All I can say is...
Conspiracy Science
The Skeptical Inquiry Consortium
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September 29, 2009
September 27, 2009
Anti-Semite Comedy Goldmine
I just received a rather hilariously screwed up message on Facebook that I thought needed to be shared.
At first I wasn't sure what to say, so I settled with this:
So far she hasn't responded yet, but I think my reply was fairly clear.
The idea it would even matter that I'm Jewish shows an underlying anti-Semitism, it'd be like claiming you're not racist but constantly pointing out black people.
I can only laugh with an underlying nauseated feeling about this kind of absolutely retarded bullshit.
I'm not Jewish and I don't have anyone in my family tree which stretches back to prior when the Winston name was adopted for family use. The idea that the word for "stone" appearing in my name means I have Jewish ancestry would mean that anyone with "berg", "stein", "baum", or "witz" at the end of their name must have Jewish ancestry and completely ignores the fact that Norman, English, and Germanic names in general predate Judaism in Europe.
What's say the first person, 350 years ago, to use Winston in my family was Jewish, that would mean 17 generations ago I had "Jewish ancestry", and even the Nazis themselves required a family tree going back to 1750 join the SS, and I would have easily qualified - not that I'd join.
I see people like this on the JREF Forums a lot, basically the kind who say they're skeptical about the holocaust, or skeptical about the "official 9/11 story", and in reality they're anti-Semitic and/or conspiracy theorists.
I decided to block this person on Facebook, I don't feel like exchanging messages with such a complete shit bag of a human being.
It's weird, it both makes me laugh and makes me sick.
I get asked the .gov and bible question a lot, it's in my FAQ, I guess this dipshit really didn't read anything on my site other than my About page where I mention I'm not Jewish.
Alex Jones has a lot of people getting on his ass for being married to a woman with Jewish ancestry, and I guess it goes to show that when you can't defend your conspiracy theories or theories in general, you can just break down and accuse those you don't like of being Jewish or bring up their family members. For the record, my wife isn't Jewish either, her ancestry is French.
September 25, 2009
Military arrest at G20 protest not hoax and not military
There's a video going around the Internet of a supposèd arrest by military men of a G20 protester. On the one hand you have people like Alex Jones claiming this is evidence of the coming marshal law that they've been claiming is just around the corner for 20-25 years. On the other you have other people claiming it's a hoax - that is to say some kind of performance art piece.
Well, neither are true.
First, let's take a look at the video:
Problems with the military theory:
- The uniforms are different - there are two types of uniforms used by the individuals in the video
- The boots aren't standard - while two are wearing military-style boots, the other is wearing brown work boots.
- The uniform styles are outdated and are no longer used.
- The car has a Pennsylvania license plate, not a US Government plate.
- According to one protester: The ID tags had Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety on them and a long ID number.
- Even on Infowars many of those guys point out things wrong with the video.
In this picture:
You can see the same three guys hanging around cops and the same car.
Misconceptions
Some people watching the videos think it's illegal for non-military to wear BDUs, but that's hardly the case - ever been to a military surplus store? It's actually illegal to wear any sort of rank, insignia, and so forth. US Code Title 10, Chapter 45 does seem to state that it's illegal - even wearing a military cap, but the purpose of the law is actually to keep individuals from impersonating military personnel. I guess I sort of contradict myself there, but have you ever heard of anyone being arrested for simply wearing BDUs?
There's a reason Tupac called cops "troops" anyway.
According to the G20 Folks
The G20 Joint Information Center:
The individuals involved in the 9/24/2009 arrest which has appeared online are law enforcement officers from a multi-agency tactical response team assigned to the security operations for the G20.
It is not unusual for tactical team members to wear camouflaged fatigues. The type of fatigues the officers wear designates their unit affiliation. Prior to the arrest, the officers observed this subject vandalizing a local business. Due to the hostile nature of the crowd, officer safety and the safety of the person under arrest, the subject was immediately removed from the area.
In The End
Why does it matter if they're all lying and it was really super-unorganized, protocol breaking, badly uniformed military personnel? During the days of COINTELPRO, the police had no problem cooperating with the FBI to have people killed or to beat up people in the streets. Why is it different now if it's the same evil people in charge? Why do they need to use the military when they've shown they can brutally do whatever they want without it? Is it because the so-called "patriot movement" with people like Alex Jones seem to believe States can do no wrong and only the Federal government is evil?
When's marshal law coming? Still just around the corner. I have a feeling I'll be asking this question for the next several years, and even then, it'll be just around the corner. If they didn't do it after 9/11, why are they going to do it now?
See you Monday!
September 24, 2009
Donations and further information
Since I started the site in early 2007 I've had several people contact me about donating and for the longest time I refused to accept donations, but a message I received today from a visitor to the site changed my mind on that.
It really comes down to having more time to work on the site. If I "make money" via the site, through ads or donations, I can subsidize my income a bit and have to work less. If I work less I can work on the site more and bring in more content.
I want to also help people, so I added an important clause to my donations, 30% of them will go to charities - for food services, homeless, and children unless the person who donates wants it to go to something else - and the rest to help bring more content to the site.
I make it clear on my donate page that I'm not begging for money, although I make pretty much nothing from the site now, I will continue to work on it. I won't hold any information hostage because people do not donate. I didn't want to have subscriptions and limit anyone like Alex Jones, so I opted for a 100% voluntary solution.
So in truth, if I get donations, I will have more time to work on the site because I will have to work less and I can get more content up faster, and even if I get no donations at all, I'll still be working on the site about the same pace I am now.
See my donate page for more information.
I don't have a paypal account so a great friend of mine has allowed me to use his for the "trial run" of this, and he doesn't receive anything from it nor will he have access to the money.
September 23, 2009
Post-industrialism? More like anarcho-primitivism!
There are a lot of views on the future and the survival of the human race, they range from philosphies on free markets (such as anarcho-capitalism or minarchism), anarcho-socialism, communism, some kind of mixture, technocracy (where I rest in the debate), and then there's the ever popular anarcho-primitivism.
What's that you ask? Well it's the advocation that we more or less return to the hunter-gatherers we once where, or in some cases, basic agriculture. A web site pointed out to me on our Facebook group detailed how that was likely the only answer for humanity. Here's the discussion up to this point:
[FB]Ben:
Edward, I'd like to hear your opinion of the featured article of this site:
http://www.outlawjournalism.com/
... and this: http://www.outlawjournalism.com/?p=56
So I go and check it out and decide that I'm going to make my next blog post about it and don't say anything on the wall yet. In the mean time someone else beats me to it:
[FB] Terence
That last one (56) is a good article. It generally details most new-age and aliens claims as disinformation. Unfortunately, instead of crediting this to rebellious emotion, profiteering, trolling or general batshit insanity - they then credit THE ELITE with authorship. It's simply amazing, on the brink of dispensing an ounce of logic, it opts for a pound of more bullshit and, by its own article, can be referred to as "a disinformation conspiracy".Its argument is its own undoing.
It's also quite interesting, many times the author is correct; we are ever in a struggle between the classes, a struggle that occurs on many levels, for very complicated reasons. The reasons used at any conflict are usually over-simplified, zeitgeist oversimplifies this, but so does this author, generally in the exact same way.
The author presents a good look at conspiracy rubbish, but from his own objective world view which is generally of the same flavour. Corporations and governments should never be trusted, but dispensing the majority of conspiracy claims well, but as a conspiracy in itself, just simply beggars belief.
The man is agonizingly one cent short of a dollar.
What more can I add? All I can point out is this gem:
[Article] "What I have determined is that civilization as a whole was a scam from the beginning, and the only logical path for humanity to take is to utterly abandon it and return to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Ultimately, this is going to happen whether you want it to or not, as there is no other way it can go, but if you understand that it will happen, and why it must happen, you are going to be psychologically, and perhaps even physically, prepared for the total collapse of the entirety of world civilization"
Look everybody, it's Tyler Durden!
It's important to note that prior to the agrarian revolution, when humans were hunter-gatherers, the infant mortality rate was absolutely tremendous, and life was insufferable hell. How do I know? Well, other than being an avid camper, it isn't hard to imagine that 15 being middle aged is pretty screwed up.
One thing I almost forgot, in order to be hunter-gatherers, the population of the Earth has to be much lower, and in fact at that point in human history it was about 1 million people, that's about 500 times smaller than the "ideal" the conspiracy theorists think the elite are striving for.
As for other articles on the site: Gaza genocide, Zionist conspiracies, the same stupid Henry Kissinger NWO bullshit, and so on.
Advocating hunter-gatherer as some how the best option we have is like saying vaccinations, pasteurization, and so forth were just useless and unneeded... oh wait, they are that stupid.
Prison Planet QOTD:
September 21, 2009
Zeitgeist Movement Blunders
Everyone knows that the best way to attract people to your movement is to promote conspiracy theories and alienate the religious - it's why Anarchism and Marxism were so incredibly successful in the United States and the west in general.
As some woman who doesn't understand how to use paragraphs stated:
Of course, her question went unanswered because the moderation set the thread to read only. But her question is a good one, I think.
Honestly, I don't think there is hope for the Zeitgeist Movement unless they make some serious changes. Peter Joseph's movie appealed to the fringe, and despite the movement's promotion of science and rationality, the opposite is actually occurring, and they're attracting mostly the fringe and not the mainstream people they need to in order to grow.
On their forums you can find countless posts regarding the evils of vaccinations, peak oil paranoia - and those who say it doesn't originate from fossils, magical cancer cures, and so on.
Well, so much for science.
Well, what about technology? I think it's good there's another group promoting automation, but their concept of promotion seems to start at making forum posts and radio addresses about how technology will be, and how things could work and also stop there, instead of doing actual research and trying to accomplish something.
Anarcho-capitalist Stefan Molyneux brings up a very good point in his review of Zeitgeist: Addendum: if they're so keen on things like geothermal energy, why not built a geothermal power plant and supply free energy to a city they can setup?
This is a really good question, and while I disagree with 90% of what Stefan says, I do agree with this, and here's why:
I'm not really sure how big the Zeitgeist Movement is, it's hard to say. Their web site, as of writing this, says there are 338,587 members, and their Facebook group has 239,994 members. That seems like a lot, but considering there are 1.1 billion people on the Internet, and Alex Jones has even more fans, it's not really that many considering how popular the movie is.
If each one sent $10, they could easily get the startup cash needed to build their projects, but of course they want to avoid money. While I am also anti-money, I'm not stupid, if you want to get things rolling in this world, you need some sort of funding.
But how many members are there in the Zeitgeist Movement and how realistic are their goals of obtaining higher membership count?
It's very easy to sign up for the Zeitgeist Movement mailing list, so much so that in their stats Afghanistan has 2,335 members, and while I can imagine there are some Afghani members, I really doubt there are that many - it's must more realistic to think that when a given person signed up, they never bothered to select the country they actually belonged to, considering Afghanistan is the first result. Further, joining a Facebook group is easy too, two clicks and you're on board.
Peter Joseph acts as though his movement is growing through leaps and bounds, but actual activity says otherwise. They have 28,436 members on their forums, that's roughly 8% of total "members" even bothering to sign up for the forums and other parts of the site.
A very unscientific system of finding motivation in groups a friend told me about was that: 1 in 10 will be motivated at all, but only 1 in 20 will be driven to push the organization forward. So for comparison, we take those who even bothered to join the site and roughly 0.8% will be motivated and 0.4% will ever push the organization forward. Granted that 0.4% is 1,421 people - far more than even joined my Facebook group up to this point.
I just take this all into consideration when Peter Joseph says on his radio address that he thinks the Zeitgeist Movement needs 50 million members to really be taken seriously. I would imagine that would be a good starting point, but he fails to keep in mind the fact he promotes his first movie still, which still promotes conspiracy theories and will alienate the religious.
Roughly 24 million Americans could be described as agnostic or atheist, and while the Zeitgeist Movement is international, their biggest base of support is in the United States (but also Canada and the United Kingdom). Let's be realistic, if you want to change the world, you need to concentrate heavily on changing the United States. So if they were able to get all American atheists to jump on board, that'd be half their goal. Given that, most atheists in America aren't conspiracy theorists and if nothing else, Part II of the first movie will definitely push the majority of them away.
Further, most big time conspiracy theorists are not anti-religion, considering how many followers Alex Jones has vs how many are in the Zeitgeist Movement, even Jeff Rense is a bigger deal than Peter Joseph. Most of them are also skeptical of the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist Movement and simply compare it to communism and think nothing more of it.
Aside from the alienation of the religious, that being the majority of the world's population (myself not included, because I'm an atheist), and the alienation of those who do not believe in conspiracy theories (again, likely the majority of the population), we run into more problems.
Aside from promoting a resource-based economy and advancements in automation, there's absolutely nothing in the Zeitgeist Movement's platform which would suggest they give a shit about anyone else but themselves. I do believe that the members of the Zeitgeist Movement definitely want to help others, but how does it look when there's not a single project to help feed the starving or house the homeless? You can read more about my general objections to the platform/methods of the Zeitgeist Movement on the last page of my review of Zeitgeist: Addendum.
Where are you going to get 50 million people willing to voice their support when you offer no proof of wanting to do good, other than armchair debates about robots, peak oil, and drug legalization, promote conspiracy theories, and rail against the religious and call them stupid?
Just because more people make two clicks to join the Zeitgeist Movement's Facebook group or sign up for their mailing list, doesn't mean that the movement is growing balls-to-the-walls; more people join crappy social networks each day than join the Zeitgeist Movement.
Roughly 400 people or so sign up for The Zeitgeist Movement's mailing list each day, and unless something big happens, it will take about 340 years for the list to get up to 50 million.
People have pointed out that my Facebook group has roughly 255 members, but that doesn't matter - I'm not the one claiming I'm going to change the world, nor do I have flashy movies that help recruit people.
In conclusion, I think the Zeitgeist Movement would spread a lot further if they get away from pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and freaking out the religious - but I doubt they will, even today the first film is still on the site and still promoting the same stupid shit.
It's not difficult to be an armchair revolutionary, you're just a few clicks away!
September 18, 2009
Upcoming movies for September and October
This month and next there are two movies that I plan on taking a look at, one is Camp FEMA which is coming out through Infowars, and while Alex Jones isn't technically the creator, he no doubt had a big hand in it so it will be in his section. He will also have a movie coming out on October 21, I believe it is, and it will be a follow up to The Obama Deception, and let's hope he did a better job than last time with his research.
If you know of any big movies coming out please tell me about them on here, twitter, Facebook, where ever you want to.
I said I would get Esoteric Agenda up as my next movie, but due to how much I have to look up, I don't think it will be first anymore, but it may come between Camp FEMA and Fall of the Republic, but that remains to be seen - if any other Jones movies are coming out or anything like that.
I also got up an article in my US Government section about COINTELPRO, be sure to check that out.
See you Monday!
Prison Planet QOTD:
September 17, 2009
Economic collapse really is coming soon
A Time article says it all.
Best selling author Douglas R. Casey says:
"We are facing the greatest depression in the history of the world."
This is exactly what the conspiracy theorists have been saying, and there have been depressions in the past, they could be correct on this one. I'm open to the idea that they might be.
Howard J. Ruff, in the same article says further:
"We will look back on 20% inflation with nostalgia."
This is another thing they've been saying. It's important to note that Casey and Ruff are not conspiracy theorists nor have they appeared on Alex Jones radio show (that I know of, but I doubt it).
Casey, 34, has advised audiences to leave their property in a basement safe in stead of a safe-deposit box or to speculate in the real estate of countries such as Chile and Colombia when, he says, political troubles have depressed land prices. "Buy when blood is running in the streets," he says.
That's exactly what's going on, so it's pretty convincing blood could be running in the streets.
Another Time article, published a year prior to the one above, has Casey telling us:
The message of Crisis Investing is simple. A depression of unprecedented magnitude will hit the world [...] because of excessive controls and distortions in the economy created by the U.S. Government. Says Casey: "This depression is going to make the 1930s look like a technical correction. This one is going to be a real doozy."
Now I'm getting nervous, this is what a lot of people have been talking about. And Neal Boortz has me on this one, considering Casey even says:
Gold will eventually hit at least $1,600 per oz.
So is it true?
In a couple of years could this all come to pass?
Apparently so, everyone's saying it, now Time is reporting it.
Oh wait, the articles are from 1980 and 1981? The predicted depression is set to begin in 1983?
Well I'll be dipped!
More proof that conspiracy theorists and some "economists" cycle the same garbage over and over again, and people at it up, over and over again. Casey was giving talks for $1,000 per person about the coming economic doom.
Thanks to an anonymous person who showed me these articles.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,954583,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949094-1,00.html
Prison Planet QOTD:
All too fitting:
September 16, 2009
What I learned about conspiracy theorists
While looking around for new 9/11 conspiracies I found an interesting article that uses sarcasm to talk about conspiracy theorists: What I Learned
I think it's absolutely one of the best reviews of the 9/11 conspiracy theorist mindset I've ever seen. I want to share some of my favorite lines from it.
- The silence of the thousands of military & civilian authorities who must have been involved in order to pull off such a widespread conspiracy and the silence of the true witnesses and recovery/cleanup volunteers can be easily explained by the government buying their silence. Thousands. And it's worked perfectly, since nobody actually part of the conspiracy has stepped forward.
- Top Pentagon officials suspiciously and abruptly cancelled travel plans on Sept. 10 for the next morning, apparently due to security concerns, so they were obviously part of the plot. They cancelled their travel so they could stay where it was safe. In their office building. In the Pentagon.
- If the 9-11 Commission report is flawed or incomplete, it obviously means that the attacks were orchestrated by the United States, not that the report was simply...flawed. Or incomplete.
- The U.S. is actually quite popular worldwide; so much so, in fact, that its government must create artificial terrorist organizations to attack it. Left to their own devices, everybody else pretty much respects Americans and leaves them alone.
- It takes the complacency or cooperation of the world's largest superpower to hijack a defenseless civilian aircraft.
- The WTC towers fell in what was obviously a controlled demolition. The largest, messiest, deadliest, most witnessed, most mismanaged, most ill-timed, most poorly executed, and most uncontrolled controlled demolition in history.
- Those plane crashes were like so totally fake cuz they were so totally unlike all the real fiery passenger jet crashes into buildings I've seen in real life.
- When you refer to the planes, say "alleged aircraft." When referring to the terrorists, say "alleged terrorists." Because not only can we not be sure they even existed, but also, "alleged" has such a nice, objective ring to it.
- The same nefarious conspirators that pulled off the single largest concerted suicide attack in history forgot to make a hole in the Pentagon to help fakethe airliner impact site.
- Incompetence, being unprepared, not foreseeing events, rushed decisions, finger pointing, blame trading, and hysteria equal "conspiracy."
- More information only muddles "the truth:" The most accurate and complete reports of any disaster are from selections of the first hurried reports, not from more complete, thoughtful analysis and more thorough eyewitness reports that come later
- When we hear witnesses describing "something like a bomb going off" in the Pentagon, we should ignore subsequent (and concurrent) eyewitness reports of a rather large passenger jet flying into exactly the same spot, and ignored reports and photos of engines, landing gear, other aircraft parts, aircraft passengers, and other debris being found on and in the site, and absolutely no evidence of any explosive.
- No buildings in history ever fell because of fire until 9-11. And if the WTC towers were the first modern, steel structures to collapse by fire, it is not a testament to the intelligent engineering put into the design of skyscrapers in general, but only evidence that the WTC was brought down by other means. No, I don't mean by airplanes filled with thousands of pounds of fuel ramming into them, I mean by a bomb.
- Steel supports must liquify at their melting point of 3000°F in order to weaken and fail, and everything that metalurgists and engineers have told us about heat of only about 700°Fweakening steel is false, and for thousands of years, metal workers like blacksmiths and armorers have just had it all wrong, because they only needed large blast furnaces, spigots, and molds to form horseshoes, swords, and plowshares from liquid metal, and they didn't need a hammer and anvil, as you see in Hollywood movies' special effects.
- It doesn't make sense that remains of the hijackers and passengers, who hit the sides of mostly open-spaced office buildings at hundreds of miles an hour and ejected out the other side, were some of the first remains discovered, and not under thousands of tons of rubble straight down. The body parts must have been planted on streets, on the roofs of buildings, and through broken windows by burglars. Or something.
- If video is poor quality, or with low frame rates (like with a surveilance film), it must be fake.
- The WTC towers fell straight down (more or less), which proves that it was a controlled demolition. If it were a true building falling down, it would havefallen over like a popsicle stick.
- Although video clearly shows smoke and debris being blown out the pancaking WTC upper floors as the floors collapse against each other, but video of planned, controlled building demolitions clearly shows bright flashes of explosions before the building begins collapsing, the explosives planted in the towers must be some new super-secret kind because the explosive effect obviously goes back in time and starts the collapse of the building before the explosions throw stuff out the windows. So now there's the whole "Government Stuff Can Travel Through Time" consipiracy, and don't get me started.
- George W. Bush is at once America's most deviously intelligent autocrat and its most stupidest president ever.
- When an eyewitness describes a loud sound or strong, sudden vibration as "like a bomb," it means unequivocally that it was a bomb, because, you know, people have so much experience identifying bomb noises versus nearby passenger jet crashes
- 99.9% of the world's top engineers, architects, physicists, and chemists are all wrong, and I am right, because I read the Intarweb and I am so smart.
And the most telling:
- If I repeat the same absurd claims enough times, they will become truth: There are over 6.5 billion people in the world, and about 1.1 billion of those people use the Internet. Chances are, I could claim anything on the Web, and at a million-to-one odds, over a thousand people would believe me. In the age of the Internet, that makes me an expert.
- I can't be wrong because thousands of people believe my theories. But you can be wrong even though hundreds of millions believe you, because we all know there are millions of stupid people in the world.
- Any information that comes from the government is suspect, because everybody knows that "the government" is one vast conspiracy utterly controlled by a small number of evil-doers, not made up of millions of honest, hard-working people, at all levels of bureaucracy, of all ages, of all parties, of all walks of life, each fighting in their own way for truth, justice, and the American way.
- The government has a track record of blowing up its own buildings to push its own nefarious agenda, like they did in the Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 WTC attack, because, you know, those attacks enabled the government to, you know,... do stuff, and stuff. So you can see this isn't a new idea for them.
Who am I kidding? The whole thing is great, check it out!
In other news, my review of the Zeitgeist Radio Address is going to wait, because Peter Joseph implied that there will be another show debunking the debunkers, but if the next show is a regular show then I'll just finish it up. I'm trying to better allocate my time here, especially with that new Alex Jones movie coming out in 2 days.
QOTD, From Prison Planet:
September 15, 2009
Pat from Screw Loose Change challenges Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen released a statement shortly after his imaginary interview with the president challenging anyone who disagrees with him to debate him on Larry King Live:
[ Reuters ] Appearing on The Alex Jones Show today to discuss his video address to Barack Obama, Charlie Sheen has challenged those who have publicly attacked him for speaking out on 9/11, particularly Meghan McCain, Rush Limbaugh Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, to debate him on CNN's Larry King Live.
Pat from the blog Screw Loose Change, one of the most popular 9/11 debunking sites, if not the most well known, stated:
[ Screw Loose Change ] I Accept Charlie Sheen's Challenge
Let's roll.
Chuck, I'm publicly attacking you for speaking out on 9-11. I promise not to bring up your hookers or your divorces or your drug use; I promise to keep the debate solely on the evidence presented in your video address to President Obama.
So what do you say? Have your people contact my people.
So, will Sheen accept? Probably not. I'd love to see it happen, but I don't think he would even dream of doing it. The only thing I can imagine is if Sheen is more crazy than he's letting on (likely), but we'll see.
QOTD, from Facebook:
