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Our Nut-Job Litmus Tests

I would once give a fair hearing to such long-term conspiracy / secrecy stories, but even that polite approach dissipated over time. The main reason was that ongoing experiences with people (particularly in groups and institutional sets) convinced me no such human aggregation is, or has ever been, capable of either (a) securing any Really Big Secret from broader dissemination or (b) keeping the Really Deep Doctrine they derive from such secrets stable over a period of mere years, much less centuries.

Even the mafia knows if it's going to kill someone it has to use as few people as possible and often kills the killers later. The conspiracy crowd believes in 1000 man conspiracies with members of the media, accident investigators, emergency responders, military, popular science magazine etc all keeping silent for decades. It's actually impossible for a conspiracy that big to be kept quiet for even a short period of time.
Anyone who thinks mass shootings are staged to take away their guns is a good one. A lot of my favorite crazy theories have been mentioned including Niburu and chemtrails and the joos running the world. Faked moon landing. Anyone who believes in reptilians. Anyone who thinks black helicopters follow them and they are being gangstalked. People who think Obama (or any other figure) is the anti christ. Actually all the one world government / NWO / Visa is going to chip you and its going to be mark of the beast nutters freak me out. Mostly because they are armed.
Used to be it was easy to pick out mentally ill people they thought their postman was an alien or the tv was sending them messages. Now crazy is normal online and I can't tell if someone is actually mentally ill or just naive and easily convinced. There are a shocking number of people who cannot judge if a source is a accurate or just a crazy person with a blog.
 
Ah yes. Black helicopters. One thing you notice from even casual acquaintance with pilots of any sort of aircraft - military or civil - is that they can be people with a sense of humour who love to bullshit and who have an instinct for practical jokes. The bullshit can serve a practical purpose - it sorts out members of the "club" from wannabees and Walter Mitties. I recall being in a pub in Norfolk one night listening to a visitor who claimed to have a private pilot's licence droning on about GPS and navigation systems and boring the arse off everyone by going into all the detail. Then somebody I knew, who really WAS a pilot of light aircraft with years of experience and thousands of flying hours, shut him up by explaining what he does when he gets a little lost. He carries an AA road map of Britain in the cockpit. When he finds a motorway below him - apparently in Britain you're never usually more than ten minutes' flying time away from a motorway - and identifies which one it is and which major cities it connects. (you're never THAT lost in the sky, apparently Unless you're really lost you can be pretty sure which county or region you're over.). Failing motorways, a major A-road usually suffices. Then problem solved, he knows where he is. This somehow had more of a ring of truth to it! It also fits in with the cheerful low-tech Heath-Robinson approach to flying in Britain.

Pilots tell tall tales - especially to non-pilots. There is a time-honoured practice called "shooting a line", to see who bites. I'm minded here of the RCAF pilot who claimed with a perfectly straight face that he'd flown over an area in the Canadian Arctic which appeared to be laid out in perfect geometric lines, as if it were the ruins of a long-gone city. "Very spooky and makes you wonder if people really were here before us". Of course, a lot of curious people went to look. And of course they found nothing....

A friend in North Wales told me about a local UFO enthusiast, an exciteable sort of chap who swears blind one evening a black helicopter deliberately hovered over his house for ten minutes, as if sending out some sort of signal or warning that They were onto him. My friend assured me that even neighbours had witnessed this too, watching the helicopter, some sort of point made, flying off to the west afterwards. West. In north Wales. Hmmm. Apparently the UFO-nut had had a couple of letters published in the local papers - Wrexham Evening Leader and Daily Post, apparently - alleging They walk among us and are part of a conspiracy, et c. Must have been on slow news days in August.

Now RAF Valley in Anglesey is a helicopter station. It has a few of the air-sea-rescue choppers in neon-yellow, orange and red, which against the usual logic of military helicopters are meant to be highly visible. These are publicised and are great PR for the RAF.

But areas of Mid-Wales are also used by Special Forces for training exercises. Any helicopter used to insert, or retrieve, SAS/SBS personnel is not likely to be decked out in neon-yellow, fire orange and scarlet for easy visibility. In fact, inobtrusivity would be a virtue in these circumstances. What colour scheme do you think this sort of chopper would use? and what sort of pilots would be attracted to working as taxi drivers for the SAS - with a higher than usual risk factor involved?

And on a boring day with a need to take a chopper out for a test drive or to keep flying hours up, why not detour and hover over the address of that nutter who wrote that letter to the local paper, which helpfully had his address at the bottom... just for a laugh... let's give him something to write about here.... we can doctor the flight log afterwards to say we were nowhere near...
 
My acquaintance the Norfolk pilot also explained that one day when heavy cloud set in, he solved the problem of navigating by dropping below the cloud cover, finding the Newmarket Road into Norwich from the south, then flying along it and over the city till he found his airfield just to the North. He also said once that a last-ditch navigating method is to "stray" into the fringes of a no-fly zone - either a major airport's approach circuit or just close enough to a military base - and wait for the advisory radio message telling him where he was and to get the hell out. He then thanked Ground Control politely for confirming his location, and flew out, having got a very reliable fix. Gods know if he still dares do this in these post-9/11 days when the response might be to scramble a fighter or lock on with ground-to-air missiles....

Should also mention that North Wales has a high number of "black helicopter" sightings. Perfectly explicible in the context of RAF Valley being the (unconfirmed) home of dark-cammed choppers used for deniable transit of SAS soldiers, which of course would not be officially acknowledged on grounds of national security. .... they don't need to be black. Dark green cam schemes could easily be mistaken for black when seen from below. Genuine sightings, real-life black choppers, logical reason, illogical interpetation.
 
Should also mention that North Wales has a high number of "black helicopter" sightings. Perfectly explicable in the context of RAF Valley being the (unconfirmed) home of dark-cammed choppers used for deniable transit of SAS soldiers, which of course would not be officially acknowledged on grounds of national security. .... they don't need to be black. Dark green cam schemes could easily be mistaken for black when seen from below. Genuine sightings, real-life black choppers, logical reason, illogical interpetation.
I lived within sight of that base for a year and we only ever saw 'Red Arrows' (a lot), other Gnats (daily), Air Sea Rescue helicopter (fluorescent). I used often to cut across the (north) end of the runway on my push-bike as a short cut to Ryd-y-Gari, until after a coupla months, I got pulled over by the MP's landrover and got a 'stern ticking off' *. Tight security eh?


*That's serious paraphrasing. They used words even my Dad objected to. Luckily they didn't ask who he was, that would have been even more trouble.
 
Even the mafia knows if it's going to kill someone it has to use as few people as possible and often kills the killers later. The conspiracy crowd believes in 1000 man conspiracies with members of the media, accident investigators, emergency responders, military, popular science magazine etc all keeping silent for decades. It's actually impossible for a conspiracy that big to be kept quiet for even a short period of time.
Anyone who thinks mass shootings are staged to take away their guns is a good one. A lot of my favorite crazy theories have been mentioned including Niburu and chemtrails and the joos running the world. Faked moon landing. Anyone who believes in reptilians. Anyone who thinks black helicopters follow them and they are being gangstalked. People who think Obama (or any other figure) is the anti christ. Actually all the one world government / NWO / Visa is going to chip you and its going to be mark of the beast nutters freak me out. Mostly because they are armed.
Used to be it was easy to pick out mentally ill people they thought their postman was an alien or the tv was sending them messages. Now crazy is normal online and I can't tell if someone is actually mentally ill or just naive and easily convinced. There are a shocking number of people who cannot judge if a source is a accurate or just a crazy person with a blog.

As against your argument may I suggest the Hillsborough cover-up? It certainly has driven holes through my own certainty about the difficulty of organising a cover-up that involves many people. If its being hidden in plain sight you don't need to keep secrets. The cover-up involved people in all the trades you mention except the military and popular science mags, but additionally involved MP's.

Having said, which, I agree with all your examples in the second paragraph. On a different scale, anyone who uses multiple underlining in a letter wants watching.
 
I lived within sight of that base for a year and we only ever saw 'Red Arrows' (a lot), other Gnats (daily), Air Sea Rescue helicopter (fluorescent). I used often to cut across the (north) end of the runway on my push-bike as a short cut to Ryd-y-Gari, until after a coupla months, I got pulled over by the MP's landrover and got a 'stern ticking off' *. Tight security eh?


*That's serious paraphrasing. They used words even my Dad objected to. Luckily they didn't ask who he was, that would have been even more trouble.

There is a plague of dark green helicopters at the moment (or possibly one that keeps reappearing). I think they have been practising rescues, but normally the rescue helicopters are bright yellow Sea Kings.

The heavy transports that fly down the valley are more likely transporting 'stuff', but what the stuff is I have no idea. I'm not up on modern types of military aircraft, they are big Hercules type things. They are hardly 'stealth', though.
 
As against your argument may I suggest the Hillsborough cover-up? It certainly has driven holes through my own certainty about the difficulty of organising a cover-up that involves many people. If its being hidden in plain sight you don't need to keep secrets. The cover-up involved people in all the trades you mention except the military and popular science mags, but additionally involved MP's.

Having said, which, I agree with all your examples in the second paragraph. On a different scale, anyone who uses multiple underlining in a letter wants watching.

Hillsborough is an excellent example of a real conspiracy and one apparently involving dozens, perhaps hundreds of people, and which went on for a couple of decades.

I'd add to that the cover up of the activities of Muslim grooming gangs operating in dozens of British towns over the course of 30 years. Police, social services, politicians and media colluded in this, which really should have been the biggest scandal this century.
 
Interesting! Random points:

i) A conspiracy theory would work if the participants were motivated to keep the secret. Let's say a tight-knit body of men who have an ethos that divides the world into "us" and "everybody else" and believes, institutionally, that "everybody else" is just waiting to leap down our throats at any percieved instance of wrongdoing, that "everybody else" includes the sort of bleeding-heart liberal left-wing bastards who don't like us one little bit. I could suggest the Parachute Regiment and British Army establishment after Bloody Sunday, in this context. Or the Royal Ulster Constabulary closing ranks against accusations of collusion with Protestant paramilitaries, making any consequent investigation into a war of attrition against a band of brothers closing ranks and refusing to volunteer information. The sense of brotherhood, of being part of the Family, would be so strong and so engrained that even those members who reralise something appalling and wrong happened, who might privately be appalled at the excesses and egregious stupidity of their peers, would join in the wall of silence. You could see, for instance, a majority of decent and otherwise good men serving in the Paras or in the RUC might weigh up the situation, and consider solidarity and support for their errant colleagues far more important than exposing their wrongdoing. Belonging to a Band of Brothers does this to people - it's marked in uniformed military or paramilitary organisations where there's a very real sense of having been initiated into an élite. You are In. Everybody else is Out. Keep it that way, whatever happens. And - for instance - an RUC officer who also belongs to the Orange Lodge and goes socialising with known UDA paramilitaries. His colleagues might be appalled at this. But they live in the same areas and walk the same streets. Don't forget the value of "group reinforcement" of the ethos, or in a northern Irish context, the possibility of some big guys knocking on the door to politely ask you to withdraw any statement... and even if the realisation slowly dawns on you that you did wrong and colluded in something that wasn't very nice, you are still part of the Brotherhood.

Also look at the way the Metropolitan Police in London closed ranks over PC Stephen Turnbull - the copper who bludgeoned a man down at a demo in London, the man he battered later dying of his injuries. If it wasn't for the fact there was film of the incident, Turnbull would still be a copper. Earlier examples: the appallingly bad way the Stephen Lawrence murder was handled - it took years of pressure before the Met accepted it had not done the best it could, with coppers involved covering up things up to and including association with known criminals. The murder of Blair Peach at a demo - stiull unresolved thirty-odd years on.

British policemen close ranks and practice omerta in a way that makes the Mafia look loose-lipped. And have I mentioned freemasonry yet? (At the risk of activating somebody's litmus paper about me....) rife in provincial towns: there's a Masonic lodge that meets at Manchester Town Hall, for instance. Right in the middle of the centre of local government. So no surprise Rochdale and Rotherham were hushed up for so long....
 
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I have some awareness of the pervasiveness of Freemasonry in local politics etc. , yes. But it falls (as far as I can tell) under the 'Band of Brothers' ethos rather than having an active plan and a nationwide (or worldwide) common goal. It's got more in common with , say, the Jehovah's Witnesses than having any plan for world domination.

This is what I think is different about Hillsborough:
a) there was an actual plan to suppress police notebooks, evidence etc. which was considered and put in to place in the days immediately after the disaster.
b) The cover-up involved people outside the Police - ambulance men, journalists etc. Some of these may have been misled rather than actual parts of the conspiracy, but they were deliberately misled.
c) Putting out palpably false information to other bodies is different to simply withholding co-operation.
d) Junior staff were openly threatened by senior staff and ordered to change there evidence and stay quiet. (By openly I mean during official on-duty time).

No doubt the 'brothers' effect was part of it, but it was an actual conspiracy with sanction from senior levels rather than a group acting informally out of a perceived common interest.
 
With Youtube videos, I have noticed a correlation between 'nut-jobbiness' and annoying vocal delivery of the person doing the voiceover.
Check out the videos made by the following people (in order of tooth-grinding annoyance):
  • Mars Moon Space Photo Zoom Club
  • MLordandGod
  • WhatsUpInTheSky37
 
I'm not exactly sure but hearing the below I didn't even need a test.

to paraphrase the Coast To Coast AM March 24, 2016 guest:

'The American secret government is using Tesla scalar wave higher dimensional technology given to them by Nazis (and give to the Nazis by aliens) to do 9/11 and to create chemtrails which contain morgellons (an insect/fungi/plant crossbreed), synthetic RNA, and piezoelectric crystals. The morgellons are controlled and activated by satellite and used to change our DNA to convert us to "bio-robots". The morgellons also read your DNA and broadcast it via the morgellons antennae, allowing the government to track you and read and control your mind via the HAARP system, military radar, and cell towers. The intelligence gathered is fed to artificially intelligent quantum computers which are used to insert programming into you via methods researched by the CIA (a black magic organization)/MKUltra via morgellons and the piezoelectric crystals as part of the American secret government's satanic demon worship/pedophilia/eugenecist agenda controlled by the Rothschild's/transhumanists as part of their attempt to control the holographic world we live in. Vaccines remove various minerals from the body allowing the piezoelectric crystals to be better absorbed for better reception of the brain controlling waves.'

This was all in the first hour of the program by the way.
 
'The American secret government is using Tesla scalar wave higher dimensional technology given to them by Nazis (and give to the Nazis by aliens) to do 9/11 and to create chemtrails which contain morgellons (an insect/fungi/plant crossbreed), synthetic RNA, and piezoelectric crystals. The morgellons are controlled and activated by satellite and used to change our DNA to convert us to "bio-robots". The morgellons also read your DNA and broadcast it via the morgellons antennae, allowing the government to track you and read and control your mind via the HAARP system, military radar, and cell towers. The intelligence gathered is fed to artificially intelligent quantum computers which are used to insert programming into you via methods researched by the CIA (a black magic organization)/MKUltra via morgellons and the piezoelectric crystals as part of the American secret government's satanic demon worship/pedophilia/eugenecist agenda controlled by the Rothschild's/transhumanists as part of their attempt to control the holographic world we live in. Vaccines remove various minerals from the body allowing the piezoelectric crystals to be better absorbed for better reception of the brain controlling waves.'
They forgot to suggest wearing an aluminium-foil hat though. Tch, amateurs.
 
That reminds me a tad of John Lear, who just seems to mix together every conspiracy theory going.

Given his background, I do wonder if Lear is some kind of disinfo agent rather than a genuine nutjob.
 
I am especially skeptical with regards to those whisperers. Ghosts or animals. I consider it the perfect scam to pull on people.

Also: The HAARP bullshit people comes with everytime there's something fortean or conspiratory, like strange weather, UFO's and so on. Looks like some people use HAARP as a standard blame object.
 
I'm not exactly sure but hearing the below I didn't even need a test.

to paraphrase the Coast To Coast AM March 24, 2016 guest:

'The American secret government is using Tesla scalar wave higher dimensional technology given to them by Nazis (and give to the Nazis by aliens) to do 9/11 and to create chemtrails which contain morgellons (an insect/fungi/plant crossbreed), synthetic RNA, and piezoelectric crystals. The morgellons are controlled and activated by satellite and used to change our DNA to convert us to "bio-robots". The morgellons also read your DNA and broadcast it via the morgellons antennae, allowing the government to track you and read and control your mind via the HAARP system, military radar, and cell towers. The intelligence gathered is fed to artificially intelligent quantum computers which are used to insert programming into you via methods researched by the CIA (a black magic organization)/MKUltra via morgellons and the piezoelectric crystals as part of the American secret government's satanic demon worship/pedophilia/eugenecist agenda controlled by the Rothschild's/transhumanists as part of their attempt to control the holographic world we live in. Vaccines remove various minerals from the body allowing the piezoelectric crystals to be better absorbed for better reception of the brain controlling waves.'

This was all in the first hour of the program by the way.
Wow, that's the wildest thing I've ever seen. Every far-out conspiracy theory ever invented, wound up together.
 
Wow, that's the wildest thing I've ever seen. Every far-out conspiracy theory ever invented, wound up together.
I was indeed thinking of it as a grand attempt at a "Conspiracy Theory of Everything". It was worth a listen if your brain doesn't rebel at the sheer wildness.
 
'The American secret government is using Tesla scalar wave higher dimensional technology given to them by Nazis (and give to the Nazis by aliens) to do 9/11 and to create chemtrails which contain morgellons (an insect/fungi/plant crossbreed), synthetic RNA, and piezoelectric crystals. The morgellons are controlled and activated by satellite and used to change our DNA to convert us to "bio-robots". The morgellons also read your DNA and broadcast it via the morgellons antennae, allowing the government to track you and read and control your mind via the HAARP system, military radar, and cell towers. The intelligence gathered is fed to artificially intelligent quantum computers which are used to insert programming into you via methods researched by the CIA (a black magic organization)/MKUltra via morgellons and the piezoelectric crystals as part of the American secret government's satanic demon worship/pedophilia/eugenecist agenda controlled by the Rothschild's/transhumanists as part of their attempt to control the holographic world we live in. Vaccines remove various minerals from the body allowing the piezoelectric crystals to be better absorbed for better reception of the brain controlling waves.'

We heard this one, or one very much like it (hard to distinguish the ones that have every thing but the kitchen sink). My husband posits they might be computer-generated. Ever since the TV in the kitchen conked out, we've been listening to a hour or so of After Dark during our dinner. When we had the TV we used to watch old Bob Newhart reruns. Newhart is a very funny guy with pro writers, but After Dark always has the potential to be much funnier.
 
I'm not exactly sure but hearing the below I didn't even need a test.

to paraphrase the Coast To Coast AM March 24, 2016 guest:

'The American secret government is using Tesla scalar wave higher dimensional technology given to them by Nazis (and give to the Nazis by aliens) to do 9/11 and to create chemtrails which contain morgellons (an insect/fungi/plant crossbreed), synthetic RNA, and piezoelectric crystals. The morgellons are controlled and activated by satellite and used to change our DNA to convert us to "bio-robots". The morgellons also read your DNA and broadcast it via the morgellons antennae, allowing the government to track you and read and control your mind via the HAARP system, military radar, and cell towers. The intelligence gathered is fed to artificially intelligent quantum computers which are used to insert programming into you via methods researched by the CIA (a black magic organization)/MKUltra via morgellons and the piezoelectric crystals as part of the American secret government's satanic demon worship/pedophilia/eugenecist agenda controlled by the Rothschild's/transhumanists as part of their attempt to control the holographic world we live in. Vaccines remove various minerals from the body allowing the piezoelectric crystals to be better absorbed for better reception of the brain controlling waves.'

This was all in the first hour of the program by the way.

What utter nonsense :banghead:

Morgellons are composed of self-replicating nanobots, as any fule no.
 
Hillsborough was a carefully constructed conspiracy, but failed almost immediately. The recent inquest revealed the shocking breadth of the criminal behaviour of the Police, local authority, football club, along with certain journalists and politicians but within weeks of the incident their lies were unravelling. The sheer volume of testimony along with television footage contradicted the central corrupt argument - that Liverpool fans were wholly to blame.

What has been staggering, and a worrying insight into the quality of our leaders, civil servants and some sectors of the media, is how the guilty stuck to their lie. They were building on lessons learnt in the early 80's, and refined in modern politics. Construct a story, write a simple marketing inspired 'headline', and repeat it constantly no matter what the evidence says. The miners are 'the enemy', Sadam has WMDs, the economy was 'ruined' simply by X, Y or Z, Obama was not born in America.

Yet the tenacity of the families, supporters and some politicians paid off.

Back on-topic–there are a small number of 'fringe' themes or attitudes which I find are just tiresome.

# People who repeat over and over the same point of view or experience ( for instance a mate tells me nearly every time we meet about a spiritual experience they had almost 30 years ago. It was fascinating the first time I heard it..... 25 years ago)
# People who have extraordinary complex conspiracy theories - as per GerdaWordye's post above. Someone started to explain to me last year the hierarchy of evil alien civilisations secretly running the world, and how they related to the hierarchies of daemonic forces ... and so on. This leads me on to:
# Channeling
# Fairly specific US craziness : HARRP, FEMA camps, chemtrails, earthquake machines, false flag operations, and oh so many others
# The conspiracy to kill most of the worlds population, involving the WWF, Prince Philip, the UN, diseases incubated by bats and spread by WHO as fake inoculation campaigns etc.

I think that's it. For the time being.
 
BBC article about those who believe mass shootings in the US are staged.

Mass shootings in the United States are a depressingly familiar occurrence. But why do conspiracy theories spring up and spread so rapidly online in the aftermath of such horrific events?

There is a mass shooting in the US an average of once a day, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive.

After each big shooting, a familiar script follows. Thoughts and prayers are proffered. #PrayFor(InsertLatestTownHere) trends on Twitter. Rival politicians argue about when the best time to talk about gun control might be. And then most of the world seems to move on and forget about it, until the next one.

To that script, a disturbing and relatively new phenomenon has been added. Victims are increasingly forced to fend off allegations that the shooting never happened, fuelled by conspiracy theorists on social media. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trend...social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
 
BBC article about those who believe mass shootings in the US are staged.

Mass shootings in the United States are a depressingly familiar occurrence. But why do conspiracy theories spring up and spread so rapidly online in the aftermath of such horrific events?

There is a mass shooting in the US an average of once a day, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive.

After each big shooting, a familiar script follows. Thoughts and prayers are proffered. #PrayFor(InsertLatestTownHere) trends on Twitter. Rival politicians argue about when the best time to talk about gun control might be. And then most of the world seems to move on and forget about it, until the next one.

To that script, a disturbing and relatively new phenomenon has been added. Victims are increasingly forced to fend off allegations that the shooting never happened, fuelled by conspiracy theorists on social media. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trend...social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
And the earth is flat and the NASA moon landing were done in a studio. I wish these trajeties weren't happening but unfortnunatly.
 
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