The Osama Bin Laden Conspiracy Center

By now you’ve all heard the “news” that Osama bin Laden is on his way to meet his virgins, who are presumably all male. . . and goats. While I am quite pleased this rotten P.O.S. is dead, certain questions have been raised by this chain of events. Some might even say something's up! Indeed, here are some of the instant conspiracy theories surrounding his death. I’m not saying I believe them, but I want you to believe them. (Just kidding.) Please feel free to bunk or debunk or to add to the list!

1. The Biggie: It wasn’t Osama bin Laden they killed. This one was going to come up no matter what. Heck, people still think Elvis and Hitler are alive too. But Team Obama made this a lot worse by dumping the body at sea without giving the world a chance to come kick the corpse and check the VIN.

As anyone who’s ever tried to collect a reward while some mafia don looks skeptically at the body in your truck knows, it’s very hard to prove that a corpse is the person you claim it is. This has been a problem for law enforcement and militaries ever since Julius Caesar looked at Marcus Antonius’s bloated corpse and said, “quisnam est ut.” (“Who dat?”) Indeed, it took decades to identify Hitler’s body. They only recently figured out that Anastasia did indeed die where the Rolling Stones claimed. And they still don’t know if they got various Western outlaws.

So there will always be room for doubt, especially in the Middle East where facts are irrelevant to belief. Thus, no matter what, it was going to be hard to convince Middle Easterners and a handful of conspiracy nuts in the US that they actually killed THE Osama bin Laden.

And now they’ve gone and made this worse by dumping the body at sea. What were they thinking? Keep in mind, this is an administration that no one trusts and which desperately needs something like this to distract the public from their failures, i.e. they have an incentive to lie. Even the intelligence people can’t be trusted on this one. These are the same intelligence people who couldn’t get him for ten years, who claimed to have gotten him before, and who kept capturing body-doubles of various famous people and claiming they had the real thing. For all we know, Mr. Osarma ben Loden just bought the madras and is now sleeping with the fishes. Rest in peace Mr. ben Loden.

Likelihood: 50%.

2. The Timing Is Suspicious Part I: Does the timing bother you? It should. We’re told they’ve been following him for more than 10 months but just couldn’t find the right time to kill before now. Really? Could it be that Obama waited to have Osama killed until he needed help in the polls? With Libya turning into a disaster, the Taliban announcing yesterday that they are starting their annual offensive in Afghanistan (right after NATO claimed the Taliban no longer had the will to fight), and Trump making a monkey (in a non-racist way) of Obama, doesn’t the timing of this just seem a bit too good?

Likelihood: 95%.

3. The Timing Is Suspicious Part II: Why did it take so long to get him? And isn’t it suspicious that the military gets him now that even the Republicans are talking about cutting the military budget? Man, it's 1968 all over again! Actually, no, this one's silly. Our military doesn’t work that way because the funding people and the actual soldiers don’t really mix.

Likelihood: 2%

4. The Timing Is Suspicious Part III: Does it strike anyone as strange that Obama held a press conference at 10:30 at night EST? In the past, even when they got Saddam, they waited a day or so to check their facts and then had a traditional presser. Obama didn’t. Was it a coincidence that this announcement caused NBC to cut away from the end of Celebrity Apprentice. . . the show belonging to the man who has been embarrassing Barack bin Obama for several weeks now? I’m not saying it. . . but I am thinking it very loudly.

Likelihood: 99.2%

5. Those Dirty Pakistani Traitors!: How in the world could Osama have been living in luxury in Pakistan without the assistance and protection of the Pakistani security forces? Obama’s claim that Pahkeestahn was notified after the fact pretty much confirms that our own people knew not to trust Pakistan. Now it’s time to clean out that nest of traitors.

Likelihood: 60%

6. Those Dirty Pakistani Traitors!: Clearly, the government of Pakistan has been working with the US this entire time. They are puppets of the Americans, and Obama’s lie that he did not tell them about this was meant to cover up their complicity. Western dogs. Now it’s time to clean out that nest of traitors.

Likelihood: 60%

7. Bin Laden Worked for the CIA: Could it be that Osama Bin Laden switched sides and was working for the CIA since 2007? But if that’s the case, then why kill him? For one thing, this is a conspiracy and those never need to make sense. For another, why not? Maybe he had something he was going to do to embarrass the agency? Maybe they just got sick of cutting him checks? In any event, this pig was working for the man, man! Oh man.

Likelihood: 20%

8. There Was No Bin Laden: Man, it’s like this. Bush needed a way to feed the evil war machine and grab Iraq’s oil, and he wanted to blow up some building unrelated to (but nearby) the World Trade Center for reasons no one has yet figured out. So he personally blew up the World Trade Center and then invented Osama bin Laden to take the fall. Obama figured this out, but rather than expose Bush he used the Osama character to try to get his own glory too. Oh man, it’s all there. . .

Likelihood: 0.0%

That’s all I’ve got for now. Though I wonder where Hillary has been? Does she have sniper training? And did I hear that right that Osama actually died at a hospital in Texas where he was being treated for VD? And who is buried in Grant's tomb? Thoughts? Additions?

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

What Passes For "Conservative" At HuffPo

Leftists are interesting creatures. They are immune to reality. Logic and truth are foreign concepts to them. They are seething with hate. They love to put their ignorance on display. And sometimes, they pretend to be conservatives. Take, for example, Eric Margolis, who rants at Huffpo on occasion. Eric claims to be moderately conservative, defining himself as an “Eisenhower Republican.” You can tell me in the comments if you buy into that laugher.

To properly get a sense of who Eric is, let’s look at two pieces that he ran over at Huffpo about Afghanistan and Iraq. But first, some background: Eric is a fool with no understanding of history, no grasp on reality and an indifference to facts. He believes that “America has become addicted to debt and war,” and he seems to despise the American military, which he describes derisively as “professional soldiers” (in the Roman context) and “mercenaries.” He also thinks that using modern weapons in a place like Afghanistan is “cowardly”:

“In my view, as an old soldier and war correspondent, using heavy bombers to attack tribal levies or employing gunships and drones against tribal compounds is cowardly.”

Note the assertion that “America’s professional soldiers” are waging a war against civilians.

You may also note that Eric mentions that he is a former solider. In fact, he reminds us of this over and over because he thinks this means something. Perhaps he’s forgetting that Lee Harvey Oswald, Hitler and Alan Alda also were soldiers, and they were all less paranoid than Eric.

And speaking of soldiers, Eric has no love for “fire-breathing Gen. Stanley McChrystal” or our “Special Forces ‘mafia’.” He also hates Fox News, Republicans and the American people, as he was just sure that those morons would make McChrystal into a hero, and thereby the Republicans would “again sadly demonstrate they have become the party of America's dim and ignorant.” He also hates the Tea Party because it appeals to the “fears and prejudices” of its followers, and he rejects the Republican Party because it is influenced by the evil Tea Party.

Oh, and speaking of evil, in a 2009 essay titled “Don’t Blame Hitler Alone for World War II,” Eric claims that it was wrong to give Hitler full blame for World War II, because this was a “preventive war” forced on Hitler by the Soviets.

Ok, so that’s conservative Eric. Now let’s take a quick look at what he just wrote about Iraq and Afghanistan. Here are some highlights.

The Taliban are resisting “western occupation” of Afghanistan. . . forget that the Taliban were there long before the West arrived.

And why would we occupy Afghanistan you ask? Well, first he rants something about the US wanting to control the biggest exporter of heroin. But then he changes his mind mid-rant to alert us that the US wants Afghanistan to control its “oil”. . . which doesn’t exist.

But his real hatred is aimed at our being in Iraq. See if you can follow this:

He starts by saying that we only went into Iraq because the “Seven Sisters” have been squeezed out of their oil fields in places like Iran, and they needed Iraq’s oil wealth to get back into the game. The “Seven Sisters,” by the way, was the name given to the big seven American oil firms in the 1950s. Only four still exist and only two remain American.

But then he suddenly realizes that people might not buy the idea that we need Iraq’s oil because. . . well, we don’t. So he says that the real reason we wanted their oil fields was to gain influence over people like Japan who need the oil. Apparently, occupying Japan doesn’t give us enough influence. His proof? Well, “as the old saying goes, America’s trinity is ‘God, guns and gasoline.’” Wow, now that’s definitive!

Then he gets a little crazy. . . er:

1. He notes that “American ‘liberation’ left Iraq politically, economically and socially shattered, ‘killed’ in the words of former foreign minister, Tariq Aziz.” To back this up, he claims that “reputable studies estimate Iraq’s death toll at mid-hundreds of thousands to one million, not counting claims by UN observers that 500,000 Iraqi children died of disease as a result of the US-led embargo before 2003.” Of course, there are no reputable studies that say this, there are only a couple of far left guesses. Even the AP only puts the death toll at 100,000.

2. He goes on: “four million Sunni Iraqis remain refugees.” FYI, that’s more Sunnis than exist.

3. He says the “surge” only worked because Iran ordered the Shia Mahdi Army militia “to temporarily end resistance” and because of “deft bribery” by the Americans who spent “untold millions bribing Sunni fighters.”

4. Then he takes a quick side trip to warn us that Washington is building new “fortified embassies” in Kabul, Islamabad and Baghdad? These “may hold 1,000 ‘diplomats.’ Osama bin Laden calls them, ‘Crusader Fortresses.’” You see people. . . it’s all there in black and white!

5. And what about the “50,000 US troops left until 2011 . . . to ‘advise and assist”? Well, “to this old war correspondent and military historian, that sounds an awful lot like the British Empires employment of native troops under white officers.” Military historian? Yeah, sure.

6. Of course, he couldn’t leave the Jews out of this because no paranoid rant is complete without a little anti-Semitism. So, did you know that “Large numbers of Iraqis doctors and scientists have been murdered”? And guess who did it? Well, Eric doesn’t want to say definitively because there’s no “hard evidence,” but he lets us know that a lot of people are saying they were killed “by Israel’s Mossad.”

That’s probably enough for you to get the point. Eric is an anti-Semitic, anti-American nutjob with paranoid delusions of American schemes to conquer the world. He fits right in at Huffpo. And he is anything but a “conservative.”

I guess it’s become the vogue thing for leftists to masquerade as “conservatives.”


[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Conservatives: Beware The Crazies

I want to take a moment to discuss a danger to the conservative cause: the integration of the insane into the conservative community. During times of great economic and political upheaval, like the present, people will crawl out of the woodwork to take advantage of your heightened emotional state. They play to your fears. They spout false facts and use false logic. They make emotional appeals and demonize all who disagree. They are cultists without the god, and too many normal conservatives are being pulled in. This is a real danger to conservatism.

Yesterday, as I visited one of the websites that I often visit (I won’t name the site), I came across an article in which the author promoted a particular book. Despite recommending that people read this book, the web-author failed to mention that the book spins a vast, ignorant, misleading, paranoid and oft-discredited conspiracy. Indeed, the book is almost a model for how such false conspiracy theories are cobbled together:

1. Begin with an author who does not understand the subject matter about which they are writing, but is willing to claim unique, almost-clairvoyant insight;

2. Mix in cherry-picked data by including only facts that can be spun to further the theory and ignoring all contrary data or evidence;

3. String the data together in suggestive ways and allege that this is evidence of a vast conspiracy that threatens everything we hold dear -- or prevents us from achieving some better state of humanity;

4. Toss in a little false logic, usually centered around the "absence of disproof";

5. Allege a cover-up to explain the lack of data and the sketchiness of the theory -- though the author must simultaneously assure us that they have broken through the otherwise perfect cover-up; and

6. Demonize all potential critics of the theory and any expert who might provide a counter fact.

These are the same principles and mechanisms upon which the 911 truthers, the moon landing conspiracy theorists, and the great international Zionist conspiracy theorists build their mal-theories. They allege vast conspiracies based on irrelevant data and suggestions that the lack of disproof proves the theory -- a ridiculous bit of illogic that you could use to prove the existence of unicorns, leprechauns, or anything else. And when people try to challenge their "facts" or present "disproof", they accuse those people of being part of the conspiracy. Essentially, it's a self-proving delusion.

After reading the article, I pointed out that the web-author should not promote such a book, certainly not without warning about the nature of the book and the lack of credibility of the author -- a John Birch society member who has been vacillating between seeing the Supreme Court, the banks, the Federal Reserve, and a half dozen other institutions as either a communist or capitalist plot, and who claims that the AMA, the FDA and the American Cancer Society are “withholding the truth,” that vitamins cure cancer, because they have economic motives to keep you from curing your cancer.

The web-author responded that he had mentioned in some prior post that he does not condone the conspiratorial aspects of the book, but that he thought it would be a good primer for average people to get an understanding of monetary policy. But this is wrong. This is like recommending Chariots of the Gods, a book about aliens building the Great Pyramids, because the author presents a good primer on Egyptian construction methods. It’s like sending someone to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital because Marx does a good job of explaining the division between capital and labor. It is inappropriate to send people to advocacy books, particularly nutty ones, under the guise that the book provides a good basis for them to learn about an issue, especially without warning them about the degree to which they are being misled.

So why does this bother me? Because the adherents to these fantasy theories are learning to peddle their garbage to unsuspecting conservatives as just another reason for opposing Obama. They are trying to smuggle their agenda into the conservative movement disguised as legitimate concerns. And unfortunately, I am seeing more and more of it creep into the conservative community at large.

For example, every day I receive unsolicited faxes from a group that wants to scare me into opposing Obama. As you know, I do not support Obama. To the contrary, I oppose everything he's proposed. Yet, I am offended by these faxes. Their tone is hyperbolic and they are cholk-full of lies: ObamaCare makes private health insurance illegal and includes forced euthanasia, people older then fifty will be denied surgeries, ObamaCare social workers can seize your children and raise them, Obama is training a group to go house to house seizing guns, the FDA is making it illegal to grow your own food, and Obama has cut a secret deal to give Jerusalem to the Muslims. All lies. In fact, these are the same lies, slightly rephrased, that the wing nuts on the left used to scare their voters about Bush: Dick Cheney is hiding under your bed. But if you only give this patriotic, anonymous group twenty dollars, they can save you!

Now, on their own, these faxes mean nothing. I throw them away. But then I visit websites full of normal conservatives and I see these allegations repeated. That's right, these same insane theories are starting to appear on conservative websites, often promoted by normally intelligent conservatives who know better (or should know better).

This is highly destructive of our movement. Not only is it destructive of the intellectual core of our movement, because it replaces rational thought with illogic, it replaces fact with fiction, and it replaces reason with emotion and demonization, but it also distracts people from the real issues, and it scares off the people who might want to join us. Nobody wants to walk into a room full of terrified, angry people huddle in the corner shouting about burning a wizard.

It is time to stop listening to these flakes, and to tell them to go back to crazyland without us.

Further, conservatives need to repudiate the “idiot movement” that seems to be taking hold. For the same reasons that conspiracy theories are taking root, there seems to be a new strain of thinking that education is bad (often promoted by the same people who espouse the conspiracies). At website after website, I’m seeing more and more rants about “them educated” people and “them college types.” At one site, I saw the ridiculous rant: “we should make it so that you can’t serve in Congress if you went to college.” Yet, far from repudiating this fool, many of the normally reasonable conservatives at the site agreed.

Do you really think being uneducated is a good idea? Who do you think built the car your drive? Who designed the road or the bridge you crossed, the computer you’re using to read this, and the systems that bring you your food every day? Did a high school drop out invent your cell phone? What about that vaccine that kept you alive? Do you look for the stupidest doctor you can find? How about a dumb lawyer? Do you want your kids to have stupid teachers or are you taking them out of education because it's a waste of time?

And let me ask this, does anyone believe that the Founding Fathers were uneducated or that they would support a movement that views the educated with suspicion? Do not confuse those who misuse their education with education itself. To attack education is to attack everything that made this country what it is today.

Education is the pathway to the future. It always has been. It is about opportunity. Education is the key to your success. These days, having only a high school degree is the surest indicator of poverty. And it’s only going to get worse as the world becomes more advanced. If you don’t get an education, in fifty years, you’ll be doing the jobs illegal aliens won’t do.

Moreover, conservatism is an intellectual philosophy. It takes brains to be a conservative -- it takes only emotion to be a liberal. Conservatism, unlike liberalism, understands cause and effect and the fact that people react and adjust. It is often a difficult philosophy because you need to understand the future, you need to see how the world will change when people respond to your policy. It is about thinking ahead. Liberalism is about being swayed by emotion, about hero worship and trusting that a great leader, who knows more than you, will figure it out. This anti-intellectualism that is spreading in conservative ranks runs the danger of destroying conservatism and replacing it with a form of anti-liberal liberalism, and that’s not a governing philosophy, that's a cult of personality.

We need to stop being enticed by false, emotional appeals and crazy conspiracy theories, and start thinking reasonably: question authority, don’t join a cult.

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...

Film Friday: Capricorn One (1978)

Some movies are cultural markers. They highlight the beginning, or end, of an era. Capricorn One, directed by Peter Hyams (Outland, 2010), is such a movie. Capricorn One marks the moment American culture recognized that average Americans had not only lost their faith in their government, but actively began to believe their government capable of great evil. Capricorn One marks the beginning of the Conspiracy Era.

** spoiler alert **

The Plot

Capricorn One opens as NASA prepares to launch the first manned mission to Mars. Astronauts Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Peter Willis (Sam Waterston), and John Walker (O.J. Simpson) board the rocket. The Vice President sits in the reviewing stand awaiting the launch. The President did not come because many have begun to question whether the country can afford to continue exploring space in bad economic times. As the countdown slowly winds down, the capsule door suddenly opens. The astronauts are told to leave the capsule and are whisked away to a waiting plane. The rocket takes off without them.

There was a mistake, Dr. Kelloway (the always-fantastic Hal Holbrook) explains to the confused astronauts. A simple mistake. A contractor messed up, and if the astronauts had remained on the rocket, they would be dead by now. Unfortunately, Holbrook continues, the mistake was discovered too late to be corrected in time without scrubbing the mission. Scrubbing the mission would have meant the end of the program. . . and an end to manned exploration in space. So an alternative plan was formed. They would fake the Mars landing on a studio set. And when the rocket returned to Earth, Brubaker, Willis and Walker would be secretly flown to the splash down site, where they would await rescue, before returning home as badly-needed heroes.

Left with no choice, the astronauts reluctantly agree to participate in the deception. But on its return, the capsule loses its heat shield and burns up in the atmosphere. The astronauts are dead. And when Brubaker, Willis and Walker figure out what happened, they realize NASA can’t afford to let them be seen again. The chase is on.

The First Modern Conspiracy Movie

Released a few years after Watergate, Capricorn One marks the moment the American public first began to believe that their own government was capable of great evil. It marks the beginning of the modern conspiracy theory. Prior to Capricorn One, conspiracies were confined to criminal endeavors or foreign agents. Rarely did the government set out to deceive the population. And when it did, as in Close Encounters, it was done by honest government officials who were looking out for the best interests of the public. The idea of manipulating the American public for personal gain or to protect an agency from embarrassment was simply unheard of. . . and the government never killed its own people (except spies).

Compare this to the modern version of conspiracies, as seen in virtually any movie today. Typically, the most important officials in the government have entered into a secret deal to engage in some nefarious activities that will cause significant harm to the American people. Their motives are sinister, and their methods are murderous and sadistic. Modern conspirators waste no time sending out armies of black-clad, cold-blooded killers to eliminate anyone who even tangentially stumbles upon the conspiracy.

Capricorn One is the movie that marked this change in our culture. It is the film that first told us the American government itself could be a sinister, evil force -- not just a single bad actor in the government. And interestingly, intentionally or not, Peter Hyams lets us watch this transition within Holbrook’s character as the movie unfolds.

Indeed, when we first learn of the conspiracy, Holbrook acts like every other “conspirator” you could find in a 1950’s movie. He is the noble civil servant, pressed into a difficult corner, looking to do the right thing for the American people. He believes he is acting for the good of the public. He wants to protect the efforts of the thousands of people who toiled to make this program work and to save science from the budget axe of a short-sighted Congress. He wants to give America back its heroes and he wants to avoid causing another devastating blow to America’s self-confidence -- an issue on many minds during American’s national post-Watergate malaise. As he explains what happened to the astronauts, he is clearly heartsick. There are times you think he may cry, and you share his pain. Equally importantly, he doesn't threaten the astronauts. He reasons with them and pleads for their support. He does not want to hurt anyone.

But then things begin to go wrong. A NASA employee notices the telemetry readings cannot be correct. He brings this to Holbrook’s attention. But unlike modern conspirators, Holbrook doesn't have him killed. He gives the employee a chance. He tells the employee the machine is broken and instructs him to disregard the data. But the employee persists, and soon he attempts to share this information with a reporter friend -- Robert Caulfield (Elliot Gould). It is only then that the employee vanishes and a cover up put into place to hinder Gould’s investigation.

The treatment of Gould too is telling. Had this been a modern conspiracy movie, Holbrook would have ordered Gould eliminated. But that doesn’t happen here -- no black van appears to take Gould away in the night. At first, Gould is merely misled. They try to throw him off the track. But he persists. So they sabotage the brakes on his car. Could this kill him? Yes, but more likely it was only a message, as they easily could have killed him if they wanted to. When he doesn’t get this message, they frame him for drug possession, which gets him fired. With this “threat” neutralized, they ignore him. . . they don’t hunt him down.

But soon a much more modern conspirator emerges in Holbrook. When the capsule burns up on reentry and the astronauts escape the studio facility, Holbrook stops being the innocent conspirator of the 1950s and transitions into a role that would become Hollywood cliché: Holbrook sits behind a desk in a far away office, issuing terse orders over a phone to capture (and possibly kill) the three astronauts. He literally sends black helicopters to hunt them down.

Holbrook has lost his innocence, and so has the culture. Gone is the idea the government can be trusted and will never hurt us. In its place, people now believe in black helicopters and hit squads. And this reflects in the increasingly nasty tone most conspiracy theories have taken in our culture. The government doesn’t just hide the truth about aliens anymore, it blows up buildings to “hide the truth.” It doesn’t just act in our best interests anymore, it now manipulates us so it can carry out its own sinister agenda.

Capricorn One marked the moment this transition began. (Interesting, many credit Capricorn One with popularizing the moon landing conspiracy -- a ridiculous bit of paranoia, bad science and false logic that 6% of Americans, 28% of Russians and 25% of Britons believe.)

Death of Professional Journalism

Capricorn One also marks the dying gasp of old school, professional journalism, an issue highlighted this week by the passing of Walter Cronkite. Indeed, Capricorn One not only shows us what journalism was, it hints at what journalism was about to become.

Consider the character of Robert Caulfield (Elliot Gould). Gould is not a modern attack journalist. Notice, for example, how gently he treats Kay Brubaker (Brenda Vaccaro) when he believes her husband has given her clues about what is going on. He doesn't run over and shove a microphone in her face, he asks for an interview. He is respectful. He even asks for permission to delve into more “personal” questions. And unlike modern reporters who love to hear themselves speak, he listens, he does not talk. Nor does he speculate. Nor is he a tabloid journalist, not by our standards. Gould suspects that something is amiss with the Mars landing because his friend told him about the telemetry and because his friend disappeared. But while this would be more than enough evidence for modern journalists to this story, Gould doesn't write the story because he simply doesn't believe he has enough verifiable facts. Thus, he represents old-school journalism.

Yet, his editor, played by David Doyle (Bosley of Charlie’s Angles), sees him as a tabloid journalist. He repeatedly assaults Gould for proposing wild theories, for failing to gather facts, and for failing to cover “hard news” like train derailments. He laments what Gould means for the future of the profession. And in making these complaints, he foreshadows the exact road journalism would take, and it would do so largely because of the new trade in rumor, paranoia, and conspiracy. Thus, as with the shift in thinking about conspiracy theories, Capricorn One gives us a look at how journalism once was, and shows us where it would head in the Conspiracy Era. And that’s the way it was.

Check out the new film site -- CommentaramaFilms!

[+] Read More...

[-] Collapse Post...