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.

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.

8 Crazy Notions 'til Christmas: White Rastafarian Nazis who are probably gay

Two years ago, Jones had this to say about college environmentalists:

"You can go to any university and see the people with their Rasta fake hair, the wannabe white Rastafarians and their sandals and their patchouli, going, 'It's what we gotta do for the earth', and I just wanna knock their Nazi teeth in. Don't you understand the Nazis have fake Rasta hair, with limp wrists...they're walking around in coffeeshops actin' real cool, and I just wanna knock their teeth out...I WANNA CRUSH YOUR SKULL! Because I'm just a normal mammal...I'm a normal...[pause for thought] creature that when I see innocence being torn apart, my instinct as a warrior is to stand up and fight."

Robot Ebola Copters & Super Congress Gun Raids

You know, the usual.

Media Matters has posted a detailed report on some of Jones's most recent hysterical rants, apparently not realizing that this is like reporting "Earth rotated on its axis today." Two points in the report stand out: Jones's claim that the FBI and ATF are conducting illegal searches of homes belonging to Texans who purchase more than one firearm, and his weird screed about "robot helicopters spraying airborne Ebola" to kill us all.

The gun-search claim was mentioned on the Aug. 1/11 broadcast. The information comes from "two Texas gun dealers" and "someone in my office". Unimpeachable sources, I'm sure, but we're gonna need a bit more than that before we start freaking out. The NRA hasn't reported any such searches in its news feed. It's true, though, that a new regulation requires firearms dealers in U.S.-Mexico border states to notify the ATF if someone buys more than one semiautomatic rifle in a five-day period, a regulation that already applies to handgun sales throughout the U.S. Yesterday, the NRA filed a lawsuit against the federal government over this.

The robot-copter rant came the following day, in response to a caller who despairs for the future (how could you not be miserable, if you believe everything you hear from Alex Jones?). The story must be at least three years old, because he cites his source as the Sunshine Project, which shut down in 2008. SP kept tabs on the latest biochem and nonlethal weapons technology. The website's last update was posted in October 2007.
Freaking out over old news is Jones's stock in trade. After the Rocky Mountain News folded, he was still citing an article about a biohazard incinerator in Colorado, insisting the thing was really a crematorium for the remains of Americans who would soon be slaughtered en masse. Sound familiar? Yeah, that's because we hear this shit every other day. The New World Order is out to kill 99% of us. They just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Jones is possibly referring to this document, the outline for a presentation given to the Airline Pilots Association by the DoD's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program in 2001. It's pretty bizarre. The JNLW proposes using commercial aircraft to spray immobilizing agents or other chemicals onto battlefields, unruly mobs, or what-have-you. There's even a proposal for using nonlethals to knock out plane passengers, presumably in a hijacking situation. But there's nothing in this presentation about drone copters, so let's move on.
Back in June, Jones reported that surveillance drones have already been in use within the U.S. for years. If you combine the notions of planes spraying nonlethal chemicals onto crowds and drone aircraft monitoring crowds, you could surmise that drone aircraft will soon be dumping chemicals. But "airborne Ebola"? First of all, there's no such thing. This is clearly a reference to the infamous comments made by University of Texas-Austin professor Eric Pianka back in 2006, one of Jones's favourite bits of "evidence" that They are plotting to wipe out all but 1% of the world's population. I've discussed this before. The bottom line is that Pianka is a herpetologist, not a biochemist, and he was referring to a naturally occurring (not to mention fictional) strain of Ebola.

Ebola is easily transmitted, has a high kill rate (50-89%), and can't be cured. So if They did get their hands on an airborne strain, it's unlikely They would be reckless enough to spray this particular virus on their own turf. After releasing it into the open air, They would have to cower in underground bunkers for months, if not years.

So once again, we have Alex Jones grabbing some disparate facts and factoids and smushing them into one big ball of irrational panic. Not exactly headline news.

Apocalypse Wut

or, How to Exploit Your Friends and Destroy People

"I've already been on MSNBC today, and I'm on a whole bunch of stuff coming up tonight. And obviously, we'll be able to inject infowars.com into the discussion when I'm on those broadcasts, and the people will come here and find the larger picture. It's kind of the red pill. Thanks to Charlie Sheen." - Alex Jones (Feb. 25/11 broadcast)

By now I'm sure you've all heard about (if not heard) Charlie Sheen's stream-of-unconsciousness rant on The Alex Jones Show, AKA "the rant that got Charlie Sheen fired". Sheen was supposed to be talking about 9/11, his 20 questions for Obama, etc. Instead, he talked for over half an hour about... Charlie Sheen. He dissed his enemies and critics, praised the "narly narlingtons" and "goddesses" who have stood by him, and bragged about his superstardom and talent. He read some of his baseball poetry, talked about watching Jaws on a yacht in the fourth dimension, and waxed ineloquent about Apocalypse Now. I can't even count the number of times he used the words "winning", "on fire", and "bring it".

When the rant began, I thought Sheen was on speed or coke. Then Jones went to great lengths to stress that Sheen is now totally clean. So then I thought maybe he just had a few too many energy drinks and was really hyper. As the "interview" went on, however, I finally realized that Sheen could be having a nervous breakdown or even a break with reality - and that Jones was basically exploiting a man who probably needs some help, rather than the fawning attention and acclaim Jones was throwing at him.

Inside jokes about being a "Vatican assassin warlock" aside, Sheen lavishly insulted his boss (Two and a Half Men writer/producer Chuck Lorre) and insisted on calling him Chaim Levine. That's not full-on anti-Semitism, but let's face it: It sounds like Sheen and Mel Gibson would get along just fine.
Sheen also referred repeatedly to violence against his enemies, joking (?) about decapitating Lorre in front of his children, "violently murdering" unnamed critics, and attacking people with "fire from above". Jones nervously nudged him to specify that he was talking about taking down his enemies "in the infowar", but Sheen stopped cooperating with him.

As for Sheen being clean, he says he cured himself of all addiction problems with his own mind. He had nothing but scorn for Alcoholics Anonymous, which he described as a cult made up of sissies, trolls, and losers. He said, "They have a 5% success rate. I have a 100% success rate."

"You sound like Thomas Jefferson," Jones told him.
"I'm not Thomas Jefferson," Sheen said, "Thomas Jefferson was a pussy."

So, now Charlie Sheen is out of a job (along with a lot of other people) and everyone thinks he's unhinged rather than just uninhibited. Great job, Mr. Jones.

I don't know what's wrong with Charlie Sheen and I don't know enough about the politics of network television to take a position on Chuck Lorre's "vanity cards", but I do know it's uncool to use your friend's nervous breakdown to promote your website, no matter how invaluable you think its content is.
Check out Jones' appearance on The View; Whoopi's reaction to him is classic.

A message to all liberal college students:

Alex Jones is not happy with you.

White Rastafarians can be a little annoying, I'll admit, but Alex Jones really, really hates them.

"You can go to any university and see the people with their Rasta fake hair, the wannabe white Rastafarians and their sandals and their patchouli, going, 'It's what we gotta do for the earth', and I just wanna knock their Nazi teeth in. Don't you understand the Nazis have fake Rasta hair, with limp wrists...they're walking around in coffeeshops actin' real cool, and I just wanna knock their teeth out...I WANNA CRUSH YOUR SKULL! Because I'm just a normal mammal...I'm a normal...[pause for thought] creature that when I see innocence being torn apart, my instinct as a warrior is to stand up and fight."

Jones seems to believe that all liberals endorse eugenics and enforced population reduction. During his February interview of Stanley Monteith, he declared that if you take a liberal - any liberal - aside and mention Madame Blavatsky or Margaret Sanger, the liberal will snarl, "That's right, you sonofabitch, and we're gonna get you too. We've gotta exterminate the blacks and the Mexicans."

He's right, of course. When the moon is full, liberals gather in Rothschild castles and dance naked around cauldrons full of gay porn and back issues of Mother Jones, bellowing "Gooble-gobble! Gooble-gobble!" until Al Gore calls for silence. Then they pray to a plaster bust of Margaret Sanger and pledge to exterminate all minorities by putting minute quantities of harsh chemicals into the same drinking water that they consume.

So I guess we could go ahead and add "campus hippies" to the list of New World Order baddies, along with bankers, "rockabilly art types", schizophrenics (AKA "demons"), herpetologists, law enforcement officers, and pretty much anyone with a college education. But my advice to Jones is to just be patient with the college kids.

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative, without changing a single idea." - Robert Anton Wilson

Summer Repost

I posted this at Swallowing the Camel around this time last year:

I listen to Mr. Jones once or twice a week, which is about all I can handle. Any more of the guy and I'd laugh myself to death. But even I'm not laughing at him much these days. I can't even giggle when I realize that I am witnessing the last threads of sanity being plucked from the angry sweater that is Alex Jones' psyche.

Much as I hate to give Jones any credit, I think he has done such a fine job of indoctrinating his listeners that he has actually become dangerous.
Dangerous? How could an intellectually challenged, woefully misinformed Angry Redneck Suburban White Guy with a Message, having just a radio show and a handful of shoestring "documentaries" to his dubious credit, be dangerous? Well, I think anyone who tells you to avoid vaccinations, tapwater, non-organic food, soy products, and police officers could be dangerous. All of these things are good for you, in moderation.

Jones has lost his ability to reason, if indeed he ever possessed it in the first place. During today's broadcast, he declared that every single U.S. serviceman is injected with very aggressive cancer viruses as part of the New World Order's "eugenics" program. Eugenics is the practice of selective breeding to bring out desirable characteristics, but Jones has broadened the term to mean "killing everyone for no apparent reason." Common sense should tell him that indiscriminate mass killing of Americans would not benefit Them; it would destroy Their tax base and reduce the number of consumers, possibly even collapse the economy. Hasn't he noticed that the neocons urge women to squirt out as many kids as possible, to financially compensate for the imminent decline in Boomers? Hasn't he seen the horrifying effects of fertility treatments? Does he not realize that lifespans and quality of healthcare are increasing throughout the developed world? And that unvaccinated people suffer and die from diseases that could be prevented by vaccines, while vaccinated people do not suffer and die from diseases that are prevented by vaccines?

No.

Instead, he sobs, "It's eugenics", then - turning on an emotional dime - screams, "Please do not laugh at me, officers!... I used to be dumb, too, and I love you. Remember I warned you." He informs us that entire military units will soon be dying from vaccines. "You are all going to die." Break for Prison Planet online store commercial.

This meltdown was followed by half an hour of grunting, groaning, snorting, and sighing as Jones tore into each and every one of the people who phoned to pledge their undying fealty to him. One caller earned his exasperation by being from Alaska. Another frustrated him to the point of apoplexy for suggesting a modest outlay of cash for some extra media exposure. And all incurred his wrath by talking about "this or that" while not caring enough about the real issues - like foster children being killed with radiation and chemicals (no source given, of course), like the creation of AIDS, like the symbol on Obama's private plane that proves he's a globalist in thrall to the New World Order agenda...
"It's a world of YOU KNOW WHAT!" Jones bellows in disgust. "The average person is duplicitous, greedy scum. And you people with your namby-pamby this-or-that... like this NESARA bull... there is no knight in shining armor! You have to save yourselves!"

After a few commercial breaks, Jones calms down enough to explain his outbursts as a bout of depression, something that strikes him on-air "only" once a month or so. He becomes so disgusted by the NWO agenda, he says, that the bottom just falls out and he is overwhelmed by the "maggot-covered decay" that surrounds him, by the "giggling Yuppies" who refuse to take him seriously. An "epiphany" has made him realize that he simply can't articulate the "kaleidoscope of ideas" he has, so he becomes emotionally overloaded with the "wonder of God's creation... covered with crap!"
Essentially, he feels that he is a lone voice in the wilderness, and that he is shouldering too much of the responsibility for the salvation of all mankind. It's time for others to step up and do their part by plastering their communities with PrisonPlanet.com bumper stickers and warning their neighbors away from the IQ-devouring scourge that is tapwater.

This rare moment of insight ends seconds later, when Jones again begins ranting and sobbing about "vaccines causing autism in little children - that's a fact", about our "sexual congress with evil... [our] golem-like abandon", about the "rockabilly art types" (no, I don't know either), and about those who criticize him. This rant is punctuated by a sustained "AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGG!"

"I watch you drink out of those dark cups... and I cry for you.
My fruits are legion. And they are good.
I don't have ego anymore. I have the power of will that is mistaken for ego.
We are on a planet."

He reiterates an earlier statement that the NWO will probably kill him. They already listen to all his phone calls and threaten his wife. He then goes on to literally rebuke his enemies, old school televangelist-style, and to warn us away from the "key things" that the NWO is using to destroy our minds and bodies: sodium fluoride, vaccines, cell phones, GMO foods, TV, and "dangerous brainwashing movies like Batman", ending on the televangelistic note, "Be born again. Unlock your psyche."

Break to an ad that urges listeners to download Jones' program to their iPhones.