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The Montauk Project: The idiotic conspiracy theory that inspired ‘Stranger Things’
05.04.2020
09:31 am
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This is a segment from my Disinformation TV series that originally aired late nights on UK television’s Channel Four network in 2000 and 2001. This and many more bits from the series are streaming at Night Flight Plus. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.

In January of 1999, I started to put together the pilot episode of what would become a two series run of a show produced for Britain’s Channel 4 called Disinfo Nation if you lived in the UK, and Disinformation in the rest of the world. The very first day of shooting was such an outrageous experience that it was really never topped during the subsequent two years of production, 24 zany months that saw me going to fetish clubs, listening to the sounds of plants communicating and “investigating” behind the scenes of various ludicrous conspiracy theories.

A film and video producer I knew by the name of Chica Bruce—well known around New York for her work on Yo! MTV Raps—had become an aficionado of the “Montauk Project” conspiracy theory book series and when she heard about the TV pilot order I’d gotten from Channel 4, she strongly encouraged me to do a segment on her new obsession. I thought this was a good idea, having read several of the Montauk Project volumes myself, books I considered to be mind rot at its absolute finest. (It has been said that the Montauk Project books inspired the Stranger Things TV series.)

Chica had become acquainted with the key players in the conspiracy, as well as several “Montauk experiencers,” as she put it, disturbed young men who had “feelings” that they too were a part of the nefarious goings on at a disused Air Force base on Long Island. How this generally occurred, she explained to me, is that they would read the Montauk Project books and their own repressed memories of working on the project would resurface. There were more than ten “Montauk Boys,” but fewer than twenty. Chica, a very attractive woman, was apparently the sole female traveling in such a circle, for reasons that would soon become pretty obvious. She scheduled interviews with two of the main Montauk players—and possibly a third—during a weekend shoot on Long Island. I also planned to interview Chica herself and have her show me around the site of the former Montauk Point Air Force base. I found her innocent willingness to buy into the obvious tall tales these clowns told added an entirely new layer to the story I wanted to tell. Chica could put herself through metaphysical logic loops that would have left someone with a less hardy appetite for weirdness feeling dizzy. Having a photogenic character like her to play off Jabba The Hutt-like Preston Nichols and Stewart Swerdlow—an effete goateed married man who told me on camera that he was sent back in time to assassinate Jesus Christ—was pretty perfect.

I always endeavored to present the conspiracy theory material with a completely straight face. I was heavily influenced by Chris Smith’s classic American Movie and the films of Christopher Guest. I wanted to make “real” mockumentaries. The goal was to produce something that lived up to a conceit of a title like Disinformation (meaning a mixture of truth and lies used as an information smokescreen) and the show’s cheerfully snarky tagline: “If you’re not wondering if we made this stuff up, we’re not doing our job right.”

The idea was to force the audience to ask themselves if it was real or if it was scripted—several times—during the course of each show. For that to work, it had to seem like I believed it, too, no matter how preposterous or insane what the subjects were saying was. I also had to convince the interviewees that I bought into their reality, too.

I hit upon my interviewing style on the first day and it really worked for me: I’d ask extremely detailed questions, designed to elicit extremely detailed answers and then I’d have plenty to work with in the edit room. But there was an additional, less obvious psychological benefit to this approach. Here’s an example of what I mean by that: In the case of my interview with Preston B. Nichols, I went through every single page of his totally crazy books and instead of asking broad questions like “So tell me about your involvement with the Montauk Project…” I’d ask something more along the lines of “How were you recruited for your first job on the base or did you apply for the job? Was it a friend or a family member who told you about the job? I guess I’m a little unclear about how you found yourself there in the first place” and then he would be obliged to clarify it for me.

I’d follow that up with “Did you have to pass any sort of top secret security clearance before you started work there?” and I would drill down from there.

You see what I was doing, demonstrating a better than usual familiarity with the backstory—I’d clearly done my research, which showed respect—but not getting it quite right so he’d be obliged to correct me on a small detail. I was a TV guy slickster in an expensive suit on his turf, so it was imperative that I disarm whatever nervousness or intimidation my persona presented him with and get him on my side from the very start or I wasn’t going to be able to get the sort of footage I needed. This little trick—and the fact that I can keep a straight face with the best of them—worked wonders for me.
 

 
Preston Nichols’ home was a tiny old house that looked extremely incongruous among the million dollar McMansions that surrounded it. As we drove closer and saw the weed-covered yard and modified school bus in the driveway, it became obvious to us that we were indeed in the right place. Nichols lived there with his father, a morbidly obese old fellow who watched football perched on a La-Z-Boy® recliner. He reacted to the crew and myself like Gollum would after being exposed to light for the first time in years. He was so fat that it was hard for me to tell if he had any bones. He didn’t even bother moving as we tried to set up around him and he passed gas frequently, in front of us, without any shame.

Their home was one of the filthiest places I’ve ever seen and a huge stack—and I do mean huge, there were at least 500 cans—of Spam (yes, the processed meat product) sat piled in one corner, stacked neatly on a wooden palette. Semi-eaten cans, with spoons stuck to them, were seen all over the place, as if it was all the pair ate. Directly from the can. There was junk everywhere. The bathroom was a rusty, pissed-covered scandal. The toilet seat had been cracked completely in half and then put back together with several rolls of thick cellophane tape. Preston wore a sweatshirt that had dried food and Spam gravy spilled all over it. It was not pretty and he smelled real bad, too.

Although he was obviously quite suspicious of me—and not without good reason, of course—I got exactly what I needed from the interview (Except for one thing: Preston’s dead mother had constructed a memorial shrine to the actor Yul Brynner, an entire wall of framed photographs, newspaper clippings and magazine articles next to the massive pile of Spam. Afterwards, in the van, I asked the cameraman if he’d gotten some good shots of it, but alas he had not, thinking it had nothing to do with the story. No Spam pile, either.)

Next up was Stewart Swerdlow, a curious fellow who told me in great detail, not only of his involvement with the project, but of his time spent in federal prison for a crime he told me that he’d been brainwashed to commit. I also met his new wife who explained that she’d been introduced to him while he was in prison by a psychic who told her that Stewart was her soul mate, and soon afterwards she divorced her husband for him. Stewart himself, as you will see, admits ruefully that he’d been “manually deprogrammed” by Preston Nichols, as he quite self-consciously alludes to this incident during the interview.

Lastly there was Chica Bruce herself, valiantly trying to convince me that I had not seen what I had just seen with my own two eyes—that Preston was a fat fibber/closet case using conspiracy theories for ulterior motives and that Stewart being a blatant New Age con man (He was purveying “color therapy” at the time and offered to “do my colors” for a discount. I passed). I did an interview with Chica and then she took me on a tour of the decommissioned air force base (now a state park).

As we walked around the park—it was fucking freezing—she kept asking me things like “Don’t you feel that? C’mon man, you don’t feel ANY like inter-dimensional weirdness going on here? NOTHING?

“No, sorry, I ‘feel’ nothing.”

Chica was earnestly looking for the Montauk Project conspiracy. There was a conspiracy all right, just not the one that she was looking for…

With this background, have a look at “The Montauk Project”:
 

 
Watch more Disinformation on Night Flight Plus, the only place to watch original episodes of the cult 1980s series Night Flight. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.04.2020
09:31 am
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Brice Taylor: Mind-controlled Sex Slave of the CIA, Bob Hope and Henry Kissinger
04.22.2020
08:50 am
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This is a segment from my Disinformation TV series that originally aired late nights on UK television’s Channel Four network in 2000 and 2001. This and many more bits from the series are streaming at Night Flight Plus. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.

This piece, one of my favorites, focuses on the self-proclaimed “mind-controlled sex slave” of the CIA, “Brice Taylor” (not her real name) but actually did not make it to broadcast. “Brice” is the author of one of the craziest books I have ever encountered, Thanks For The Memories: The Truth Has Set Me Free! The Memoirs of Bob Hope’s and Henry Kissinger’s Mind-Controlled Slave in which she alleges being a victim of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program, specifically something called “Project Monarch” which groomed “mind-controlled sex slaves” for rich and powerful people.

This was the SOLE piece, the only one out of all the shit I dropped in their lap for two years (“Uncle Goddamn,” Kembra Pfahler sewing her pussy shut, the extreme porn segment, etc., etc., etc.) that the Channel Four lawyers docked from the show. They were amazingly lenient with me for nearly everything—I cannot believe what I got away with, looking back on it—but this one could not be salvaged because British libel laws are such that you can’t knowingly publish a false claim or untruth, and the law is pretty cut and dry on this.

But weren’t her claims of making mother/daughter dolphin porn directed by Sylvester Stallone a little too preposterous to be believed? The fact that no one would believe any of it didn’t really matter, as corporate lawyers, they very simply just could not let this story run. None of it. I was so happy with the way that it had turned out that this seemed like a bitter defeat at the time, but it’s been seen elsewhere since.

The backstory behind this is that I contacted Brice Taylor via her website and told her about the British TV show and invited her to be on it. After an initially wary exchange, I suggested that we speak on the phone.

Her concern, she told me bluntly, was that I was going to make her look like a kook. I then proceeded to give her the well-honed standard rap that I gave to every kook I wanted to get on camera: “Brice, if I have video rolling and you are saying kooky things, look, I’m a television producer, so I’m probably going to use that footage, yes, but if when the cameras are on, you’re true to yourself, you’re poised, you stay on message and you’re satisfied when I leave that you didn’t embarrass yourself, no, I’m not going to go out of my way to make you look like a nut. How would that work anyway unless YOU give me the kooky footage in the first place? So just don’t act like a kook when you’re on camera, okay?”

AS IF, but that line of reasoning did seem to win her over a bit, although she still wasn’t convinced. I upped the ante: “Okay, what if we do the piece from YOUR point of view? In fact, aside from me asking you a question or two off-camera or something minor, the entire piece can be in YOUR voice—we can use the introduction to your book as the narration, it’s perfect, we’ll just mic you up and have you read it a couple of times—and you being interviewed on camera. You have my word that I will basically keep myself out of it. You will write the piece, how’s that?”

She was very definitely “in” after that and the very next day, the fearless cameraman and editor I worked with on the show, Nimrod Erez, one of the show’s producers Brian Butler, and I drove to a place in San Diego where she was staying (it was a gorgeous home in the hills that belonged to her therapist, who she also worked for doing some sort of New Age water therapy/memory retrieval thing that I didn’t really understand).

Upon our arrival, we were greeted by 6’4” retired FBI Special Director Ted Gunderson, a name well-known to fans of the most far-out variants of conspiracy theory. Gunderson, now deceased, but then about 75, was known for being an idiotic bigmouth who hounded the producers of shows like Geraldo! and A Current Affair for appearances. We were told that he was there to provide “security” for “the little lady” as he called her and he’d also invited himself to be on camera (something that she seemed to want, too) to bolster her bonafides. I was only too delighted to accommodate a blithering fucking idiot who would have a lower third (accurately) identifying him as a former FBI bureau chief! In the context of a show that didn’t want the audience to be able to tell if it was a put on, or real, this was a gift.
 

 
A few asides about Gunderson: One, he lived in Las Vegas (where he hosted a low watt radio conspiracy theory show) and brought along three framed photographs on his long-ass drive to San Diego. One was him with Gerald and Betty Ford. Another was of him with Ronald Reagan. The third was a portrait of John Wayne, just a regular studio promo shot, not even signed to him or anything. Listen to him speak in the piece. He thought he sounded like John Wayne and he wanted me to somehow connect him to the actor in my mind. Maybe I’d even compare him to John Wayne, he told me.

The second thing was that it was OBVIOUS—and I mean OBVIOUS—that Ted thought he was going to get laid. He followed “Brice” around like a male dog sniffing around a female dog’s ass. When I wanted them both on camera at the same time, she balked and took me aside to admonish me not to “make it look like we’re a couple.” She wasn’t into him, not in the least, but she wanted him there on camera to make her seem more credible.

With a guy like Ted there to buck up your credibility, you obviously ain’t got much to begin with! The best way to describe Gunderson is that he was like Jethro pretending to be a “double-naught spy” on The Beverly Hillbillies. At one point during his law enforcement career he oversaw 700 plus officers of the FBI’s Southern California bureau, and yet frankly, he’s one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met. Whenever someone asks me how he got into such a position, I tell them, “He’s big and he’s pushy.” (I’d run into him a few more times over the years, including when we interviewed him about Satanic cults for another spot on the show. He was a comic foil for me twice in the series.)

As the lights were getting set up, an anxious Brice asked me where the show would be seen and I told her what Channel Four was and I said “It’s network, not cable. One of the main channels over there” and explained that there were fewer television stations in the UK than in America and this caused her to perk up. “So you mean to tell me, like they’ve only got four or five TV channels? And that’s what everyone basically watches? Do you think the Queen of England watches Channel Four?

I was confused about where she was going with this and I demurred “Well, yeah, I’m pretty sure, of course, that she’s watched Channel Four, yes…”

“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! TED! TED! He says the Queen of England might see this show! Maybe I can get a message to her about my son!”

She turned to me, obviously cycling maniacally at this point: “So you really think the Queen of England will see this???”

Not wanting to dampen her instantaneous enthusiasm for the task we were about to embark on, I replied that if the Queen of England was up watching late night TV and flipping channels while the Duke of Edinburgh snoozed, then, yes, perhaps there was perhaps a certain mathematical possibility of that occurring… (!)

I don’t want to give too much away for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but we discussed beforehand that when I would feed her the question about the Queen, she would shift from speaking to me, to addressing the camera/Queen directly for some added dramatic oomph!

With the interview, the B-roll and the voice-over in the can, we decamped to Kinko’s to get color photocopies of her family photographs. Gunderson came with us, at one point comically showing off that he was packing heat to try to impress her, but by then it was obvious that she’d gotten what she wanted out of him (the drive from Las Vegas to San Diego is hardly trivial) and she started making “Well, I’ve got to be getting home now” noises to clue him in that he wasn’t getting any of that Project Monarch pussy anytime soon.

While the piece was being edited, I invited my pot delivery guy, a fat queeny dude (think “Cam” on Modern Family) to watch it. When it was over, he looked at me and said “You know you’re going to Hell, right?”

Perhaps he’s right, but at least I kept my word about letting Brice tell her own story, her way. Although the piece did not air on Channel Four as I’d hoped, when “Brice” got a VHS of the segment, she seemed thrilled and sent me a copy of her book inscribed with a thank you.

Over the years, when I’ve been invited to screen the Disinformation TV shows at museums and repertory cinemas, the most ridiculous question anyone has ever asked me about this piece—and it gets asked nearly every time!—is “How much of what she says do you think is true?”

Um…. how’s about none of it?

As a weird footnote to this piece, I’ve seen it passed around by various “believers” and “truth seekers” on Facebook and elsewhere for years, as if it’s an actual news piece, or a true documentary. Just last week it was seen on Twitter as a QAnon something or other. I felt like razzing this person for a moment, but soon thought better of it for obvious reasons!

And now, without much further ado, take it away Brice Taylor, mind-controlled sex slave of the CIA…

Watch more Disinformation on Night Flight Plus, the only place to watch original episodes of the cult 1980s series Night Flight. Get a full year membership for $29.99 ($10 Off) for a limited time with discount code: DANGEROUSMINDS.
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.22.2020
08:50 am
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CONSPIRACY: 1979 Supertramp album cover reveals Freemasons ‘pre-knew about’ 9/11


 
Of all the 9/11 conspiracy theories floating around out there, this one’s my… favorite.

According to the fellow in the video below, which was influenced by a post on a David Icke conspiracy forum, the Masons were behind the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. They left clues about their (long) planned event on the 1979 Supertramp album Breakfast In America.

According to the video, Supertramp financier Stanley August Miesegaes was a Mason who used the cover art of the best-selling Breakfast in America album to reveal details about a planned “event” against the World Trade Center.
 

Supertramp financier, Stanley August Miesegaes—according to the video, that *could be* a masonic pendant around his neck. A correction at the beginning of the video indicates that the theorist isn’t certain if Miesegaes was indeed a 33rd degree Mason or not. Just to, you know, clear that up for y’uns!
 
The video offers evidence that the iconic album cover is a bit of “predictive programming,” a notion popular among conspiracy buffs that our overlords embed messages into pop culture in order to psychologically prepare the general population for certain events. Apparently Breakfast in America was to be the subliminal mental lubrication citizens would need two decades later to accept the tragedy of 9/11. This evidence includes the cover’s depiction of the New York City skyline as seen from an airplane window. CHECK. A waitress posing as the Statue of Liberty holds a glass of orange juice over the center of the World Trade Center, indicating the color of the fireball that would tear through the buildings.  CHECK. Just above the World Trade Center, if you hold the record up to a mirror, you see that the “u” and “p” from “Supertramp” resembles the numbers “911.”  CHECK.
 

 
The fateful event was to take place in the morning of September 11—breakfast time in America.

DOUBLE CHECK!

Furthermore, the words “super” and “tramp” are synonyms for “great” and “whore,” which indicates the Great Whore of Babylon, a figure from Christian mythology, with Babylon also mentioned as a place of evil in the Book of Revelation. And if that’s not proof enough for you, why the back cover has yet another illustration of a plane flying above the twin towers.

All in all, it’s a pretty compelling case that “somebody pre-knew about it,” right?
 

 

Posted by Christopher Bickel
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03.07.2016
09:52 am
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The ULTIMATE Jade Helm 15 conspiracy video
07.15.2015
01:45 pm
Topics:
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“IS THIS WHERE YOU WANT TO BE WHEN JESUS COMES BACK? I DON’T THINK SO! AMERICA, GET IT RIGHT!!

I still don’t know how people aren’t seeing that Operation Jade Helm is going down. This is a parking lot at Sam’s Club in San Angelo, Texas where there is obvious Jade Helm activity. There were containers, tarps on chain link fences, moving trucks with Knights Templar insignia on them, and all of this stuff was laid out in a triangle - obvious Illuminati involvement. This is big, people. Get right and get ready!

The only thing I’m going to say about this upfront is that a sizable percentage of the people reading this very sentence will hit play and not realize that this is satire.

And most of them will have something about the Confederate flag on their Facebook page. And bad hillbilly dental work. They will invariably be Republicans. I even bolded the part about it being satire. I’m mentioning it twice, aren’t I? Still some large number of people will not get the joke, or that the joke is, in fact, on them.

For everyone else, enjoy the comedic stylings of Get Right America.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.15.2015
01:45 pm
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Stanley Kubrick faked the Apollo 11 Moon landing?

smoonkub.jpg
 
So, did Stanley Kubrick fake the Moon landing?

Well, that’s the proposition of William Kare’s documentary (mockumentary?) Dark Side of the Moon, which originally aired on French TV channel Arte in 2002 as Opération Lune.

According to Karel’s (fictional?) film, Kubrick was hired to fake the Apollo 11 mission by the U.S. government. The evidence? Well, secret documents alluding to Kubrick’s involvement in the “fraud” were discovered among the director’s papers after his death in March 1999.

Moreover, Kubrick apparently left clues to his involvement into the scam: firstly, his being loaned lenses by NASA to recreate the candle-lit scenes in his film Barry Lyndon—how else could have got hold of these unless NASA owed him a BIG favor?; secondly, Kubrick allegedly made a confession of his involvement in the conspiracy that is contained in his film version of Stephen King’s The Shining.

Adding substance to these alleged facts, Karel wheels out a highly convincing array of contributors: Henry Kissinger, Buzz Aldrin, Jan Harlan, Richard Helms, Vernon Walters (who is claimed to have mysteriously died after filming) and Christiane Kubrick.

It’s a great romp, and for those who are tempted to believe, watch the bloopers reel at the end.
 

 
Via Open Culture

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.25.2014
10:25 am
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Exene Cervenka, the Victoria Jackson of punk rock?


What the fuck happened to this woman?

X’s Exene Cervenka seems more than a tad confused these days, based on the evidence of her rambling, paranoiac and just plain stupid YouTube channel and the fact that she’s now referring to the killings in Santa Barbara over the weekend as being a “hoax” on her Twitter feed—it’s a “gun control” ruse, don’tcha know?

Cervenka’s First Amendment right to make a complete and utter fucking laughingstock out of herself is indisputable—last time I checked, this was still America—but I can’t imagine that the other members of X think this is all that hilariously funny. (Consider what having to tour with this hillbilly nincompoop must be like, always wanting to listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on the radio).

Some of her fans seem unwilling to believe Cervenka could be this big of a fuckwit and are sticking up for her, saying this must be some kind of Andy Kaufman-esque “performance art.” Bullshit, she’s just an ugly human being. Fuck you, Exene. People died and you’re spreading batshit crazy conspiracy theories on the level of Alex Jones. You should be ashamed of yourself, lady, but these days, you don’t even seem acquainted enough with reality itself to fully comprehend why.
 
Exene is a fucking idiot
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
X marks the Conspiracy Theory: Exene Cervenka, the new Alex Jones?

Thank you Rich Lindsay!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.28.2014
02:28 pm
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X marks the Conspiracy Theory: Exene Cervenka, the new Alex Jones?
03.27.2014
10:02 am
Topics:
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Hi. Let me introduce myself. My name is Christine Notmyrealname, and I am a completely unlicensed for-amusement-and-entertainment-purposes-only uncertified conspiracy therapist. My job in life—self-appointed—is to bring conspiracy theorists, and those who aren’t, together, so that we can all unite and fix what’s wrong with society, the world, et cetera.

With those words, we are ushered into the over-the-rainbow, everything-you-know-is-fucking-WRONG-maaaaan world of Christine Notmyrealname, whom you surely know better as Exene Cervenka, singer of the seminal L.A. punk/roots rock band X. When DM last checked in on her, she was holding the punkest garage sale ever, in preparation for a move from L.A. to Texas, which, it turns out, may be in preparation for SHTF. But don’t worry, ladies, you can survive the coming apocalyptic nastiness if you just land the right man! Forget about that metrosexual Beverly Hills pantywaiste in his BMW, you want a redneck with a front porch, a pickup truck with a gun rack and the manly ability to put food on the table that he has killed himself. Just make sure you have skills to offer, and try not to be a tarted up, fake-tits whore.

Exene, she calls it as she sees it…
 

 
WATCH OUT FOR ALLIGATOOOORRRRRS!
 
Cervenka has a kooky YouTube channel full-to-burstin’ with bonkers shit. Samples from her playlists called “Liked videos,” “Favorite videos,” and “random greatness” include “exposés” of Reptilian shape-shifters, “proof” that the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary was fake, and the Internet paranoiac’s usual array of 9/11-OMG-the-currency-is-about-to-crash-wake-up-sheeple-everything’s-a-false-flag crap. It’s useful to have this background to her proclivities, because she steers clear of explicitly pushing those buttons in her own videos, which give them a kind of inchoate vagueness that actually augments their unhinged appeal.
 

 

 
Look, we can surely all agree that consensus reality absolutely does not always match up with what’s actually happening, and that information gleaned from corporate media invariably comes with a heapin’ helpin’ of veiled agenda. But there’s a whole lot of excluded middle between sensible advice to question the information that’s fed you and “The End-Time Adventures of Lucifer and His Illuminati Gang.”
 
Some of Exene’s favorite “informations,” after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
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03.27.2014
10:02 am
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Alex Jones explains Obamacare dressed as a lizard, continues downward mental health spiral
10.03.2013
04:12 pm
Topics:
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Is it wrong to hold up someone who is so obviously mentally ill to mockery and then sell advertisements against it? Am I a bad person for lampooning someone clearly losing his shit for laughs and banner ads?

Nah. This kind of thing happens on Fox News all the live-long day, doesn’t it?

I think if you showed a younger Alex Jones what he would eventually come to represent, and how the general public would regard him, as they do today, “Winning” like his pal Charlie Sheen, just a sad, pathetic clown, he’d probably break down and start sobbing.

Imagine the sheer, unmitigated hell his wife must go through!

Crack is wack, but whatever Alex Jones is on should be avoided at all costs.

Maybe the Illuminati HAVE already gotten to him. I guess I wasn’t thinking, you know, enough steps ahead!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.03.2013
04:12 pm
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Conspiracy Theory Corner: Top Five 9/11 Freudian Slips!
06.21.2013
12:11 pm
Topics:
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Can an expression THIS BEFUDDLED be faked?

One of things that interests me about 9/11 is how it violently divides people, creating a kind of epistemological schism. For many, entertaining the conspiratorial view of the event (“inside job” and all that) is tantamount to believing in the tooth fairy. For others, entertaining the official version of the event is also tooth-fairy credulous. There is little middle ground, and the adherents could easily be said to occupy parallel universes.

Needless to say, for those tending to the former perspective, my tongue is firmly, deeply buried in my cheek here: of course I didn’t and don’t think that such a vast and mind-bending conspiracy is possible, let alone credible, or that the following are really anything other than meaningless slips of the tongue (rather than what Freud liked to call “psychic facts”). That is to say, I’m being ironic. Gawd.

(As for everyone else, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more…I’m just trying to get this information out there!)

Number 1 “The TV was obviously on…”  Dubya describes seeing the first plane hit.
 

 
Is this the greatest Freudian slip of all time? A predictable number one, certainly, but deservedly so. Where were you when you first saw the planes hit the towers? Remember? Well, apparently being POTUS during such an event plays havoc with your memory. “Kite… Plane…Must… Hit… Steel…”
 
More 9/11-related Freudian slips after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Thomas McGrath
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06.21.2013
12:11 pm
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Alex Jones completely loses his shit again, this time on BBC: ‘We have an idiot on the program’
06.10.2013
11:35 am
Topics:
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Veteran BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil, who made the mistake of inviting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones onto his normally staid Sunday Politics program last night, has called Jones “the worst person I’ve ever interviewed” and an “idiot.”

I don’t think he meant that in a good way.

Neil’s other guest was journalist David Aaronovitch and the topic was the Bilderberg Conference, currently taking place at a luxury hotel in rural Hertfordshire.

After Jones asserts that the euro was a “Nazis Germany plan,” Aaronovitch mocks him with a wonderfully droll question (I won’t give it away) and Jones freaks out.

Beyond that, basically all Alex Jones did was shout things like he had Tourette’s syndrome, but the canny flim-flam man did make sure to get his URL on BBC television. Repeatedly:

“Hey listen, I’m here to warn people, you keep telling me to shut up. This isn’t a game. Our government, the US, is building FEMA camps. We have an NDAA where they disappear people now. You have this arrest for public safety, life in prison. It’s basically off with their heads, disappear them. Take them away. Infowars.com. Liberty is rising. Liberty is rising. Freedom will not stop. You will not stop freedom. You will not stop the republic. Humanity is awakening. Infowars.com. No, you guys are crazy, thinking that the public’s too stupid. You’re crazy, thinking the public doesn’t know. You’re crazy, thinking the public isn’t waking up.”

Before the show ended, an exasperated Andrew Neil made the familiar swirling finger near his ear/“this person is fucking bonkers” gesture before adding “We have an idiot on the program today” as Jones continued his spittle-flecked, bellicose ranting.

Mr. Neil later said of Jones’ conniption fit on Twitter: “The moment Alex Jones knew he was no longer on air he stopped.” (That’s passion, that’s… entertainment?)

Piers Morgan tweeted back: “Morning, @afneil - didn’t you get my memo on @RealAlexJones?”
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion of Los Angeles, California!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.10.2013
11:35 am
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Conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck has new conspiracy theory about being called a conspiracy theorist
05.29.2013
07:40 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Papa’s got a brand new conspiracy theory: Glenn Beck, the teary-eyed, former alcoholic Mormon “patriot” and multi-millionaire conspiracy theory media mogul believes (or, rather, *ahem*, says he believes) himself to be the target of, what else, a conspiracy to call him a conspiracy theorist.

Heavy meta!

It sounds like I am making this up. I am not making this up. Via Raw Story:

Conspiracy talk radio host Glenn Beck [see what he did there?] said Tuesday that he isn’t sure why he’s been labeled a conspiracy theorist in the media, but he’s pretty sure it’s the result of a “concentrated effort” somehow coordinated by the White House.

Building on his theory that CNN secretly orchestrated an incredibly awkward moment between host Wolf Blitzer and an atheist survivor of the Oklahoma tornadoes, Beck told listeners on Tuesday that it’s just another example of the media’s conspiracy to push a hidden agenda, in this case atheism.

“The media has their own agenda,” he said of CNN. “And if the media has a storyline, it just writes it in. And currently the storyline is ‘conspiracy theorist.’” Then, without irony, he asked: “Why is it a concentrated effort now to label me a conspiracy theorist?”

Fantabulosa! The man surely knows how to enthrall his audience of cud-chewing cows, does he not? They subscribe to this shit, baby! Pay the man a monthly fee to put stupid ideas in their heads. It’s genius, the best gimmick for separating fools from their money since televangelism or Scientology!

Glenn Beck is so gangsta, motherfucker, countin’ those stacks o’ Benjamins!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.29.2013
07:40 pm
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Conspiratards: Reddit forum mocks Alex Jones & Ron Paul fans; maybe they’ll learn something?


 
There’s a fantastic new—at least I think it’s pretty new—sub-reddit section that’s a catchall for some of the more idiotic conspiracy theories out there. Titled ‘Conspiratards,’ for the most part, the forum consists of postings debunking the willy-nilly fever dream dot-connecting of Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, the 9-11 truthers, birthers, LaRouchites, Tea partiers, Ron Paul fanboys and David Icke. If you are so inclined, it’s a fucking laugh riot.

As you might imagine it’s also one of the most vicious and biting forums on all of reddit—which is really saying something—and many true believers have a vendetta against the forum’s very existence. There’s a disclaimer on the sidebar that directs readers to the “Controversial” tab:

Special Note: Conspiratards hate free speech and religiously down-mod good submissions here, so be sure to check out the “controversial” submissions that they don’t want you to see!

When you talk about conspiracy theories, there are, of course, REAL conspiracies and crimes—things which can be proven in a court of law and that actually happened historically (Watergate and the Iran Contra scandal come immediately to mind) and then there’s the utter lunatic bullshit that Alex Jones propagates on his radio show, the Montauk Project book series and Brice Taylor, the self-proclaimed mind-controlled sex slave of Bob Hope, the CIA and Henry Kissinger). When you get down to the “lizard people” level, I’m not sure what value these empty mental calories provide as a part of one’s intellectual diet, but from a sociological viewpoint, it’s fascinating to gawk at the loopy things that some people are willing to believe, absent any proof other than a sweaty, obnoxious fat guy shouting that it’s all a big government cover-up (A pic of Alex Jones looking suitably barking mad is the Conspiratards’ mascot).

I’ve watched as the conspiracy theory subculture degenerated from serious, yet unorthodox, inquiry and investigative journalism (the high point was the late 80s, early 90s when zine culture still flourished) to the mentally unstable jabberwocky of Jones, the Fox News reichwing propaganda machine and the smirking, immature fratboy fascists at Breitbart we have today. It’s gone from fascinating to pathetic and there’s a world of distance between the likes of a great, non-conformist mind such as Mae Brussell or her disciple Dave Emory, and a bi-polar paranoid numbskull like Alex Jones.

Because of the popularity of Disinformation, which launched in 1996 when the Internet was still a new thing to most people, I was often asked to comment on conspiracy theories on television shows and newscasts from all over the world. Out of “nowhere” these “theories” appeared to be gaining a level of acceptability in the culture, and this seemed to alarm traditional journalists and so they would have someone like me—or Jonathan Vankin, author of Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes, still the definitive book on conspiracy theorists) explain it for their listeners, viewers or readers. Both Jonathan and myself were bemused onlookers, not true believers in any way, so we tended to be the “go to” guys for that stuff back then.

I was always asked these two questions, or some variation thereof: “Have you ever investigated a conspiracy theory that you were skeptical of, only to find that you ultimately came to believe it?” (“No,” is the very short answer) and they also always wanted to know how the general public would be able to tell shit from shinola in this brave new Internet era…

This was the trickier question to answer, but to a large extent, I’d give the same answer today as I did fifteen years ago: “If it sounds like something they already believe, and it’s presented with a certain level of slickness, be it a professional TV graphics package, or good web design, then a certain segment of the population probably will believe it—fervently—and there’s not a lot that can done about it.”

I’ve had TV hosts gasp when I said that, but I wasn’t trying to imply—certainly not—that Lyndon LaRouche’s website would be on equal footing with The New York Times, but I was on the record several times back then predicting that “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” as defined by Richard Hofstadter in his famous 1964 essay of the same title, would become very popular in the coming decade as a form of entertainment.

It’s not about the John Birch Society-type ideas, or those of Glenn Beck’s idol, W. Cleon Skousen, per sethey’ve been languishing in the background for 50-60 years—but the slicker presentation of these kinds of ideas in a wide-open, low barrier to entry mediaverse that is seeing them flourish and gain traction in a way that never could have been imagined when Hofstadter wrote his essay. Today what used to be the fringe is the mainstream.

Consider the right wing “bubble” that the Mitt Romney campaign and the GOP were accused of living in during the 2012 election. If Breitbart.com looked like Free Republic, it’s doubtful that it would carry the same weight in the minds of conservatives as the freaking New York Times, if you take the point, but to many on the right, it DOES have the same value, a fact that came out repeatedly in the election post-mortems. Breitbart? WTF?

Then there’s Fox News. Imagine how threadbare that network would appear without the slick motion graphics and the blonde newscasters? It would frankly look just like the Alex Jones podcast without the Fox-y ladies and professional art directors. Ever noticed how few live reports Fox does? Local newscasts get out of the studio more often than Fox does and many times, they’re using the same feeds as CNN, perhaps even licensing these feeds from their competitor. It looks like a news network and has all of the trappings and outer appearance of one, but is it really news that Fox offers its elderly viewers in between all of the Gold Bond powder and MedicAlert commercials?

In any case, my perception of the Conspiratards sub-reddit forum is that it represents (by its explicitly mocking name and irreverent attitude) a really, really interesting new development in conspiracy theory culture. Not merely a “get your head out of your ass, dude” place to vent, it’s actually a place where even the folks who troll it will inevitably get a dose of counter reality that will bounce off the back of their heads like a basketball of logic.

I can understand why people are Glenn Beck fans or Alex Jones diehards, but it doesn’t mean I have any respect for how their tiny minds process and evaluate information sources. Conspiratards on reddit looks to promote a modern—and necessary—form of media literacy, no more, no less. The educational system might be failing us, but take heart that we can still teach each other something.
 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.09.2013
12:59 pm
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Rachel Maddow eviscerates conspiracy theorist Alex Jones


 
About ten years ago, whoever was managing Alex Jones at the time would have DVDs of Jones’ shouty “documentaries” messengered over to me at the Disinformation office.

I was already well aware of Alex Jones and sight-unseen, I already knew that this was not going to be something that I was going to be interested in, and especially not interested in investing any money into (the idea was that we would have manufactured it and distributed it on DVD).

Aside from the fact that they were obviously the products of a ranting and raving unhinged paranoiac lunatic with access to someone who knew Final Cut Pro, Jones used footage that there was no way he could have gotten the rights to use.

They were these long, like, messy video collages of fact, conjecture, crappy pixelated news footage and the jumbled-up logic, red-faced, bulging vein exhortations Jones is famous for. I will admit to watching them on the treadmill but they were always binned immediately afterwards.

In the intervening years, Jones has become a household name in some of America’s more gullible households, mostly due to Glenn Beck disgracefully elevating his profile on Fox News. Beck ultimately decided to cut out the middleman and unashamedly ripped off Alex Jones’ shtick. Oh yeah, Beck stole his act lock, stock and fucking barrel, went to the bank with it and then kicked Jones to the curb to distance himself from his hot-headed, foaming at the mouth mentor (and lesser showman). Jones does have a legitimate gripe with Glenn Beck, if you ask me, but it is Beck who deserves the blame for mainstreaming a kook like Alex fucking Jones in the first place.

Of late, Mr. Jones has been his own worst enemy, making himself into a laughingstock, first with his infamously berserk Piers Morgan interview on CNN and then again with his “false flag” accusations about the Boston bombing.

Jones makes outrageous predictions constantly. Is he ever right?

Nathaniel Downes at Addicting Info thinks Alex Jones is a fraud. That might be more than a little unfair to Jones—I think he believes what he says, he’s just fucking nuts—but he’s amassed an impressive list of some of Alex Jones’ greatest misses from 2012:

Worldwide shortage of rare earth metals – Didn’t happen
Food supply disruptions hit western nations – Didn’t happen
Deadly superbug mutation goes wild – Didn’t happen
New evidence links vaccines and neurological disorders – The opposite happened
U.S. power grid suffers catastrophic failure – Didn’t happen
Satellite breakdown – Didn’t happen
GM crop contamination leads to crisis – Didn’t happen
Honeybee population collapse spreads to other species – Didn’t happen
Weather patterns become increasingly radicalized – Debatable
Nuclear power sees global resurgence – The Fukushima incident discredited this
Nuclear weapons unleashed in the Middle East – Didn’t happen
New exotic superfood from South America emerges in western markets – Didn’t happen
A high-tech, portable vitamin D sensor device is invented – Didn’t happen
U.S. debt gets downgraded while world investors slash purchases of U.S. debt instruments – The debt was downgraded, but investors still flock to it
U.S. nearly comes to military conflict with China over natural resources – Didn’t happen
Huge new scandal implicates major pharmaceutical company in scientific fraud – Nothing out of the ordinary here
China unleashes armies of corporate espionage hackers onto western nations – Some debate on this is ongoing
Medical imaging scandal unfolds as older patients begin to show serious health damage from radiation via mammograms, CT scans and more – Didn’t happen
Another 9/11 false flag incident – Didn’t happen
The world won’t end on December 21, 2012 – Hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day!
EPA pressured to regulate pharmaceuticals in the water supply – Can’t even contemplate this one without the brain hurting
Nursing home drugging scandal exposed – Didn’t happen
The psychiatric industry will declare more normal behaviors to be “disorders” – Didn’t happen
Vaccine industry goes crazy with new vaccines for all sorts of “diseases” – Didn’t happen
War on health freedom ramps up, targeting raw milk, homeopathy, herbs and supplements – Didn’t happen
The world becomes a far more dangerous place for honest citizens – So open-ended you cannot even evaluate
New attempts are made to destroy internet freedom – SOPA and PIPA have been discussed for awhile, so not a real argument
China’s boom will bust, sending ripples through global economy – Didn’t happen
Central and South America will drop the U.S. dollar as a currency – Didn’t happen
Local currencies emerge following the collapse of the dollar – As the dollar didn’t collapse, this didn’t happen
TSA suspends full body scanners after celeb photo scandal – No, was suspended due to dangerous exposure to radiation
Cell phone brain tumors start to appear in younger users – Didn’t happen
Medical industry claims to find cause of autism – Didn’t happen, although some hope has been raised
Terrorist strike on the U.S. water supply – Didn’t happen
Sperm count drops, infertility rates rise – Fertility is increasing, not decreasing, across the United States
“Stealth personal recorders” go mainstream – We call them Cell Phones, although Alex Jones is quick to claim that they cause cancer

Good times!
 

 
Rachel Maddow’s epic Alex Jones takedown from last night is quite amusing. She starts off all serious, but wait until the clips of feverishly ranting Alex Jone start. After that she riffs on him like the fool he is and annihilates him, but with her typical good-natured wryness. Jones is perfect fodder for her wit. Good stuff.
 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Alex Jones: DMT elves want the elites to kill us all!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.25.2013
05:09 pm
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Mind control, time travel & Nazi gold—is The Montauk Project the weirdest conspiracy theory of all?
03.05.2013
07:35 pm
Topics:
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In January of 1999, I started to put together the pilot episode of what would become a two series run of a show called Disinfo Nation if you lived in the UK, and Disinformation in the rest of the world. The very first day of shooting was so outrageous that it was really never topped during the subsequent two years of production, 24 zany months that saw me going to fetish clubs, listening to the sounds of plants communicating and “investigating” behind the scenes of various ludicrous conspiracy theories.

A film and video producer I knew by the name of Chica Bruce—known around New York for her work on Yo! MTV Raps—had become an aficionado of the “Montauk Project” conspiracy theory book series and when she heard about the TV pilot order I’d gotten from Britain’s Channel 4 network, she strongly encouraged me to do a segment on her new obsession. I thought this was a good idea, having read five of the Montauk Project volumes myself, books I considered to be mind rot at its absolute finest.

Chica had become acquainted with the key players in the conspiracy, as well as several “Montauk experiencers,” as she put it, young men who had “feelings” that they too were a part of the nefarious goings on at a disused Air Force base on Long Island. How this generally occurred, she explained to me, is that they would read the Montauk Project books and their own repressed memories of working on the project would resurface. There were more than ten “Montauk Boys” and fewer than twenty. Chica, a very attractive woman, was apparently the sole female traveling in such a circle, for reasons that would soon become pretty obvious. She scheduled interviews with two of the main Montauk players—and possibly a third—during a weekend shoot on Long Island. I also planned to interview Chica herself and have her show me around the site of the former Montauk Point Air Force base. I found her innocent willingness to buy into the obvious tall tales these clowns told added an entirely new layer to the story I wanted to tell. Chica could put herself through metaphysical logic loops that would have left someone with a less hardy appetite for weirdness feeling dizzy. Having a photogenic character like her to play off Jabba The Hutt-like Preston Nichols and Stewart Swerdlow—a campy goateed married man who told me on camera that he was sent back in time to assassinate Jesus Christ—was pretty perfect.

I always endeavored to present the conspiracy theory material with a completely straight face. I was heavily influenced by American Movie and the films of Christopher Guest. I wanted to make “real” mockumentaries. The goal was to produce something that lived up to a conceit of a title like Disinformation (meaning a mixture of truth and lies used as an information smokescreen) and the show’s cheerfully snarky tagline: “If you’re not wondering if we made this stuff up, we’re not doing our job right.”

The idea was to make the audience ask themselves if it was real or if it was scripted—several times—during the course of each show. For that to work, it had to seem like I believed it, too, no matter how preposterous or insane what the subjects were saying was. I also had to convince the interviewees that I bought into their reality, too.

I hit upon my interviewing style on the first day and it really worked for me: I’d ask extremely detailed questions, designed to elicit extremely detailed answers and then I’d have plenty to work with in the edit room. But there was an additional, less obvious psychological benefit to this approach. Here’s an example of what I mean by that: In the case of my interview with Preston B. Nichols, I went through every single page of his totally crazy books and instead of asking broad questions like “So tell me about your involvement with the Montauk Project...” I’d ask something more along the lines of “How were you recruited for your first job on the base or did you apply for the job? Was it a friend or a family member who told you about the job? I guess I’m a little unclear about how you found yourself there in the first place” and then he would be obliged to clarify it for me.

I’d follow that up with “Did you have to pass any sort of top secret security clearance before you started work there?”

You see what I was doing, demonstrating a better than usual familiarity with the backstory—I’d clearly done my research, which showed respect—but not getting it quite right so he’d be obliged to correct me on a small detail. I was a TV guy slickster in an expensive suit on his turf, so it was imperative that I disarm whatever nervousness my persona presented him with and get him on my side from the start or I wasn’t going to be able to get the sort of footage I needed. This little trick—and the fact that I can keep a straight face with the best of them—worked wonders for me.

Nichols’ home was a tiny old house that looked extremely incongruous among the million dollar McMansions that surrounded it. As we drove closer and saw the weed-covered yard and modified school bus in the driveway, it became obvious to us that we were indeed in the right place. Nichols lived there with his father, a morbidly obese old fellow who watched football perched on a La-Z-Boy® recliner. He reacted to the crew and myself like Gollum would after being exposed to light for the first time in years. He was so fat that it was hard for me to tell if he had any bones. He didn’t even bother moving as we tried to set up around him and he passed gas frequently, without any shame.

Their home was one of the filthiest places I’ve ever seen and a huge stack—and I do mean huge, there were at least 500 cans—of Spam (yes, the processed meat product) sat piled in one corner. Semi-eaten cans, with spoons dried and stuck to them, were seen all over the place, as if it was all the pair ate. There was junk everywhere. The bathroom was a rusty, pissed-covered scandal. The toilet seat had been cracked completely in half and then put back together with several rolls of tape. Preston wore a sweatshirt that had food spilled all over it. It was not pretty and it smelled real bad, too.

Although he was obviously quite suspicious of me—and not without good reason, of course—I got exactly what I needed from the interview (Except for one thing: Preston’s dead mother had constructed a memorial shrine to the actor Yul Brynner, an entire wall of framed photographs and magazine articles next to the massive pile of Spam. Afterwards, in the van, I asked the cameraman if he’d gotten some good shots of it, but alas he had not, thinking it had nothing to do with the story. No Spam pile, either).

Next up was Stewart Swerdlow, a curious fellow who told me in great detail, not only of his involvement with the project, but of his time spent in federal prison for a crime he told me that he’d been brainwashed to commit. I also met his new wife who explained that she’d been introduced to him while he was in prison by a psychic who told her that Stewart was her soul mate, so she divorced her husband for him. Stewart himself was uh, manually “deprogrammed” by Preston Nichols, as he quite self-consciously alludes to during the interview.

Lastly there was Chica Bruce herself, valiantly trying to convince me that I had not seen what I had just seen with my own two eyes—that Preston was a fat fibber/closet case using conspiracy theory for ulterior motives and Stewart being an extremely unconventional New Age con man (he was purveying “color therapy” at the time and offered to “do my colors” for a discount. I passed). I did an interview with her and then she took me on a tour of the decommissioned base (now a state park).

As we walked around the park—it was fucking freezing—she kept asking me things like “Don’t you feel that? C’mom man, you don’t feel ANY like inter-dimensional weirdness going on here? NOTHING?

“No, nothing.”

Chica was earnestly looking for the Montauk Project conspiracy. There was a conspiracy all right, just not the one that she was looking for…

With this background, have a look at “The Montauk Project”:
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Sympathy for the Devil: The Truth about Satanism in America (NSFW)

Brice Taylor: Mind-controlled Sex Slave of the CIA, Bob Hope and Henry Kissinger

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
03.05.2013
07:35 pm
|
UK 9/11 Truthers get their day in court (well, kinda)
03.05.2013
11:53 am
Topics:
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A couple of Mondays ago, on a cold, colorless morning at 9am sharp, I found myself in the singular predicament of joining the back of a queue of around fifteen 9/11 “Truthers” in a dismal magistrates’ court in Horsham, a small English town about an hour from London. These Truthers were mostly male, middle aged, and—I’m sorry to say—a little stinky.

Their conversation sounded something like this:

“… you believe that you’ll believe anything…”

“…Building Seven…”

“… Osama Bin Laden, don’t make me laugh…”

And the delightful…

“… other than the lizard thing—which I personally don’t have any great problem with—everything else that man has said has been spot-on…”

What was I doing there, dog tired and trying not to breathe through my nose? I was a tourist, waiting to attend what promised to be the weirdest TV license prosecution in history.

Last year, documentary filmmaker Tony Rooke decided he’d had enough of the mainstream media’s repression of what he considered the irrefutable case for the existence of a 9/11 conspiracy, and in an ingenious illustration of the old adage about using an enemy’s own weight and strength against them, had refused to pay his TV license on the grandiose grounds of Article 3, Section 15 of the UK 2000 Terrorism Act, which states that it is an offence to provide funds if there is a reasonable cause to suspect that those funds may be used for the purposes of terrorism (the TV License is a compulsory fee for all UK TV owners and pays for the BBC).

“Mr Rooke’s claim is that the BBC has withheld scientific evidence that demonstrates that the official version of 9/11 is not possible,” explained a press release circulated by the AE911Truth UK Action Group, “and that the BBC has actively attempted to discredit those people attempting to bring this evidence to the public.” As part of his defense, it added, Rooke had secured three hours to present his case, and had assembled a “formidable team” of defense witnesses, including Professor Niels Harrit (Professor of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen) and former intelligence analyst Tony Farrell. “Evidence such as this,” it concluded, “has rarely, if ever, been seen in any court of law…”

Yes, your correspondent was in Horsham not so much for a backdoor inquiry into the more controversial or contentious aspects of 9/11, as a cat-flap one. And he was very much looking forward to it!

While not exactly the toughest crowd through which to cut a dash, I am pleased to report that man-of-the-hour Tony Rooke did all the same. He was stood outside chain-smoking, with slightly floppy dark hair and a fleshy, dignified face that looked calm, thoughtful and somewhat oversensitive. As befits a defendant, he was dressed smartly, but had pulled this off rather well, something I feared would have been well beyond the reach of the other attendant Truthers, who were pointing him out to one another, murmuring in near awe that he looked “like a barrister.”

Arguably he was inspiring too much confidence. While it seemed pretty clear you would have to riffle through a fair few parallel universes before coming across a judge brazen or bananas enough to pitch the UK into an epistemological crisis over a TV license, some of the more optimistic Truthers were daring to dream, and by the time they opened the doors to Court 1 there were over a hundred cramming the narrow corridor.

This proved far too many for the tiny courtroom, which didn’t even seat thirty. Fortunately, I quickly found myself a cushy spot in the front row of folding orange leatherette chairs, but the vast majority of that large crowd was refused entry by a wiry usher with an ex-cop vibe—it was to be one in, one out at Loose Change Live.
                      
The Truthers were in uproar: I was increasingly concerned about the possibility of the court being closed or cleared. Fortunately, the usher managed to eventually shut the door on them, and when Judge Stephen Nicholls entered those seated rose to their feet with something like reverence—due I supposed to the notion it was in this man’s power to turn the tide on their thus far rather one-sided battle with the Illuminati.

Nicholls was a man in his early-to-middle sixties, with glasses and bright white hair that had receded to a widow’s peak high on his brow. After scheduling later hearings for the day’s other defendants—a pair of understandably bewildered looking bruisers facing drink driving charges—Nicholls informed Rooke (who was representing himself), that although opening statements weren’t officially allowed, he would extend “a little leeway” in this instance

So, Rooke climbed into the witness box and launched into a decent speech. His tone was steady, reasonable, and wry as he addressed Nicholls. “I have incontrovertible—and I don’t use that word lightly—evidence against the BBC. The BBC had advance knowledge of twenty minutes of the events of 9/11 and did not do anything to clarify what the source of that information was. At the preliminary hearing I asked if you were aware of WTC7. You said you had ‘heard of it.’ Over ten years after 9/11 you should have more than heard of it. It’s the BBC’s job to inform the public—especially regarding miracles of science where the laws of physics become suspended. Instead, they have made documentaries making fools of and ridiculing those of us who believe in the laws of gravity.”

It crossed my mind that Judge Nicholls probably had since looked into WTC7 (a funny idea). Now, though, he interrupted (Rooke’s speech was getting increasingly polemical and wide-ranging). “This is not an inquiry into the events of 9/11,” Nicholls declared, collecting his No-Shit-Sherlock Award 2013 with the kind of silken irony you could only hope to spin from the soul of a judge. “This is an offence under Section 363 of the Communications Act.”

The prosecutor—a youngish guy called Garth Hanniford with a blandly handsome face and a horrible off-the-rack blue suit—was then invited to cross-examine the defendant. Good old Garth. He gave the impression of a man incapable of summoning much in the way of effort or enthusiasm for anything, and had been observing the extreme novelty of the day’s events—surely the most interesting afternoon of a working life spent prosecuting TV license avoidance?—with all the attentiveness of someone watching a friend play computer games.

He now stood up and launched into what one suspected was his habitual cross-examination.

“Do you possess a television Mr Rooke?”

“Yes I do.”

“And do you possess a television license?”

“No I do not.”

“And do you watch television?”

“Sometimes.”

So… you’re happy to make use of the service but not to pay for it?”

“Well, I’ll monitor it if I have to. Ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. And it was only through watching the BBC that I could know that I would be committing a crime by paying for it.”

“No further questions,” mumbled Perry Mason, another day’s work already behind him.

On the wall behind the witness box, two decent sized television screens were on standby. There was something delectably Dadaist about the prospect that, any minute now, in a British court, we would presumably be watching the famous clip of the BBC newscaster informing viewers that the third building in the World Trade Center complex, WTC7, had just collapsed, while, in the background of the shot, it was still stood there—a stubborn facet of that surreal riddle (9/11) that had driven tens of thousands into the cold arms of paranoid schizophrenia. Now, as the witnesses for the defense filed in – the as-advertised all-star cast of maverick academics and former spooks—it was as if the national unconscious really was going to momentarily overwhelm the national superego.

Judge Nicholls, however, had other ideas. With an air of mild mischief, he started to tip his hand. As I understood it, his argument was that, even were he to sit through the show and at the end exclaim, “Jumping Jesus—9/11 was an inside job and the BBC are a pack of scoundrels!”—it would be beyond his jurisdiction to consequently exempt Mr Rooke from paying his license fee (let alone brand the Beeb “an organisation that supports terrorism,” or whatever). The day’s witnesses and exhibits, therefore, were superfluous.

In short, Loose Change Live was facing a major existential threat!

Judge and defendant went round in circles for a while…

“…I don’t want to incriminate myself by paying fees to an organisation complicit in terrorism. I will pay once the police establish that the BBC has nothing to do with terrorism…”

“… I do not believe that I have the power to rule under the Terrorism Act…”

“… I just want to present the evidence, that I am not allowed to do so leaves me slightly baffled…”

“…even if I accept the evidence, this court has no power to create a defense in the manner which you put forward…”

And so on. Meanwhile, the atmosphere was growing flat; the day building to a brutal anti-climax. Then, sensing the jig was up, Rooke suddenly lashed out.

“There is such a thing as morality, you know,” he declared (hell of a thing to chuck in the face of a judge). “You had me swear on a Bible, and now you’re asking me to commit a crime. If the BBC covers up a pedophile ring—keep paying. If they cover up 9/11—keep paying. Keep paying keep paying keep paying keep paying. When on earth does it stop? I’m sick of it.”

Judge Nicholls’ features darkened: there had been insolence (unanswerable insolence) in Rooke’s outburst, and the weight of the audience seemed suddenly and for the first time to press against him. He muttered he would retire to consider the evidence, stood up, and exited the court stage right with as near to a flounce as he had surely come in his entire career. Rooke had drawn a drop of blood!

When Nicholls returned to sentence him, the mood in the court received a further lift—he handed the defendant a conditional discharge of six months, ordering him to pay £200 legal fees, but not a fine, or even the outstanding license fee—it was a so-called “zero sentence.”

Rooke was passed a form to fill in.

“Can I just clarify,” he said, pausing with his pen in hand, “you’re ordering me to commit a crime?”

“I’ve given the judgement,” Nicholls responded, “I won’t be adding anything further to it now.” He raised his eyebrows. “Now do you want to fill in that form for me?”

Hearty thanks to David Kerekes

Posted by Thomas McGrath
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03.05.2013
11:53 am
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