If you guessed something about how the moon landing was faked or if you think it has to do with reptilians, the JFK assassination or fluoride sapping our precious bodily fluids, keep guessing…

In a new nationwide survey of American voters, Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind project took a look Americans’ belief in political conspiracy theories. The researchers asked respondents about four relatively common-held conspiracy theories: Birtherism (which 36% of all Americans believe in); that the government had advance warning about 9/11 (25% believe that to be true); that Obama stole the recent election (only 19% believe this one, which is surprising); and that George W. Bush stole the 2004 election via rigging the vote (23% believe this).

It was hardly news to read that 64% of registered Republicans voters were “birthers” but so many of them still are? Nearly two-thirds of GOP voters—64% of ‘em—believe that it’s “probably true” that Barack Obama is lying about his birthplace. Remarkable! It’s like it hasn’t abated at all.

Via Alternet:

Belief in conspiracy theories is not unique to Republicans — 56 percent of Democrats believe in one of the four popular myths researchers asked about — but it is more common. Among registered GOPers, 75 percent said at least one of the four theories was likely true.  Moreover, researchers noted: “Generally, the more people know about current events, the less likely they are to believe in conspiracy theories — but not among Republicans, where more knowledge leads to greater belief in political conspiracies.”

THAT’S pretty revealing, isn’t it? Read that last bit, in bold, a second time before continuing, won’t you?

“There are several possible explanations for this,” said Fairleigh Dickinson political scientist Dan Cassino, who helped conduct the poll. “It could be that more conspiracy-minded Republicans seek out more information, or that the information some Republicans seek out just tends to reinforce these myths.”

I can name a bunch of “possible explanations” off the top of my head: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Fox and Friends, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Donald Trump and so forth. If you fill your head with shit all day, don’t be surprised when you turn into a complete shithead.

...Republicans are more likely to believe that Obama stole the 2012 election, while Democrats are more likely to think the same about 2004. Thirty-seven percent of Democrats think Bush or his supporters engaged in significant voter fraud to win that year, compared to just 9 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of independents.

9/11 conspiracy theories were also more popular among Democrats, with 36 percent believing that Bush knew the towers would be attacked, while young African-Americans are particularly likely to believe this myth — fully 59 percent believe it.

Dan Cassino from Fairleigh Dickinson has a plausible reason why “birtherism” is still so prevalent (aside, of course, from standard run-of-the-mill American idiocy):

“This conspiracy theory is much more widely believed mostly because it’s been discussed so often. People tend to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire – so the more smoke they see, the more likely they are to believe that something is going on.”

I think that’s being a little too kind, but he does have a point. As Robert Anton Wilson once told me “People just tend to believe the last darned thing they heard.”

Below, the “Conspiracy Theory Rock” animation by Robert Smigel that was “mysteriously” cut from SNL, obviously at the behest of Lorne Michaels’ puppet masters!
 

 
An extravagantly open-minded wuss, I’ll probably spend Friday’s long-awaited “Mayan Apocalypse” wearing one unbroken wince of apprehension. Thank Christ I don’t have a TV – a newsflash’d probably kill me! All the same, I can see that there’s little real reason to worry. For one, we constantly read that the Mayan calendar is apparently cyclical – even NASA has emphasized this (as if they’d be quietly fueling their shuttles otherwise). And, for two, since when did everyone start giving a toss what the Mayans thought about anything anyway?

Someone who will be leaving 2012 with a reputation for foreseeing carnage, however, is Loren Coleman. As I’ve already detailed, this morbidly sagacious fellow has a penchant for fingering the future through the present, and made use of his idiosyncratic cocktail of behavioral science, synchromysticism and intuition to predict the Aurora shootings back in July. Naturally, not everyone will agree with this statement, but his prediction – the context of which made it eerily precise – seemed to defy coincidence. As such I could think of no better person to quiz on the 2012 phenomenon. It transpired that Coleman’s thoughts on it were by no means independent of current events…

Thomas McGrath: Loren, first things first, have you stocked up on canned food for the 21st?

Loren Coleman: No. I do not fear the world is going to end on Friday. I don’t have extra food, batteries, or supplies in my home. I won’t take any unusual precautions for living my life on December 21st. Fear mongers, however, including certain sensationalistic elements of the media, are whipping this up.

TM: How would you explain the tenacity of this “2012” meme? Do you think there could be some preternatural source for its potency, or does it strike you as mere hysteria?

LC:  Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, Sandy Hook: If it feels like the End is Near, in large part it has much to do with the fearful, the vulnerable, the suicidal-homicidal who are causing self-fulfilling End of the World prophecy events to come true. It must be awful times for those kinds of folks. Because of that, the red dawns, the bloody killing days, are all around us, and awareness is important. While we must be alert, we should not live in fear.

Psychologically, we all know we are going to die. Humans are not immortal. Sometimes an intriguing psychological process infrequently occurs around these “end of days” deadlines. People somewhat enjoy thinking they can know when they will die, when society will die, and that they will not be alone in the “final event,” because if it is global, everyone dies. It is massive parlor game gone mad.

That the latest event here in the States (on the night of Sunday, December 16th) involved a “Mayan” location, seemed beyond coincidental.

TM: It occurs to me that this 2012 phenomenon might betray the existence of an emergent religion, a sort of New Age syncretism with a number of specific traits (a mythology woven out of conspiracy theory, for example). Apocalyptic predictions and manias are a common feature of most jejune religions and religious movements. Of course they’ve all been wrong so far, though many survived the inaccuracy. Any thoughts on this?

LC: Some end of days (which even has a name, eschatology) movements have evolved into religions, mainstream today, and cults who self-destructed in the past. These include, for example, The Seventh-day Adventist Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses (who are still around); The Solar Temple and the Heaven’s Gate groups (who are less significant because their membership has been declined by mass suicides). Others like The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are eschatological too, and these Mormons (remember Mitt Romney is an elder in the Church) believe earthquakes, hurricanes, and other disasters, including school shootings, are a sign of the Second Coming.

I do not see any eschatological movements coming out of this Mayan-blamed date. Yet.

TM: You’ve alluded to certain apocalyptic/catastrophic intimations of your own in Twilight Languageposts I’ve come upon. Do you suspect we are in fact living in “end times”?

LC: No. When humans are living they think everything happening now is super-significant. It is, for them. But humans tend to be shortsighted, and forget human history more than they wish to acknowledge. Several “end times” predictions have been visited upon humans. We just weren’t alive then, so they seem less important than this one.

TM: You’ve gone on record with predictions for an Israeli strike on Iran - do those stand for the present? Care to share them with our readers?

LC: My hope, always, is that men and women who talk peace will find a path to peace. However, sabre-rattling seems more in tune with what’s happening in Iran, Israel, Syria, Egypt, and the USA in the coming months in the Middle East. An attack seems in the making, for the fear of war with an attack or two seems the next step in these warrior states sitting down to talk peace, unfortunately. Look to the Spring.

TM: Any other predictions for 2013?

LC: If 2012’s earlier theater, church, workplace, mall and school shootings in America follow the patterns of the past and continue to be predictive of the future, I feel awareness for various kinds of dangerous incidents should dictate awareness to December 21-22, 2012, and during the “red danger” period of April 14-30, 2013. I hope not, but the Newtown violence was so horrific, the copycat effect may be a contributing factor to repeat incidents, in the short term and next spring.

 
No offense to any actors out there – as it happens, I’ve always found you to be a perfectly charmin’ bunch of narcissists – but I can’t imagine a more frightening conspiracy theory than one that posits that they secretly rule the world, which is exactly what Ed Chiarini, aka DallasGoldBug, suggests in his hilarious, bizarre and entirely entertaining “research.” 

It can often seem as if conspiracy theory secretly aspires to transform everything into cinema. Apollo 11 – which many conspiracy theorists would like to see added to Stanley Kubrick’s Wikipedia filmography – is an obvious example, as are the array of special effects that populate 9/11 conspiracy theories, ranging from holograms to exploding buildings.

July’s Aurora shootings faced plenty of this sort of speculation. Here, after all, was a massacre that occurred in a cinema during a Batman screening, executed by a Joker copycat. A few days later, Batman himself (well, Christian Bale) would swing by the hospital. For the victims and perpetrator alike the line between cinema and reality was already smudged, and many conspiracy theorists have since asserted that the entire event was a kind of meta-hoax, with some even suggesting that the following impromptu press conference with an Aurora emergency doctor is a cameo by Tom Cruise! 
 

 
Personally, I can’t see it (a pity – I love the idea), but whatever your reaction to the above – “fuck off!” or “fuck me!” – plenty apparently experience the opposite, while the idea that public life is riddled with doubles, doppelgangers, actors and clones currently finds itself in a kind of conspiratorial vogue.     

Which brings us to Ed Chiarini. Many contemporary conspiratorial “researchers” have their own gimmick nowadays, and Chiarini’s is a selection of “biometric” techniques including voice recognition, handwriting analysis and ear comparison, that he uses to argue that numerous figures in the public eye, from politicians to famous felons, are actually played by actors who frequently reappear in other high profile roles.

We’ll get to some of these shortly. They’re pretty fucking out there. Chiarini’s three-hour, three-part magnum opus, The Truth EXPOSED , however, begins quite reasonably, gently taking the open-minded viewer by the hand, and leading them to the edge of the deep end before hurling itself in and attempting to pull them down with it.

After a cursory explanation of ear biometrics (the ears never lie, got it?) the documentary begins by arguing that various US “reality” television characters – none of whom I’d ever heard of – were played by actors who also appeared in other reality shows. It then moves on to the news, arguing that the actors from the “reality” shows also crop up as witnesses and protagonists in current affairs, alongside other recurrent performers. Chiarini supplements the amateur biometrics with other examples of apparent staging in the news, with particular events – like 9/11 and the Occupy protests – ostensibly swarming with plants and choreographed coverage.

At this point, my politely suspended doubt was meandering further and further afield, and I was quite comfortably ensconced in Chiarini’s world of luridly fraudulent news…

All of a sudden, though, it was back, and hammering madly on the window. Out of the blue, Chiarini seemed to be arguing that JonBenét Ramsey grew up to be Lady Gaga, and that Lady Gaga “was” (the supposition here is that they’re all played by an actor) none other than Amy Winehouse! As a Brit, this rather offended my pop music patriotism, but maybe, if he’d left it at that, Chiarini could have reeled me in a little further. As it was, the revelations were coming in so thick and fast you didn’t even have the chance to finish laughing at the last one.

Here, off the top of my head, are some of the best…

Matt Stone and Trey Parker “are” Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold

Barack Obama “is” Osama Bin Laden.

Karl Rove “is” Mark Chapman.

David Ike “is” Richard Branson.

And my own and any other reasonable person’s personal fave….

Henry Winkler – aka the Fonz – “is” Iran’s President Ahmadinejad…

Which prompts the perfectly reasonable supposition that Ed Chiarini “is” taking the piss.

For many fellow travelers in the conspiracy racket – at first extremely hospitable to Chiarini and his biometric party pack – the above claims and the many others like them stretched even their extremely flexible credulity to breaking point. Chiarini didn’t do himself any favors with this target audience by treating many of their heroes to a DallasGoldBug mash-up, suggesting that…

JFK “is” Jimmy Carter

Bill Hicks “is” Alex Jones

and

William Cooper “is” Jordon Maxwell (I can actually see where he’s coming from here).

The predictable result of these was that Chiarini was accused of being a shill sent by the secret government to make conspiracy theorists look like a pack of dickheads. In other words, they accused him of being an actor! Excluding a small hardcore of followers who’d probably believe him if he said Jon Bon Jovi was Albert Einstein, the sense was that Chiarini had gone rogue, madly folding his folded world while hollering “sue me” at anyone who objected to reading that they weren’t real.

Personally – and I’m quite possibly on my own here – regardless of whether he’s a nut-job, a spy, or a prophet in the wilderness, I find something oddly sublime in Chiarini’s claims, and the concept they throw up of an entirely artificial world in which the heroes and villains that constitute history, from Churchill (Lionel Barrymore) to Hitler (Kermit Roosevelt – who also played Walt Disney), are theatrical inventions seducing us from precipice to precipice in a daze of bogus love and loathing.

My imagination enjoys itself in Chiarini’s parallel universe, too. Take, for example, the aesthetic logic in Obama “being” Osama. What I love about this one is how experimental the latter’s assassination becomes – one character cannibalizing the other to enhance their essence, while their real consanguinity is hidden in plain sight by the near – and extraordinarily improbable – correspondence of their names. This showbiz Illuminati, it would appear, are not immune to a touch of l’art pour l’art.

There are, also, times when Chiarini’s parallel universe impinges upon this one. His commentary (see below) over that famous flick known as The Lonesome Death of Lee Harvey Oswald (starring Jim Reeves as Oswald and David Rockefeller as Jack Ruby) is a case in point, and leaves it looking – well, for a glorious moment or two – laughably, transcendentally phoney…
 

 
Thanks to Mark Reeve at ORB Editions

 
Above is a picture of Jimmy Savile with the prolific serial killer Peter Sutcliffe—aka the Yorkshire Ripper—and boxer Frank Bruno. Savile, who apparently befriended the necrophiliac murderer Sutcliffe through the his enigmatic “volunteer” work at Broadmoor (a high security psychiatric hospital), is introducing the two men, who appear to be sharing what looks a lot like a Masonic handshake.

What the fuck?

The more I read about Savile (I’ve already written about his probable necrophilia) the weirder it gets. There is something literally legendary about him – to me Savile increasingly looks like some kind of latter-day Gilles de Rais, the profligate aristocrat, pedophile and black magician who rode into battle alongside Joan of Arc and was later convicted for the deaths of over five hundred children.

What might Savile have to do with dead children? We’ll get to that. But first let’s look at the evidence that suggests he may have been… a spy (or spymaster).

Don’t take my whacky word for it! Let us instead refer to a 2008 Daily Mail article that began with the sentence “Deep cover is not the phrase which springs to mind when you meet Jimmy Savile,” before going on to consider what credibility there was in the following assertion made by Savile himself.

“I guess I am like Forrest Gump (…) I am like a sewing machine needle that goes in here and goes in there, but I am also the eminence grise: the grey, shadowy figure in the background. The thing about me is I get things done and I work under cover.”

Although the article goes on to tentatively soften some of Savile’s remarkable claims to world historical prestige, all are left pretty much intact. They include Savile’s extremely intimate friendships with successive UK Prime Ministers (including “11 consecutive Christmases at Chequers” with Margaret Thatcher) and several very high profile British royals – Princess Diana actually referred to Savile as “a sort of mentor for Charles” (nice) – and the fact that Savile “spent an afternoon entertaining the wives of the G7 leaders back in 1991 at John Major’s invitation.” (What did he regale them with? Tales of Broadmoor high-jinx with the Yorkshire Ripper?)

Beside Savile’s remarkable ability to insinuate himself at Chequers and Buckingham Palace, we can also chalk up the apparent ease with which the Catholic and enthusiastic Zionist strolled into the corridors of power in Israel, which he visited to record a 1975 Jim’ll Fix It (the following incredible anecdote is corroborated by Savile’s BBC producer Roger Ordish):

“I arrived at this reception and I was wearing a pinkish suit with short sleeves. When President Ephraim Katzir came to me, he asked how I was enjoying my visit to Israel.I said I was very disappointed: the Israelis had won the Six Day War but they had given back all the land, including the only oil well in the region, and were now paying the Egyptians more for oil than if they had bought it from Saudi Arabia. I said: ‘You have forgotten to be Jewish’. He said: ‘Would you like to tell my cabinet that? ‘Next morning, I went to the Knesset and they interrupted a cabinet meeting and I told them the same as I had told him.”

Strange privileges and experiences for a mere TV presenter don’t you think? A TV presenter, furthermore, who appeared to have endeavored to commit at least one sex crime every day of his adult life, while remaining blissfully immune to prosecution or even arrest…

Which brings us – reluctantly – to the shadow of dead children. Savile, notoriously, was photographed at Jersey’s infamous Haut de la Garenne children’s home (and is said to have been “named several times” by abuse survivors there). As many are aware, Haut de la Garenne is very frequently alleged to be the scene of one of history’s biggest cover-ups. To cut a long and exceedingly depressing story short, children’s body-parts and an apparent torture chamber beneath the orphanage were overnight reclassified as harmless bits-and-bobs a few days after embattled investigators – who had been regularly complaining of institutional hostility and interference – were replaced at the behest of Jersey’s authorities. Proceeding this, some of the abuse allegations were halfheartedly pursued, but many investigators and journalists feel that the real and unimaginable depths of the story – depths purportedly dark enough to bring down entire governments – were sealed up.

Well, it is possible that the universe does not favor alleged institutional child abuse after all. “Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes,” as Shakespeare put it, and the manner in which these (alleged) foul deeds have risen back up is fascinating. In short, hardly an article has been penned on Savile these last weeks that has not been adorned with the aforementioned photographic evidence of his visit to Haut de la Garenne: the image is like some stubborn morsel of something the mainstream media was long since instructed to digest. For doesn’t Savile’s very presence at Haut de la Garenne give immense credence to the allegations that there has been a cover-up there, not to mention the wide whispers that extremely prominent members of British and Jersey society regularly “visited” the place?

Then there is the longstanding allegation that Savile procured boys from Jersey orphanages for former British Prime Minister Edward Heath to rape and molest on the latter’s yacht. A month ago that would have looked like an extremely wild conspiracy theory. But now…

Savile was a Knight of the Crown, a Knight of the Vatican, a (probable) necrophiliac, a pedophile, the buddy of serial killers and future kings, a children’s TV presenter, a pop mogul and many more things besides… has there ever been a stranger Englishman? It would appear that when Savile died his considerable protection died with him, and the establishment are happy for him to now suffer public and relentless vilification. But his activities, place and prominence in British society is so strange, so sinister, that it is a like a chink in the armor of the very establishment that’s allowing his corpse to fend for itself, and through this chink some pretty astonishing things can be glimpsed.

I am indebted to the remarkable and remarkably strange Aangirfan blog for 99% of the above links and leads.

 
I’m subscribed to the daily email letter of the wingnut news service WorldNet Daily, and let me recommend it to you, it’s a never-ending source of zany amusement and bughouse lunacy. A bottomless pit of low IQ buffoonery and shocking cultural, scientific and historical illiteracy (and no, funnily enough, I was not even paid for that endorsement…).

WND is mostly known as the Internet’s “birther central” news service, offering up hot steaming… piles of the exploits of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Jerome Corsi, Orly Taitz and other “controversial” right wing authors and “researchers” into Obama’s past who you might not want to get stuck sitting next to a plane, let’s just say.

But WND isn’t just an endless ticker-tape of the reichwing id gone totally off its fucking rocker that a black guy is the President, it’s got other fun stuff, too, like a documentary that attempts to prove that the parting of the Red Sea actually occured, hate harpie Pamela Geller’s new book, and my favorite, the work of biblical conspiracy theorist Jim Staley, who offers unconventional explanations of scripture, revealing entirely new interpretations of the word of God.  

In his DVD release, Sons of God available in the WND Superstore (a free American flag lapel pin with every order) and being pushed by them with their email newsletters, the earnest-looking Staley goes places where even Glenn Beck fears to tread! (For now at least, expect him to bite Staley’s rap soon, the same way Beck ripped off Alex Jones.)

This is a very in-depth teaching out of Genesis 6 that deals with the term “sons of God.” Jim goes to great length using the Scriptures, the writings of Josephus and other extrabiblical books of antiquity to reveal exactly who the “sons of God” are, who the “Nephilim” are and how it all relates to the End of Days. This teaching pulls together Greek mythology, the La Azazel goat of Yom Kippur, fallen angels, roaming evil spirits and aliens. Not only is this teaching on-the-edge-of-your-seat fascinating, it is scripturally based and riddled with the facts of history.

“Riddled with the facts of history” is an odd turn of phrase—riddled by, maybe—but seems entirely appropriate in this case, doesn’t it?
 

 
Here are two consecutive customer reviews of Sons of God from the WND Superstore sales page. 

Name: Rachel
Review Date: 10/16/2011 9:43 am
Rating: 3

The Sons of God
I was a little disappointed with it. I thought there would be more pictures of things that have been found of giants. It was good information but I wanted more.

________________________________

Name: Chuck F
Review Date: 10/3/2011 11:28 am
Rating: 5

Sons of God
Excellent! The word of God is filled with truths that we as christians must study to become more empowered.

Dat’s right!

Here’s an even better one:

Name: Damon
Review Date: 3/31/2012 10:26 pm
Rating: 4

Sons of God Book
This subject matter within this book, is slowly becoming more and more completely integrated into the “modern thinking” persons worldview.

Open minds are the key to undertsanding where we are going, and from where and which, we came.

These revelations, or literally, “revealing” of information (rather than disinformation), will eventually lead to full disclosure.

The slow unveiling of the great mysteries, and connections to ancient civilizations (as well as modern technologies) along with advanced studies of near and far space, are showing us the truth about the great questions of man.

It is refreshing to see that such a brilliant young mind such as Jim Staley’s, is beginning to fully comprehend what is happening in our rapidly changing world.

These topics and explanations are quite difficult for the average person to comprehend. Alas, this book takes much of the difficulty out of that equation.

 

 
I’ve said it before about them and I’ll say it again. Joseph Farrah and the staff at WND might be batshit crazy, but this doesn’t mean they are bad at business! If you’ve been able to lasso up a large audience of cretins, then give the cretins what they want!

It’s the American way!

Below a trailer for Sons of God. You can watch the entire thing at YouTube.
 

 
This just in via a WorldNet Daily email blast: Apparently, there’s a NEW hot-off-the-presses Obama conspiracy and although it doesn’t even rise to the level of patently ridiculous or highly implausible, that’s never really seemed to be much of a problem for the people at WND.  

If you have ever found yourself asking yourself, “Self, just how did Obama become a committed revolutionary Marxist?” then this is the movie for you, Jim-Bob:

With the release this July of Joel Gilbert’s full-length documentary, “Dreams from My Real Father: A Story of Reds and Deception,” the mystery deepens regarding who Obama really is.

“The film provides the first cohesive understanding of Obama’s deep-rooted life journey in socialism, from his childhood to his presidency,” Gilbert told WND.

Gilbert rejects the official story that the Kenyan-born Barack Obama was the president’s father.

Instead, he argues, Frank Marshall Davis, the radical poet and journalist who was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, was the real, biological and ideological father of Barack Obama.

“I decided to investigate Frank Marshall Davis. His close physical resemblance to Obama was shocking, while Obama little resembled the Kenyan Obama,” Gilbert said. “How could this be?”

So that’s where it starts, this supposed “resemblance” (Maybe all black people look alike to the filmmaker?). Gilbert, the director of Paul McCartney Really is Dead, Elvis Found Alive and Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years, then spent “two years of research” looking into Obama’s revolutionary Commie Marxist background and good golly, look what he found!

“I unearthed two film archives of Frank Marshall Davis, one from 1973, the other from 1987, as well as Davis’ photo collection,” he explained. “I then acquired 500 copies of the Honolulu Record, the communist-run newspaper where Davis wrote a weekly political column for eight years.” Gilbert’s research turned shocking when he obtained seven indecent photos of Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, at Frank Marshall Davis’ house, suggesting an intimate connection between Dunham and Davis.

“I was not happy to include these racy photos in the film but found it necessary to substantiate the intimate relationship between the two,” he said. “Those photos ended up in a men’s mail-order catalog of nude women, likely sold to them by Davis. I placed black bars on parts of the photos to be respectful.”

To establish the foundation for the photos, Gilbert documented that Davis was one of the founders of a photography club in Chicago, known as the “Lens Camera Club,” and that he specialized in nude photographs.

Later in life, Davis also penned a scurrilous, autobiographical sex novel, titled “Sex Rebel: Black,” in which he detailed an illicit sexual relationship with an underage woman named “Anne.” Gilbert believes the name was a thin disguise for Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

Gilbert reconstructs Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” and concludes that the tale of the goat-herding father from Kenya is a cover story, concocted to mask an inconvenient pregnancy.

But hey, wait a minute… Does this mean that the nutjobs at WorldNet Daily—the very home of the O.G. birther movement—are now disavowing the work of their own “ace” Obama gumshoe, Dr. Jerome Corsi???

Maybe not, as Corsi actually blurbs it?

“Deepens the mystery about who Barack Obama really is, and reveals Obama’s deep rooted socialism in past and present. A must watch film!”

Uh, Jerome, but would it not totally invalidate your own conspiracy theories, if it’s true??? Yeah, it would!

Has Sheriff Joe Arpaio seen this yet???

The truth, Gilbert argues, is that Barack Obama II was born from the illicit sexual relationship that rebellious teenager Ann Dunham began with Davis after her parents forced her to move to Hawaii.

Gilbert believes that when Dunham first arrived in Hawaii after graduating from high school, she used the sexual relationship with Davis to act out her frustration that her parents would not permit her to fulfill her wish to attend the University of Washington in Seattle with her Mercer Island High School friends.

Dreams of My Real Father takes proven facts and then adds in a few hefty dollops of what director Gilbert apparently describes with a straight face as “reasoned logic and speculation.”

Gilbert states flatly:

“The ‘Birthers’ have been on a fool’s errand. To understand Obama’s plans for America, the question is not ‘Where’s the Birth Certificate?,’ the question is ‘Who is the real father?’”

 
Over at Salon today, Glenn Greenwald has posted a terrific, take no prisoners rebuttal (more a demolition) to an article published in the NY Times about how the citizens of Pakistan harbor dark and paranoiac thoughts about the United States, and of course, Israel (and India). It’s a well-established fact that some absolutely insane conspiracy theories are widely believed by the Arab man in the street. Even elite media types—people who travel a lot for work—fall prey to and propagate such memes—like the long discredited anti-Semitic text Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was made into a TV mini-series in Egypt. Yes, it’s safe to conclude that utterly false, and quite unhelpful conspiracy theories about the USA are common currency in the Arab world… but… but what about the batshit crazy stuff Americans believe about the Middle East, Islam and Arabs?

From Greenwald:

Initially, it’s worth asking how these “conspiracy theories” compare to this: from the front page of The New York Times, September 8, 2002: 

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today. . . . In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. . . . An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks.

*Ahem*

He goes on to give example after example of mind-numbing misstatements of fact, fear of the other—and just plain awful reporting—all courtesy of America’s chattering classes, i.e. the folks who are supposed to be better informed than the public, the media elites.

It’s not hard to conclude that there are extreme misconceptions on both sides of the equation. If you watch, say, Al Jazeera in English (which is all we really have access to) it’s a pretty measured news organization, much more BBC than Fox News, that’s for sure. But look at our media here and the flouting of woefully misinformed—just fucking stupid—people like Sarah Palin as opinion makers. There was an article I came across just today about how the CIA was planning to make a phonied up video of Saddam Hussein screwing a little boy (before abandoning the idea because they realized it wouldn’t have the same taboo shock value over there as it would here!). I mean, this is the shit the CIA admits to! Is there any wonder at why the average Pakistani citizen would feel that the United States is the Great Satan and not trust us?

Paranoia? Or rational fear?

I highly suggest reading Glenn Greenwald’s entire piece, this is just a teaser for it.

Those irrational, misled, conspiratorial Muslims (Salon)
 
In conclusion, here’s a lovely bit of homegrown convoluted thinking… the maker of this video actually seems to believe in his heart that this man is a liberal plant at a Tea party! The Democrats sent him! Blame Obama! (To be clear, the guy is right to fuck with the idiot, but to call him a Democrat plant is quite a leap, I think you’ll agree! Can’t just be a conservative idiot, can he, he’s got to be a liberal plant? Or ACORN! WTF?)
 

 
Because of my former career at The Disinformation Company, Ltd., I am often asked—I was asked this yesterday, in fact—if I have ever investigated a conspiracy theory that I was skeptical of and then become a convert? Nope. Not once. And for the record, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I just played one on TV.

First of all, you have to parse the term. There are criminal conspiracies—events that can be proven in a court of law or that are a matter of historical record; and then there is the Montauk Project/David Icke side of things. Iran-Contra, the CIA shenanigans we’ve all heard about, Watergate, etc., these were real events. When you get into the territory of aliens, the 9-11 nonsense, and the “reptilian beings” like the Queen, the Royal Family and the Bushes, I just pretty much tune it out. Been there, done that. I went down that rabbit hole when I was a teenager and came back out again on the other side.

Conspiracy theorists tend to be people who have been a bit cut off, from, let’s just say, the power centers of the world. If you’ve never been to Washington, DC or Manhattan or been in a Beverly Hills country club, or know how the news gets produced, then the way the world runs must seem very mysterious. Like someone is in control. But that’s not true.

People who are in positions of power—industrial, political, financial, media power—went to high school like the rest of us did. The class president type who went on to become a congressman did so because he could. He got into that position of power because… people voted for him and not for the other guy. And don’t be surprised if rich guy A makes a deal with rich guy B because both of their kids are on the same soccer team. THAT is the way the world turns. There are lots of little conspiracy theories, sure, but there are probably more of them on a local level, than on a national level because on a national level criminal activity is too easily exposed. If a blowjob in the White House can’t be kept secret, do you really expect me to believe that 9-11 was an inside job? (For the record, I have no fixed opinion about the JFK assassination, but it was unlikely the job of Lee Harvey Oswald alone).

Once a conspiracy theory gets published in a book, it then gets quoted by other writers, discussed on George Noory’s show and these things just perpetuate themselves in that way. It’s an intellectual cluster fuck with diminishing returns.

And blah, blah, blah, this is a topic I could rant about for a long, long time. Forgive the rambling preamble, all I really wanted to say was, there is an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times Magazine this week about something that might seem to be in one category of conspiracy theory, i.e. the alien thing, but does, in fact, fall into the other camp of something which can be verified:

Area 51. It’s the most famous military institution in the world that doesn’t officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada’s high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground.

Then again, maybe not—the U.S. government refuses to say. You can’t drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted—all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades.

It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. In 2001, Katie Couric told Today Show audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened—that it was staged in the Nevada desert. Millions of X-Files fans believe the truth may be “out there,” but more likely it’s concealed inside Area 51’s Strangelove-esque hangars—buildings that, though confirmed by Google Earth, the government refuses to acknowledge.

The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk—in fact, five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh “Slip” Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in “What Plane?” in LA’s March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world’s most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton “T.D.” Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base’s half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. Here are a few of their best stories—for the record…

Read more: The Road to Area 51: After Decades of denying the facility’s existence, five former insiders speak out. (Los Angeles Times Magazine)