The Great Post Office Conspiracy

I'm going to be blunt: This is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard on The Alex Jones Show. It's speculative to the point of absurdity, needlessly alarmist, and inaccurate in its few concrete details. I'm not even going to w.a.s.t.e. much time on it.

In brief, Steve Quayle claims a military source told him the U.S. Postal Service has constructed "secret rooms" in 130 post offices. They're called Criminal Investigative Units, and are presumably intended for use by the Postal Inspection Service, which deals with everything from benefits fraud to bioterrorism-by-mail. But Quayle assumes the rooms are really part of a martial law plan that also includes "indoctrinated multicultural post office workers" (whatever that means).

The Prison Planet article on this vast conspiracy points out a website about the new Macon, Georgia, post office that actually mentions the Criminal Investigative Unit rooms - so there goes the idea that they're "secret".

I don't know just why these rooms are being constructed, but I don't think Steve Quayle does, either. For years, his main area of study has been "giants in the bible" - quite a leap from shadow government intel, don't you think? And his track record of providing reliable information is sad:

• In January of last year, a high-ranking officer who works on "deep psychological operations" for NORTHCOM told Quayle that the Department of Defense is spending money to develop new multi-user online games like World of Warcraft. Jones: "The military is using the XBox as the platform to fly predator drones, and they want to hire the top-scoring teenagers." This claim was apparently based on this article, and other reports that the Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System (basically .338-caliber rifles mounted beneath Vigilante drone helicopters) uses a modified Xbox 360 game controller for targeting. There have been no indications that the military actually wants to use gamers as "pilots". I mean, c'mon, WoW players flying drones from their mom's basements? Srsly? (Jan. 8/09 broadcast)
  
• The same source told Quayle that on October 7, 2008 the U.S. was just minutes from martial law because "China demanded 3.1 trillion Ameros, which the Bush regime gave to them, or they would basically cancel and crash our currency." Considering that the Amero doesn't actually exist, this is kinda unlikely. Are we really expected to believe the Treasury would issue secret currency for two years, without any of it getting into circulation? Jones: "They announced a month ago in The New York Times that the Federal Reserve is issuing something above treasury notes itself [sic] that is collateralized by North American assets. So that's your Amero." No, that's a Treasury bond. And the Times doesn't buy into the Amero rumours, as this 2007 article shows.
  
• H1N1 and its vaccine were "execution by injection", a form of "esoteric murder, ritual Satanic deliverance of the innocents to death", timed to occur with the "occult day, Cinco de Mayo". Not only is Cinco de Mayo unaffiliated with any sort of occult tradition, it's not even a religious holiday. Celebrants commemorate the 1862 Mexican victory against the French in the Battle of Puebla. They do extremely sinister, occulty-type things like drink beer, dance, and play air guitar. (April 28/09 broadcast)
  
• When Quayle interviewed Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb, Cohen allegedly told him off-air that red mercury is real. Quayle surmises the U.S. gave some of it to China and/or Iraq. Perhaps they sold China some Imipolex-G, too. (interview)
  

Watch out for those zombie strippers

!su evas su pleh namdam a si poolF

So Jones and pretty much every conservative broadcaster and journalist in America has been freaking out over the upcoming Robert Rodriguez film Machete. They're insisting it's basically a green light for Mexicans to become violent toward Americans, sanctioned and funded by the state of Texas. The kerfuffle began on the sinister occult holiday Cinco de Mayo, when Rodriguez released a joke trailer for the movie (which you can watch on YouTube, if you don't mind some naughty language and violence) that gave the impression it was all about a campaign of violent retribution against anti-immigration officials. It opens with actor Danny Trebejo delivering a message directly to Arizona, days after the infamous "Papers Please" anti-immigration law was passed.
Though Rodriguez quickly assured everyone that violence against Americans isn't really the gist of the movie (which doesn't have an official trailer yet), Jones and company aren't buying it. Jones claims he received phone calls from people who had worked on the film, expressing their opinion that the film really does encourage racial division and could lead to a backlash against Hispanics. He acquired a copy of the script and found that the movie is all about a race war between disgruntled immigrant labourers and white Americans, particularly Minutemen, with many violent confrontation scenes.

Jones' primary beef is that Machete might receive funding from the Texas Film Commission, meaning Texas taxpayers could end up footing the bill for a movie they consider pro-immigration and/or racist. Also, this funding is made possible by Governor Rick Perry - a man Jones loathes.
What Jones didn't mention until yesterday is that the Texas Film Commission doesn't directly finance movie production. It just provides 5-15% tax breaks to selected projects, to encourage filming in the state. Film projects are very lucrative for any state.
Though an article at Infowars implied the funding is already in the bag, a Film Commission spokesperson says it isn't. No money has been released to Troublemaker Studios; Rodriguez's application is still pending.

Jones' second-biggest complaint is that if the movie was about white people declaring war on Mexicans, it would never receive government funding. Ignore, please, the umpteen major Hollywood films that have portrayed Hispanics as career criminals, drug pushers, gangsters, or lowlifes. Aside from J-Lo flicks and Rodriguez's movies, it's damn near impossible to find mainstream films that portray Hispanics in a favourable light - and you can't tell me that not one of these films received some government funding.
He's also annoyed that the Texas Film Commission "refused funding" for a big-budget movie about the Waco tragedy. What actually happened is that when commission director Bob Hudgins expressed concerns about the script, the production company decided to withdraw its application.
No one has complained about the Texas Film Commission's support of the Coen brothers' remake of the vigilante cowboy flick True Grit.

"In hindsight, Robert Rodriguez probably oughta thank me for giving this film so much hype, it's been in hundreds of newspapers."

(Alex Jones, May 26th News Alert)

So what is Machete about, anyway? The eponymous character is Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo), who most parents with teens will recognize as the crazy inventor Uncle Machete from the Spy Kids films. In the first film, he and Gregorio (Antonio Banderas) patch up their relationship after Machete helps his niece and nephew defeat an army of kid-bots. Believe me, folks, I know way more about this movie than I want to.

Rodriguez built the Machete character around Trejo back in the early '90s, envisioning him as the Hispanic counterpart to Charles Bronson - famous for a string of vigilante movies.

Machete's next appearance was in one of the fake trailers attached to the 2007 Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature Grindhouse, alongside other imaginary gems like Hobo With a Shotgun and Don't (which I found hilarious). Rodriguez announced at that time that Machete would be getting his own movie.
It's interesting to compare the faux Grindhouse trailer with the Machete joke trailer. It's even more interesting to study the public's reactions to the two trailers. The Grindhouse trailer, being for a non-existent movie, received no negative attention whatsoever. Not one person griped that Rodriguez was encouraging Hispanics to go out and chop up white folks. No one accused him of trying to spark a race war. No one wondered why an inventor had suddenly turned into some kind of vigilante. The same goes for the other trailers; no one worried that homeless people might take up arms and go on shooting sprees, for example.

And why would they? We're not exactly dealing with Oscar-calibre dramatic cinema, here. Rodriguez's work is a wacky blend of action and gore, painstakingly styled after B movies of the '70s (he also likes to plunder the cast of Lost for some reason, but I digress...). Like all Rodriguez films, Machete is high camp. If you're willing to believe it's an earnest attempt to mobilize Mexicans against Americans, then you should also believe that CIA agents are being abducted and transformed into characters on trippy kids' TV shows, or that your weird high school shop teacher really was an alien, or that strippers might eat your face off after sundown.

But then Jones' grasp of film is, um, tenuous. Remember his bizarre review of Watchmen, which he mistook for a New World Order propaganda piece? To make his take on the film even weirder, he somehow got it into his head that the same man who wrote From Hell was a Freemason. Then, months later, he praised V for Vendetta - same writer and some of the same themes as Watchmen, but basically a paean to religious terrorism and violence. WTF?

At any rate, all of this is moot now. Rodriguez has conceded that, yes, his joke trailer was a bit too incendiary, and Jones now says he doesn't want Rodriguez to lose his state funding (even though Austin 360 quotes him as saying, "We need to get the funding at the state level stripped out of the film commission if they do not stop this.").

Jones vs. Canada

You know you're rambling when a Russia Today anchor has to cut you off.
The last time Jones ranted about the Canadian border (claiming that Third World immigrants get preferential treatment at border crossings), a grieving mother had to steer him back on track. Sheesh. Focus, Mr. Jones, focus.



Just wanted to point out a few things about this clip:

- This has been covered by mainstream media outlets throughout Canada. It's not being suppressed or ignored.
- If it's difficult for Jones to get his material into Canada, you wouldn't know it. There is absolutely no shortage of Jones merchandise in this country. Endgame and The Obama Deception can be purchased at the largest audiovisual retail stores, Prison Planet bumper stickers are everywhere, and his show is freely available.
- I have crossed the U.S.-Canadian border more times than I can possibly count. Never had a problem. At all. Generally, if you just answer questions promptly and normally, even if they're stupid, you won't have any trouble crossing either border. Customs agents on both sides have similar training.
- "Behaviour placement" is far less creepy and obnoxious than product placement, particularly since at least one network (NBC) is freely admitting to using it in their shows. Not sure WTF this has to do with Canada.
- Canada currently has a Conservative government that is closely aligned with U.S. policy. The Liberal Party has been in decline lately, and the socialist-leaning NDP Party is toast. So where are all these blissfully ignorant, superhappy liberals of which you speak, Mr. Jones?

Stephen Colbert on "Survival Seeds":

"When you're tilling the earth with a human femur while the sky is raining fire, you'll want a reliable supply of radicchio and mini squash."

Rand Paul is actually a citizen of Somalia. I can't prove it, but you can't prove it's not true, therefore it probably is.

The Great Swine Flu Plot of '09 & The Great Tea Partier Frameup of 2010

Man, the New World Order sure likes to take its sweet time...


Now that it's just about summer of 2010, let's check in on the progress of the New World Order's Great Swine Flu Plot of '09. Because, as devoted fans of Jones are continuously telling me, Jones is mostly right about everything. Or as Jones himself has put it, "Everything I say comes true!".

Well, there's not much point in going through the whole Swine Flu Plot checklist, because it's all dependent on the first item on the list: Forced inoculation with the H1N1 vaccine. This was supposed to result in rioting, which would result in martial law. Also, H1N1 hysteria would be used as a smokescreen for the passage of the Cyberbullying Act, the Clean Water Restoration Act, and more bank bailouts. Aside from that last thing, nothing on the list has happened. At all. In fact, throughout the U.S. and Canada there were shortages of H1N1 vaccine in '09 - people had to wait in line for hours, if they were eligible to receive the shot at all (most people weren't). Now that the pandemic hysteria has calmed considerably, clinics throughout Canada and the U.S. are stuck with surplus vaccine that will eventually have to be thrown out. At no time was forced inoculation of the general population seriously proposed by anyone in a position of authority, so the prediction didn't make much sense in the first place.

Next was The Great Tea Partier Frameup of 2010. Beginning in February, Jones declared that the government would probably carry out false flag terror attacks within the U.S. - most likely against the IRS - and blame it on Tea Party protesters, Patriots, militia members, etc. This was to happen anytime from mid-April to the end of May. "They're gonna blow stuff up and blame it on you, blame it on me!" Jones said on his April 19th broadcast.

Still waiting. The rather pathetic New York City bombing attempt was a perfect opportunity to pin something on Tea Partiers, Patriots, or other "homegrown" groups, yet no serious efforts were made to do that. A few minor media pundits feebly suggested "what if this is domestic?", but from the git-go, the mainstream media's prime suspects were Arab Muslims, American Muslims of Arab extraction, and American Muslims. Notice a theme? Then a suspect was hauled in: An American Muslim of Arab extraction.

Well, maybe he was a white, Tea Partying Christian in his spare time.

Seriously, though, there are those who insist that the Great Tea Partier Frameup plans had to be shelved because Jones drew too much attention to them (why the New World Order baddies would actually care about what a mere million or so radio show listeners believe isn't entirely clear). Maybe this is so. But prove it. It's incredibly easy to make a bogus prediction, then say it didn't come to pass because public awareness, or prayer, or telepathic happy thoughts, or whatever, prevented it from happening. False religious prophets do this all the time. The Heaven's Gate dude, Marshall Applewhite, first predicted the spaceship would arrive for his followers in the mid-'70s. When it didn't, they were smart enough to look elsewhere for spiritual guidance. Less than two decades later, however, Applewhite had a whole new batch of dupes who heard the same story - and believed it enough to castrate and off themselves.

That's not to say that Jones is a "false prophet". Chances are, he genuinely believes that these Crises of Epic Proportions are really going to happen, and honestly thinks he and his listeners are staving them off by spreading the word. But believing something doesn't make it so, does it?

A Moment of Praise

As I said in the intro to this blog, Jones and company are bound to be right once in a while. And it's only fair that I give a nod to that fact from time to time. Today, I was very pleased to see this story about the Judge Rotenberg Education Center posted at Infowars. This is the kind of story that I'd like to see Infowars and Prison Planet display more often: It's based mostly on fact rather than speculation.

The Judge Rotenberg Education Center (JRC) is a private residential facility for children, teens, and young adults with mental and/or behavioral problems, located in Canton, Massachusetts. Until recent years JRC accepted only youth considered to be "hopeless cases" (those with severe autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and various forms of emotional disturbance). Today, children with relatively minor disorders like ADHD and OCD are housed there as well.
Established as the Behaviour Research Institute in 1971 by Harvard-educated psychologist Dr. Matthew Israel, the "school" relies solely on aversion therapy and rewards to train its "students" out of unwanted behaviours. Psychotherapy and psychiatric meds are unavailable to residents; the JRC doesn't even have a psychiatrist on staff. Israel experimented with numerous aversive techniques (spanking, white noise, pinching and muscle squeezing, ammonia) before settling on electric shock as the best way to deal with target behaviours. JRC has used it ever since, in addition to the other techniques. At first, residents were given mild .2-second shocks from a commercially available device called the Self-Injurious Behavior Inhibiting System, produced by Human Technologies. But when one 12-year-old boy was given 5000 of these shocks in a single day, Israel requested a more powerful device from Human Technologies. The company refused. So Israel designed his own devices, one which administers a strong 2-second shock and a device that is three times more powerful, capable of delivering shocks up to 91 milliamperes (stun guns go up to 20 milliamperes, maximum). Both models of this Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED) are in use at JRC. Nearly half of JRC's 200-plus residents are wired for electric shock, including children as young as 9.

Israel argues that shock is a consistent and effective means of behaviour modification, with no side effects. But while most JRC parents are relieved that their children's behaviour is under control, there don't seem to be any longterm benefits for the children themselves. Five of the six residents featured in Israel's promotional film Before and After are still at JRC, despite the almost miraculous "after" effects of aversive conditioning depicted in the film. One of the film's two autistic women, now in her forties, still wears a helmet. The other woman has been wired for electric shock half her life.

In 2006 The New York State Education Department issued a regulation stating that schoolchildren can't be given electric shocks for minor infractions. Parents of New York Rotenberg residents promptly filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the regulation from being instituted, even though JRC is a "school" only in the most tortured sense of the word. Schooling is limited to self-instruction on computers; there is no hands-on work, no discussion, and certainly no field trips.
The same year, a parent's lawsuit sparked public hearings on JRC's use of electric shock. No policy changes resulted.
Parents have twice banded together to protest proposed shutdowns of JRC, once in the '80s and once in the '90s.

A sister school now called Tobinworld was opened in California in 1977, and is still run by Israel's wife, Judy Weber. Tobinworld stopped using physical punishments in 1982, after 14-year-old Danny Aswad died while strapped facedown on his bed and a Social Services report complained of welts, cuts, and bruises on other residents.

The death of Danny Aswad was not an isolated incident. To date, there have been six deaths at JRC, two of them preventable:

• 1985: 22-year-old autistic man Vincent Milletich asphyxiated while in restraints and helmeted.
• 1990: 19-year-old Linda Cornelison was physically punished over a 4-hour period for refusing to eat. As it turned out, she had a perforated stomach and died hours later. Cornelison had the mental capacity of a toddler and was unable to speak.
  

Despite government investigations, negative media coverage, numerous allegations of abuse, and vocal opposition from human rights organizations and members of the psychiatric community, JRC remains open for business. When reporter Jennifer Gonnerman visited the facility in 2007, one 15-year-old resident held up a sign: "HELP US". Later that year, the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care concluded that residents had been abused, compelling JRC to institute a few reforms. However, electric shock and the other aversive conditioning methods are still in use. In 2008, JRC staff member Elliston Livingstone was charged with raping a student under the age of 14.