Remember: All Crazy Gunmen are Left-WIng

Jones & Co. appear to be accepting the media's unfolding Florida nightclub shooting narrative at face value, and you might be wondering why that is. Aren't most, if not all, mass shootings just government-staged events designed to terk our gurns? Doesn't the global elite use a blend of sophisticated mind control and blackmail to trick totally innocent gunmen into being their patsies? Isn't everything false flag?

Well, no.

Because if a gunman is left-wing, he's just a crazy gunman and no false flag occurred. It is a rule of thumb in Jonestown. Alleged nightclub shooter Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat. Therefore, this was a straightforward mass shooting that just happens to be the largest in U.S. history.

Survival Food Scam

A must-read. If you're a Jones listener or Infowars reader, you've heard/seen these ads, and you may have read the Infowars article about FEMA stockpiling meals from this supplier:

"The Inside Story of the Charlatan Who Duped the Nation's Top Conservatives" by Zack Beauchamp (ThinkProgress)

2013: Not Quite the Year of Alex Jones

Matt Drudge hoped that 2013 would be "the year of Alex Jones". If he was hoping for people to become more paranoid and less informed, then he got his wish. If he was hoping that Alex Jones would enlighten the planet in 2013, he's probably a little disappointed right now. Let's break down what Jones accomplished this year:

1. Jones appears on Piers Morgan Tonight. Morgan has featured some well-spoken, highly informed gun advocates on to his show to debate him on gun control. Jones was not one of these people. Somehow, he turned what should have been an impassioned defense of the Second Amendment into a rant against Communists, the British, and "suicide mass murder pills" (psychiatric meds), seeding his rant with so much misinformation that it started to look like he was launching a false flag attack on his own credibility. Just one example: He stated that suicide is the number one cause of death in the United States. False. Heart disease has long been, and remains, the leading cause of death for Americans. Suicide is somewhere around number ten.
Jones was invited on the show because he had launched a petition to have Morgan deported back to the UK. How did that work out? Well, Morgan is still happily ensconced in dual residences: One in England, one in New York. As Jones certainly knows, having an opinion on television (even if it concerns Constitutional rights) is not grounds for deportation.

2. Jones "solves" Sandy Hook and Boston. According to Jones and his staff at Infowars, both of these events were staged by...somebody or other...to usher in gun control and draconian...stuff. Or something. The evidence in the Boston bombing amounts to some photos of random dudes. In the case of the Newtown shooting, Jones has not produced a single alternate suspect.
The Boston and Sandy Hook "truth" movements are thriving, but they aren't producing any solid information, as I've documented on this blog and at Swallowing the Camel.

3. Jones predicts WWIII. Again.

4. Mike Adams makes 20 dark predictions and announces a revolution in food technology. Mike "Health Ranger" Adams hosts the show when Jones is away, and his website Natural News receives copious Infowars coverage. We'll look at his 20 predictions and his epic announcement in another post. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

That's really about it.

Can Alex Jones Spot a Patsy?

These days, it is remarkably difficult to frame someone for a criminal act and get away with it for any appreciable length of time. Sooner or later, an astute journalist or filmmaker or lovelorn correspondent is going to realize that the wrong person is in prison, and they're going to attempt to do something about it. Thanks to the efforts of groups like the Innocence Project, false convictions in the U.S. are being overturned at record pace. In Canada, vigilant media outlets like the fifth estate have turned the falsely convicted into household names, raising awareness of shoddy investigative techniques and bogus expert testimony. In fact, even if a convict is guilty as all hell, a William F. Buckley might step in and persuade the public - and, more importantly, the parole board - that They Got the Wrong Guy. Patsies are certainly not a thing of the past, but it is now harder than ever to sustain a fraudulent case against a suspect.

How ironic, then, that Alex Jones and company have convinced a huge number of us that we live in the Age of the Patsy. Crazy gunmen are actually mind-controlled assassins, racist lunatic bombers are just drugged-up scapegoats, and homicidal hijackers don't even exist.
I've noticed a very interesting thing about Jones and patsies, though. I've mentioned it several times already (notably here), and recent events have reinforced my suspicions in a powerful way.
Here's the deal: If a suspect is thought to be right-wing, like the Boston bomb suspects, Jones will almost immediately denounce the entire case as a false flag operation engineered by one or more government entities (or, in non-U.S. cases like Norway, "globalists" - a handy umbrella term for anyone who does anything Jones doesn't like). But if the suspect appears to have left-leaning tendencies, like ricin-mailing suspect Paul Curtis, Jones and Infowars will float the official story with few questions asked. This was the case with James Lee, who burst into the offices of the Discovery Channel in 2010 and threatened to kill staff members for the corporation's alleged failure to adequately address climate change and environmental pollution. It was also the case with Arizona gunman Jared Loughner, whom Jones denounced as an "abortion-loving atheist" and Infowars declared as fitting into the "classic satanic/vampire cult wannabe mould" (whatever that is). Jones suggested these men could be under the influence of mind control and psychotropic drugs, but didn't refer to them as patsies or try to convince us they were the victims of government blackmail.

On that note, let's take a closer look at how Jones handled the recent ricin mailings and the Boston bombings.

Boston: Barely half an hour after the first reports of bomb blasts, Jones tweets his suspicion that this was a false flag event. Later, Infowars articles tie events in Boston to foiled terrorist plots in which the FBI was involved, and Jones declares the FBI his #1 suspect. Jones predicts that pro-gun advocates like Oath Keepers will be framed for the attack.
Ricin: Responding to reports that letters thought to contain ricin were intercepted en route to President Obama, a Mississippi judge, and Senator Roger Wicker, a Prison Planet article argues that Wicker, as a Republican supporter of Second Amendment rights, was not the victim of right-wing gun nuts (as some media commentators speculated). The article suggests They will attempt to link the ricin letters to Boston.

Boston: In numerous articles, Infowars casts doubt on what the media has to say about the "patsy" suspects. At one point, they even question whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev actually died or not, pointing to grainy unsourced footage of a naked man being detained by police.

Ricin: On the day of Curtis' arrest, Infowars publishes a single article about the ricin mailing, titled "Ricin Arrest: Suspect Appears to Be a Mentally Unstable Democrat". The article does not contradict or question mainstream media reports, and plays up a vaguely anti-gun comment that Curtis once left on HuffPo. There is no longer any suggestion that the ricin mailings could be part of a false flag operation.

Boston: Infowars publishes photos of two "suspects". Though these two men are not doing anything particularly suspicious in the photos, Jones insists they are either military contractors employed by Craft International or Navy SEALs, and that they are much stronger suspects than the Tsarnaev brothers. Jones continues to bang the drum about these two men despite the fact that he is fully aware of the dangers of fingering innocent people.
Ricin: Not a single alternative suspect is presented.

Boston: Jones theorizes the bombings were just an excuse to give the TSA increased powers and enable gun control.

Ricin: After the arrest of Curtis, no alternative theories are presented.

Boston: Jones gradually adds the CIA and other entities to his list of suspects. He continues to refer to the Tsarnaevs as patsies, but admits they might have been involved in some capacity.
Ricin: Still no alternative suspects. Infowars reposts an extremely brief story about Curtis' release without additional comment.

Paul "Kevin" Curtis looked like a pretty good suspect. An Elvis impersonator with a penchant for conspiracy theories, he supposedly used his own initials and a favourite quote in the ricin letters. Even his friends complained about his erratic and obnoxious behaviour. For the past 12 years, he has been zealously trying to expose an alleged organ-harvesting operation, claiming he was wrongfully fired from a custodial job at North Mississippi Medical Center after he found a severed head and other body parts in a morgue refrigerator. The guy is clearly a few croutons short of a salad, and Alex Jones has no love for the mentally ill.
But Curtis was not the guy. He was a patsy. Someone carefully culled information from his many Facebook posts and other online ramblings in order to incriminate him. Because Curtis had previously sent letters about organ harvesting to Sen. Wicker and several other politicians, the lookalike ricin letters quickly made him the prime suspect. There is one suspected culprit in this frame-up job, but to date there have been no other arrests in the case.
How is it that Alex Jones, with his amazing predictive powers and psychic ability, completely missed this? And just why was the Infowars crew so quick to accept mainstream media reports about Curtis, while simultaneously challenging each and every media report about Boston?
I won't answer that. As they say in the conspiracy world, I'm only asking questions.

Charlie Sheen looks good by comparison

 angry, wrong, paranoid and sexist = winning

I'm sure everyone has seen Jones' rant on Piers Morgan Tonight, and there's little I can say about it that hasn't been said already. He made a serious tactical error by bringing his SSRI nonsense into the "debate" - what the hell do antidepressants have to do with the 2nd Amendment, anyway? - but that's neither here nor there. Jones is not known for his ability to stick to a topic, engage in debate, or be coherent.
But it gets so much worse than that. After the broadcast, Jones was triumphant. He believed his appearance was an out-of-the-park success, even though he came across to most viewers as an escaped mental patient. He boasted that he made a CNN producer cry.
Then things got weird. Now, Jones is insisting that his CNN rant was such a threat to the establishment that he could be wiped out at any time by the NYPD or the Mafia. Are you serious? You've just discredited yourself (and embarrassed the pro-gun lobby) on national television, and you think that was not only successful, but so successful that someone will have to assassinate you? I'm sorry, this is just too crazy for words. Jones has lost it. He is the last person you want defending your Constitutional rights in public.

Speaking of SSRIs, Jones has been misrepresenting recent research. As I covered a long time ago, a single group of researchers found that SSRIs might decrease photosensitivity in shrimp, causing them to stray into areas where they can be easily seen and devoured by predators. On yesterday's broadcast, however, Jones declared that the shrimp are making themselves vulnerable because their inhibitions are lowered (do shrimp even have inhibitions?!). Then he stated that women - not men, only women - on SSRIs also have lowered inhibitions, and will "drop their skirts" at the slightest suggestion. In actuality, decreased sex drive is a common side effect of both depression and antidepressant use.

Why do mass murder conspiracy theories flourish, and how can I help stop them?

If you're on Facebook, or have conspiranoid coworkers, or live anywhere other than beneath a rock, you've probably heard at least one of the following conspiracy theories about the Aurora and/or Newtown shootings:

•  James Holmes and Adam Lanza were mind controlled assassins, programmed to kill large numbers of people so that Obama/Communists/Rothschilds/whoever can push through restrictive legislation, damage the reputations of certain citizens, declare martial law, psychologically destabilize Americans, make blood sacrifices to the Devil, and/or distract us from "more important" things that are happening. Infowars promoted these theories, here and here and here and here. More recently, a fellow prison detainee claimed Holmes blames his therapist for programming him to be a killer, but there's no way of knowing at this time if Holmes actually said such a thing or not (IMO, it seems unlikely that Holmes would be left alone with another detainee for four hours, as Steven Unruh says). Nonetheless, the story was picked up by Infowars (here) and by The Huffington Post (here). Note that while the tone of the HuffPo article is justifiably skeptical, the Infowars article decries the mainstream media's neglect of this "shocking" story and uncritically takes Unruh's word for everything.
• James Holmes' father, Robert, was scheduled to testify at a Senate hearing on the Libor interest rate scandal at the time of the Aurora massacre. Clearly, the bankers called in New World Order mind controllers to program his son to become a killer so that his invaluable testimony would never be heard. An Infowars forum user promoted this theory here.
• Adam Lanza's father, Peter, was also scheduled to testify on the Libor banking scandal (the same Infowars forum user promoted this theory, here).

The last two theories are quite similar to one that surfaced after nanny Yoselyn Ortega murdered her two charges, the son and daughter of CNBC executive Kevin Krim. Several conspiracy sites, like this one, immediately adopted the theory that someone had programmed or otherwise manipulated Ortega into a double homicide and a suicide attempt because the CNBC website had published a report on a $43 trillion lawsuit that has been filed against "banksters" and a laundry list of financial entities. The theorists noted that the article was removed almost as soon as it appeared, meaning Krim may have recognized his children's murder as a message to continue keeping a lid on the lawsuit. However, this "report" turned out to be a press release from Spire, the law firm behind the lawsuit. Chances are good that it was posted on CNBC by accident, then removed when someone realized it wasn't a legit news story. In all likelihood, because it so incredibly broad and vague, the lawsuit will be tossed out of court. I doubt the banking establishment is at all concerned about it. Furthermore, when Ortega recovered from her self-inflicted wounds and spoke with investigators a week after the murders, she made it clear that her crime was motivated by her resentment over being allegedly treated like a maid by the Krims. This is starkly at odds with one blogger's confident assertion: "That is, a priori, and without any detailed detective work, I feel there is roughly a 9 in 10 chance that Lucia and Leo have been murdered by rogue elements of the United States government."
On closer examination, the shooting theories are equally groundless. Robert Holmes was employed as an anti-fraud specialist for FICO, the credit-scoring company, but he had no connection to the Libor affair. There was no Senate hearing scheduled, anyway.
Adam Lanza's father has no link to the scandal, either. Max Keiser.com and Occupy Corporatism, among other alt media outlets, have been doing their best to debunk this bit of misinfo. They allege that it originated with Sorcha Faal, the same peculiar conspiracy-monger who was behind one of the least credible conspiracy theories about Michael Jackson's death.
No actual evidence has emerged to indicate that either James Holmes or Adam Lanza were in any way influenced, coerced, or brainwashed into committing their crimes.

So misinformation is the backbone of these theories. Another part of the problem is that the average person has little to no knowledge of criminology. That's probably a good thing - knowing how criminals behave isn't exactly a marketable skill. But when it comes to creating conspiracy theories, it's going to seriously hamper your ability to put together a coherent and plausible narrative. One thing I hear a lot in connection to mass murder is that the killer looked blank, glassy-eyed, or robotic. This is presented as proof that the killer was under some form of mind control. In reality, if you talked to and/or observed people with Intermittent Rage Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder (to give just two examples), you would quickly learn that these people can and do appear poker-faced when carrying out crimes that would turn other people's stomachs. The survivors of their crimes can tell you this. A man with Intermittent Rage Disorder once told me he feels paradoxically calm and focused during his rages.
If you review mass murders of the past, you'll find that the killers' motivations were generally not political in nature (Anders Breivik would be a notable exception). For them, it was personal. They were, for the most part, emotionally or mentally disturbed individuals who killed in retaliation for real or perceived slights. Some did it for pure enjoyment (I believe Eric Harris falls into this category; Dylan Klebold went along for the ride, and seemingly remained in denial right up to the time of his death).

So how can you help prevent the spread of shoddy, factually-challenged conspiracy theories? Before turning an online conspiracy theory into copypasta, do yourself the following favours:

1.  Take 5 minutes out of your day to hit the search engines of your choice and make sure the information is accurate (odds are, it isn't, and you've just saved yourself some time and energy). Remember that anyone can be wrong, so information isn't necessarily reliable just because it has been repeated by a certain source.
2. Apply common sense to the situation. For instance, if Adam Lanza is a Manchurian Candidate, who programmed him? He was homeschooled, so it couldn't be those godless public school Commie teachers. He didn't have a job, so it couldn't be his boss. His mom wasn't exactly up to New World Order mind controller standards. Besides, would some shadowy government entity spend months or years grooming an unstable and unreliable young man to become an assassin, when mercenaries and unscrupulous criminals and CIA agents can be hired on the cheap to accomplish the same task more efficiently?
3. Apply Occam's Razor for good measure. Is it more likely that a sadistic or deranged person decided to commit a crime, or is it more likely that a government-funded Svengali flawlessly conditioned him to commit a crime? If a liquor store is robbed, do you automatically assume that a mind-controlled patsy did it, or do you assume that some cash-hungry creep did it?

The Blame Game: Screw It

18 children under the age of 11 have been killed by a 20-year-old gunman, and I am in no mood for this Manchurian Candidate nonsense today. I've had quite enough of the Infowars Blame Game of offloading blame for atrocities onto anyone but the perpetrators. Every time someone murders schoolchildren or innocent bystanders because he's suffering from a severe mental illness, is a sociopath, or wants to get even with the powers that be, Jones and Company take a cursory look at the initial reports, draw a sweeping conclusion from the limited facts available, and stick to it no matter what subsequently emerges. Did a racist kill a museum worker because he couldn't stand his tax dollars going toward Holocaust education? Well, no, he was actually blackmailed by some shadowy government entity - even though there is zero evidence for that. Did a Norwegian douchebag open fire on a kids' camp because he didn't like the political affiliation of the organizers? Nope, he's just a patsy in a New World Order scheme to suppress Norway's version of libertarians - even though he went into great detail about his motives in court.
Have you ever been right about this stuff, Infowars? If you're such master profilers, maybe you should tackle some cold cases. The Lindbergh baby? Mind-controlled patsies took him. The Black Dahlia? Probably a "Valkyrie-style takeover drill".

As for the Second Ammendment concerns that Infowars places above everything else in the latest school shooting (even the lives lost), and their complaints about celebrities calling for gun control, a Facebook friend expressed it best:

When someone reacts to this shooting by talking about how to prevent future events like it, they're "politicizing tragedy." What would you call it when someone reacts by screaming about how disgusted they are that the government may take steps to limit their capacity to shoot people? (Even though it probably won't.)

Is anyone really impressed by Infowars' lazy, gun-jumping b.s.? Does a hastily-typed report by Paul Joseph Watson actually convince you that the latest crazy asshole must be a New World Order zombie, even though everything in it has been culled from mainstream media reports that are supposedly far less reliable than Infowars? Well, then, you just might be living in a sick, dismal fantasy world. And maybe you should stay there. I really don't care today.
Rather than struggling to distort this tragedy to fit my political ends, I'm going to see it for what it is (a terrible crime against children) and mourn for the many families who have been devastated by it.

2 Crazy Notions 'til Christmas: The Christmas tree bailout of '11

On November 10, Infowars announced a "15-cent stealth tax on all fresh Christmas trees", which would apply to Christmas tree sellers who move more than 500 trees per year. And as with all federal stealth taxes, the consumer will end up paying "double or triple the levy". That's 45 extra cents for your tree, people! 45 cents! It's like the New World Order is breaking into your home at Christmastime and raping your pockets!

Oh wait, never mind. The very first link in the article itself reveals that the Obama administration squashed the crippling tree tax.

But that doesn't mean there wasn't a pizza bailout of '11! Dairy lobbyists got the ball rolling on that one, but author Patrick Henningsen expects "pizza lobbyists" to be demanding bailouts on a regular basis from now on.

I don't know if there are any pizza lobbyists, but I do know that one young American couple of my acquaintance owns a Domino's franchise. They're just the kind of hard-working, middle-class, salt-of-the-earth people that Alex Jones continuously praises. Perhaps because of that pizza bailout, they get to stay in business and continue raising their family.

6 Crazy Notions 'til Christmas: Ron Paul's racism has been debunked

Ron Paul supporters often tell me it simply doesn't matter that for two decades, Ron Paul's newsletters cranked out bizarre and alarmist stories about race wars, blacks taking over white neighbourhoods with their drugs and their random violence, the "gay agenda", and the political liability that blacks have become.*
"He's not really racist," they tell me. "He didn't even know those articles were being written." They say that anyone who still makes an issue of it should be ashamed, because there is no issue and there never really was. Paul apologized and took some of the blame, so now we should just erase it from our minds.

Paul Joseph Watson makes all these arguments, and some others, in today's Infowars piece "Gingrich-Linked Propagandist Recycles Debunked 'Racist' Ron Paul Smear".

To this day, we don't know who wrote the racist articles published in Ron Paul's newsletters, because no one has taken credit/blame for them, and Ron Paul apparently doesn't know who it was (Lew Rockwell is the prime suspect, though).
That in itself is a problem, because a man who wants to run an entire country should have the organizational skills to know what's being published under his name. If I had a newsletter going out to people all over the country, I wouldn't let one stamp touch them until I at had least skimmed the latest issue. I realize Dr. Paul was a busy dude in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, but there's really no excuse for allowing your staff to publish bizarre racist screeds under your name with your consent. Even to this day, Paul claims he doesn't know who was writing what. Doesn't that seem negligent at best, and dishonest at worst? I don't blame Ron Paul for the screwy stuff that gets posted to the Daily Paul forums, because cleaning those up would be like clearing the Aegean stables. I don't fault him for the fact that the American Free Press, a rag established by white supremacists, prints his column; AFP pays him for syndication, and like most columnists who are in syndication, he doesn't pick and choose the publications in which his work appears. But I do blame him for failing to monitor his newsletter more closely. All of this has to make you wonder how many other bucks Paul has passed.

Look at this way: If I welcomed a group of other bloggers to contribute to Leaving Alex Jonestown, and they began posting stuff like "Alex Jones Can Suck My Big Hairy Balls Becuz He Is a Faggot" (that's an actual YouTube comment, BTW), wouldn't you be offended and annoyed with me? I think you'd have every right to be. Clearly, I was shirking my responsibilities and allowing the lunatics to run the asylum.

I'm approaching this from the best-case scenario angle, the one that says Ron Paul simply had some racist associates and let them have too much control over his publications. The worst-case scenario is, well, worse. In that one, Ron Paul did write some or all of the content for some reason (to appeal to a certain demographic, or to convince constituents that he would keep them safe from the invading non-white hordes, or whatever), then lied about it. I would prefer not to think that of Paul. He doesn't seem like a racist. A touch homophobic, certainly, but not the kind of guy who's going to make fun of Kwanzaa or use the phrase "nappy-haired hos" in casual conversation.
Let's face it, though: If we don't know who wrote the stuff, that means we don't know who wrote the stuff. Nothing has been debunked in the newsletter affair.


* There's really no dispute that some of the newsletter content was racist and disparaging of minorities. An unidentified author referred to Martin Luther King Jr. day as "Hate Whitey Day". Another wrote, "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." That's fine for a southern newsletter put out by a "League for Racial Purity", but it's not acceptable for a U.S. president.
Check out loads more of the newsletter content at Et tu, Mr. Destructo?.

18 Crazy Notions 'til Christmas: ZOMG FEMA CAMPS NOW

Jones has been fretting about U.S. Patriots being dumped into concentration camps since... well, always. And today Infowars has issued a special alert about imminent mass detention of the New World Order's greatest enemy: Paranoid white people. Forget about all the Arabs in Gitmo or the Mexican illegals in privatized prisons. Let's just worry that a guy with deer antlers strapped to his truck might get pulled over and indefinitely detained because of his Ron Paul bumper sticker. That's reasonable.

This latest red alert is based on a KBR document supposedly leaked to Infowars by a government employee who wishes to remain anonymous. At first glance, it appears to be a call for contract proposals related to KBR's formation of a "National Quick Response Team". The projects will involve designing, constructing, maintaining and servicing camps that can hold 300-1000 people, ostensibly in emergency situations.

There are some problems with Kurt Nimmo's and Jones's interpretation of the document. It was sent from Kentucky procurement counselor Bobbi Carlton to Bob Siefert, manager of KBR's Houston office, on the morning of November 16. Yet Nimmo and Jones state, "KBR’s call for FEMA camp service bids arrives soon after the Senate overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which permits the military to detain and interrogate supposed domestic terror suspects in violation of the Fourth Amendment and Posse Comitatus."
The 2012 NDAA passed the Senate on November 29. This subcontracting document, if genuine, did not "arrive soon after" the NDAA. And as of this date, the act is still sitting in the House.

This is just one minor example of Jones's FEMA camp panic, which is a component of his Persecution of Patriots panic. He tells us that he, as a U.S. Patriot, may be shut down at any minute (actually, he expanded operations this year with the introduction of his subscription Infowars Nightly News service). Before Obama was even in office, Jones was telling Ron Paul and his audience that this is the president who will probably have him killed; a Muslim extremist itching to usher in the persecution of white people. (Nov. 5/08 broadcast)
Infowars "reporter" Aaron Dykes tells us that the Department of Homeland Security, "empowered to fight terrorism, has instead been turned against the American people, targeting returning veterans, Tea Partiers, Constitutionalists, Federal Reserve activists, and more". Yet there is not a single Tea Partier, U.S. vet, Constitutionalist, or anti-Fed activist in Gitmo. Not one has been the victim of extraordinary rendition, handed over to a foreign country to be tortured, nor been detained indefinitely without charge.

Fritz Springmeier, "political prisoner"?

On Halloween, Alex Jones conducted a Skype interview with Fritz Springmeier, who was released from prison in March. You can watch the full interview on Infowars, but here's the first part:



I have written about Fritz Springmeier many times in passing. He has appeared at least once on this blog ("Al Gore and the Suitcase of Blood"), several times on Swallowing the Camel, and quite a few times on blogs dealing with "Satanic panic".

It would be exhausting and rather pointless to detail his entire career here, but if you're unfamiliar with Springmeier, here are some details you may want to know:

• Born in 1955, he used the name Victor Earl Schoof until legally changing it to Fritz Springmeier in 1987.
  
• He says he attended West Point, but did not.
  
• He professes to be a very religious man, and once ran a sort of Christian lay ministry (he is not an ordained minister, and does not have any theological training).
• In 1997 he allegedly circulated a strange "affidavit", accusing several other Christian ministers, including Alex Jones's mentor Texe Marrs, or trying to sabotage this ministry. "Several people have told me my ex-wife is controlled by demons and given her life to Satan," he wrote of his second wife, Gail.
  
• To his mind, every religious tradition outside of the Judeo-Christian is basically Satanism. This includes ancient Egyptian beliefs, Theosophy, and any form of occultism. Oh, and Jehovah's Witnesses. And the Catholic Church. In a 1996 Prophecy Club lecture, Springmeier said every human on Earth is tracked from birth to death by Jesuit priests.
  
• His conspiracy writing and lectures have been a huge influence on David Icke. Much of Springmeier's misinfo has made it into Icke's books. For example, the Belgian castle called Chateau Amerois is referred to by both Springmeier and Icke as the "Mothers of Darkness" castle, in which the elite hold ghastly Satanic rituals and slaughter children.
• In the early '90s, he became deeply interested in the subject of government mind control programs, and trained himself to be a deprogrammer of women who allegedly survived "Project Monarch", a supposed offshoot of MK-ULTRA*. He ended up leaving his second wife and young son for one of these women, Cisco Wheeler. Together they authored books and gave lectures on Illuminati mind control techniques. Their best-known work is the massive book The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Mind Controlled Slave.
• Cisco Wheeler, like all alleged Monarch victims, was deliberately programmed to have multiple personalities (Dissociative Identity Disorder). One of her alter personalities was a cat.
  
• Springmeier's take on history is, um, creative. In the Prophecy Club lecture cited above, he declared that Hitler was descended from the Rothschilds. You'll see more of his unique interpretations of history later in this post.
  
• He really, and I mean really, hates The Wizard of Oz. He's convinced it's a Satanic parable used in the mind control programming and ritual torture of young children. He thinks the same of every film, book, and TV show that appears to reference Oz in any way (for instance, the movie K-Pax).
  
• In his book Bloodlines of the Illuminati, Springmeier attempted to identify the 13 families that have controlled the world for centuries. His M.O. was to tick off lists of prominent people with the same last name, without bothering to ascertain if they were actually related to one another, then link them to the Illuminati by the most tenuous connections. For example, reporter Robert Collins was implicated simply because he had the surname Collins and because the Illuminati "control the press" (Springmeier provided no evidence that the Illuminati does, in fact, control the press). Likewise, he tied serial killer Ted Bundy to the Bundy/McBundy families, and explained that his sadistic sociopathic condition is quite typical of Illuminati members, even though Bundy's name came from a working class stepfather.
• In the '80s, he vociferously defended "former Illuminati member" John Todd long after Todd's stories were shown to be fraudulent. The late Mr. Todd was a "Christian" con artist posing as a former Satanist. He was also a convicted rapist. Though he had a long history of complaints against him for propositioning teenage girls, and faced related criminal charges several times, Springmeier insisted that Todd's rape conviction was a frame-up by (who else?) the Illuminati. At one point, he even claimed that Todd had been abducted from prison and murdered by Illuminati agents in 1994. This was not true. Todd was released from prison in 2004, was remanded into custody as a dangerous sex offender, and died a natural death three years later. Now, Springmeier uses the same cry of frame-up in reference to his own criminal activities.
• In their book Deeper Insights Into the Illuminati Formula, Springmeier and Wheeler state that the Illuminati has been creating "synthetic humans" (made partly from cows) since the 1970s.
  
• In 2001, he and his third wife, Patricia, were arrested for having a marijuana grow op in conjunction with a white supremacist, Forrest E. Bateman, Sr. Bateman was convicted in 1989 of racially intimidating a high school student in Forest Grove, Oregon, and three years later he appeared on the state police's Ten Most Wanted list for firearm offenses and assault connected to skinhead activities. And now we get to the heart of the matter...
  
  
  
  

Kooky as he was, and annoying as his continuous stream of nonsense could be, I had no reason to suspect that Springmeier was in any way a violent man. So I was shocked in 2002, when Springmeier was indicted on charges of planting a bomb in an adult video store and robbing a bank in Damascus, Oregon, years earlier.

Here's what happened: On the afternoon of October 8, 1997, a propane bomb exploded in the Fantasy Adult Video Store in Damascus. No one was injured.

Roughly ten minutes later and six miles away, a man in camo fatigues, later identified as Forrest Bateman, Sr., walked into the Damascus branch of Key Bank of Oregon and demanded cash from a teller, firing his assault rifle at the ceiling to intimidate bank employees and patrons into complying with his demands. He exited the bank with a mere $6000.

The bombing and robbery went unsolved until 2001, when police discovered the pot operation Springmeier, his wife, and some friends were running.
Springmeier and Bateman were arrested after deputies of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office seized fifty marijuana plants, bomb-making materials and illegal weapons**, and Army of God literature from Bateman’s home in Sandy, Oregon, in February. Anthony Huntington (Bateman's housemate), Patricia Springmeier, and a woman named Jennifer Williams were also arrested. Bateman already had outstanding warrants against him for of assault and illegal possession of an assault rifle.
The FBI was brought into the case because of the weapons and Army of God literature, which indicated possible terrorist activities.

Anthony Huntington turned out to be the weakest link in the robbery chain. Faced with serious prison time for weapons and drug charges, he confessed his own role in planning the 1997 bombing and bank robbery, and gave up the names of his co-conspirators, including Springmeier and Bateman (most reports hint there was at least one other man involved, but no other co-conspirators are named). The drug and weapons charges were dropped and replaced with charges related to the bombing and robbery.

Batemen pled guilty and was sentenced to 9 years in prison. Springmeier pled not guilty, was convicted, and received the same sentence as Bateman. Huntington, for his testimony against Bateman and Springmeier, received a reduced sentence for his role in the bombing and robbery. He was released in 2005.
It should be noted that the longest prison term was served not by Springmeier, but by Bateman. Bateman was released from prison in September, a full seven months after Springmeier.

In my opinion, these three guys got off easy: Five and nine years are ridiculously short sentences for two violent crimes that could easily have resulted in fatalities.

Now here's where the "political prisoner" part comes into play. Springmeier claims total innocence in this affair. His story is that he knew Huntington only from Bible study. He knew nothing about the bombing, he knew nothing about the robbery, and the whole thing was a frame-up. He has even said he has an alibi: He was working at a print shop in Eagle Creek, a town ten miles from Damascus, exactly when the robbery occurred. But his boss refused to confirm this, he says, because Springmeier had once offended him by criticizing Billy Graham.

According to Fritz, he was framed for a variety of reasons: He helped people leave the Illuminati, he published his mind control research, he exposed an "entire community" of Illuminati members in Bend, Oregon (forcing them to sell their homes and move elsewhere).
He insists there was no evidence against him (both he and Jones betray a total lack of understanding of just what circumstantial evidence is, and how powerful it can be when used properly). He claims the three witnesses who testified against him at trial were bribed, though he presents no evidence of this. Not even circumstantial evidence.

Hard information about the case is scanty. Most of the original news articles have been taken down, and Internet searches just bring up the same small amount of info provided by Springmeier's supporters (you'll find dozens of re-posts of Henry Makow's essay "How Fritz Springmeier Was Framed", which will not tell you how Fritz Springmeier was framed; it's simply more of Makow's usual "the Illuminati did everything and that's the end of it" b.s.).

It is not known to me precisely why Springmeier was growing pot, nor why he decided to take part in a bank robbery. The authorities seem to think he and his buddies were "fundraising" for even more sinister activities, such as bombing abortion clinics or federal buildings. It's entirely possible, however, that Springmeier just wanted some cash.

In spite of his association with the racist Bateman, I have found no evidence that Springmeier is directly involved with organized racist or racial separatist groups. His wife maintains that he is not a racist.
He does have some peculiar ideas about Nazis and Jews, though. In Deeper Insights Into the Illuminati Formula, he and Wheeler contend that the Nazi concentration camps were established not because the Nazis wanted to confine and exterminate citizens they deemed non-Aryan, but simply to perform mind control experiments on children. The racial supremacy thing was just a "cover". And he espouses conspiracy theories that Jewish people essentially control the world. In Bloodlines of the Illuminati, he and Wheeler wrote, "Since the core of the conspiracy of power is Jewish, the attitude of those allied with it hinges on their attitude toward the Jewish people." They also stated that Oliver Cromwell was "financed by Jews, and helped the Jews gain power in England."
It has been widely reported that Springmeier penned literature for the Christian Patriot Organization, an allegedly white supremacist group that operated an illegal warehouse bank in Oregon. I have found no evidence of this.

Is it possible that Springmeier was framed? Sure. Not likely, but certainly possible. Given the dearth of reliable, readily available info on the case, it's difficult to discern exactly what happened here. To reach an opinion on the case, you have to rely heavily on hearsay and on Fritz's word.

I choose not to believe Springmeier because he is not credible. He already had a criminal record (for parental abduction), and was engaged in drug-related activity, before the bank robbery charges were filed. He hung around with a skinhead bank robber, which is creepy any way you look at it. He believes - or wants us to believe - that fake Illuminati cowpeople walk among us, and that Auschwitz was more a science lab than a death camp. There's just no reason to take his his word for anything. Springmeier is one odd, shady dude.

Alex Jones has a history of supporting incarcerated people who were definitely not persecuted, yet insist they were. Remember Ed and Elaine Brown, the elderly New Hampshire couple who decided that paying income tax is for fools, and were duly convicted (after an armed stand-off) of not paying their taxes? They cried foul from prison, and Alex Jones put them on the air to share their story with the world. What he did not share with the world were the couple's various allegations that Freemasons, Zionists, Illuminati members, and Jesuits had framed them. That would have seemed silly to most of his listeners, because it's fairly obvious that Freemasons and priests don't give a flying crap about a couple of goofy senior citizens in rural New England who don't feel like paying their taxes.

The same goes for Springmeier, of course. The Powers That Be aren't particularly interested in persecuting small-town Oregonians who publish underground books full of weird mind control instructions, quirky religious beliefs, and warnings about synthetic cowpeople. If they did, Alex Jones wouldn't have many guests left.

I know I'll be getting a shitstorm of emails about this, along the lines of "You don't know if Fritz is innocent or not!". Yeah, well, Jones doesn't know either. In the opening of the video, he makes it clear that he based his opinion of Springmeier's sincerity on vibes: "I didn't get any bad vibes from him, and I know that that's always the real signal." Somehow, I don't think that would stand up in court.
Also, Jones has been selling Bloodlines of the Illuminati, and it would certainly not be to his benefit to admit that he's been hawking the wares of a convicted bomber and bank robber, would it?


* H.P. Albarelli, Jr., spent nearly two decades researching the CIA and its mind control programs. He uncovered startling new evidence, but he found no evidence of Monarch, nor any comparable program. However, he did locate a man who admitted "the Monarch Project" was something he invented.
** According to one report: a machine gun, a grenade launcher, an assault rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, 3000 rounds of ammunition, ammonium nitrate, homemade C4 explosives, six homemade grenades, dynamite blasting caps, primers, fuses, black powder, and 200 timing devices, as well as a bizarre "suit of armor" made out of ceramic bearing an Army of God patch

Infowars Nightly News presents a not-so-special report on a decade of 9/11 Truthiness

This "special report" by Aaron Dykes, one of the first broadcast on Infowars Nightly News, was a whole week in the making. How very sad, then, that most of it can be demolished in five minutes or less.
Every single piece of "evidence" presented is old stuff that has either been discredited, or never really served as evidence of an Inside Job in the first place. A few of the statements are flat-out wrong.
How this in any way qualifies as a "special report" or "news", I don't know. If Jones wants to be the new Rupert Murdoch, and if Aaron Dykes fancies himself the next Wolf Blitzer, they need to step it the hell up.

Jones: "I did say they were gonna blow up the World Trade Center and blame it on bin Laden two months before 9/11..."

If you listen to the prediction Jones made on July 25, 2001, you'll hear for yourself that he wasn't anywhere near this specific. He did mention bin Laden, but did not provide a timeframe, a target, or a means of attack. When he mentioned explosives, he was referring to the '93 World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings. When he mentioned the World Trade Center, he was again referring to the '93 bombing.
What he does not mention is that the late conspiranoid broadcaster William Cooper gave an identical warning (also mentioning bin Laden but not a specific target) a full month earlier. We don't know if Jones was aware of Cooper's prediction at the time he made his, but he sure as hell knows about it now. It's been all over the Internet for more than a decade.

Dykes (with all the enthusiasm of a dead squid): "Homeland Security, empowered to fight terrorism, has instead been turned against the American people, targeting returning veterans, Tea Partiers, Constitutionalists, Federal Reserve activists, and more."

Really? How many Tea Partiers, U.S. vets, Constitutionalists, and anti-Fed activists are in Gitmo? How many have been prosecuted or court martialed for terrorist activities? How many have been the victims of extraordinary rendition, handed over to foreign countries to be tortured? How many have been detained indefinitely without charge?

And speaking of returning vets, take a look at what Alex Jones has to say about them...



Dykes: "Six of the ten [9/11] Commission members stated their disappointment with the conditions and their doubt about the conclusions: Co-chair Lee Hamilton who admitted they were set up to fail, Bob Kerrey who said there was ample reason to suspect there was an alternative to what was outlined in the version, Timothy Roehmer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting", John Leimer who said, "We purposely put together a staff that had had, in a way, conflicts of interest", and 9/11 Commission member Max Cleland resigned after concluding it was..."a national scandal", and that the investigation was compromised, and senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission John Farmer wrote an entire book, saying he was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described..."

The Commission had to deal with lying, dissembling, and obfuscating on the part of government employees (from the FAA, NORAD, FBI, etc.) who were desperate to shift culpability from themselves onto... well, anyone else. At some point, every commission member was frustrated by this. But the report issued by the 9/11 Commission was unanimously approved by all members, and there was no minority report.

Lee Hamilton co-wrote an entire book defending the work and conclusions of the commission. His complaint that the commission was "set up to fail" was directed at the officials who did not cooperate fully with the commission's investigation, not at the commission itself. The same complaint was expressed by John Farmer, who was justifiably outraged by the lies initially told to the commission by NORAD officials (as you probably know, NORAD/NEADS tried to make itself look more competent than it actually was by claiming, falsely, that it came close to intercepting at least one of the hijacked airliners; later, under oath, the officials had to admit they lied).

To date, not one member of the 9/11 Commission has criticized its findings. And not even Max Cleland, who resigned from the commission because of White House stonewalling, has ever suggested that 9/11 was anything other than a terrorist attack instigated by anti-American extremists.

Dykes: "NIST was unconfident in its own conclusion. After years of delay in its own report... finding only a low probability that the building [Building 7] fell due to fires."

I'm going to be blunt and crude here: Only a fucking idiot would make this mistake. The "low probability" statement was made by FEMA, not NIST. NIST was unequivocal in its "Summary of Findings". This was reported on Infowars itself just three years ago.
FEMA spent less than 6 months studying the collapses of the three World Trade Center buildings. NIST spent over 7 years completing its investigation.

Dykes: "Testimony from police, firefighters, and rescue workers who witnessed bombs that day were ignored by the 9/11 Commission."

No one "witnessed bombs" on 9/11. Most people heard incredibly loud, percussive noises (what they described as explosions) as the buildings fell, which of course is to be expected when any large building collapses.
It's true that not every first responder present that day was allowed to testify for the Commission, but I don't understand how hearing numerous people say "I heard loud noises" could possibly have aided the commission members' work or resulted in different conclusions than the ones they ultimately reached.
Contrary to what we've been told in this special report, NIST did explore the possibilities that demolitions or unconventional weaponry were involved in the collapses, as stated in their "Summary of Findings". They found no evidence to support either notion.

Dykes: "Video evidence showed molten steel, but NIST denied this."

The narrator is referring to the same 9/11 footage that you'll see in the video below. The molten metal looks like steel, but it wasn't. When pouring out of something, molten aluminum can lose its distinctive silvery sheen and appear just as fiery-orange as melted steel. The maximum temperatures of the fires in the World Trade Center towers could significantly weaken steel, but not melt it. You can argue this until the world ends. You can do all the rinky-dink backyard experiments you care to do. The facts won't change.




Dykes: "Whereas early polls in 2002 showed very few skeptics, as the years moved along, there have been more and more who doubt the official story. In 2006, more than 80% of people were found questioning the official 9/11 account, and more than a third believed it was an inside job or that the U.S. government had a role in the actual attacks."

What does this prove? That people believe in conspiracy theories. I didn't need a poll or a "special report" to tell me that.

Dykes: "FBI translator Sibel Edmonds broke her gag order to blow the whistle on wiretaps she translated leading up to and including the day of September 11, proving that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were working for the U.S government up until the day of 9/11."

We aren't told where or when Edmonds revealed this information, but it was on a 2009 broadcast of The Mike Malloy Show. Edmonds said, "I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11." But in the same interview, she unequivocally stated she does not possess any evidence that 9/11 was an Inside Job. Her knowledge extends only to operations in Central Asia. You can read a transcript of the interview here.
Two years later, she still hasn't elaborated on the precise nature of that "very intimate relationship."

Dykes: "As the group [Al Qaeda] was re-branded as an enemy, its iconic leader, Osama bin Laden, a billionaire whose family has heavy business ties with the West, and whose codename was Tim Osman..."

Hold it right there. You are kidding. No one in their right mind would accept the idiotic "Osman" story concocted by the late conspiranoid Ted Gunderson and his favourite source of misinformation, jailed drug dealer Michael Riconosciuto.
If you carefully review and examine all the many bizarro claims made by Gunderson and/or Riconosciuto over the years, and you still find either man credible, you may need to see a professional ASAP. Riconiscutio, in particular, is a troubling character. In the '80s he was a close associate of serial killer Philip Arthur Thompson, who employed thugs to abduct young women for him to torture.
I know Alex Jones buys the Osman story, though.

Dykes: "Chuck Norris is only the most recent of many prominent citizens who've become concerned about videos depicting white Americans, not Muslim radicals, as likely terrorists."

This is a reference to the cheesy, less-than-helpful PSA videos the Department of Homeland Security produced as part of its "See Something, Say Something" campaign. I'm guessing the DHS chose to use Caucasian actors in these videos to avoid cries of racial profiling. But hey, if Chuck Norris is worried about it...

Dykes: "The truth about 9/11 has a dangerous parallel to the JFK assassination."

Yes, Mr. Dykes, indeed it does. As amply detailed in Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, conspiranoids have been crafting bullshit theories out of nothing for half a century. And they will continue to do so forever. The question is: Will you believe them?

Watson, you are so busted. Again.

When the Oslo bombing happened and no one knew what was going on, Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars knew exactly what was going on. As he confidently reported that very day, "Oslo police were conducting a bombing exercise at a location near the Oslo Opera House just 48 hours before a terrorist blast hit a government building in the Norwegian capital." In Alex Jonestown, of course, "exercises" are really practice drills for false flag terror attacks. Why Oslo police would wait until the eleventh hour to rehearse for something that must have been in the works for months, Watson didn't attempt to explain. The fact that the "exercise" happened so soon before the bombing was proof enough that something false-flaggy was going down.

However, "Jussumguy" has alerted me to a Norwegian news report about the opera house exercise conducted by Oslo police, and it didn't take place exactly two days before the bombing. It was more like two days, four months, and a year. The story is dated March 17, 2010.

Now, to be fair, this could have been an accident. Watson posted a link to a translation of the Norwegian article, and the translation does not bear the original publication date. But if you were about to broadcast an already tenuous theory to the world, wouldn't you, I dunno, look at the original article?

"Pentagon Preparing for Martial Law!"

Jones took time of out of his busy schedule - shrieking at John Boehner's answering machine and whatnot - to be interviewed by Pravda TV Russia Today. None of what he says about the economy points toward martial law (or "marshall law", for that matter), but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.

The DHS "Police State" : Telescreens

As a followup to yesterday's post on the Department of Homeland Security's "See Something, Say Something" anti-terrorism campaign, let's look at the other feature of the program that is riling Jones: "Telescreens".

Earlier this month, the "Orwellian" telescreens were placed in select Wal-Mart stores around the country.
Now by using the term "telescreen", you would assume that these devices enabled some form of two-way communication by which shoppers could report suspicious activity (not just activity in the store itself, but in any public place).
That's not quite the case. In fact, it's not at all the case. The screens are just that: Screens. A brief, looped message from Janet Napolitano plays on them. The screens are basically talking posters.

This Infowars article by Paul Joseph Watson implies that telescreens will be installed in 9000 other public places, including federal buildings and sports stadiums, but another article makes clear that only "signage" will be placed in 9000 federal buildings. There is no indication that screens will be placed in these areas.

Paul Joseph Watson likens See Something, Say Something to the Bush-era TIPS program in this article. But TIPS, which was canceled when the DHS was formed, encouraged repairmen, utility workers, and other home-service employees to keep an eye out for suspicious activity in people's homes. TIPS bears little resemblance to the new campaign, which deals solely with public places.

I'm sorry, but I have a difficult time viewing a handful of Wal-Mart TV screens, three bland PSA videos, and some posters as a "Sovietized police state" aimed at nabbing political dissidents. If you truly believe that these things are just like the tactics of the East German Stasi, then I strongly suggest you review some literature about the Stasi and remind yourself that if you're a lifelong American, you have never lived under that kind of oppression. To say that you have would be an insult to people who actually survived life in fascist police states.

And I have an equally hard time believing that Jones is really concerned about the DHS program fostering paranoia, distrust, and suspicion in Americans - because that's his stock in trade. He has told us to be suspicious of environmentalists, white Rastafarians, pretty much every law enforcement officer you'll ever encounter, cartoon scriptwriters, doctors, free mammogram clinics, comic books, and schizophrenics. If that's not paranoia, distrust, and suspicion, what is?

The Scariest Videos You Will Ever See

Or not.

Jones is freaking over a trio of PSAs put out by the Department of Homeland Security as part of its anti-terrorism "See Something, Say Something" campaign. An Infowars article by Paul Joseph Watson claims that in the videos, "ordinary everyday activities are characterized as signs of potential terrorism".

I don't really have a problem with the DHS releasing videos like this. For one thing, they're chock-full of duuuuh information that the average, moderately functional person will not really need. They cover very basic security measures for hotels, malls, and stadiums.
For another thing, the DHS has an annual budget of over $55 billion and should damn well be doing something with all that lucre, even if it's just pumping out cheesy PSA vids for morons. They're spending a paltry $13 million on this effort, according to a Huffington Post article.

Give them a view (here) and decide for yourself. Personally, I would not call any of the following activities "ordinary" nor "everyday":
- Paying in advance for several weeks' stay at a hotel. In cash.
- Parking your car smack in front of the hotel entrance, then walking rapidly away from the hotel while bellhops and valets shout at you.
- Presenting false ID.
- Strolling into a hotel kitchen to take pictures with your cell phone, or covertly filming mall walkways for no apparent reason.
- Leaving bomb parts strewn around your hotel room for the maid to find.
- Calling the mall to find out how many security guards are working.
- Purposely leaving your stuff in an open spot and never coming back for it.
- Hanging out in employee-only areas even though you don't know any employees.

While I definitely don't want to foster paranoia in anyone, I don't think there's anything wrong with vigilance, either. Being aware of your surroundings and following your gut are called "survival instincts" for a reason, and that's basically all the DHS videos are asking you to do. It's not "Stasi-like" to report something funky.
Though the media has all but ignored it, a backpack bomb was found and defused along the MLK Day parade route in Spokane, Washington, last week - thanks to citizens' vigilance. They saw the pack in an open place, wondered how it could be "lost" in such an obvious spot, and reported it. There was plenty of time for the parade to be rerouted and the bomb removed.

Tomorrow I'll discuss the other scary part of the "See Something, Say Something" campaign: Thousands of "telescreens" in public places.

The Illusion of Green Fascism

In their latest campaign to prove that anyone who cares about the environment is a dangerous, misanthropic radical, Jones & Co. are scraping the barrel in search of extremists. Paul Joseph Watson came up with Charles Manson, and now he's trumpeting the brainfarts of an obscure radical from Finland, Pentti Linkola. Representing the far end of the environmentalist spectrum, Linkola actually does believe in things like human culling, fascism, and eugenics. He's an epic douchebag. And that's why he's not much of a threat to humanity as a whole: He'll never have a large enough following to implement any of his batshit crazy notions of how the world should be run.

The average environmentalist (including the ones that could be considered hardcore) is repelled by guys like Linkola. And the feeling is mutual. A year or two ago I attended a talk by Derrick Jensen, a California environmentalist who subtly promotes the bombing of dams to save the wild salmon. During the Q & A, nearly everyone asked him if it was not better to spread environmental responsibility by example (peaceful activism, recycling, and whatnot). He dismissed these people as "lifestylers" who would never made a real difference, tossing off comments like, "Composting wouldn't have stopped Hitler." Most of the small audience walked out of that room feeling that Jensen was a mentally unbalanced man. They may still read his books, but I don't think they'll be dynamiting a dam anytime soon.

The truth is, your typical environmentalist does not actually want to return to a pre-industrial, agrarian way of living. They want to keep their iPhones and their hybrid cars. The daffy siren call of folks like Linkola might snag their attention momentarily, but in the end they're not going to adopt any ideology that compromises their own comfort and security. They're not into power trips. They just want the world to be safer, healthier, and better.

Every belief system has its extremists. To pick them out of the crowd and hold them up as poster children is not only misleading, it's downright deceptive. You will not be likely to find a Linkola or a Jensen among the hippies at your local farmer's market. Not everyone who talks about conservation, alternative energy, or global warming is a threat to democracy. Jones is doing to environmentalists what he insists the New World Order is always doing to him: Falsely aligning him with violent extremists.

Brain-Eating B.S.

They're coming to get you, Barbara...

By Infowars standards, vaccines that will "lobotomize" the population are old news; Jones & Co. have already returned to calling Obama "Barry Soetoro" and freaking about the tapwater. But we'll go over the issue, anyway, because I'm sure Jones will return to it at some point, throwing references to "lobotomy vaccines" and "lithium in the water" into his broadcasts as though they're well-established facts of life.

The "lobotomy vaccines", as you've probably guessed, don't actually exist. Jones is referring to the research of Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford professor who has been studying the effects of chronic stress on animals and humans for the past three decades. In 2003, he announced that he is conducting research to develop a "vaccine-like" form of genetic therapy that will, if effective, buffer people from the adverse health effects of stress. The idea is to deliver to the cortex genes that produce neuroprotective proteins, counteracting the stress response.

Sapolsky says he's doing this research because relaxation techniques, talk therapy, and drugs (which only mask the effects of stress, rather than relieving them) are not solving the problem. He admits that his treatment is still years away from the clinical-trial phase, but feels it's crucial for science to tackle stress head-on. After observing the behavior of wild baboons in Kenya, Sapolsky came to suspect that tolerating a rigid social hierarchy can greatly increase stress and its assorted ills, particularly if submission is drummed into us from a young age. (I'm sure Alex Jones would agree with that.)

Sapolsky's work was recently profiled in a Wired magazine online article by Jonah Leher. It was this article (or a recap in London's Daily Mail) that spurred Jones to raise the alarm about "brain-eating vaccines". Jones ignored the bulk of the Wired article, which dealt with the well-documented effects of chronic stress and the possible evils of subordination, and went straight for the "vaccinelike treatment". And rather than weighing the pros and cons of such a hypothetical treatment, he summarily decided it was just another New World Order attempt to make us stupid, submissive, and apathetic. He automatically assigned the worst possible motives to Sapolsky and his assistants: Scientific tyranny. Never mind that Sapolsky's dream of a stress treatment may never materialize. Never mind that it will not, in all likelihood, ever become mandatory even if it does reach the market someday.
I encourage you to look into Sapolsky's work for yourself before deciding it's part of some NWO zombification plan. I don't fully understand all the science behind it, but I do realize that stress treatment is not intended to render people passive, stupid, or emotionless. Nor will it nullify the fight-or-flight response. It will not disable or destroy any part of the brain, as lobotomies did.

Jonah Leher responded to the panic with an editorial, pointing out that the Daily Mail condensed, paraphrased, and sexed-up the details of the Wired article. This triggered "right-wing paranoia", and soon other media outlets were portraying Sapolsky as a mad scientist attempting to create a zombie army. Leher concludes his commentary in a nasty way, declaring, "Alex Jones is a liar".

Jones isn't lying. He's just not fully informed about the research, he's jumping to the worst conclusions without talking to any of the principal players like Sapolsky, and he's villifying a potentionally beneficial treatment that hasn't even been tested on humans yet (and won't be for years, according to Sapolsky himself).
Jones has challenged Leher to be interviewed on his show, to prove that Jones' "documented" assertions about Sapolsky's research and other NWO mind-control plots are wrong. If Leher accepts this challenge and is allowed to speak freely on the program, I think Jones' wildly hyperbolic statements about "brain-eating vaccines" will be shown to be the alarmist factoids that they are.

Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)

In an August 4th Infowars article, Paul Joseph Watson states that "major mental health professionals are already pushing for lithium to be introduced into water supplies as a means of mass medicating against 'mood disorders'". Scary sh**, right? Yes, it is - until you realize that the only "major mental health professionals" even suggesting lithium in the water amount to exactly four Japanese researchers and one flake in Vancouver. And the Japanese guys made their suggestion in the pages of a periodical that isn't even remotely peer-reviewed, Medical Hypotheses. As one blogger put it, this is where scientists go when they are drunk or bored. It is not a medical journal by any stretch of the imagination.
In their Medical Hypotheses article, the Japanese researchers cited their own study, supposedly showing minor correlations between natural lithium levels in water supplies and suicide rates, which could be interpreted to indicate that more lithium equals fewer suicides. These results were published in The British Journal of Psychiatry last year, but the authors didn't suggest adding lithium to drinking water at that time. For that, they had to turn to a non-scientific journal. The only other similar study was conducted in Texas in the early '70s.
The Japanese study was also cited by the Vancouver professor who believes it merits further research, and that this "further research" (which no one seems to be conducting) could merit experimental dosing of water supplies.
Aside from these five dudes (who are insane, IMO), no one else in the scientific community is seriously advocating the use of lithium in the water. No one. In fact, pretty much everyone except these five guys is in perfect agreement that adding potent psychoactive substances to drinking water is a very bad idea. For Watson and Jones to suggest otherwise is irresponsibly alarmist. This is just one more example of the media taking the results of a single study and running wild with them, hyping the news until it's so out of proportion it's barely recognizable as science anymore. Jones should be media-savvy enough to realize this.

Watson's article is absolutely bursting with misinformation like "lithium in the water". Examples:

- "The U.S. government has been forced to admit that childhood vaccines preserved with thimerosol have contributed to the explosion in autism cases in the United States." This is in reference to the 2008 Poling decision, handed down by the federal "vaccine court". The government paid damages to the parents of 9-year-old Hannah Poling, who claimed their daughter suffered neurological damage from a series of routine childhood inoculations. People who still believe - despite a complete absence of evidence - that mercury in the vaccine preservative thimerosol causes autism in children celebrated the Poling decision, and frequently point to it as definitive proof that autism is linked to vaccines. The problem with this conclusion is that Hannah Poling isn't autistic. She suffered neurological damage due to a brain disease (encephalopathy) brought about by a mitochondrial disorder. To date, there has been no research into a possible link between mitochondrial disorders and vaccines. This is why the vaccine court conceded the case without an evidentiary hearing. The Polings couldn't provide any evidence that vaccination caused their daughter's impairment, and the court couldn't provide any evidence that it didn't. In short, the government couldn't "admit" anything.
Furthermore, Watson's mention of thimerosol is completely out of line, because the Polings believed their daughter was injured not by the preservative in the vaccines, but by immunological overload from having too many vaccinations at once. (Never mind that the viral load in the smallpox vaccine alone was greater than all the current childhood vaccines put together, and that this didn't result in an autism explosion in the 1950s!)

- John Holdren (Obama's science czar) is still promoting the use of sterilants in drinking water to curb the population. Watson points to a 2006 article written by Holdren as evidence of this, but all the article shows us is that Holdren is still concerned (as are many people) about runaway population growth. Nowhere in the article does he advocate involuntary sterilization. Being concerned about overpopulation does not mean you are into eugenics, mass murder, or any of the other things Jones warns us the "elites" are into, even if you did express a few absurd ideas in the '70s. My own mother advocates zero population growth, but is not a eugenicist by any means. She and Holdren are from a generation that is highly concerned about the world's future.

Watson then quotes some of the comments that Infowars readers have made on the article itself, including a registered nurse who claims he/she is abandoning his/her profession because he/she disapproves of vaccination and water fluoridation. This person repeats the often-cited but never-verified assertion that the Nazis used fluoridated water to "make the Jews more docile". Watson also brought this up in his first Infowars article on "brain-eating vaccines".
I have been trying to trace this factoid to its source for over a year, and it leads only to dead ends. The most authorative source of the Nazi fluoride story was an anti-fluoridation crusader of the 1950s named Charles Perkins, who also declared (without providing any evidence at all) that water fluoridation was a Communist plot brought to the U.S. by Soviet brainwashers. Perkins did not give any source for his statement that the Nazis used water fluoridation in the concentration camps, and at any rate fluoride does not render people docile. (If it did, wouldn't crime rates have dramatically decreased since the introduction of fluoride to municipal water supplies?)

As error-riddled and alarmist as Watson's articles on the issue are, Jones' video on the "brain-eating vaccines" and "lithium in the water" is even less factual and even more fear-based. Jones states that articles in Time magazine, the New York Times, and "all the major medical journals" are promoting the idea of putting lithium in our water. This is not the case. Those periodicals were reporting the results of the Japanese study, not promoting adding drugs to the water. In fact, The New York Times and BBC articles both quoted Sophie Corlett, director of the British mental-health charity Mind, who warns against adding drugs to the water.

Infowhat?

There's silliness to spare on Infowars right now. There are a few articles on important issues, like "Dollar Plunges After UN Call to Ditch Greenback", and a piece that questions neo-natal screening for schizophrenia. There's mention of possible HIV infection at a VA hospital in Missouri. There's stuff that is also saturating the mainstream media right now (job loss, allegations of police misconduct and brutality at the G20, Goldman Sachs links to the oil spill, etc.). But then there are these messes:

• "Scientists admit chemtrails are creating artificial clouds". As I've said before, Jones' idea of "admit" and mine are slightly different. In the Daily Mail article cited by Paul Joseph Watson, scientists are "admitting" only that jets leave contrails, and that the skies over areas with heavy flight traffic can be so full of contrails/moisture/clouds that the amount of sunlight reaching the ground is decreased. This is not a newsworthy story. It is a side effect of jet pollution, and maybe we should worry about that before we even get started on "chemtrails". First off, how much of today's hugely increased jet travel is actually necessary? Much of it is for business trips that don't accomplish anything that couldn't be done with Skype or even just an old school teleconference.
• The "art" of looking for occult symbolism in pop music videos, which has been taken to tragicomic lengths by the likes of Lenon Honor and "Vigilant Citizen", has caught the attention of the Guardian - a paper that just loves to walk the wobbly line between the Washington Post and Weekly World News. Dorian Lynskey's article "Lady Gaga and the New World Order" describes Vigilant Citizen's theories about Lady Gaga's links to the Illuminati, Satanism, and mind control. But Lynskey clearly doesn't put much stock in them. He even notes similarities between Vigilant Citizen's work and the anti-rock rantings of uberconservatives like David Noebel, which is not a flattering comparison. And at the end of the article, Lynskey concludes that such analysis is a textbook example of "the paranoid style". He writes, "To the Vigilant Citizen, a pop star appearing 'vacuous, incoherent and absent-minded' must be 'a tribute to mind control' rather than them actually being vacuous, incoherent and absent-minded." I have no idea why Jones & Co. think this article supports any of their contentions about the New World Order. It's just a fluff piece about a slick-but-weird American website and American right-wing paranoia in general. The Guardian is laughing at you, Mr. Jones. For the record, I don't believe Lady Gaga is actually vacuous, though her music might be. IMO, any chick who tattoos Rilke on her flesh has more than the usual shit going on upstairs. And let's face it, she's a hell of a lot more interesting than Madonna with her macrobiotic gruel and her abducted children. It's Paul Joseph Watson's commentary that's vacuous. His analysis of pop music trends boils down to "pop music sucks" and "robots are scary". He trashes Katy Perry for failing to become the next Amy Grant, but gives Eminen a green light for "pushing back" against the "Babylon system". Hey, never mind those tributes to rape and murder, or the blatant pharmaceutical product placement, or the same promiscuity that you revile in female popstars, or the overt occult references in his early work. Never mind that in his song "My Darling", Eminem says he "sold his soul" just like Katy Perry. I mean, he rapped a little about 9/11 Truth, so it's all cool, right? If inconsistency was a terminal disease, Watson would be in ICU right now.
  
• "Israel Suspected in Bogus Claim Iran Developing Nuclear Trigger", by Kurt Nimmo, has one hell of a misleading title (one that was echoed in the latest issue of Nexus magazine, BTW). Now I don't doubt for a second that the nuclear threat posed by Iran is trumped-up or even just fabricated, but exactly who suspects Israel of creating the claim that appeared in the Times of London last December? Reading Nimmo's title, you'd think some government officials or investigative reporters suspect Israel. But no. The only person who has named Israel as a suspect is long-retired CIA agent Philip Giraldi, and his "evidence" is thin indeed. The intelligence officials who are actually looking into the 2009 report haven't reached any such conclusions. So the question becomes, is Giraldi a reliable source? The Nexus article mentions that in 2005 Giraldi identfied Michael Ledeen as an author of the infamous "yellowcake document" that led to the Plame Affair. This turns out to be an empty claim, as no one has conclusively proven its authorship. Besides, the first such allegations against Ledeen were made by journalists in 2004. Something quite similiar happened with the "Habbush letter"; Giraldi declared that Dick Cheney was behind the forgery, but only after journalist Ron Suskind did the actual work. Are we seeing a pattern here? A journalist digs up some juicy intel info, and Giraldi pokes his head out of retirement to say, "Oh, yeah, I already knew about that, and here's what my former colleagues from two decades ago have to say about it." Then he gives the alt media a few scraps of info that don't really contribute any knowledge to the events in question.