 7, 1988 Report on CIA Drug Running:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9bClEwPNas&feature=player_embedded



March 25, 2995 News Clip on Mena Drug Smuggling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiczqeT_RDg&feature=player_embedded



27.  Bohemian Grove

For years, many conspiracy theorists were saying that the rich and powerful met every year in the woods and worshiped a giant stone owl in an occult fashion.  It turns out, ABC, CBS, NBC, and many other credible news agencies investigated this and found out, its true.  It is said to be just all fun and games, like brotherhood style fraternity stuff.  These news clips can be viewed by clicking here.

July 21, 1983 Report on Bohemian Grove Mentioned:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZWmBBM6Rd0&feature=player_embedded



For more clips on the Bohemian Grove including comprehensive investigations by the mainstream media:
http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Articles/tabid/266/ID/588/Rare-news-clips-about-Bohemian-Grove-surfaced-for-documentary-film-project.aspx



28.  Operation Paperclip:

Operation Paperclip was the code name for the 1945 Office of Strategic Services, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency recruitment of German scientists from Nazi Germany to the U.S. after VE Day.  President Truman authorized Operation Paperclip in August 1945; however he expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism” would be excluded.  These included Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph and Hubertus Strughold, who were all officially on record as Nazis and listed as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces.” All were cleared to work in the U.S. after having their backgrounds “bleached” by the military; false employment histories were provided, and their previous Nazi affiliations were expunged from the record. The paperclips that secured newly-minted background details to their personnel files gave the operation its name.

29.  The Round Table: 

British businessman Cecil Rhodes advocated the British Empire reannexing the United States of America and reforming itself into an “Imperial Federation” to bring about a hyperpower and lasting world peace. In his first will, of 1877, written at the age of 23, he expressed his wish to fund a secret society (known as the Society of the Elect) that would advance this goal:  “To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.” 

In his later wills, a more mature Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on what became the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British statesman Alfred Milner as one of its trustees. Established in 1902, the original goal of the trust fund was to foster peace among the great powers by creating a sense of fraternity and a shared world view among future British, American, and German leaders by having enabled them to study for free at the University of Oxford.  Milner and British official Lionel George Curtis were the architects of the Round Table movement, a network of organizations promoting closer union between Britain and its self-governing colonies. To this end, Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book The Commonwealth of God, began advocating for the creation of an imperial federation that eventually reannexes the U.S., which would be presented to Protestant churches as being the work of the Christian God to elicit their support.

The Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1949 but it would only be a free association of independent states rather than the powerful imperial federation imagined by Rhodes, Milner and Curtis.  The Council on Foreign Relations began in 1917 with a group of New York academics who were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to offer options for the foreign policy of the United States in the interwar period. Originally envisioned as a British-American group of scholars and diplomats, some of whom belonging to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent group of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers and international lawyers organized in June 1918 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S. secretary of state, Elihu Root, that became the Council on Foreign Relations on 29 July 1921. The first of the council’s projects was a quarterly journal launched in September 1922, called Foreign Affairs.  Some believe that the Council on Foreign Relations is a front organization for the Round Table as a tool of the “Anglo-American Establishment”, which they believe has been plotting from 1900 on to rule the world.

The research findings of historian Carroll Quigley, author of the 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, are taken by both conspiracy theorists of the American Old Right (Cleon Skousen) and New Left (Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view, even though he argued that the Establishment is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world government but rather British and American benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual interests of economic elites in the United Kingdom and the United States. Quigley also argued that, although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during World War I and slowly waned after the end of World War II and the Suez Crisis. Today it is largely a ginger group, designed to consider and gradually influence the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong opposition. Furthermore, in American society after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley, was that no elite was in charge and acting responsibly. 

American banker David Rockefeller joined the Council on Foreign Relations as its youngest-ever director in 1949 and subsequently became chairman of the board from 1970 to 1985; today he serves as honorary chairman. In 2002, Rockefeller authored his autobiography Memoirs wherein, on page 405, he wrote:

“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents … to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” - David Rockefeller 

Barkun argues that this statement is partly facetious (the claim of “conspiracy” or “treason”) and partly serious – the desire to encourage trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe, and Japan, for example – an ideal that used to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party when there was an internationalist wing.  However, the statement is taken at face value and widely cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Council on Foreign Relations (itself alleged to be a front for an “international banking cabal”, as well as, it is claimed, the sponsor of many “globalist” think tanks such as the Trilateral Commission) uses its role as the brain trust of American presidents, senators and representatives to manipulate them into supporting a New World Order. Conspiracy theorists fear that the international bankers of financial capitalism are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the U.S. by subordinating national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank for International Settlements with the intent to “create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole”. 

(continued below)
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"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

~ Thomas Paine, A Dissertation on the First Principles of Government, 1795
Jordan
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« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2012, 07:19:28 PM »

His entire article violates everything he accuses conspiracy theorists of doing. I put it up just in case someone wanted to post at this site a rebuttal Wink
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goforward
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« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2012, 08:52:32 PM »

conspiracy=jew hating
very rational evaluation Roll Eyes
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Matthew 5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Jordan
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« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2012, 09:55:52 PM »

Well, for starters....


Awesome info Satyagraha.
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MonkeyPuppet
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aut libertas aut mors


« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2012, 10:15:31 PM »


conspiracy=jew hating
very rational evaluation Roll Eyes


Yeah, it appears the SPLC is chin-deep in the "Philosopher's Beard".
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