Today marks forty-six years since John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. He was either killed by a single gunman with serious mental issues and weapons training who got very, very lucky, or by (as Wikipedia puts it), “the CIA, the KGB, the American Mafia, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, former Vice President Richard Nixon, sitting Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, the Federal Reserve, the military-industrial complex, representatives of Big Business, or some combination of those entities and individuals.” None of these include my personal favorite; the explanation given in the TV show Red Dwarf.

The idea that Kennedy was assassinated as part of a larger conspiracy is one that’s very popular. People don’t want to accept that one single person could’ve killed the president; especially not someone as young and handsome and popular as JFK. They’d much rather believe Kennedy was killed by a huge group of faceless Them, because we all know They won’t stop at anything to rule the world!

Why does this make me think of the Birthers and Teabaggers out there?

There’s no real evidence that supports this notion. All the evidence, from ballistics on down, points to Oswald shooting Kennedy. But as we’ve seen with other articles in this series, reality does not play a role in conspiracy theories.

I suppose it’s possible that Kennedy might’ve been killed under orders from one of the various groups or people listed above, but there is just no evidence. Yes, there’s been assassination conspiracies before, most notably against Lincoln, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.

I can understand the desire to believe in this particular theory. After all, if it was a conspiracy then that means that at least someone, somewhere, is in charge of things and random events like Oswald getting lucky don’t happen. But the reality is that they do.

Hopefully in the future people will start ignoring the evidence-lacking conspiracies and just pay attention to the facts and the science in the case. For some reason, though, I’m not holding my breath.

For them as wants an entertaining, scientifically accurate, takedown of this as well as a couple other conspiracy theories, check Penn & Teller – Bullshit – The Complete Third Season. They’ve a great episode in there dealing with it!

There’s a man out there pretending he’s President of the USA. His name is Barry Soetoro (though he might lie and tell you it’s really Barack Hussien Obama). He’s a seriously dangerous individual and no matter what you might think of him or his politics, he has no right to be President of these United States. After all, he wasn’t born in the USA, and even if he was, it doesn’t matter, cause his father wasn’t! Therefore, he isn’t an American citizen and has no business running our country!

Or so They would have you believe.

“They” in this case are a group of fringe idiots called “Birthers”, who contend that Obama has no right to be President because he’s not a legitimate US citizen. This people are what you call “wrong”.

Let’s break down the claims.

Obama was not born in the United States!

Probably just a damn fake!

He was, actually. He was born in Hawaii in 1961. We know this for several reasons, such as a birth certificate, and a newspaper announcement. Now to be fair, the actual birth certificate itself has not been released by the government in Honolulu. Instead something called “A Certification of Live Birth” was released, but it seems to have all the necessary info. To me the distinction between the two is pointless and non-existent, and I consider this certification to be enough proof, but there are those out there who want the actual birth certificate itself released (including Andrew Sullivan who says he wants it done so the issue will go away. He’s living in a dream world. No proof will be enough for the Birthers).

Obama’s father wasn’t born in the USA, so Obama can’t be a US citizen!

This is quite a silly little claim and if true would, among other things, invalidate the Presidency of Chester A Arthur, whose father was born in Ireland. But it doesn’t matter that his father wasn’t an American citizen. The law stipulates that to be an American citizen, you simply have to be born in the USA. This leads to a phenomenon with illegal immigration known as “anchor babies”, where illegals have children in the USA in the hopes that, should they ever be caught, the fact that the children are citizens will be enough to keep the kids from being deported.

This particular issue has been settled in the law since 1896 thanks to the Supreme Cuort ruling in United States v Wong Kim Ark. That ruling applied the 14th Amendment which explicitly states:

Section One: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

So that theoretically settles that. Besides, as pointed out earlier, if this belief from the Birthers is true, then Chester A Arthur would not have been officially President, and can you imagine the chaos that would cause? I mean, if not for him, we wouldn’t have… all those… things… and stuff… that he did. Yeah!

Obama went to college under the name “Barry Soetoro!” with a country of birth listed as Indonesia!

This one couldn’t be any more false if it were named Falsey McFalse! It comes from an April Fool’s Day joke! It’s debunked thoroughly at snopes.

Obama traveled to Pakistan at a time when US citizens weren’t allowed to do so! He must’ve used a passport from Indonesia, so he’s not an American!

Oh, dear, so much of that statement is wrong. Snopes again.

Stephen Colbert addressed this on his show the other night, complete with an interview with Orly Taitz, the psychopathic dentist/lawyer/real estate agent who is one of the driving forces behind the Birther movement. God, she’s five kinds of batshit nuts. His interview of her is hilarious!

As I said before, Andrew Sullivan wants the original birth certificate produced, just to shut up the Birthers. I don’t suppose I have any problem with that. Sure, release the damn thing.

But it won’t do any good. These people are not connected to reality and this isn’t really about Obama’s birthplace; it’s really about them hating on him because he’s black/a Democrat/a secret Muslim/whatever. If you say to them, “Will the certificate be proof enough?” and they say yes, and you give it to them, they’ll come up with a reason why it’s not good enough. They’ll move the goalposts so that no matter what proof you give them, it won’t be good enough. They will never change their minds.

Not unlike religion, really…

The Illuminati are a super-secret, evil organization that rules the world. They control every facet of your existence. They control our elections, our corporations, our money. They’re the ones behind the Kennedy assassination, and the deaths of Princess Diana and Bob Marley. They control the horizontal, they control the vertical. They rule everything and we are but mere puppets in their schemes.

Well, that’s the theory, anyhow.

Yes, ladies and gents, welcome to the grand-daddy of all conspiracy theories, “the Illuminati rule the world!”

The movie Angels and Demons comes out this weekend, and the Illuminati is one of the major players in the story. I’ve read the book, and found it better and more interesting than the more popular The da Vinci Code, but it’s still a bit trite.

Because of the movie, interest in the Illuminati and the conspiracy theories surrounding them is going to be massive, and I fully expect the History Channel and the Discovery Channel to milk this for all its worth, showing wall-to-wall Illuminati nonsense which will likely be presented in the, “well, this probably isn’t true, but you never know for sure! (sly wink to the camera)” kind of way.

The Illuminati was inded real group, founded in Bavaria in 1776. It was wiped out a few years later in 1785 (but of course that’s just what THEY want you to think). At that point it passed from the realm of history and reality and into the realm of paranoid conspiracy theories, and not just one or two. No, the Illuminati features in a great many (for a good list see here).

Of course there’s no real evidence for any of these conspiracy theories related to the Illuminati. Like all conspiracy theories they’re ultimately based on a hope that someone, somewhere, is in control of things. Otherwise, all the bad things that happen are just bad things. But if THEY control the world, then at least someone causes the bad things to happen. They’re still bad, but at least not random.

Also like all conspiracy theories they enable those who believe in them to feel some power. They can tell themselves, “These folks are mighty and strong, but I was clever enough to outwit them and see through them! Go, me!”

For a really good article on the subject, check out this link to the Skeptic’s Dictionary. It goes into plenty of detail.

And remember: take “novus odoro seculorum” cum sallo granis.

Roswell, New Mexico - Nothing special happened here, unless you can prove otherwise!

On or about July 7, 1947, an experimental weather balloon crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. Due to over enthusiasm on someone’s part, a press-release was sent out saying that they had found the remains of a “flying disk”. A correction was issued later that day, everyone realized their mistakes, and that was the end of it.

Well, at least it was the end of it in the world of reality.

The story was largely ignored until the 1970’s when it began to become widely known within UFO fanatic circles. Then it eventually wormed its way into the national consciousness where it has, sadly, resided to this very day, despite the efforts of the media to do basically nothing to dislodge it.

Due to the combination of conspiracy theories centering around this (“The guv’mint covered it up!”), and the fact that the media acts as a willing accessory in this story (“What really happened at Roswell? We’ll give you the official information, then lots of innuendo and baseless statements we’ll present as reality and let you decide!”), this article fits neatly into both the Conspiracy Theories and You! and Mass-Media Nonsense! categories here on my blog. True, most conspiracy theories touch both areas, but this one is especially egregious.

In many ways this is the grand-daddy of conspiracy theories. It ties in the idea of aliens visiting the Earth and shadowy, government cover-ups of this, and possibly other, UFO events. I’d say it’s second only to the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theories in popularity and importance.

Of course there’s no actual evidence that it was a flying saucer or a disk or anything other than a weather balloon that was recovered at the crash site. Naturally the absence of any evidence is, to some thinkers, perfect proof that what they say happened, happened. After all, if the government covered it up, how could there be any evidence?

Because of this lack of evidence, all that we have are memories of a few people. Memories which were doubtless corrupted by time, wishful thinking, an eagerness to please, fame and money. This is part of why eyewitness accounts of events are not always reliable; everyone sees things differently. I’m not saying anyone is actually deliberately lying about what they witnessed, I’m just saying that they might not be providing an accurate picture of what actually happened.

The media is completely complicit in this whole thing, of course. If they didn’t talk about it so much, we wouldn’t know about it, at least not the extent that we do. If the mainstream media did their job (ie: “There is no evidence at all of any alien craft or bodies or of any sort of government cover-up of these events” instead of doing their usual wink, nod, spreading their hands, grinning inanely and saying, “Well, no one knows for sure!”), this whole thing wouldn’t have reached the point it’s at now.

Here’s a great example. Check out this video from CNN. Now at one point Miles O’Brien (and I love the fact that at one point O’Brien was hosting a news show with someone named Kira), says, “Are we ever gonna know what really happened?” Well, of course we are. We do. A weather balloon crashed. That’s what all the evidence points to. No evidence points to an alien spacecraft.

Consider also an interview with an old woman in that video. The incident happened when she was twelve. In 1947. Sixty-one years ago! Surely it’s entirely possible that after all that time, with her being told by various people that, oooo, it must’ve been a UFO, she might’ve started thinking, well, maybe, and her imagination began to fill in the blanks. Speaking just for myself I’d have a tough time recalling the details of a warm August night in 1986 when I first had sex. I can recall that it happened, but it was twenty-two years ago. My recollection of the fine details is hazy at best and I’m sure much of what I remember isn’t quite how it happened. That’s a little more than a third of the time this woman is talking about. I’m sure that in 2047 (ooooh! 100 years after Roswell! Coincidence? I THINK SO!), my memories of something that happened in 1986 will be even hazzier than they are now.

Please note: I’m not saying she’s lying. I think she really believes what she’s saying. That doesn’t make it true and it’s a great example of why eyewitness evidence is not the best.

Of course it’s not too late to correct this nonsense. All the media has to do is stop covering Roswell. Just do that until there’s some real, verifiable, hard evidence of anything other than the official government story of what happened that night. Until then, they should be responsible and do their jobs and ignore this idiocy.

As for the conspiracy theorists, you guys need to get a life. There’s no proof of what you say (not that that stops you). If you have proof, please come forward. But you don’t. Instead you come forward with the usual collection of innuendo and half-baked theories that aren’t supported by any evidence.

Also remember this folks: yes, there’s probably aliens out there. I’ve written about that before. But they probably aren’t coming here to observe us. Why would they? What makes us that interesting?

And no, the government isn’t covering up alien contact. Again, why would they? What does it gain them? You can make the usual noises about “national panic” but I think after 9/11 we can all say the public isn’t quite as panic-prone as we might think. On that day there were some uncomfortable moments and bad choices by some members of the public (like my sister who pulled her kids out of school and her money out of the bank), but most people kept their heads and watched the news.

I know this conspiracy theory won’t go away. It makes too much money for the people involved. I also know the media won’t stop covering it. It makes too much money for them. But is it too much for me to want to hold everyone to a higher standard?

Oh, well. I’m sure anyone from the conspiracy crowd will simply say that I’m delusional or in the pocket of the government. If that’s the case, damn it, I want a paycheck!

We all know the NSA is an evil, shadowy organization hellbent on taking over the world! They can go anywhere, be anywhere, monitor every email, monitor every phone call and are probably watching you even now!

Or, possibly not. At least not if you live in the real world.

The National Security Agency (sooper sekrit shadowy website here, complete with, I notice to my amusement, some broken links and a kids page), is the government agency charged with cryptography, data mining, communications monitoring and electronic eavesdropping on the world. As such, and due in no small part to the extreme secrecy that has surrounded the Agency since its inception, it has attracted no small number of conspiracy theories.

One of the more fun ones, and one that I’m currently seeing while watching The Bourne Ultimatum, centers around ECHELON, a major communications eavesdropping project that many people, including the producers of the movie, would have you believe is able to scan every single phone call on the planet, all at once, record them, and check them for secret code words!

The system apparently does exist, but certainly doesn’t do what’s shown in the movies and widely believed by conspiracy theorists everywhere. How could it? There’s quite literally billions of phone calls made around the planet every day. I’d not be surprised if there were a billion an hour.

Besides, what about different voices and accents? Surely even the most sophisticated voice recognition software would have a challenge understanding even basic words in every single accent there is. Not to mention the thousands of different languages. Heck, I doubt such software would be programmed for pig Latin. All the clever terrorist would have to do is call their “bomb” an “ombay” and they’ve defeated us! Oh, noez!

Speaking just of the word “bomb”, if that was a keyword, you’d have probably billions of hit just in the USA alone. You’d have “That’s da bomb, baby!”, “That movie was a bomb!”, “My grandfather defused bombs during World War II,” and the like. Just about any key word the system was programmed for would pick up millions, if not billions, of hits per day. You’d quickly run out of people who would be able to scan every hit for the one that might be legit.

In an article in the Straight Dope, Cecil Adams discussed this very concept. Amusingly, I note that it was published a few months before the September 11th attacks, but he uses bin Ladden as an example of what one would be looking for. He’s part of the plot!

I don’t think the NSA would want to monitor every single phone call, email, fax, etc that was being sent around the world. It would be way too labor intensive to eliminate all the false positives. I’m pretty sure that ECHELON, or any system like it, would be something they’d use in a targeted fashion. They probably have a certain group of people they monitor and listen to every word they say, not just a few keywords.

So the NSA isn’t listening to your phone calls, monitoring your email or intercepting your text messages. Sorry, you just aren’t that important.

A few months back I wrote all about the silliness of the 9/11 “Truth” Movement. This is a group of conspiracy theorists who believe the only thing that didn’t bring down the World Trade Center towers was a pair of hijacked jets flown by Muslim terrorists.

Now from the BBC I find out that a new report is being released that details exactly what happened to Tower Seven, that darling of the theorists that wasn’t hit by a jet and yet collapsed anyhow.

The report appears to be about what you might expect. Check this passage, for example, from the article:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s lead investigator, Dr Shyam Sunder, spoke to BBC Two’s “The Conspiracy Files”:

“Our working hypothesis now actually suggests that it was normal building fires that were growing and spreading throughout the multiple floors that may have caused the ultimate collapse of the buildings.”

So in other words, a large number of fires, burning out of control, softened the steel support beams enough that the building came crashing down. This exactly what would be expected, and likely exactly what happened.

There remains no evidence at all, period, for the 9/11 “Truth” Movement’s conspiracy theories. None. I know this new report won’t make these morons shut up, but at least it gives ammunition to the rest of us and might make them at least quiet down and just sullenly mutter at each other instead of bothering the rest of us with their stupid notions.

Were you aware the world is being controlled by a small cabal of alien lizards? It’s true! They’ve interbred with humans, disguise themselves as human using mass-hypnosis/telepathy and are embodied in such things as the British Royal Family and the Bush family!

At least, that’s the world according to David Icke, which is probably a lot less interesting than The World According to Garp. Icke is clearly either a: lying, b: barking mad or c: some combonation of the two. Either way he’s making quite a bit of money telling people all about our evil alien overlords (not the same as Overlords of the UFO, mind you).

The guy’s really a grab-bag of conspiracy theories. He even pushes his own particular version of the 9/11 conspiracies (though his features alien lizards, which at least is more original than most). He’s also apparently an anti-semite who buys into the things printed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which probably sounds better in the original Russian. After all, the thing’s a fraud printed by the Russian secret police). He also seems to think the Illuminati are involved in all this.

It’s very hard to take this loon seriously, but plenty of people do. I don’t know why. I think part of why might be the same thing that makes many conspiracy theories attractive. That being the principle of “secret knowledge”. The idea that, “I know something you don’t know!” Logically it also makes them smarter than the apparent conspirators. Otherwise, how could they know what’s going on, despite the efforts by Them to hide things from us?

Frankly, Icke’s a jackass. Like I said, he’s either a liar, nuts, or both, and either way he’s got much more money than I do, which is just unfair. I find it sad and alarming that anyone would actually buy into the bullshit he peddles on the public, and I really hope that if there are alien lizards hanging around on Earth, one of them does to him what Diana did to a rodent.

Next time, on Conspiracy Theories and You!, the aforementioned Illuminati! Well, if they allow me to publish about them, that is…

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were the work of a group of Muslim terrorists led by former US friend, Osama bin Laden. We have a great deal of evidence that suports this theory, including him doing everything but saying, “Yeah, we did it! Come get us, bitches!”

However, despite all the evidence there is a group of people out there who continue to believe Something Sinister ™ is afoot!

For some very detailed debunking on this issue, I refer you to Daylightatheism.org’s wonderful article on the topic. I’ll just be addressing some of the highlights.

Why is there no airplane-shaped hole in the Pentagon?

Because we do not live in cartoon world. When the plane hit, the wings, which are very fragile, folded into the body, thus leaving a basically round hole in the building. And killing a lot of people.

A missle was used to attack the Pentagon!

Hmmm… ok, why? What would be the point? And if a missle was used, how do you explain the disapearance of a plane-load of people? Wouldn’t it be easier, if you’re going to get rid of people and a plane, to just use the plane instead of a missle?

The destruction of the World Trade Center was obviously done with explosives!

Here’s the odd thing about building demolition: it takes explosives. Lots and lots of explosives. Big, bulky things that are hard to hide. People say that you see little puffs of explosives going off as the building goes down (wrong. It’s debris being pushed out by the pressure of the upper floor collapsing). For that to be the case, someone would’ve had to place explosives on those floors. Those floors with employees. And security personnel. And cameras. Surely in the several days/weeks/months this would’ve taken, someone would’ve noticed.

Doesn’t matter! Clearly, explosives were used!

And so two large airplanes crashing into the building had nothing to do with it?

… they were faked! Yeah! With holograms!

That is so stupid, I won’t even bother to refute it. Yet some people apparently believe it.

Building Seven wasn’t hit by anything, but it collapsed! Clearly, explosives were involved!

Ok, so why would someone want to blow up Building Seven? What would be the point? If you’re going to do that, why not just arrange for someone to detonate a fake car-bomb? Or crash a plane into that? Why have it be blatantly faked after all the effort to make the rest look real? Actually, the building was hit, but not by a plane. Large amounts of debris hit it, it caught fire, burned and fell over. It happens. Get over it.

As I said, these are just highlights. I strongly recomment the daylightatheism.org article I mentioned above, as it goes into a great deal of detail.

I know people want to believe this is a goverment conspiracy. If we can do that, well, it at least mean’s someone is in charge. Sure, they’re doing horribly awful, evil things, but at least it’s not some guy in a cave plotting our doom! It’s a sad belief, but there you are.

As a side note, there’s all sorts of people who believe many stupid things in connections with the attacks. It’s worth reading up on, if just for a laugh.

Next time: David Icke… what an idiot.

I wrote before about the death of Princess Diana, and those who are convinced she was killed by some horrible conspiracy. well, after much money, money work and much pointless effort, the UK government has finally reached a verdict that we all basically knew all along: she was killed by her drunken idiot driver.

So after all these years and effort and money, what have we got? A veridict that is 99% likely to be the correct one, and will do nothing whatsoever to convince those who believe she was murdered. What a pointless, stupid waste.

Oh, a side note: The Award for Best Responsible Journalist Coverage of a Stupid Inquest in a Funny Manner goes to BBC News America, who teased this story by saying, “Have you been wondering what really happened to Princess Diana? Well, neither have we, actually.” Good job!

Due to the recent flap with Barack Obama’s former minister, I thought it was time for me to address one of the more annoying conspiracy theories out there; that the US government invented AIDS to kill black people and gays.

The basic thrust here is that, somehow, the US government, for reasons of racism and hatered, made up the AIDS virus and somehow, apparently through the auspices of the WHO, distributed the virus through Africa, probably within the smallpox vaccine. A side arguement to this theory is that HIV doesn’t actually cause AIDS. These are some of the many myths about HIV and AIDS.

Ok, time for a short history lesson. When was the first AIDS case? Was it:

A. 1976
B. 1982
C. 1959

Answer: 1959, in what is now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (a misnomer for a country, to be sure). The first American case was in 1969, when a 15 year-old boy died from it in St Louis. You can read this article for more on the history of HIV.

For this virus to have been man-made in 1959 presupposes a level of technology I don’t think we possesed at the time. We would’ve had to go in, modify some existing virus, get it to the point of being really nasty and distribute it, all without anyone catching on. I don’t think this was possible for us back then, though I conceede I might be mistaken.

Also, when you think about it, AIDS is a really stupid way to kill people. Someone catches it and can linger for months or years before dying. It’s also spread in highly selective ways, and it’s really easy not to catch it (use condoms). If you wanted to have something that would kill off large numbers of people, wouldn’t it be better to have it be airborne? Of course, it’s hard to control at that point, but even transmitting it through bodily fluids makes it hard to control, and needlessly complex. Hell, if you’re really determined to kill off the blacks in Africa (though why the USA in the 1950’s would’ve cared about them and not tried to kill off the blacks here in the USA is not addressed in these theories), then why not just poison the water supplies?

Of course, this theory also presupposes that our government is evil enough to do this. Now, the US government has done some pretty nasty things over the last couple centuries (exterminating the American Indians, the Tuskegee Experiment, toppling goverments in South America, abandoning the Kurds when they needed us the most, turning a blind eye to genocide, etc), but usually our evil is either done from stupidity or neglect. To assume large portions of the US government, cause this project would need a lot of people working on it, are evil enough to try and kill off all the blacks is to, basically, equate them with the Nazis. I won’t even bother to refute how stupid and obnoxious that is.

What we often forget is that Mother Nature is, indeed, a real mother. We forget how nasty things like smallpox and the 1918 Influenza were. Heck, the Black Death killed about 30% of the population of Europe. All of these were long before we could do any sort of genetic manipulation and gene splicing, and any of them would’ve a better weapon than HIV.

I know we like to have someone to blame for these kind of things. If we can say the government made AIDS, then that means we aren’t at the mercy of the world, and that things aren’t random. Well… we are at the mercy of the world, though not nearly as much as we used to be. And sometimes shit just happens.

Next time: The 9/11 “Truth” Movement!