Disinformation » Conspiracy

Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators

Ralph Bernardo — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 05:47:56 +0000

Thanks scientists for taking mosquitoes from an “annoying” level to now a plot line for a super-villain. Martin Enserink writes on ScienceNOW:

Here’s a study to file under “unworkable but very cool.” A group of Japanese researchers has developed a mosquito that spreads vaccine instead of disease. Even the researchers admit, however, that regulatory and ethical problems will prevent the critters from ever taking wing — at least for the delivery of human vaccines.

Scientists have dreamed up various ways to tinker with insects’ DNA to fight disease. One option is to create strains of mosquitoes that are resistant to infections with parasites or viruses, or that are unable to pass the pathogens on to humans. These would somehow have to replace the natural, disease-bearing mosquitoes, which is a tall order. Another strategy closer to becoming reality is to release transgenic mosquitoes that, when they mate with wild-type counterparts, don’t produce viable offspring. That would shrink the population over time.

The new study relies on a very different mechanism: Use mosquitoes to become what the scientists call “flying vaccinators.” Normally, when mosquitoes bite, they inject a tiny drop of saliva that prevents the host’s blood from clotting. The Japanese group decided to add an antigen-a compound that triggers an immune response-to the mix of proteins in the insect’s saliva.

Lady Gaga: Puppet of Illuminati Mind Control?

Ralph Bernardo — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:41:02 +0000

Disinformation World News first “uncovered” this Illuminati plot back in August of last year. Here’s more analysis from Max Fisher of Vigilant Citizen’s The Hidden Meaning of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” on the Atlantic Wire. Check out the video below and make up your own mind…

ALLEGATION: Lady Gaga is a pawn of the Illuminati and a peddler of the occult. Her music video “Telephone” is a brazen attempt at recruiting teenagers into mind control programs.

LADY GAGA IS: “A mind-controlled drone who kills people”

“TELEPHONE” VIDEO IS ABOUT: “Ritual murder of average Americans in a diner by mind-controlled slaves” and “mind control, a covert practice used by the military, the CIA, religious cults and the Illuminati elite. It is used to program human beings to become mental slaves and to execute specific tasks.”

LYRICAL EVIDENCE: “By ‘kinda busy’, Gaga means she has dissociated from reality. Real life is calling her brain but she ‘has no service’, she’s not there. Gaga is not thinking or talking for herself anymore, her head and her heart have been dissociated from her core personality due to [Illuminati/CIA] Monarch programming.”

Listen to “The Lady Gaga Code” on Disinformation World News

Read Vigilant Citizen’s The Hidden Meaning of Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”

Read Max Fisher’s analysis on the Atlantic Wire

Did Aliens From Friendship Island Warn Of The Chile Earthquake?

majestic — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:04:01 +0000

In January I visited Chile, luckily for me before the earthquakes. While there I was told a story about Friendship Island, a mythical island inhabited by strange beings off the southern coast of Chile (learn more here). Although famous amongst Chilean conspiracy buffs and ufologists, it is seldom discussed outside the region. I would have left it as an amusing piece of local lore, but recently the leading Chilean TV conspiracy theorist, Salfate, went on air in December 2009 claiming that beings from Friendship Island had told him there would be many earthquakes and tsunamis in 2010…

OK, it’s totally nutty stuff, but the natural disasters are hitting as predicted. What does anyone know about Salfate – is he credible or a crank?

Bush Officials Warned 9/11 Commission Against Probing Too Deeply

5by5 — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:26:15 +0000

Some people ask, “Why do conspiracy theories get such traction in people’s minds?”

Perhaps because the arguments against them are not entirely dissuasive, but I have to say, if nothing else, it’s largely because of stories like this one, that actually lend credence to people’s suspicions by providing them with objective proof of the government’s attempt to obfuscate and withhold vital information.

Whether it is done in order to prevent embarrassment, or to protect themselves from prosecution, the fact remains, Bush officials in Washington were more concerned with covering their own butts, than publicly revealing an inconvenient truth. Even if it meant that national security might be improved and a similar event avoided.

As of today, it has been revealed via a FOIA request made by the ACLU, that Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet sent a letter dated January 16, 2004 to the members of the 9/11 Commission that there was an investigatory line it was “not allowed to cross.”

The line was in questioning the terrorist suspects that the Bush Administration was busy torturing, in violation of both U.S. and international law. In other words, the Commission was not allowed to question the accused.

Hardly a high point for American jurisprudence.

LINK to Raw Story article

Subsection #3 is perhaps the most obscene part of the letter, as it is quite pointedly, a bald-faced LIE. It claims that detainees are receiving “humane treatment”, at precisely the same time as they are being waterboarded over 180 times, subjected to sleep deprivation (or what torturers of the Middle Ages called “Tormentum Insomniae”), stress positions, sexual humiliation, beatings until several deaths resulted, etc., etc., etc…..

Personally, I don’t think these three Bush Administration officials should have feared any commission headed up by a man like Lee Hamilton: your go-to guy for worthless commissions that assign no responsibility, impose no accountability, and even hide inconvenient evidence if necessary. He does have a history of placing bipartisanship over truth, as he did during the Iran-Contra investigations where he literally shuffled off evidence into a Senate storage room in the Hart Office Building that proved Bush Sr. and other Reagan officials (like now SecDef Gates) went to Paris & made backdoor deals with the Iranians to keep the hostages incarcerated until after Reagan was inaugurated.

Between Hamilton and Bush insider Zelikow, there was basically no chance that anyone would have to face punishment for their actions (or lack thereof) on that day.

Because of all this, asking those critical questions, and the attempts to find answers to them, gets left up to the general public, as the compliant corporate press happily takes whatever the government feeds them, rather than acting like the Fourth Estate – the literal guardians of the truth, who should at a minimum, regard those in power with rational skepticism, not blind belief.

So the answer is to my initial question is simply this – conspiracy theories get traction because all the people who SHOULD be doing their jobs ferreting out the truth, AREN’T.

Sitting Now Podcast Teases New TV Show

ArsMoriendi — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:12:29 +0000

Hitting your screens this May

So we finally took the plunge — after a year of planning and debate and — and announced our new Sitting Now TV show. The show will initially be available on the site, and via online distros like iTunes, YouTube, and Vimeo, and then later will appear on a channel to be announced later in the year (confusing I know).

Anyway, check out this ‘teaser’ intro, and let us know what you think!

disinfoview: Jesse Ventura on ‘American Conspiracies’

majestic — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:12:30 +0000

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has a new bestselling book out, American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us. Following my recent interview with June Sarpong, a member of the investigative team for his TV series Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura, Jesse agreed to meet with the disinformation® New York crew at the legendary Russian Tea Room.

I asked Jesse why he’s digging up dirt where other public figures fear to tread, what we should do with the information he’s revealing, who he thinks is really behind the myriad conspiracies in his book — from JFK to 9/11 — and much more. Enjoy the video — we’ll post some extra clips where we talk off the record about everything from surfing to rock & roll … soon!

The 9/11 Hijackers Are Alive

phunkychic666 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:18:16 +0000

The chief of Japan’s Democratic Party says that the 9/11 hijackers are alive and that 9/11 was a complete hoax. Dr. David Ray Griffin is a professor and author of the book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé and he says that he agrees.

2008 Financial Collapse: The Greatest Calamity The World Has Ever Known

Robert Singer — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:14:09 +0000

The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:

35 Million Americans on Food Stamps: 12 Percent of U.S. Population on Food Stamps Highest Since Records Kept in 1969, and that’s before the Obama administration announced a planned three-year budget freeze on government discretionary spending. (My Budget 360)
18 Million empty houses in the United States and 39 million Americans who are no longer working or looking for work, and that’s before Federal Reserve finishes rewriting the rules of American “capitalism” as US Housing, the Automobile Industry and the American Dream are dismantled. (The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M., David E. Sanger)

“There are now well over 150 million Americans who feel stress over these things on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.” (The Economic Elite vs. People of the USA, David DeGraw)

In an effort to explain our escalating financial crisis, the American Nightmare (an Environmental Dream), the “experts” are under the erroneous impression that the Fed “missed” the warning signs leading up to the October 2008 meltdown.

The pundits are focusing their angst on the 44th POTUS, who might very well go down as the single most inept president in all of American history. (How to Squander the Presidency in One Year, David Michael Green)

Barack Obama is not inept, greedy or stupid and he isn’t one of “us.”

He rose from obscurity to power with his top economics adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the co-founder of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and he travels in the same circles as other members of the super-secret Skull & Bones Society at Yale University, who pretend to be running for president every four years.

The decision to have Obama preside over the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression was made five years ago; the November election was a formality. (Why Joseph Biden will be the Next Vice President of the United States)

To believe otherwise, is to ignore the Bradley/Palin effect and the decision by John McCain to wait until his concession speech to shed the image of a nasty “grumpy old man.”

In September 2008, when the Obama campaign seemed to be slumping and their candidate’s long-standing lead in the polls had evaporated, the senator’s supporters openly worried that a potential victory might be slipping away. Then, providence joined the campaign: The failure of the giant investment bank Lehman Brothers followed by a global financial meltdown in the month of October.

“Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.” John F. Kennedy

And, “speaking of change”, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and his policies on Guantanamo, state secrets, renditions, executive power, bailouts and the stimulus packages are for the most part identical to those of George W. Bush.

However, the policies at the Federal Reserve have changed inexplicably, monumentally and historically:

As of October 2008, the men behind the Federal Reserve, all connected to the House of Rothschild, are no longer giving up what’s left of their real wealth so the middle class can live the American Dream, a nightmare for the planet.

Brian Deese, special assistant to president Obama for economic policy, in his first government position, shuffles back and forth from the West Wing to the Treasury Department (Federal Reserve) rewriting the rules of American “capitalism” as he dismantles the US Housing, Automobile Industry and the American Dream. (The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M., David E. Sanger)

Deese’s First Rule: Withdraw Credit and Liquidity:

Causing spending to fall even further, forcing companies to cut back on inventory and staff – Creating even more unemployment…263,000 jobs eliminated bringing the total to 39 million Americans who are no longer working or looking for work. (The September Employment Rate is 90%)

And that’s before the recently announced “planned three-year budget freeze on government discretionary spending.”

Capitalism never made sense

“The Fed didn’t miss anything; the October meltdown was an inside job”

Professor Ebeling, the Ludwig von Mises professor of Economics at Hillsdale College, understood something was wrong when he wrote, “The perverse development and evolution of historical capitalism, the institutions necessary for a truly free-market economy have been either undermined or prevented from emerging.”

But when he claimed, “It is the principles and the meaning of a free-market economy that must be rediscovered” in order to overcome the burden of historical capitalism and save liberty, he should have written that principles must be rediscovered in order to prevent the planet from attempted murder (ecocide).

American “capitalism” and our consumer economy never made economic, environmental or common sense—unless the goal was ecocide.

Capitalism and a not-so-free market economy based on consumer products, that is, products we are manipulated to want, not need, was never sustainable. Consumers consume…the resources of the planet.

Who is Responsible?

The “experts” are under the impression this is the natural order of things.

Allegedly, this is another “example” of the private credit monopoly of rich and predatory moneylenders that “prey upon the people of the United States” for the benefit of themselves. [1]

“For the benefit of the middle class is a more accurate statement.”

The people responsible for the October collapse, our Federal Reserve, also get credit for the windfalls of “Monopoly Money”, created out of thin air, which financed our consumer society.

Those predatory moneylenders gave the middle class the highest standard of living in the world.

Recall when the American economy appeared headed into a recession at the end of the dot-com bubble, the Federal Reserve began slashing short- term interest rates until they reached a historically low one percent. The move re-inflated the economy by allowing homeowners to extract $750 billion in equity from their homes—up from $106 billion in 1996—and apply the dollars toward a multitude of consumer items and other credit card debt.

As interest rates plummeted and alleged home equity artificially soared, buyers were able to afford first and second homes, and they did it by taking out risky mortgages with “teaser rates” similar to those offered by the credit card industry. Even as interest rates adjusted upward, the sponsoring banks used complicated financial derivatives to resell the risky mortgages as “asset-backed paper.”

As housing prices edged downward and mortgage rates inched upward, the recession was put on hold with the help of an astonishing 10 to 12 credit card offers per month being delivered to some consumer mailboxes. The credit card companies issued 1.5 billion cards to 158 million cardholders and promised an improbable zero percent interest—some deals for up to 18 months. (Similar to mortgage debt, the credit card debt is put into pools also known as derivatives that are then resold to investment houses, other banks and institutional investors.)

Thank those rich and predatory moneylenders for the short-term interest rates and the liquidity that allowed the debt to be pooled, sold and resold.

But blame them because our hyper-shopping has wreaked havoc on the planet.

Who is Behind the Federal Reserve?

Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and Morgan—all connected to The Global Financial Elite (TGFE), direct the Federal Reserve to create money out of thin air.

The process that the Federal Reserve, or any bank, uses to create money “consists of making an entry in a book, that is all,” said Graham Towers, governor of the Bank of Canada. “Each and every time a bank makes a loan (a debt) . . . new bank credit is created—brand new money.”

Money used to pay for the Industrial Revolution, orchestrate the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970’s, the dot-com and the housing market bubbles, resulted in 60 years of unprecedented prosperity for the middle class.

These scoundrels at the beginning of the 20th century, owned or controlled one-sixth of the world’s real wealth: raw materials, commodities, copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold.

So how do they get rich exchanging real wealth for about $500 trillion of the Monopoly money they printed?

They don’t, they are the losers, not the middle class!

Remember those trees we chopped down so just about anyone in America could afford their dream house, or those mountains we blew up so we could have that fat station wagon in our driveway? All of those resources “now used up”, were once owned or controlled by the robber barons of our history books.

Their real wealth, not yours or mine has been “cut, mined and hauled away so Americans could trash the planet with houses, second houses, cars, RVs, TVs and DVDs— the cheap stuff we associate with the good life that put the planet on the downward spiral to ecocide. (Dem Bones is Connected To De Debt Bone)

The middle class should be thanking those scoundrels for all that “stuff”—but blame them for conning us into trashing the planet.

The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff, an animated video about the underside of our consumer society, believes the scoundrels are a bloated corporation sporting a top hat with a dollar sign etched on its front.

Film narrator, Annie Leonard argues our environmental damage is the result of the greedy corporations externalizing costs (shift them onto the public and the environment) so they can make more money.

But that premise is contradicted on film when Annie stands in line to buy a radio for $4.99 and correctly realizes the price couldn’t possibly capture the cost of the radio but incorrectly concludes that the greedy corporations pollute the environment so they can make more profit. [2]

If profits were the motive, then why wasn’t the radio $5.99? A price anyone would consider a “throw away” or loss leader.

We have come to believe that everything wrong in America is about someone getting rich while we are getting swindled.

That our economy runs on profits is a true statement, but imagine how much those moneygrubbers would have made if the radio was $5.99.

That $1.00 would be 100% pure profit.

The swindlers and scoundrels downward-manipulate the costs of what was in 1910 their real wealth:

Raw materials, commodities, copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold, to industry at prices lower, not higher as you would expect, so the corporations can still make a profit selling you a radio for $4.99.

Downward manipulation is an uneconomic aberration discovered in the precious metals market by the noted silver analyst Ted Butler.

We are conditioned to believe that prices are always inflated so the greedy corporations can make more money but Ted Butler’s research confirmed the price of silver has been manipulated to stay at the $4-5 price range for years. The beneficiaries of this type of manipulation are the consumers since industrial users can sell their products cheaply and still make a profit. (The Myth of the “Free” Enterprise Economic System)

Behind every consumer society is the reality of a credit-based monetary system and a fiat currency. Behind every fiat currency is a Federal Reserve or a Central Bank controlled by The Global Financial Elite including, Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and J.P. Morgan, Ted Butler’s prime suspect in the “ongoing intentional not accidental” great crime of keeping the price of silver low so consumers can buy a lot more ‘radio’ (silver) for their dollar.” (The Real Story, Theodore Butler, Silver But No Silver Lining)

Annie should be asking herself why those scoundrels intentionally sold their raw materials cheaply so just about everyone could afford the American Dream, a nightmare for the Planet.

Ecocide Results in Cognitive Dissonance

The premise that anyone would intentionally damage the planet, which future generations will inherit, results in Cognitive Dissonance (CD). CD is the discomfort felt at the discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation that contradicts a strongly held belief system.

But what if the attempted murder of the environment was the goal from the beginning and not the unintended consequence?

Then we were “conned” into shopping for stuff to intentionally because The Global Financial Elite are in a metaphysical war with mother-earth (Gaea) and hope to attain immortality in the New World Order. [3]

Now the world around you will finally make sense.

Hot, flat, and crowded Thomas L. Friedman will finally know what planet George W. Bush is on.

Bush lost the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, but is winning the war waged on the environment.

Dubya was deadly serious about Ecocide when, after rejecting the global climate change targets of the July 2008 G8 summit, he said, “Goodbye, from the (then) world’s biggest polluter.” China is now the world’s biggest polluter, Meat, Milk and Motors: The New China Syndrome

Ecocide Eliminates the Stupid Explanations

We see the collapse of GM and Chrysler as the result of failed public policy, government action, inaction and conclude the leadership is inept, arrogant or just “stupid” because only Ecocide could explain an industry that failed to keep up with the competition and adjust to new market demands.

Did Detroit forget the Volkswagen Beetle was the most successful car in history?

An incredible 21,529,464 Beetles were produced with the same body style and the same taillight (World’s 5 Most Successful Cars).

The policies and decisions for the last 31 years aren’t inept or stupid if the goal was pollution.

The Beetle as a mobile pollution device was a failure. Its effects on the environment were minimal compared to the Detroit lineup of egocentric gas-guzzlers, all designed with a different taillight and eco-unfriendly accessories.

The “Evil” Federal Reserve made sure that shiny new automobile with the V8 engine, chrome wheels and bumpers was so cheap just about everyone in America could afford the mobile pollution device of their dreams.

Ecocide Explains Why Alaska is in the Picture

Most analysts point to the oil shock of the mid-1970s, set off by the Arab oil embargo of 1973 as the turning point for the US economy and automobile industry.

Why didn’t our then-President Richard Nixon and the rest of the U.S. government promote mass transit, renewable energy, and high-mileage vehicles?

Because the objective that makes the most sense was to disturb 800 miles of the most pristine country in Alaska with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

In 2008 we had a similar shock when $4.50 a gallon gasoline convinced Americans they should give up their last Arctic wilderness (U.S. Economy in Free Fall, Why is the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in this picture?).

Ecocide Explains why Electricity is so Cheap

Electricity radically transformed and expanded our energy use. To a large extent, electricity defines modern technological civilization and made the Industrial Revolution and therefore our consumer society possible.

Electric power arrived barely a hundred years ago, but high costs and the Great Depression dried up most investment capital and delayed electric service to rural Americans until President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in 1935.

The REA loaned money created by the Federal Reserve at low interest rates and helped to set up electricity cooperatives.

Historically, energy is priced below its actual environmental and social cost in order to create excessive demand and discourage conservation. In other words such pricing diminishes the value of energy to users and causes them to use it irresponsibly and increase the amount of pollution coal-fired plants generate.

Why is electricity priced so cheap that “only the rich can afford to burn candles”?

Because cleaner alternatives like wind, solar or even natural gas don’t require mining companies to use dynamite to blast away 800 to 1,000 feet of 500 mountaintops and bury over 1200 miles of rivers and streams. [4]

Ecocide explains why 54% of electricity comes from the most abundant raw energy, coal and is the dirtiest source of power for much of the world. Coal-fired plants harm wildlife, generate smog, soot, acid rain, global warming, toxic air emissions and require billions of gallons of our most precious resource—water.

He Ruined the Country

The private credit monopoly of rich and predatory moneylenders do not “prey upon the middle class” to get rich.

You don’t become wealthier by exchanging gold, silver and raw materials for about $500 trillion of the Monopoly money you print.

Moneylenders created the middle class and then conned us into trashing the planet because Ecocide was the goal not the unintended consequence.

American “capitalism” and our consumer economy make perfect sense if the goal was the attempted murder of the planet.

Maybe ecocide is what Woodrow Wilson meant when he confessed that he “ruined the country.”

_______________________________________________________________________

Robert Singer writes for Disinfo, The Market Oracle and The Peoples Voice.

Follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/rds2301)

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.”– Don Marquis

Footnotes:

[1] Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking & Currency Committee, speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, June 10, 1932.

[2] “Corporations Rule the World”, David Korten (1995): “If some portion of the cost of producing a product are borne by third parties who in no way participate in or benefit from the transaction, then economists say the costs have been externalized and the price of the product is distorted accordingly.

[3] Ecuador Approves New Constitution: Voters Approve Rights of Nature, Mari Margil, Associate Director The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. An Ominous Drilling Sign for the Truth

[4] On March 25, Democrats introduced legislation that would prohibit the dumping of mining waste into streams. More than one million acres of Appalachia have already been affected by this practice, Senator Alexander says, “An estimated 1,200 miles of headwater streams have been buried under tons of mining wastes. More than 500 mountains have been impacted, and homes have been ruined and drinking water supplies contaminated” (Enviros Win Injunction Against Mountaintop Removal Mining).

9/11 Truth Goes Mainstream: Chris Wallace’s ABC News Report

phunkychic666 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:26:14 +0000

Nightline profiles the 9/11 Truth Movement, needless to say with the requisite amount of skepticism necessary for a story like this to air on network television:

Only Some Conspiracy Theories Welcome at Huffington Post

Ralph Bernardo — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:45:42 +0000

Have to agree, the Huffington Post loves to embrace all sort of crazy pseudoscientific theories about your health, but has a problem with this post from Jesse Ventura. (You can read the Ventura post on InfoWars.) Alex Pareene writes on Gawker:

The Huffington Post removed a 9/11 “Truther” post from former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. According to their editor’s note, “The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories….” Oh, really?

Because today, the very same Huffington Post published this wonderful post from dangerous nutcase Jenny McCarthy about how autism is caused by vaccines and can be cured with experimental treatments that the established medical community doesn’t want you to know about. We can only assume that as soon as the editors discover this conspiratorial nonsense, they will promptly remove it.

The fun thing about Jenny McCarthy’s conspiracy is that if it catches on enough, it will literally lead to the death of children. Trutherism just makes you really annoying!

It’s not only Huffington Post who gives the former Playboy playmate lip service, ABC News was willing to seek a medical opinion from her. Even if you disagree with Ventura’s claims on 9/11 (and I am in that camp), Ventura is not saying he is qualified to dispense an engineering analysis, or even claiming he is 100% right about his conclusions.

For more on Jenny McCarthy’s lunatic crusade, check out Jenny McCarthy Body Count.

John Avlon Slams Conspiracy Theorists & ‘Fright-Wing Politics’

majestic — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:02:46 +0000

Anderson Cooper hosts John Avlon, author of Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, who really seems to have a problem when it comes to anyone who dares challenge the government’s version on … more or less anything:

ABC News Vs. Loose Change

phunkychic666 — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:30:49 +0000

Thanks to Signs of the Times for posting these two YouTube videos.

At the Treason in America Conference on 3/6/2010, ABC News decided to drop by and “cover” the event. The creators of the Loose Change documentaries were ready for them.

Winter in America: Democracy Gone Rogue

Raymond — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:57:24 +0000

From Truthout:

The absolute … spells doom to everyone when it is introduced into the political realm.

- Hannah Arendt [1]

Democracy in the United States is experiencing both a crisis of meaning and a legitimation crisis. As the promise of an aspiring democracy is sacrificed more and more to corporate and military interests, democratic spheres have largely been commercialized and democratic practices have been reduced to market relations, stripped of their worth and subject to the narrow logics of commodification and profit making. Empowerment has little to do with providing people with the knowledge, skills, and power to shape the forces and institutions that bear down on their lives and is now largely defined as under the rubric of being a savvy consumer. When not equated with the free market capitalism, democracy is reduced to the empty rituals of elections largely shaped by corporate money and indifferent to relations of power that make a mockery out of equality, democratic participation and collective deliberation.

The undoing of democracy as a substantive ideal is most visible in the illegal legalities perpetuated by the Bush-Cheney regime and reproduced under the presidency of Barack Obama that extend from the use of military commissions, the policy of indefinite detention, suppressing evidence of torture, maintaining secret and illegal prisons in Afghanistan to the refusal to prosecute former high-level government officials who sanctioned acts of torture and other violations of human rights. As part of the crisis of legitimation, democracy’s undoing can be seen in the anti-democratic nature of governance that has increasingly shaped domestic and foreign policy in the United States, policies that have been well documented by a number of writers extending from Noam Chomsky to Chris Hedges. What is often missed is how such anti-democratic forces work at home in ways that are less visible and when they are visible seem to become easily normalized, removed

[Read more at Truthout]

The Wal-Mart Hippies

majestic — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:39:40 +0000

David Brooks disses tea partiers, the ‘New Left’ and conspiracy theorists in the New York Times (where else?):

About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.

Today, another social movement has arisen. The people we loosely call the Tea Partiers also want to destroy the establishment. They also want to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.

There are many differences between the New Left and the Tea Partiers. One was on the left, the other is on the right. One was bohemian, the other is bourgeois. One was motivated by war, and the other is motivated by runaway federal spending. One went to Woodstock, the other is more likely to go to Wal-Mart.

But the similarities are more striking than the differences. To start with, the Tea Partiers have adopted the tactics of the New Left. They go in for street theater, mass rallies, marches and extreme statements that are designed to shock polite society out of its stupor. This mimicry is no accident. Dick Armey, one of the spokesmen for the Tea Party movement, recently praised the methods of Saul Alinsky, the leading tactician of the New Left.

These days the same people who are buying Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals” on Amazon.com are, according to the company’s software, also buying books like “Liberal Fascism,” “Rules for Conservative Radicals,” “Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left,” and “The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.” Those last two books were written by David Horowitz, who was a leading New Left polemicist in the 1960s and is now a leading polemicist on the right.

But the core commonality is this: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence. Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures. “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains,” is how Rousseau put it.

Because of this assumption, members of both movements go in big for conspiracy theories…

[continues in the New York Times]

With No Modification and Little Debate, Democrats Send Patriot Act Extension to Obama

Raymond — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:30:32 +0000

Even though I didn’t expect any better, this story really breaks my heart. As long as this law is in effect, 9/11 never ends. Whether you believe it is the government or the terrorists who were behind the attack, it’s obvious that someone was trying to really screw you over nine years ago, and this story is a little reminder of that. Kudos to Dennis Kucinich for holding his ground on this and other civil liberties issues that other Democrats won’t touch for fear of being soft on terrorism. Personally, I’d rather be hard on human rights.

From The Raw Story:

Kucinich jeers: Congress is ‘complicit’ in violating Americans’ constitutional rights. In the wake of congressional Democrats’ reauthorization and extension of the USA Patriot Act, few elected Democrats have been as vocal about the post-9/11 security measures as they were during the Bush administration.

Leave it to stalwart House progressive Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to raise a rallying cry against what he called America’s love of its fears.

“This legislation extends three problematic provisions of the PATRIOT Act and, at the same time, leaves some of the most egregious provisions in place, absent any meaningful reform and debate,” he declared in a media advisory.

The specific provisions he cited are the Patriot Act’s powers to conduct roving wiretaps, conduct surveillance of people not thought to have any association with terrorism and tap into your personal records, such as library accounts.

[Read more at The Raw Story]

Maybe They Are After Us

phunkychic666 — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:18:56 +0000

David R. Jones, Esq., President and CEO, Community Service Society of New York, at Huffington Post:

I’ve always been particularly contemptuous of conspiracy theories, whether it’s U.N. sponsored black helicopters, the dangers of the Trilateral Commission, or alien abduction. It’s never been the way I see things, although as a kid I had a period of concern over sitting on toilets and baby alligators that kids bought at the circus and flushed into New York City sewers.

But now I am joining mainstream America in its paranoia. This week we’ve witnessed the dissolution of ACORN, the leading national advocacy group for the poor, shut down with the active help of the Congress from both parties, and the stunning decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission which allows unlimited spending by corporations and labor unions in political campaigns. ACORN was forced out of business despite the fact that the expose´ that led to repeated attacks on it was perpetrated by a conservative activist now charged with a wiretapping attempt against U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and the congressional blocking of funds to the group was found to violate the Constitution as a Bill of Attainder, a law aimed at only one group or person.

The Supreme Court decision suddenly makes the whole notion of campaign finance laws a joke. How in the world is a person or a group without money and/or power going to cope with corporations which can literally throw millions into a political campaign and consider it pocket change? In New York City, we’re all still staggered by the $112 million spent by Mayor Bloomberg last year to get reelected. Against major multinational corporations, that amount could well be considered trivial in the future.

Why do these things come together in my paranoid delusion? Because I don’t see how a democracy can function under these conditions, with efforts to engage in grassroots organizing being cut down whenever they get too strong, a media which are controlled only by persons and corporations of great wealth, and – the final blow – elections which depend solely on getting messages out through organizing or a media completely under the control of corporate America…

[continues at Huffington Post]

Clay County, Kentucky: Precinct Worker Testifies She Stole Votes

Ralph Bernardo — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:27:03 +0000

Bill Estep writes in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

FRANKFORT — A former Clay County precinct worker testified Friday that top election officers in the county taught her how to change people’s choices on voting machines to steal votes in the May 2006 primary.

Wanda White testified that Clerk Freddy Thompson — the county’s chief election officer — helped show her how to manipulate voting machines along with Charles Wayne Jones, the Democratic election commissioner.

The scheme involved duping people to walk away from the voting computer before they had finished their selections, then changing their choices, said White, the Democratic judge in a precinct in Manchester.

White said she stole more than 100 votes that election. “It was easy done,” she said.

White said she also went into the booth with people who had sold their vote to make sure they cast ballots for the candidates who had paid.

Read More in the Lexington Herald-Leader

The Rise of the Economic Elite

Raymond — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:16:52 +0000

From Dissident Voice:

The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.

— Noam Chomsky

As a record number of US citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEOs are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening; how did we get to this point?

The Economic Elite have escalated their attack on US workers over the past few years; however, this attack began to build intensity in the 1970s. In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made. Due to technological advancements, production and profit levels exploded from 1970-2000. With the lion’s share of increased profits going to the CEOs, this pay ratio dramatically rose to $90 for CEOs to $1 for the average worker.

As ridiculous as that seems, an in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that, including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1.

Paul Buchheit, from DePaul University, revealed, “From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation’s total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%.” Robert Freeman added, “Between 2002 and 2006, it was even worse: an astounding three quarters of all the economy’s growth was captured by the top 1%.”

Due to this, the United States already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the average worker much harder than CEOs, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high. The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all-time record.

[Read more at Dissident Voice]

Raymond Wiley on The Black Fridays

wowsley — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:39:58 +0000

The Black Fridays – Episode 8: Raymond Wiley

Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS

Raymond Wiley received his undergraduate degree in history from the University of Georgia in 2008. From 2005 to 2008, he worked at WUOG 90.5 FM, the university’s 26,000 watt FM radio station, gaining experience first as a talk show host, producer, and DJ. Later he had the honor of serving as the station’s public affairs director and finally as its general manager. When he’s not producing the Disinformation Podcasts or appearing as a guest on other shows to talk about occult and conspiracy related topics, he serves as promotions director for the Disinformation Company. His interest in the occult, religion, hidden history, and conspiracy goes back more than two decades.We had a great time talking with Ray about his work at the Disinformation Company and about both his favorite issues and what he won’t talk about.

Fnord: Conspiracy Is Job One

majestic — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:46:16 +0000

The ever reliable David Pescovitz brings you this tidbit for fans missing RAW, at BoingBoing of course:

Fans of Robert Anton Wilson, the Principia Discordia, and the Church of the Subgenius will appreciate this delightful logo. To understand (or rather experience the illusion that you understand) the meaning of “fnord,” I direct you first to the references I listed above, the contents of which are inextricably linked to the original bOING bOING print ‘zine, and also the Fnord wikipedia page, where I found the image above.

Anthrax Myth Persists Despite Evidence

majestic — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:26:55 +0000

The highly convenient way in which the U.S Government’s FBI has “closed the case” on the 2001 anthrax attacks will not wash with anyone who has read the excellent Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail by Bob Coen and Eric Nadler. I’d be interested to hear what Messrs. Coen & Nadler make of the issue of whether or not the anthrax spores used in 2001 were weaponized, discussed here in USA Today:

Can science ever do away with bad ideas? Or do they just limp along forever?

Consider the federal investigators who have “formally concluded” their investigation into the 2001 anthrax killings, pointing again to the late anthrax vaccine researcher Bruce Ivins as the case’s culprit.

Whatever history’s verdict on Ivins, one brouhaha at the center of the case has already outlived him — the story of “weaponized” anthrax.

“One of my biggest frustrations with this has been showing people the data, and it doesn’t matter,” says researcher Joseph Michael of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. Michael has presented electron microscope results that show the 2001 attack anthrax wasn’t weaponized for two years, “but still the idea refuses to go away.”

The notion took hold in October of 2001, as the Hart senate office building faced closure due to anthrax contamination, when then-House minority leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., described some of the anthrax used in the attacks as “weapons-grade material.” The claim sparked a flurry of reports about the peculiar properties of the attack spores, their high quality and lightness, which hastened their spread through the building’s ventilation system.

Fears centered around silica, the chief ingredient in sand, which allows small bacterial spores to float more freely in the air, or aerosolize, if applied as a coating, a Cold War bioweapons technique studied at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

In particular, a 2001 warning that silica had been purposely added to the attack anthrax came from virologist Peter Jahrling of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The warning was delivered to White House officials (reported in Robert Preston’s 2002 book, The Demon in the Freezer: A True Story), after U.S. Armed Forces Institutes of Pathology X-ray results showed silica present in samples of the attack anthrax. The fear gained currency in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war’s beginning, which centered around fears of bioweapons, as well as chemical and nuclear weapons.

“The spores in the Washington, D.C. letters were of exceptional purity,” says the Justice Department’s just-released investigation summary.

So, as part of the investigation, Michael and his colleagues looked at the attack spores using electron microscopes, which can see at fine enough resolution, on the nanometer scale, to spot exactly where the silica resided.In so doing they knocked down the notion the attack anthrax had been weaponized with a silicon coating. Instead, they found silicon that occurred naturally inside the spores.

“I believe I made an honest mistake,” Jahrling told The Los Angeles Times, in a 2008 response to this news, adding he was “overly impressed” by his initial views of the attack spores under the microscope.

Still the idea lives on, for example, in a January opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, that cited scientists who see the amount of silica in the attack spores as “blowing the FBI’s case out of the water.” (The FBI argued the lab where Ivins worked didn’t have the facilities to weaponize the anthrax.)…

[continues in in USA Today]

1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for New 9/11 Investigation

Raymond — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:49:35 +0000

From Yahoo News:

Richard Gage, AIA, architect and founder of the non-profit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth), will announce a decisive milestone today at a press conference in San Francisco, as more than 1,000 worldwide architects and engineers now support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the and Building 7 at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

After careful examination of the official explanation, along with the forensic data omitted from official reports, these professionals have concluded that a new independent investigation into these mysterious collapses is needed.Mr. Gage will deliver the news around this major development, accompanied by signers of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth petition. The press conference will be held concurrently in 38 cities in 6 countries.

These prominent architectural and engineering professionals will discuss the organization’s findings and concerns. A brief presentation of the explosive evidence they have compiled will be followed by Q & A. The presentation is an important update of “9/11: Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction,” the DVD produced by the organization, and available on their website AE911Truth.org, which analyzes the scientific forensic evidence concluding that the three skyscrapers in New York City were demolished with explosives on 9/11. The petition will be delivered today to every congressional representative by AE911Truth petition signers throughout the country. Government officials will be notified that “Misprision of Treason”, US Code 18 (Sec. 2382), is a serious federal offense which requires those with evidence of treason to act.

[Read more at Yahoo News]

Bigfoot Threw a Rock at My Face: Eerie Radio Interviews Disinformation Podcast Hosts Joe McFall and Raymond Wiley

Raymond — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:25:03 +0000

Bigfoot Threw a Rock at My Face – Eerie Radio: Episode 143

Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS

In this episode we speak with Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall about Jesus, Rocks, and Bigfoot. Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall are the former co-hosts of Out There Radio, a 50-episode podcast of interviews and discussions covering topics related to the occult, conspiracy theory and the paranormal.

Raymond and Joe have been in podcasting since 2005, having started Out There Radio shortly after they met and realized their shared interest in fringe topics. The are currently the hosts of Disinformation: The Podcast and Disinformation World News.

Austin Suicide Bomber Featured in Music Videos

Raymond — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:14:47 +0000

From The Raw Story:

Joe Stack, the 53-year-old software engineer who allegedly flew a single engine aircraft into an Austin-based IRS office on Thursday morning, was more than just a criminal or possible domestic terrorist.He was also a musician who played the bass and accordion in a band that once crooned about how the world just isn’t made for autistic people.

They are the Billy Eli Band, according to CBS News, fronted by Texas singer/songwriter Billy Eli, featuring Joe Stack, Ric Furley and Jim Hemphill.

The “Band” section of their Web site does not mention Stack, however a domain search for his name turned up numerous results.

[Read more at The Raw Story]

Disinfo Reviews ‘Voodoo Histories’ (And Discovers That We Are To Blame)

majestic — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:52:08 +0000

I recently caused something of a stir here on the disinformation® site when I posted a New York Times book review of David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History.
I actually didn’t write anything to suggest how I felt about the book, and indeed I hadn’t laid hands or eyes on a copy at that time. The next day however, his publisher messengered over a great looking hardcover, so I cracked it open.

Imagine my surprise at learning, on page 3, that it was us, The Disinformation Company, that was (at least partly) behind his animosity to so-called conspiracy theories. He writes:

“… in music and DVD chains across the United States and Britain, among the limited number of books on sale, the young browser is likely to come across oversize paperbacks with titles such as Abuse Your Illusions, You Are Being Lied To , and Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies.

“Checking in at a rather substantial thirty dollars each, these books consist of bite-size essays by different authors dealing with myriad (and, frankly, random) subjects, from the oil industry to crime, via geopolitics. Their avowed purpose is to ‘act as a battering ram against the distortions, myths and outright lies that have been shoved down our throats by the government, the media, corporations, organized religion, the scientific establishment and others who want to keep the truth from us.’

“Browsing through one of the books in the Disinformation series (published by countercultural tycoon Richard Metzger), I came across a chapter titled ‘The European Union Unmasked: Dictatorship Revealed.’ In it, a Lindsay Jenkins—formerly a civil servant in the British Ministry of Defense—details the Eurocratic plot to destroy nation states.”

He sums up his sarcastic review on the Jenkins essay as “A theory that I suppose could be summed up as ‘How the Welsh Destroyed the United Kingdom.’”

Mr. Aaronovitch certainly hasn’t missed The Disinformation Company’s success with issue-oriented documentary films either. A paragraph later he writes:

“Ideas like this may also be observed in television and, latterly, in factual movies. Documentaries are increasingly partisan and liable to include material that suggests conspiracy on the part of someone or other. …And such works are given the same treatment as major exercises in historical analysis or substantial pieces of investigative journalism. In fact, they are often given a better billing. Uncountered, their arguments enter popular culture.”

In case you were wondering about Mr. Aaronovitch’s rather perturbed tone, he is indeed a bona fide establishment journalist, with his own column for Britain’s once-prestigious Times (actually it’s still prestigious, but much less so since it was dumbed-down by current owner Rupert Murdoch). Does one sense frustration that a film such as Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, attacks his employer in the same ‘fair and balanced’ manner that the film’s main target, Fox News Channel, employs, with similar outsize success?

Well regardless, Mr. Aaronovitch has clearly been paying attention to what we’ve been publishing at Disinformation as he aims his investigative journalist’s shotgun at a broad swathe of the authors and filmmakers that we have worked with.

Of Jim Marrs, he writes: “The accolade of most ubiquitous writer across conspiracy genres has been earned by an American, the ‘award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author’ Jim Marrs…” He then lists some of Jim’s books and concludes: “Here is a man who must think very deeply before taking a decision about whether to cross the road.”

Ouch.

He is even snider about Graham Hancock, to whom he devotes two pages of skeptical mockery. The best he can do though, is to cite anonymous reviewers on Amazon.com: “A quick look through Hancock’s Amazon reviews shows how few purchasers seem inclined to doubt Hancock’s ‘research,’ but those few who do track down his claims discover basic errors in archaeology and astronomy.” He then goes on to cite a very unconvincing post from someone who attended a Hancock lecture in the ’90s. Come on David, can’t you do better than that?

He does try. He reports that “At the end of 1999, two BBC Horizon programs demolished Hancock comprehensively … The BBC giveth ground to the pseudo-historians, and sometimes later taketh it away.”

I have to take Mr. Aaronvitch to task here, because shortly after those programs aired, the Broadcasting Standards Commission, an organization appointed to uphold standards and fairness in UK broadcasting, found the BBC guilty of unfairly representing Hancock and co-author Robert Bauval.

The BBC program, entitled Atlantis Reborn, claimed to provide a balanced and objective “testing” of unorthodox theories relating to the development of human civilization. The Broadcasting Standards Commission judged that the central part of the BBC’s attack on Hancock and Bauval was unfair.

The program was re-edited, I am told for the first time since the BBC began showing television programs, and the corrected version was aired a month after the verdict.

Now here’s the funny thing: Mr. Aaronovitch knew all of this. He wrote about it for the Independent in 2001:

“Angered, Hancock took his case to the Broadcasting Standards Commission, arguing that he had been unfairly treated. Its conclusions led him to post on his website: “If one good thing has come out of this affair, it is that the BSC has delivered a complete vindication of Robert Bauval’s Giza-Orion Correlation Theory.” This is a distortion of vast dimensions. In fact, the BSC found overwhelmingly in the BBC’s favour, but was critical of editing and a minor editorial decision.”

Leave it to another alternative Egyptologist, the famously sharp-tongued John Anthony West, to eviscerate this argument (actually in the context of correspondence with BBC executive John Lynch):

“The Standards Committee’s adjudication that obliged Horizon to publicly acknowledge unfairness on one out of eleven counts and apologize on that count. I understand that Horizon has tried to exonerate itself or at least minimize its guilt by maintaining that, since it was indicted on eleven counts, but only found guilty on one, it is therefore innocent of the other ten, and that the judgement is, in effect, no more than a Pyrrhic victory for Hancock and Bauval.

This of course will not wash. Anyone (from the rice paddies of Bangladesh to the rain forests of Rwanda) who has experience of the workings of the law knows it is routine for ax murderers, serial rapists, mob bosses, child molesters, scam artists, con men, frauds and other societal scum to get indicted on multiple counts but convicted only on one. This is no proof of innocence on the remaining counts. It just means that the one count was so obvious and undeniable that even a biased court could not help but acknowledge it. And since that one count is often enough (in criminal cases at any rate, unfortunately not in this one) to put the miscreant out of the way and prevent further damage to society, nobody makes an issue out of it.

Anyone who reads the transcripts of what was actually said by Hancock et al. in interviews, and what was actually shown by Horizon, knows very well that Horizon is grievously guilty on most, if not all remaining counts.”

Well enough about that, but suffice it to say that Mr. Aaronovitch really doesn’t like Graham Hancock, so much so that he’ll leave out information that doesn’t support what he presumably feels is a “comprehensive demolition” of Hancock’s research (and I leave out the quotation marks around “research” intentionally, while noting that Mr. Aaronvitch does the opposite). I can personally attest that Graham researches the topics of his books first hand, to the point of exhaustion.

Other authors and filmmakers published by disinformation® who come in for a tongue-lashing by Mr. Aaronvitch include Dr. Hugh Schonfield, Henry Lincoln and Alex Jones.

He reserves a special bit of vitriol for poor old Henry, who was something of a boyhood idol of Mr. Aaronovitch’s: “When, as a teenager, I first saw him on the BBC Chronicle program in the early 1970s, I was both convinced and fascinated by him.” He was sorely disappointed to find out that:

“There were things, however, that I didn’t know about him … [he] was not, in fact, in any proper sense, a historian, but an occasional actor and a successful scriptwriter…. So Lincoln was, in his working life, a moderately successful storyteller.”

He then layers further sarcasm over a very selective reading of Henry’s work. I won’t defend Henry here, but let’s just note that as with Graham Hancock, if Henry Lincoln’s career as broadcaster and author is “moderately successful,” then one would not wish to describe Mr. Aaronovitch’s for fear of coming off as mean to the point of libel. Not that libel seems to be something that our dear author thinks about too much.

So, should you buy this book? Actually, if you have the $27.95 needed for a copy, yes, I think you should, just to see what the critics are saying about the authors and filmmakers whose work we publish on this site, in our books and in our films. And I should note, Mr. Aaronovitch, that those weighty disinformation® anthologies you cite at the beginning of your book, are actually only $24.95, not the thirty bucks you mention.

On second thoughts, take advice from Mr. Aaronovitch, who, writing of Lincoln, Leigh & Baigent’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail, says: “On the first day of publication in Britain, 43,000 hardcover copies … were sold. I waited for the paperback.”