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.

Boston: Everyone is a Patsy

Yesterday, Infowars was miffed that the FBI ignored "their" two suspects (either Navy SEALs or contractors with Craft International) and instead published photos of two "patsy" suspects.
In a video made early this morning (around 5:00 CST), Jones boasted that Infowars would soon release the name of the suspect who remains at large, thanks to the efforts of Anonymous. But Jones was clearly not in possession of that name yet, because he went on to speculate about the nationality/ethnicity of the two men. First he said, “These guys kind of look like Israelis. I’m not saying Israel is involved in it, we don’t have any evidence of that. It’s just that they kind of look Israeli.” Then he said they could be “North African” or “Spanish Muslims.”
Jones touted his suspects again, but then marginalized them by saying they, too, were "patsies" put into place by whoever did the actual bombing. Beyond "the FBI", Jones has not identified who did the actual bombing.

A few hours later, the FBI released the names of the suspects: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev (deceased). Infowars did not beat the FBI to the punch, and to date, I have found no evidence that Anonymous was in possession of either of these names. The names Anonymous tweeted early this morning were not the correct ones.

Bizarrely, Jones commented about halfway through his video, "MSNBC and the White House will be upset, though, turns out to be a real group of foreigners that attacked us, 'cause they won't get to go after the Tea Party..."
Here, Jones seems to be saying the White House is not calling the shots in this "false flag operation". The FBI is fully in charge. He is also admitting - tacitly - that his predictions were wrong (or as he puts it, the FBI changed the storyline). No one blamed him, Oath Keepers, Tea Party members, or gun-rights advocates for the Boston bombings. There was vague talk about "right-wing extremists" among media commentators, and little else. In fact, the public has been pretty evenly divided between those who suspected Middle Eastern involvement and those who felt the bombings were domestic.

The primary purpose of the bombings, Jones maintains, is to give the TSA increased powers. I don't know why that couldn't be done without a bombing, but I'm not the expert. Jones is. He knew exactly what was going on. Sure, the Great Tea Partier Frameup of 2010 didn't happen, and The Great Tea Partier Frameup of 2013 was a bust, and none of the "false flags" of the past two years has been directly connected to Patriots, but one of these false flag ops has to be a Tea Partier frameup, right?

Update: As of 6:44 PM (CST), Infowars has still not posted anything about the boat standoff occurring in Watertown. But they have posted an indignant article claiming that Facebook is blocking re-posts of "their" suspects. This turned out to be untrue; I was able to re-post the article on two separate Facebook groups after Facebook supposedly started blocking it (see the Leaving Alex Jonestown FB page). 

Boston Not-so-solved

The FBI, Navy SEALs, high school student, cartoon writers conspired to take away your guns, even though no one is taking away your guns.
Don't worry. 4Chan is on the case.

It has now been well over 72 hours since the Boston bombings, and no one has attempted to place the blame Jones, Oath Keepers, or Patriots, as Jones predicted.
Jones is now blaming the FBI, and Infowars is promoting the idea that the case has already been solved by armchair detectives. Infowars: "4Chan posted dozens of photos showing Navy Seal or Private Security personnel carrying the same black back packs which are the same style backpacks showed in FBI photos." The New York Post did something similar yesterday, posting a photo of two young "suspects" standing in the crowd. There are currently reports that one of these "suspects" might be a Boston high school student. 
The two "Navy suspects" shown on Infowars are not the same two guys from the Post article, and the two men the FBI identified as suspects today are two entirely different people. We're dealing with three separate pairs of young men, yet Infowars is crowing, "Quite possibly, Infowars, with help from crowd sourced sites and a treasure trove of independent photos, may have held a huge part in destroying the official narrative the government intended to run with." Just how Infowars would know what investigators "intended to run with" is unclear. Jones said on Monday that They would try to pin the blame on gun-rights advocates, members of Oath Keepers, and/or Jones himself, but to date no one has attempted to blame any of these parties. No "official" narrative of any sort has emerged, in fact.
As of 5:50 CST, Infowars is still touting the possible high school student and the guy in the white hat as strong suspects, and in one of its lead articles brags that the "police confirm Infowars photos of Boston suspects". They're conflating these two "suspects" with the men in the FBI photos. Confused yet? Well, don't worry. Infowars clearly was, too. In a more recent post, an Infowars writer complains that the FBI has "ignored" their suspects of choice, referring to the men in the FBI photos as "patsies". But why would the Infowars "suspects", plucked from the crowd almost at random because they wore backpacks and appeared non-Caucasian, be more valid than the FBI guys - also non-whites with backpacks? The FBI claims to have video footage of one man setting down a backpack close to one of the blast sites. Infowars can make no such claim. They only have still photos that show nothing particularly incriminating.

Jones also jumped on the "predictive programming" in an episode of Family Guy, which featured Peter Griffin running over Boston Marathon runners with a car and (in a separate scene) setting off bombs with his cell phone. Someone cleverly edited the two scenes to make them look like one, and this trickery was exposed almost immediately. But some theorists still consider it suspicious.
Bizarrely, no one ever demands the arrests of these "predictive programmers". If Jones was right about this predictive programming in cartoons, Matt Groening and Mike Judge should be in jail.

I find it peculiar that Infowars is ignoring the massive blast in Texas. Is this event not false-flaggy enough to warrant the slightest bit of attention?

Boston: Solved

Half an hour after today's bomb explosions in Boston, Jones or someone in his camp was tweeting "this thing stinks to high heaven #falseflag". This is quite remarkable, given that it took him at least three hours to figure out that he "predicted" the James Stack airplane attack in Austin in February 2010, and at least 24 hours to figure out that he had "predicted" the Norway massacre.
By the time I tuned in to his show at around 2:30, he was wailing that the media might try to pin this on him (for demanding a new 1776 on Piers Morgan's show), and/or blame Oath Keepers. He thinks They will tie the bombing in to gun owners.
He says Salon is already "blaming" him, but that's not true. They're doing the same thing I'm doing at this very moment; documenting the creation of his latest false flag/frameup theory.
Have Oath Keepers been blamed for anything? Ever?

Now they're chitchatting about a banned Little Red Riding Hood book, and barely seem interested in reports of a suspect being in custody.

Jones points to CNN mentioning "right-wing extremists" as the start of the frameup. He failed to mention that this was editorial commentary by Peter Bergen, and that Bergen mentioned other suspects first. He said, "One of the things that I'd be looking at, once the device, if it is a device, is found, what kind of explosives were used. If it, for instance, if it was hydrogen peroxide, sort of a signature of Al Qaeda. If it was more conventional explosives, which are much harder to get hold of now, it might be some other kind of right wing extremists...
We've also seen other extremist groups, right wing groups, attacking, for instance, trying to attack the Martin Luther King parade."

11 Crazy Notions 'til Christmas: Droning on about drones

I figured the title alone would make this video a crazy notion - one use of a Predator drone in U.S. airspace is not exactly a Crisis of Epic Proportions. And I don't quite understand the alternative media's obsession with drone aircraft. Is a drone really worse (ethically speaking) than a manned bomber? If you kill civilians by remote control or by hand, aren't they just as dead?
But it turns out that drones are just the beginning. This video is bursting at the electronic seams with crazy notions...

1. Goldman Sachs runs the world now. I really hope he's not being literal here. I'm afraid he is, though. Later he talks about the "banker takeover".
2. Cattle rustling is illegal, but not really. Jones would do well to stick to the ostensible topic, but he can't help throwing in a mini-sermon about common law, pointing out that cattle rustling isn't against the law if the cattle somehow find their own way onto your property and damage it. Defending blatantly criminal activities is not the best way to make a point, particularly when you're supposed to be defending Constitutional rights.
3. Americans are the #1 enemy of law enforcement and the government. "Self-sufficient country boys" are their primary target. Jones says helicopter and camera surveillance is already common in rural areas. This is just another expression of his Persecution of Patriots meme, which is utterly unconvincing, NDAA notwithstanding. The government could not possibly care less about your victory gardens, water filtration systems, and backup generators. You can be self-sufficient until the cows literally come home, and I guarantee that you won't attract attention beyond the staff room of Mother Jones magazine. Jones doesn't realize the self-contradiction here; if the government is persecuting small farmers, why in the hell would local police be allowed the use of a drone to track down small-time cattle rustlers?
4. The U.S. gave Libya to Al Qaeda. Yes, Al Qaeda is present in Libya, but it has no part in the leadership of the revolutionary forces. That's not to say this isn't a possibility. It just hasn't happened. I'm sure Al Qaeda would like to be in control of Libya, but it has not yet had the opportunity.
5. NORTHCOM is the real government. This is just another expression of the military-industrial complex/permanent war economy meme. But it sounds stupid when you put it that way. Like every other government agency, NORTHCOM is a hostage to Congress. If you don't get the funding, you die. And technically speaking, there's nothing to stop Congress from slowly starving NORTHCOM to death. Whether they ever do so or not is up to you, the voter.
6. "I knew ten years ago we would have TSA checkpoints." He's talking about highway checkpoints. WTF.

The Russia Today anchorwoman is nearly as bad, scoffing at the idea that Jones has been branded a conspiracy theorist (LOL), and at the notion that high technology would be used to retrieve cattle. Did she miss the part of the CGI recreation in which it was explained that the police wanted to find out if the men had guns, so as to avoid an armed conflict that could have cost human lives? Guess all that mascara made her blink.

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?

The Blame Game: Norway Edition

It's not entirely Anders Breivik's fault that he slaughtered dozens of innocent people. We should also blame the New World Order, Muslims, liberals, Jews, people who don't like Jews, and maybe Hitler.


As Alex Jones showed us, the Powers That Be staged a false-flag terror attack in Norway expressly to give themselves an excuse to squash all patriots who oppose big government and "bankster" fraud. This isn't a Norwegian thing; it's a globalist elite thing. So we must remember that domestic terrorism is not the real threat, here.

Pat Buchanan, who has been a guest on The Alex Jones Show several times, may not agree with the first part of that statement, but he's totally on board with the end of it: The media is using the massacre to undermine right-wing populist movements throughout the world. Domestic terrorism isn't the real problem.

Muslims are. Specifically, Muslims immigrating into countries like Norway. In a column at World Net Daily He writes:

"... awful as this atrocity was, native-born and homegrown terrorism is not the macro-threat to the continent.That threat comes from a burgeoning Muslim presence in a Europe that has never known mass immigration, its failure to assimilate, its growing alienation, and its sometime sympathy for Islamic militants and terrorists."

In conclusion:

"As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right."

Meanwhile, Pamela Geller (a leading opponent of the "Ground Zero Mosque") informs us that while, yes, Breivik's behaviour was monstrous, the Liberal-sponsored youth camp he targeted was an "indoctrination camp run by Norway’s ruling Labor Party for up-and-coming children of the ruling elite".
The same sentiment was expressed by Alex Jones's ideological twin, Glenn Beck, on his radio show. As reported by The Telegraph: "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."
He made a point of adding that a Republican youth camp would also be disturbing. I guess his fact-checker took the year day off, and couldn't tell him about this. It's a little creepy, sure, but "Hitler youth"?

Frequent Jones guest Wayne Madsen has a different take: Because Breivik was reportedly a fan of Pamela Geller's blog, this all but proves he was part of an Israeli Mossad operation to take over... well, pretty much everything.
He writes, "Because our police forces in America, New Zealand, Norway, Britain, Sweden, Denmark, France, Canada, Australia and elsewhere are infiltrated with Mossad sayanim, katsas, and jumper katsas, we must take it upon ourselves to expose these agents, publicize their names, turn the disinfectant of sunshine on their subterranean operations, and generally, make life miserable for them."

Madsen's piece was re-posted to Infowars.

CPS Kidnapping and Persecution of Oath Keepers?

Not so fast....

Update (Oct. 15/10): According to an article posted at Infowars yesterday, Jonathan Irish has informed Jones that his infant daughter has been returned. He says he can't divulge any details due to a gag order, but he now claims that CPS investigated him only because he was confused with another man with a similar name who actually does have a record of domestic violence. As with everything else in the case, I don't know what to believe because there simply isn't enough information being provided from which to draw firm conclusions.

Jones has an intense hatred for social workers, particularly those employed by Child Protective Services (CPS). He has stated that social work was invented merely as a front for eugenics and racism (which would have been quite a shock to Dorothy Day, Jane Addams, and the other early social workers who did so much to help impoverished immigrants and their children). He has stated that most family court judges are sadistic pedophiles. He has stated that half of CPS workers are pedophiles.

His experiences of CPS must be quite different from mine. When I was growing up, several friends were abused or neglected by their parents, and CPS turned a blind eye. One girl was raised by a mother who would make Joan Crawford look like a freaking saint, but after one weekend in a foster home, CPS decided that because the girl wasn't a complete train wreck yet, her mother must not be so bad. She was returned to her own home, and never received another visit from a social worker. In other words, she was condemned to several more years of hell. In another family, three siblings were allowed to remain with their mother even though a social worker knew there was no food in the house. Another family plagued by alcoholism and incest never even received a visit from CPS. If social workers are really the crazed Stormtrooper thugs Jones portrays them to be, they have a strange way of showing it in certain parts of the U.S.

On Friday's show, Jones' guests were a New Hampshire couple who claim that their newborn was removed from their care solely because the father, Jonathan (John) Irish, is a supporter of the group Oathkeepers. His fiancee claims the CPS began investigating them after finding a gun in their car, even though she had a concealed carry license for it. They were told Irish belonged to a militia.

If accurate, this would be disturbing story. But the problem is, we don't have enough information to judge its accuracy. As one commenter at a Snardfarker site, Patty Kearon, pointed out: "The most important information is missing from this case. Nobody has posted any of the most important information needed to draw any conclusions. We all need to see the petitions that brought the older children into CPC custody. CPS had already taken their first 2 children into custody. We need to see the disposition reports, permanency reports and other documents such as police reports. And are the case plan requirements based on some documented substantiated abuse? We no [sic] nothing about these things which are very important pieces of information. Somebody get this needed information on the web, and then after reading it all, then I will give you my honest opinion. And anybody who makes a judgement without this information is just as bad as the people you are making judgements about".

Other commenters mention that Irish's Oath Keepers affiliation was only one of several reasons listed for the intervention, that Irish has a history of domestic violence, that Irish may not actually be affiliated with Oath Keepers. Irish himself mentioned to Jones that the CPS report lists reported abuse of his fiancee, but denies he is abusive.
Undoubtedly, many babies have been born to Oath Keepers, yet there are no other reports of newborns being removed from these families.

A Concord Monitor article has this to say: "Court records show an ongoing investigation into charges that Irish abused Taylor and her two-year-old child", and "according to an affidavit provided to Irish by the state Division for Children, Youth and Families, state officials took the child because of Irish's long record of violence and abuse."
The affidavit also says that Rochester, New Hampshire police have documented a "lengthy history of domestic violence" between Irish and his fiancee, that a judge determined Irish abused his fiancee's two older children, that he failed to complete a court-ordered domestic violence course, and that a hearing was held last month to terminate the fiancee's parental rights over the other two children for these reasons.

It seems there's much we're not being told by the New Hampshire couple. Jones didn't ask the couple any questions; he accepted their story at face value, even referring to the social workers as "wolves", "fascists", "monsters", and "kidnappers". When Irish made a vague, confusing statement indicating that his fiancee's husband (not ex-husband, as Irish calls him) is listed as the baby's father, Jones instantly interpreted this as some sort of ploy on the part of CPS - without seeking any additional information. Any other interviewer would have asked some tough questions at this point, if only for clarification. Instead, Jones solicited donations for the couple's legal defense.

The mislabeling of Oathkeepers as a "militia" can probably be straightened out in court later this month. But what about the other issues that Jones did not address? It strikes me as irresponsible to give unconditional support to this young couple when we have no idea what's going on in this case. It's not a good idea to hold them up as examples of "persecution against Libertarians and conservatives" until more is known. As the Monitor article points out, many of the supporters rallying around Irish and his fiancee heard about the case at second or third hand, and know nothing about the abuse allegations.

At the end of his interview with Irish and his fiancee (I have not used her name here because it is given variously as Taylor and Janvrin; I don't know which is her real name), Jones admits that CPS has also failed to intervene in clear-cut cases of abuse and neglect. Strangely, though, he seems far less concerned about this than about the alleged persecution of a small number of allegedly innocent parents, and what he sees as widespread corruption in social work and the "adoption racket".

Addendum: Stewart Rhodes, the founder of Oathkeepers, has a much more balanced and rational take on the case, as an article re-posted at Infowars shows. He realizes that Irish's Oath Keepers affiliation was not necessarily the dominant reason why the child was removed, and acknowledges that other issues were presented in the affidavit.

McVeigh

Whatever your thoughts on the Oklahoma City bombing (small conspiracy or large conspiracy), I'm pretty sure we can all agree that Tim McVeigh was a retarded douchebag, right?

Well, maybe not. Kurt Nimmo of Infowars doesn't seem to think McVeigh was all that bad. Just a patsy, you might say. Except he was a patsy who freely admitted his guilt and showed zero remorse for the murder of 168 strangers, 19 of them preschool children. Nimmo apparently wants us to forget that part and focus solely on the unknown co-conspirators, including McVeigh's alleged FBI handlers. He thinks MSNBC's airing of McVeigh's confession, scheduled for the fifteenth anniversary of the bombing, is purely propagandistic, part of a larger effort to "set the stage for a coming false flag operation designed to take down the patriot movement in this country". (I don't think many Americans want to destroy the patriot movement; we just want the patriot movement to calm down, stop waving guns around literally and figuratively, and handle reality like sane adults. Is that too much to ask?)

As evidence of this plot to take down patriots, Nimmo points to the "outlandish allegations" against The Guardians of the Free Republics, a patriot group that recently sent a letter to each U.S. governor, asking him/her to resign from office. To read Nimmo's account, the Guardians simply sent requests to some politicians, and were unfairly accused of potentially inspiring others to violence.
The truth is a bit more complex. Yes, the Guardians seem to be a nonviolent and law-abiding group, but their March 31st letter ordered the 50 governors to resign within three days or "be removed". Before you go saying, "Wull that's not threatening at all!", pause and imagine getting a letter like this at your job. "Stop being a [your job title here] in three days or we'll stop you." Nonviolent? Yes. Creepy and menacing? Yes.

But I'm getting away from the point, here, which is this: Whether he was part of a larger conspiracy or not, and even though the ATF and FBI have done more than their fair share of dirty deeds, Timothy McVeigh was a killer and a white supremacist who tried to minimize his personal responsiblity by saying that the government "teaches by example". This must have been quite a blow to the relatives, peers, ministers, and mentors who also tried to teach McVeigh by example during his short life.
In trying to crack government conspiracies, let's not become apologists for guys like him.