Movies 4 Your Mind: JFK

Before we dive into the topic of topic's regarding conspiracy theory, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, let me suggest to you a movie that does a nice job of dissecting the different pieces of evidence and information that show the complexity of this event and how it leads to conspiracy theories. With an all-star cast including Kevin Costner, Joe Pescci, Walter Matheiu, and Gary Oldman, this film has been regarded as one of the better illustrations of investigation of this infamous assassination. Enjoy the trailer.

The Walking Dead Conspiracy Pt. 2: How the government creates zombies

If you're a fan of the show The Walking Dead, you already know how everyone is infected, and becoming a zombie is inevitable. Obviously it's an ingeniuos idea that lets the plot of the TV series conspire a trajectory of framework as to how the public is infected.  But is it really an geniune idea that the writers came up with, or are they revealing what they feel is conspiracy.

I've discussed the idea of infecting the public through vaccination, and public infections have been shown through the Gulf War Syndrome, along with reports of current vaccinations causing deadly side-effects, the public's view regarding vaccines questions the current state of mandatory vaccinations.  But the marketing behind the vaccines pushes the public perception of absolute need for a cure.

Is there a conspiracy to infect the public? We already know how vaccines have become mandatory for children to enroll in school.  Newborns have a schedule for which they recieve their vaccinations.  If other vaccines that aren't required such as Gardasil bring up many questions regarding the development of issues, Operation Paperclip could have discovered the key to making the public a ticking time bomb.

The Walking Dead...

Researchers believe that population control is the desire behind infecting the population, and the marketing behind this infection is evident with the rampant running of commercials pushing for the need to be vaccinated.

But vaccination isn't the only way to create a zombie...

A zombie is a soul-less corpse that comes back to life, feeding on the living.  The way the goverment creates zombies is not just through infection by vaccination, but also actually controlling the public and their tools of survival.

Controlling the money of the population is another way to create zombies with unrepayable debt, emersing the population into a soul-less dependency to paying it off.

The ultimate goal is controlling the population, and by exploiting many paths, this group of controlling elites excercises their ideas in many fashions, even political.

As we will soon explore, a conspiracy to control the population is much deeper and more complex.  But it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory if it wasn't.

Movies 4 Your Mind: The Avengers (1998)

If you're looking for the superhero action movie being intertwined with conspiracy, you'll be disappointed after checking this movie out. But to show your that I'm not the only one talking about controlling the weather, The Avengers (1998) shows us that this conspiracy isn't too far-fetched. Starring Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes, and Sean Connery, this film begins to depict how controlling such a powerful force as nature and the weather can be a tool for evil. Enjoy.

A Long Lost Conspiracy: Theories behind the Bermuda Triangle

As a child, stories behind the mysterious disappearance of air crafts and ships in a region of ocean referred as the Bermuda Triangle always intrigued me.  The inexplicable nature of disappearances have led many to wonder what happened to all the missing pilots and vehicles.

Many people believe that there are supernatural powers behind these debacles (I as a child was one of them), but if you don't believe in such powers, the skepticism leads you to many questions.

Is there a conspiracy behind the Bermuda Triangle?

Throwing out aliens and anomalies, many conspiracy theorists feel that this could be experimenting with magnetic fields.  Many travelers of this area have noted errors in compass tracking throwing off travel paths, which could account for disappearance of airplanes as getting lost and sunk by these magnetic forces.

But what evidence is behind this magnetic force and the disappearances?

Nikola Tesla was an innovator of his time, specializing in magnets and high frequency energies in the 1900s.  His life's work has led to many useful inventions, some that have been withheld from the public, such as HAARP.

HAARP is a High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program that researches the effect of energy transmissions into the atmosphere, and learning how to control the weather.

The HAARP is a military based research project, and being developed under this department of research, one can only assume it's intent is to control the weather as a weapon.

The patent for this invention reads...

Thus, this invention provides the ability to put unprecedented amounts of power in the Earth's atmosphere at strategic locations and to maintain the power injection level particularly if random pulsing is employed, in a manner far more precise and better controlled than heretofore accomplished by the prior art, particularly by detonation of nuclear devices of various yields at various altitudes.

And many recent natural disasters that have devastated regions of the world have pointed towards this project as the culprit behind these catastrophes, such as the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami that hit Japan, and even the recent super storm Hurricane Sandy.

The rational behind these disasters is that nature and global warming are causing these types of disasters to occur.  But the simple fact that HAARP exists brings many conspiracy theorists to call into question the convenience of blaming mother nature.

The Bermuda Triangle and it's lore has been around since the time of Tesla and his research.  Could it be that governments have experimented with such research since the early 1900s?

Obviously any research project is going to need experimenting, blaming compass malfunctions and mysterious disappearances on a mythical region known as the Bermuda Triangle was the convenient solution.  Using nature as the scape-goat is just more imaginative convenience.

Movies 4 Your Mind: Contagion

In regards to vaccines and deadly viruses, this film Contagion staring Matt Damon, completely feeds to the conspiracy theorist that believe in manufactured infections of the public for population control.  This movie depicts the outbreak of a deadly virus, pushing humanity to the brink of extinction until a vaccine is created.  The issues that this movie illustrates not only involves how survival becomes key in such an environment, but also the way that upper echelons of society leave the lower rungs to fend for themselves as the distribution of vaccines priorities have invested interests.  Enjoy.

The Walking Dead Conspiracy Pt. 1: Infecting the public and the dark history behind Operation Paperclip.

In the early years of WW2, Nazi scientist began experimenting with rocketry, along with viruses and bacterias on concentration camp prisoners, leading them to discover the power of biological warfare. But soon after Hitler's Germany fell, the experimenting stopped.

Until...

The United States government decided to bring these German scientist into the country and continue funding research, dubbing this import of war criminals Operation Paperclip.

Their thought was if they didn't do this, their enemies would...

And so these scientist would eventually help create the NASA program and perfect aeronautics, as well as discover the great gift of vaccines through their microbiology experimenting.

But along with this experimenting, biological warfare would also be perfected.

The idea of rendering your opponent ill and ripe to conquer would lead many of these ex-Nazi scientist to discover new and deadly diseases.

One of their main experiments focused on disguising bacteria within the body, and slowly leading to death. Even though the polio vaccine helped nearly eradicate the virus, experimenting with such agents that breakdown and kill infected victims became an invested interest.

Population control...

Vaccines became the easy way to distribute such illnesses to masses of people, because, why would anyone question such an instrument that helped defeat polio...

Disguising bacteria that creates ill effects in vaccines isn't a far-fetched fantasy, especially if you desire to control the population.

Creating a population that is infected with a disease that could kill many people once something activates the illness would definitely be on the agenda of these people if they had that same research and developments that former Nazi scientists worked on.

As much as people want to believe that vaccines help cure different virus and illnesses, the fact of the matter is that these injections have become somewhat mandatory.  With the high number of vaccinations required this day in age, the idea of creating the "walking dead" becomes a conspiracy because of the results that vaccinations have created.

The public began to question vaccines after an article raised concerns with the high number of cases of children with autism.  The CDC lists what different vaccines can have as side-effects but the research is still regarded as inconclusive that vaccines don't cause diseases such as autism.

And creating a vaccinated population only leads the efforts of population control when different diseases can be injected and created in your system with a vaccination.

Scientist try to look for links between vaccines and different diseases, but if these ex-Nazi scientist learned how to disguise bacteria and diseases and include them into vaccinations, creating the "walking dead" wouldn't be that difficult.

Movies 4 Your Mind: The Adjustment Bureau

Since we are moving into the topic of a group of elites having an intent to control the world, lets look at a movie that touches on these ideas.  This film involves involves the world of politics, and with a major election coming up, we seek to look at the intent of each candidates campaign.  But what this movie infers to is, not only who is running the campaign, but the overall intent of controlling the path in which this person takes to get into office.  Are these candidates hand-picked by this elite group of people that intend to take over the world? This movie dives into such a conspiracy, and depicts how far a person with the right amount of power would go, in order to have a controlling stake in global domination.  Enjoy the trailer.

Adjustment Bureau Movie Trailer

Conspiracy and Politics: the origins and importance of conspiracy in politics

With a presidential election looming in the coming weeks, political conspiracy theories run wild and are spread through the campaigns and media we witness. Conspiracy theorist should appreciate this time of year as well, as they lobby their theories to the public to favor, or in spite of, one of the candidates, or even more times than not, neither one.

The relationship that conspiracy and politics share thrives this time of year.

But the conspiracy that seems to be most noted this time of year is that of a group of elites controlling the two party system, along with the candidates, to help them achieve complete global domination.

In my previous blog posts, I begin discussing this idea.  With different ideas of this group of elites doing whatever they can to establish control over people, we explore the behavior by politicians that is interpreted as conspiracy by these theorists.  Believe me, there is a lot to explore.

Not even mentioning the infamous assassinations (JFK, RFK, MLK Jr), this relationship that politics and conspiracy theory has is a very delicate relationship.  But to understand it, we must first look at how conspiracy theory came to be understood inside our realm of politics and society.

A famous researcher of conspiracy, Richard Hofstadter, has researched the paranoid style of thought in American politics.  This style of thinking forces people outside of what he calls the political consensus, or the group of people that agree with, and work with the current political system.  Those outside of this consensus are considered deviants, and labeled as paranoid because this consensus feels they are paranoid about the current way of life.

Hofstadter goes on to assert that, to a degree, conspiracy is a part of politics in the way that politics has to deal in secrecy.  By this assertion, we assume that the intent of secrecy within politics is in the dimension of campaign running as well as policy making.  But we also consider how conspiracy theory fills in the blanks of this secrecy that we as people yearn to understand.

People have, overtime, built a natural reaction to question what they don't understand or what they want to understand.  It is a desire to uncover truth or verify facts.

So naturally, questioning an entity that works within secrecy creates this desire to know and understand what they are hiding.  This is what creates the relationship between politics and conspiracy. Whether its necessary or not is another thing, but the fact of the matter is that this perceived relationship is what helps explain how politics creates conspiracy and how conspiracy works with politics.

Where Your Money Is Really Going: The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy and how banks run this world

Time for a history lesson...

The idea of banking has been around for quite some time. Originally, when gold was the currency, the people who own vaults became bankers by default. Imagine carrying around pounds and pounds of gold just to go to the market, doesn't sound very convenient does it? So instead of carrying gold, people would deposit it into these vaults, and the goldsmith would issue out tenders of how much gold this person had in the vault, thus creating a money tender backed by gold, or paper money.

So now that people are walking around with paper money, backed by this gold stored in a vault, the goldsmith's decided it was time to make some profit.  With all this gold, the idea of lending money to people was created, along with charging interest.  These new bankers were lending out money that they were holding on to for other people, and making a profit off of other's gold.  Still with me??

Now let's fast-forward a couple hundred years...

The idea of banking is now established, and with it lending and charging interest, fractionalized banking is created.  In today's world, banks still do this type of business, except there is one major problem; this money is no longer backed by gold.

Here's where things start getting fishy....

In the early 1900's, the big bankers in the U.S., the Rockafeller's, the Morgan's, the Ford's, all these powerful families pushed for the idea of a central bank to be created to fund our country.  After years and years of opposing the idea of centralized banking (Alexander Hamilton vs Thomas Jefferson), these powerful companies finally slipped one past congress on Christmas-Eve, after most of congress had already been dismissed for the holiday.

And that is how our Federal Reserve was created...

(...and if you don't see conspiracy yet, allow me a few more lines)

This banking system is the main system in charge of printing and lending out money to our country.  Essentially, the Federal Reserve controls our own economy and not only how much money is available to the people of the United States, but also how much this money is worth.

Because this Federal Reserve Bank is allowed to print it's own money (remember, each dollar says "Federal Reserve Tender"), it controls the money of the nation.  So if this is the case, this bank should be property of the United States as well, right?

Wrong....

This bank is owned by none other than those same families that help establish the United States central bank, The Federal Reserve.

Now, lets apply the history lesson earlier into how the Federal Reserve System works.  If this bank holds the nation's gold, and prints out tenders of this gold, why is it charging us interest to receive these "Federal Reserve tender's?" Because they absolutely are....

Not only that, but remember, The Federal Reserve is also incharge of how many of these tenders are distributed and how much value these tenders have (see, inflation).

Still don't smell conspiracy..... well, lets put it this way then....

The Federal Reserve is directly responsible for the way our economy is either prospering, or failing.  It controls the nation's money.  The Great Depression, stock market crashes, inflation, poverty, banks failing, home defaults, and national debt are all related to our status as an economy.  Am I saying these bankers are responsible for the Great Depression and poverty? That answer will always be 'Yes.'

Control money, and essentially you control the world.  Because of the power of money, having influence over money is a step towards dominating the people that use that money.... and a step closer to ruling the world.

A Recipe for Conspiracy: How conspiracy theorist look for a desired outcome

When discussing conspiracy theories, the fact of the matter is that a "conspiracy theory" is simply a hypothesis of what could have happened.

Remember; the way you approach the evidence usually determines your outcome.

And conspiracy theorists usually tend to have a desired outcome in mind when explaining a conspiracy. Truth is what a theorist looks for, but conspiracy involves secrecy, and the desire to uncover truth becomes greater because of the secrecy.

Here is where the problem begins...

Conspiracy theorist already have an answer in mind when approaching evidence. But unlike a scientist who uses evidence to dictate a conclusion, a conspiracy theory uses evidence to shape a conclusion.

Much in the same way a lawyer is picking and choosing the evidence to shape their argument and make it stronger.

Seeking out a possible explanation for 9/11 or JFK's assassination can become a never-ending search because each new piece of evidence creates a deeper conspiracy, and can potentially lead us further from the truth. As I mentioned earlier, conspiracy theories are just a hypothesis of what could have happened.

But once truth is found, does a conspiracy theorist stop looking for answers? What if they are not satisfied with the results? And what kind of results are satisfying to a conspiracy theorist; the most outlandish story or the most sensible hypothesis?

Obviously, conspiracy theorists desire something when searching for an answer. But that something is "truth" only as they would understand it.

Movies 4 Your Mind: The Bourne Identity

One of my favorite movies, The Bourne Identity is an action-packed movie staring Matt Damon. This film delivers the thrills of a conspiracy led plot and entices the mind with the ideas of government mind control and behavioral programming.

A former government assassin that has to work his way out of danger in an attempt to find his memory and identity, The Bourne Identity shows us a side of the government that conspiracy theorist have speculated on for many years. The film is action-based, but the ideas it illustrates has an eerie undertone and allusion to the government's MK-Ultra experiments.  Enjoy the trailer.

Bourne Identity Movie Trailer

Manchurian Candidate Pt. 2: Project MK-Ultra and the government's conspiracy to control our minds

A C.I.A. based experiment that started in the 1950s, MKUltra (a.k.a. Project MK-Ultra) was a top-secret scientific operation that looked into the modification of human behavior. This project later worked on developing a truth serum, along with the experimenting on mind control.

Even though most of the project's files were destroyed, the remaining files were declassified in 2001. The public began to learn more about the governments experiments with mind control, and further add belief to many conspiracy theories.

This infamous project revealed how the government was conducting experiments using drugs and hypnosis on citizens without their consent. The projects overall focus revealed to have been on programming behavior and control of the mind.

Documentary clip on the history of MK-Ultra

MK-Ultra has a very dark history that many people have studied and become intrigued by. With the public learning about this secret government project, conspiracy theorists began to acknowledge certain aspects of conspiracy within this project.

JFK, RFK, and any other suspected assassination plot would be dissected again, except this time, the conspiracy would have evidence to support the idea of government involvement.

A "Manchurian Candidate" would become the focus of these theories and lead theorist to believe that the assassins were programmed to commit the crimes.

Testimony about the MK-Ultra experiments

Project MK-Ultra has been looked at by many once the remaining documents were declassified. But the paper trail that this project left behind seems to only bring up more questions.

Conspiracy theories look for evidence, to arrive to their understanding of truth. The further we explore evidence, the more evident it becomes that interpretation only leads to conspiracy when there's no conclusive answer.

MK-Ultra gave conspiracy theories an idea to work from, but the knowledge of this project has only led to more conspiracies than it has answers.

Conspiracy in the Rubble: Truth behind the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing

At 9:05 a.m. on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and injuring over 680 more. The bomb was built by McVeigh and co-conspirators, packing 108 bags of highly-explosive fertilizer into a rental truck, and parked it outside of the building minutes before the explosion. This was considered the deadliest terrorist attack in America until 9/11.

After McVeigh's arrest, the other accomplices were detained, and the investigation proceeded.

Even though the outcome of the investigation concluding that McVeigh's bomb was the cause of the entire destruction, evidence and tests have led many to believe that something bigger was in play. Based on evidence, experts have suggested that there were more explosive devices used in this bombing, inside the building.

This federal building housed not only D.E.A. and A.T.F. offices, but a child daycare as well.

The documentary, A Noble Lie touches on the evidence that many investigators ignored, and have continued to ignore throughout the years.

Within a year of the bombing, the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was passed. On June 2, 1997, Timothy McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death.

Conspiracy theorist have claimed that the bombing was an inside job, in which the government may have been involved or had knowledge about it. The evidence left from the destruction suggest that Timothy McVeigh was not the lone culprit in this attack, even though he was the only assailant sentenced to die.

These theorist feel that McVeigh was a scapegoat in this event, in order to create paranoia within the public and help the Anti-terrorism Act of 1996 pass through office.

The act impacted the habeas corpus in the United States, which effected the appeals process of the court system.

McVeigh was eventually convicted, without much of an appeal process, and sentenced to death. Even with the evidence gathered from the rubble suggesting that he was not acting alone, his accomplices could not be directly linked to committing the attack, and were only charged with aiding.

McVeigh claimed that this was an attack on the government, an even though it proved apparent, the ultimate truth is that the size of the bomb he placed in the moving truck could not cause such destruction.

Timothy McVeigh would eventually be put to death on June 11, 2001.

Whether the government was involved, or knew about the attack prior to the bomb going off, the facts show that bomb could not have done such damage.

Though it was an act of terrorism, the public has been led to believe that everyone involved has been prosecuted and convicted.

Movies 4 Your Mind: Arlington Road

In my previous post, I discussed the ideas of paranoia, and the effect it can have on one's thought process. The film Arlington Road, staring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, shows how such paranoia changes not only how one views the world around them, but also how the rest of the world views such a paranoid person. This is a suspenseful thriller, with a twist at the end that makes it worth watching. Enjoy the trailer.

The Paranoia of Conspiracy: The effect paranoid thoughts have on creating conspiracy theories

“Conspiracy theories are the refuge of the disempowered.” 
― Roger Cohen, columnist New York Times

Mark Fenster, author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture, argues that we need to change the way we understand conspiracy theories. His thoughts on paranoia illustrate the effect that falling into a "paranoid style" of analyzation has, which can make a single incident be seen as something greater.

This can also lead to a misinterpretation or misreading of evidence when trying to explain this incident. 

(Paranoia, paranoia! Everyone is coming to get me!)

To understand a conspiracy theory, we must first understand how a theory is created. Paranoia plays a large part in creating a conspiracy, which according to Fenster, has the potential to turn legitimacy into irrationality. In his book, he goes on to argue that theories born from this style invite conflict, which only damages our society.

So, approaching evidence without a "paranoid style" can help find the truth behind conspiracy and determing whether there's conspiracy behind the truth.

And as we further explore the evidence to determine the truth, conspiracy theories offer a piece of a bigger puzzle. How we put it together all depends on the way we approach each piece.


Sources used:
Mark Fenster's Conpsiracy Theory: Secrecy and Power in American Cultre (Univ. of Minnesota Press 2008)

Movies 4 Your Mind: The Manchurian Candidate

In my previous post, Manchurian Candidate Pt. 1: RFK Must Die, I mention the documentary RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy (2007), which covers this conspiracy. Another film, rightfully titled The Manchurian Candidate (2004) staring Denzel Washington, loosely refers to the brainwashing rumored to have been a part of this conspiracy and shows the depths of the experimenting.

Manchurian Candidate Pt. 1: The Conspiracy Behind the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy has many questions surrounding it that have led many to cry conspiracy. As these theories have stated, the assassin was brainwashed by the C.I.A. in order to commit carryout the killing.

Once arrested, the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, had no memory of the event or even killing Robert F. Kennedy. The investigation however, seemed to settle on a clear cut crime, with no others involved.

Because Sirhan could not remember the exact details of that evening, he would be hypnotized in order to recall his memory of the event. What proceeded, suggested to psychologist that Sirhan had been programmed to kill Kennedy, then forget it ever happened.

Clip from RFK Must Die

The documentary RFK Must Die shows footage of the hypnosis as well as expert opinions. This, along with other evidence, led many to believe the C.I.A. had been involved.

Even with more investigations taking place, Sirhan was still convicted and sentenced to death. It would be later overturned to life-in prison.

Forty-three years later, Sirhan still  cannot recall exactly what happened...

Theorizing Conspiracy

“Everyone loves a conspiracy.” 
― Dan Brown, author The Da Vinci Code

Conspiracy theories captivate the minds of many people. From UFO's to secret societies and assassinations, the public craves answers for these questions, and conspiracy theories offer a way to help explain.

At times, theories fit too perfectly, but more times than not, a conspiracy pushes the boundaries of imagination. These theories help our mind construct an answer, but they could also be the furthest thing from the truth...