Conspiracy theorists perform a valuable service. Not only
do they make us think, and often laugh, but they also supplement the
information we accept from the mainstream media as "the news."
News is rarely the whole truth; rather, it is a "spun" version of events
shaped by reporters and editors (and nowadays, publishers and even
advertisers.) Although cases of intentional deception are rare, much has
been left out from the version of the news which reaches the general public.
If you doubt this, read this publication's annual feature about The Year's
Ten Most Censored Stories. It is hard to imagine that these events are too
trivial to be reported in the mainstream press.
Go to a press conference someday and then watch how it is reported that
night on the local news. Has a newspaper reporter ever interviewed you?
When you then read the article, did it seem the reporter caught the true
drift of what you wished to convey?
So what then must we do? Read the alternative press; but then you're doing
that at this very moment! The foreign press tends to take a much broader
view of current events. Catch the BBC on Public Television some night at
11 p.m.
Then there are the conspiracy theories to be found on the radio, in
magazines, in numerous books; and, of course, in the coffeehouses of every
town and village.
While conspiracy theories may sometimes seem the nightmarish rants of a
demented schizophrenic, when they are read with a critical and sober mind,
they often yield up sparkling nuggets of truth from their murky waters.
Here is a simple case in point: The 2000 Presidential Election. The
official spin, repeated ad nauseum by the mainstream media, was: "Every
Vote Counts!" How many times did you here someone say that? Every TV
anchorperson said it. Nearly everyone they interviewed said it too, over
and over, "Every Vote Counts!"
Why, they even had Billy Clinton on the tube saying something along the
lines of: Yes, Dan, I feel the passion the American People have for their
elections. I believe I speak for all of America when I say there have been
few presidential contests in this nation's great and glorious history when
the vote of each and every citizen was so crucially important. From this
day forward no one can ever again doubt the simple fact that Every Vote
Counts!
Say what? Clinton was not speaking for All of America. He was most
certainly not speaking for the conspiracy theorists among us.
They claim that just the opposite is true. In presidential elections,
conspiracy theorists make the case that Most votes don't count.
In their book, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, authors Jonathon
Vankin and John Whalen write about an entity called the News Election
Service. This is a private corporation which processes vote totals for
each state in presidential elections and announces the winner to the media.
Published by Barnes & Noble Books in 1998, Vankin and Whalen began their
chapter entitled Votescam with these words, "No political act requires
quite the leap of faith as voting." What would they say now, after
Election 2000?
Presumably, it was the News Election Service which gave Florida to Al Gore
early in the evening on Election Day. Based on what percentage of the
vote, .00000000001%?
When this news was broken to George W. Bush on national television, it was
obvious to the viewers that this result was totally unacceptable to the
Bush clan assembled in that room. Brother Jeb immediately jumped up and
placed a phone call. Whom did he call? Whom did George H. W. Bush call?
One conspiracy goes like this. If you have enough juice in Washington D.
C., you do not have to win the popular vote, or even the votes of the
Electoral College for that matter, to become the President of the United
States of America.
How could such a thing happen? Admittedly this is a major stretch, but
some conspiracy theorists truly believe that with enough influence, a
person could have the Supreme Court intervene, stop the election, declare
the actual vote tally null and void, and declare the eventual loser the
immediate winner!
Pretty crazy, huh? What reason could the Supreme Court ever come up with
to justify such an outrageous action?
This is where the conspiracy theorists go way out on a limb. They say the
Supreme Court could declare that to actually count all of the votes in one
state would be unfair to the voters in the rest of the country because
their votes are not really counted! This would show favoritism to the
voters of one state and therefore be unconstitutional.
To rectify this situation, Each and Every Vote cast for president in Each
and Every State would have to be truly counted. What a mess that would be!
Therefore, to keep the election legal, all official vote counting would
have to cease immediately. This would establish a precedent whereby the
president would in fact be chosen by an action of the U.S. Supreme Court
instead of based upon a total count of the votes cast.
Weird, weird stuff. Welcome to the strange world of conspiracy theorists.
If you believe that whopper, then you're just the kind of person who'd sink
his teeth into these questions raised in The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of
All Time:
- Why was Saddam Hussein given the "green light" on the eve of the invasion
of Kuwait, and why has he been allowed to stay in power after the Gulf War?
- If eye-witnesses' descriptions of John Doe #1 so exactly fit Timothy
McVeigh, whatever happened to John Doe #2?
- Why were the U.S. embassy officials held hostage in Iran, released on
Ronald Reagan's inauguration day?
- Why is the official government policy that all Vietnam era MIA's have
been accounted for? And why after spending millions searching for MIA's in
Laos and Cambodia, did Ross Perot decide to run for president against
George Bush the Elder?
- Why, after WWII were NAZI war criminals recruited to play a pivotal role
in the creation of the CIA?
- Did Charles Manson truly expect to create a race war by orchestrating the
murder of people in two homes in Beverly Hills?
- Why on the day Reagan was shot was John Hinckley Jr.'s older brother
Scott having dinner with then Vice President George Bush's son Neil?
- Why was Hemp outlawed?
- Was the Unabomber acting alone?
- If the Watergate burglars were seasoned professionals, why did they
bungle the job? In what ways was Howard Hughes involved?
- Did AIDS really come from green monkeys?
- Did Mark David Chapman act on his own?
- How did RFK assassin, Sirhan Sirhan fire off thirteen rounds from an
eight-shot pistol?
Perhaps the greatest conspiracy question of all time is: Who killed JFK?
Vankin and Whalen have presented a various collection of ten theories to
answer that question.
- Lee Harvey Oswald, acting as an agent for Castro and the Soviet Union,
shot JFK.
- Oswald, acting on behalf of the CIA and the Bay-of-Pigs, anti-Castro,
Alpha 66 Brigade, shot JFK. A twist to this plot is that the KGB hired a
hit man to kill Oswald before he shot JFK.
- The CIA first plotted to blow-up JFK at a speech in the Orange Bowl in
Miami.
- Los Angeles members of the Alpha 66 Brigade recruited an assassin to
shoot JFK in Los Angeles.
- JFK's assassination was master-minded by an American general born in
Heidelberg, Germany, named Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach. He served as General
Douglas MacArthur's intelligence chief.
- A self-proclaimed CIA assassin named Davey Morales claimed to be part
of the assassination plot as payback for the failed Bay-of-Pigs invasion of
Cuba.
- Aristotle Onassis, as the King of Organized Crime, ordered JFK to take
back Cuba for the Mafia. When JFK "welshed" on the deal, Onassis had no
choice but to follow Mob protocol and kill JFK and take his gun and his
woman.
- E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis of Watergate fame were allegedly two
of the "three tramps" temporarily detained after JFK's assassination.
- Shortly before his death, the CIA learned JFK was secretly seeking to
normalize relations with Castro's Cuba. The CIA revived its assassination
campaigns against both JFK and Castro.
- Perhaps the strangest JFK assassination conspiracy is that of James
Shelby Downard. He sees life not as a cause-and-effect system based upon a
physical reality but rather as a greater sort of symbolic chess game played
out on a more cosmic plane. Life is actually an "eternal pagan
psychodrama" of "sorcery in an abyss of logic defying synchronicities."
According to Downard, the United States is "a witches' cauldron wherein
the 'Hierarchy of the Grand Architect of the Universe' arranges for
ritualistic crimes and psycho-political psychodramas to be performed in
accordance with a Master Plan."
Downard calls Shakespeare's MacBeth a "killing of the king" drama.
He sees the assassination of JFK in a similar vein calling upon symbolism
from sources as diverse as Free Masonry, the Wizard of Oz and the magic
number "3."
JFK was assassinated in Dealy Plaza where the first Masonic Temple in
Dallas had been located.
As Kennedy's motorcade headed toward the Triple underpass, near
the Trinity River, JFK was slain by Three Tramps.
Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald has the Divine Strength of "OZ"
needed for king-killing.
Oswald was killed by Ruby just as Dorothy had been freed from
the Land of Oz by her Ruby Slippers.
Kennedy in Gaelic is Ceannaideach or Wounded-Head.
Are these the ravings of a lunatic or the ultimate Truth? The Truth is out
there. Every Vote Counts!
|
