Sunday Mercury - The Grassy Knoll

OPERATION NORTHWOODS - Faking it?

2009-11-04T16:56:44Z

The Case

At the height of the Cold War the US military was running out of ways to tackle the threat of communist Cuba.
Following the humiliating failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and just months before the Cuban Missile Crisis the desperate army elite came up with a dastardly new proposal.
Operation Northwoods ignored all rules of warfare, common humanity and moral decency.
It marked the first example of a False Flag plot, the concept that has informed conspiracy theories on everything from the 9/11 attacks to Pearl Harbour.
Under the controversial plan the CIA and the joint chiefs of staff recommended that civilians be targetted with real terror attacks, involving American casualties in order to justify an all out land invasion of Cuba.
Never before had a government countenanced the slaughter of its own citizens to warrant waging war against an enemy.
The plan was thrown out by President Kennedy, with many theorists speculating that this act of defiance against the military elite may have led to JFK's own untimely demise.
Shortly afterwards the US became embroiled in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Operation Northwoods was put back in the box it came in.
But when the most diabolical and devastating plot ever considered at the upper echelons of government was revealed in 2001, the distrustful US public had to accept that their leaders were now capable of anything.
Almost 50 years on the question remains, has a false flag terror act been committed by the US government and if not, how long will it be before Northwoods is put into operation?

The Official Story

For almost 40 years, Operation Northwoods was nothing more than a highly classified sheet of paper held in US military records.
It was not until April 2001 that the corrupt scheme became public knowledge, with the release of classified National Security Archive documents online and the publication of investigative journalist James Bamford's book Body of Secrets.
Shockwaves were sent around the world as the top secret document, signed by the joint chiefs of staff, recommended causing US casualties to further the possibility of a US invasion of Cuba.
"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," the joint chiefs wrote. "Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
Northwoods was sparked by the work of Brigadier General Edward Lansdale, a CIA and air force officer who was in command of Operation Mongoose, the codename for US plans to topple Castro and take control of Cuba.
The joint chiefs at the time were headed by General Lyman Lemnitzer the man behind the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and Lansdale's boss.
After months of planning Lansdale's team presented a document entitled "Justification for US military intervention in Cuba" which included Operation Northwoods in an appendix marked for the attention of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
The suggestions were aimed at provoking a publicly acceptable war on Cuba and included blowing up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay, hijacking civilian aircraft and creating a Cuban communist terror group in Florida.
McNamara's reaction to the submission of the controversial plans is not known. What we do know is that a strained meeting took place three days later between President Kennedy and General Lemnitzer.
The General was told that his plans had been categorically rejected, and just months later he was denied a third term as chairman of the joint chiefs.
Quashed by the President, Operation Northwoods was consigned to the secret filing cabinets at Army HQ, and forgotten about for four decades.
Or was it?

The Conspiracy Theory

Operation Northwoods is a conspiracy theorist's dream.
Clearly the content of the scheme itself is not at issue, the US did not implement the plan to undertake terror attacks to provoke a war against Cuba.
But the psychological impact of Northwoods is enormous.
Suddenly the American people, not just the traditionally sceptical conspiracy community, were handed verifiable, cast iron evidence that their government was capable of plotting murder and terror against its own citizens.
Combine this with the timing of the revelation, just six months before the 9/11 terror attacks, and Operation Northwoods suddenly assumes a great deal of significance.
For those sceptical about whether 19 jihadists armed with box cutters and very basic flying skills could really strike at the military and economic heart of the most powerful nation on earth, Operation Northwoods began to look like the blueprint for their theories.
The 1962 Operation had even talked about hijacking planes and targeting civilian air defence systems. The 9/11 "truthers" were convinced.
George W Bush's foreign policy goals to create a foothold in Central Asia and install a friendly government in Oil rich Iraq were set long before the Twin Towers were destroyed.
To those in the Republican party and beyond who dreamed of a new American empire, or "new world order" as many conspiracy theorists would have it, success in these ventures was crucial.
As pretexts for war go, they don't come much more convincing than 3,000 innocent men, women and children being slaughtered in the most audacious and deadly terror attack in history.
Within hours of 9/11 the US had in place a rock solid alliance of international states, who would back them in just about any attempt to capture those responsible for the atrocity.
The conspiracy theory runs that the US government, using Operation Northwoods as its inspiration, deliberately assisted the terror hijackers by relaxing security at airports, sending the air force on exercises and refusing to shoot down suspect planes.
Many theorists even go as far as suggesting that the US government either trained, recruited and funded the terrorists themselves, or used explosives to demolish the Twin Towers and a cruise missile to attack the Pentagon.
They claim that the 9/11 Commission Report was a cover-up aimed at blaming Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden for the US government's inside job.
To conspiracy theorists, 9/11 was Operation Northwoods in action, a carefully orchestrated plot to prepare the ground for the necessary US expansion into Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Pros

- Unlike many conspiracy theories we have documented evidence that Operation Northwoods was not only concocted, but openly debated and recommended by the highest ranking men in the US military.

- Just because Northwoods was rejected by President Kennedy does not mean it was rejected by subsequent administrations. Once the idea had been proposed it was clear the CIA and military were willing to kill their own citizens in order to further American interests.

- The 9/11 attacks are similar to the sort of plots considered by the military under the Northwoods plot. Using hijacked planes to attack civilian targets is explicitly mentioned by the joint chiefs in the memo handed to Secretary of Defense McNamara in 1962.

- Several inconsistencies in the evidence produced to support the official version of the events of 911 have yet to be satisfactorily explained. Most importantly questions over whether United 93 was shot down over Pennsylvania and suggestions that Tower 7 of the World Trade Centre was brought down by controlled explosion.

- Without the 9/11 attacks there is very little chance the US would have gained the international support it required to launch an all-out invasion of both Afghanistan, and the subsequent incursion into Iraq.

Cons

- Not only was Operation Northwoods not implemented, it was rejected out of hand by the US Government at a time when the powerful military elite were out of control in their obsession with deposing Castro.

- There is no evidence that the files containing the Northwoods advice were accessed by any administration following their rejection by President Kennedy.

- Not only was Northwoods immoral and inhumane, there is also no evidence that it could have worked. Conspiracy theorists who claim it could have acted as a blueprint for 9/11 do not acknowledge that the operation may well have failed, even in the febrile atmosphere at the height of the Cold War.

- Evidence presented to the 9/11 commission, and investigations into the financial and military operations of Al Qaeda show that the terror organisation actively planned, carried out and later accepted responsibility for the attacks.

- No-one, from any branch of the US armed forces or civilian government has ever revealed any measure of cover-up or conspiracy regarding supposed US involvement in carrying out the atrocity.

Conclusion

Operation Northwoods marks a watershed moment for conspiracy theories. The fact that the US armed forces actively plotted terror attacks against its own citizens points to a dark, frightening undercurrent present in the upper echelons of the military industrial complex. That Northwoods was a brutal, dastardly conspiracy ignoring all conventional rules of human rights and decency is beyond debate. This is clearly one of the most outrageous conspiracies of all time. However, there seems to be very little evidence that Northwoods was ever put into effect by any US administration, and certainly not on 9/11, where conspiracy theorists still struggle to produce any evidence that the government actively took part in the attacks.

OSAMA BIN LADEN - A Dead Man Talking?

2009-10-06T10:08:55Z

The Case

December 2001, three months after terrorists have destroyed the Twin Towers and brought America to its knees.
The US is struggling to hold together a fragile coalition for its invasion of Afghanistan.
Questions are being raised about the strength of the evidence against their prime suspect for the 9/11 atrocities.
And the notoriously loudmouthed Al Qaeda chief still hasn't claimed responsibility.
Suddenly a video tape appears from a house in Jalalabad showing a barely recognisable Osama Bin Laden confessing all.
Could this be fortunate timing? Or is the video a fake recording of a man who is already dead?
Bin Laden has been the western world's most wanted man for the best part of a decade.
Well over 6ft tall, sporting a distinctive beard and with an instantly recognisable face the Saudi militant should stand out a mile.
But more than eight years after the 9/11 attacks he is said to have masterminded, Al Qaeda's commander in chief remains on the run.
He could still be sheltering in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan.
He may be hiding in the lawless tribal regions of North West Pakistan.
There is even a chance that he has sought refuge in a Middle Eastern state sympathetic to his fanatical cause.
Amid all of these possibilities there is one which is rarely covered in the mainstream media.
Osama Bin Laden, the Great Satan's staunchest foe, the devil incarnate himself, could well be dead.
With so much money, manpower and murder expended on attempts at capturing him, how can one man continue to elude the most powerful military in human history?
Surely with infinite resources, gadgets that would make James Bond's eyes pop out, and enough explosives to destroy the planet a thousand times over, the US would have found this elderly cleric with a serious kidney ailment by now?
Unless of course, he is no longer there to be found.
His death would certainly not have been announced by the Al Qaeda lieutenants who rely on his iconic status to recruit the deranged youths they need to wage their unholy war.
Nor would it have been trumpeted by the US had they caught wind of his demise.
With Bin Laden's life goes the human face of 9/11, the face that launched a hundred unmanned drones in Pakistan, a thousand F16s in Iraq, tens of thousands of soldiers in the Afghan badlands.
On the history pages Bin Laden's image is destined to sit next to those of Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler as a case study in evil.
But with conflicting reports about his health, question marks over the authenticity of his videos and rumours about a burial, has he been consigned to those pages already?

The Official Story

Having already failed to blow up the World Trade Centre and been kicked out of his native Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden shot to international notoriety when he ordered simultaneous embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, killing more than 200 people.
From that point onwards Bin Laden has been the world's most wanted terrorist, even before 9/11 the Clinton administration had made his capture a major foreign policy objective and he was recognised as a clear danger.
Attempts to assassinate him were launched by the CIA, but proved unsuccessful as a series of rocket attacks missed the Al Qaeda chief.
But he retained an element of freedom of movement that, post 9/11, seems staggering. Just before Christmas 1998 he met two American journalists who traveled to his tented hideout in Afghanistan to hear the "Sheikh" speak about his Jihad against the US. The transcripts were published in Time Magazine and a video interview broadcast on America's ABC News.
By 2001 Bin Laden had stabilised his terror apparatus, and despite the unwanted attention of the US security services he was using his hideout in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, to put the finishing touches to Al Qaeda's masterpiece.
As the twin towers were destroyed, and with the Pentagon still collapsing around their ears, the US military took no time at all to identify Bin Laden as the prime suspect for the atrocity. He was, in President George W Bush's words, the only man who could have done it.
Just five days after the attacks Bin Laden spoke to deny any involvement, with Al Jazeera broadcasting a rant in which he praised the attacks but insisted he was not responsible.
He made two more televised speeches denying any involvement, a rare move for the egotistical and vainglorious Osama, who often claimed terror attacks as his own, even if they had been planned by others.
It was not until 13 December 2001 that he was pictured speaking with a fellow Sheikh about his involvement in planning 9/11 that Bin Laden finally confessed to the atrocity.
Since then we have heard little from him, the odd televised address, one or two speeches a year, but nothing on the level of his pre-9/11 output.
So what changed, why did Bin Laden confess, and where is he now?
The US authorities would have us believe that he is still at large, having released a tape attacking President Obama in June, and that he retains day to day control of Al Qaeda.
There is even a new American initiative to work with the Pakistani security services to hunt and kill Bin Laden, who they claim is now sheltering over the Pakistan border in southern Waziristan.
Maybe he is, but maybe there is a more sinister explanation.

The Conspiracy Theory

The most convincing conspiracy theory is that Bin Laden died shortly after the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.
Even before 9/11 the Al Qaeda chief was widely reported to be in poor health, suffering from a kidney disease and possible hepatitis infection.
In a film released to Al Jazeera in December 2001 but shot in October, he is seen barely moving his left side, and looking pale and drawn. He does not claim responsibility for 9/11, but praises all attacks on the US as the occupier of muslim lands.
Interpretations on his ill health range from suggestions that he had suffered a stroke, to claims from a London-based Arabic newspaper that he was struck in the shoulder by a piece of shrapnel from the US bombardment of his Tora Bora cave complex.
Whatever the reasons for his illness this video certainly seemed to show a man on his last legs.
Professor David Griffin, emeritus professor at California's Claremont School of Theology, claims in his new book - Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? - that the video released on December 13 is the first that features a totally different Bin Laden.
According to Griffin, the "confession tape" has Bin Laden as a weighty man with a black beard, not a grey one, with darker skin, a different shaped nose and thick, workmanlike hands. He looks in good health, unlike the gaunt figure filmed just two months earlier. It also appears to have been made for no apparent reason, other than to be conveniently discovered by CIA agents in a house in Jalalabad following the siege of the Afghan city.
Following the bombing of Tora Bora in November/December 2001, US authorities who felt they had the Al Qaeda boss cornered were suddenly unable to keep tabs on him.
Out of the blue, around 13 December 2001, signals intelligence on Bin Laden ceased and has never been reestablished. Whereas before the US regularly listened in to his conversations, they haven't heard a squeak from him in eight years.
Boston University's Professor of international relations Angelo Codevilla says that there is a simple explanation - he was dead.
He argues: "In the so-called confession video that the CIA found in December, the Osama figure acts like the chief conspirator. Its substance, the celebratory affirmation of a responsibility for 9/11 that Osama had denied, should also have weighed against the video's authenticity. Why would he wait to indict himself until after US forces had secured Afghanistan?"
The theory runs that an ailing Bin Laden, struggling to keep up the dialysis treatments he needed for his kidney disease, succumbed to his ill health and passed away peacefully before being buried within 24 hours in the Afghan mountains.
His "death" was reported in the Pakistan Observer shortly before Christmas 2001, and picked up by Fox and other American news networks on Boxing Day. They quoted an unnamed Taliban commander confirming Bin Laden's death and funeral.
World leaders from Pakistan's President Musharaf to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speculated that Bin Laden could be dead.
But within a year another Bin Laden tape surfaced, again showing a different looking and sounding Osama, who theorists claim was an obvious fake used to justify the US War on Terror.
In these videos he spoke less about religion, and appeared with gold rings adorning his fingers, an indulgence banned among Wahhabi followers like Bin Laden.
His speeches also began to come at increasingly convenient times for the American leaders in charge of the hunt for the world's most wanted man.
In February 2003, with the Bush administration failing to produce concrete evidence of Bin Laden's links to Saddam Hussein, a video was handed to Al Jazeera in which Osama claimed he was "in partnership with Iraq".
Then silence once more, until the eve of the 2004 US Presidential election. With President Bush trailing in the polls to Democratic rival Senator John Kerry, Bin Laden appeared as if from nowhere, giving a video address that offered the first full account of his responsibility for 9/11 and helping Bush to steer the debate back towards his tough stance on terror.
Bin Laden again proved a useful political tool to the embattled Bush administration in September 2006, two months before the American mid term congressional elections, appearing in a new video training the 9/11 hijackers in Afghanistan.
The timing of these videos, combined with the physical and philosophical differences apparent in Bin Laden after December 2001, have led theorists to argue that the terror totem has long since ceased to be a live threat.

Pros

- Bin Laden clearly looks and sounds very different in the confession tape found by the CIA (dated 9 November 2001) compared to the thin gaunt injured Bin Laden who appeared in the Al Jazeera tape released on 28 December 2001. His confession only served to further US interests after they had failed to conclusively prove he was behind 9/11.

- He speaks differently in tapes after December 2001, using more secular language and altering the tone of his rants. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies' department argues that later Bin Laden recordings are inconsistent with his strict Islamic code of Wahhabism.

- Two months before 9/11 Bin Laden was reportedly treated for an infection linked to his kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai. He ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to Afghanistan, showing that his health had deteriorated badly. It is almost impossible to believe that a kidney patient in need of regular dialysis could survive with intermittent electricity and poor water supply in the remote Pakistan/Afghanistan border region for eight years.

- Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said in January 2002 that Bin Laden required two different dialysis machines, and added: "I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a kidney patient." Two other prominent figures echoed this conclusion, the FBI's counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, who said he personally believed Osama bin Laden "is no longer with us". And then Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who told CNN: "I have come to believe that bin Laden probably is dead."

- The CIA closed "Alec Station", its dedicated Bin Laden hunting unit in late 2005, lending weight to the suggestion that there was no need to hunt him anymore.

- In November 2007 Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto claimed that bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. She named Sheikh as a possible suspect in failed attacks against her and referred to him as "the man who murdered Osama bin Laden." There are suggestions that she misspoke and meant to identify the militant as the man who killed American journalist Daniel Pearl, leading the BBC to edit out her comments when they were broadcast.

Cons

- In a video released in September 2006 Bin Laden is seen with two of the 9/11 hijackers as they train for physical combat ahead of their mission. This implies that he was behind the attacks, met with the perpetrators and was alive at least in the summer of 2001.

- Many of the tapes Bin Laden has released have been verified as authentic by the CIA using their voice recognition technology. While fake tapes have been released that doesn't mean all recordings of Bin Laden are fake.

- Al Qaeda continues to plan and execute terror attacks across the globe. It's funding remains steady if unspectacular, and it is able to recruit young men from Britain, America and Pakistan to carry out jihadi strikes in their own countries. While it hasn't produced another 9/11 yet, Bin Laden's empire is alive and well.

Conclusion

It is quite clear that Osama Bin Laden isn't just wanted dead or alive by the US, he is needed dead or alive. His face is the iconic image that lends legitimacy to their war on terror. Without that human connection, that hatred of a single, evil figure, the battle for Afghanistan and the whole concept of the global fight against extremist Islam would be unsellable to the American public. It seems clear from the evidence presented in this blog that the Al Qaeda commander is dead. Whether killed by a rocket attack in the battle of Tora Bora or finally defeated by his kidney disease, Bin Laden is now a myth rather than a mastermind. The fact that his death has been covered up does not mean that he did not plan 9/11, he is still the overwhelming prime suspect in the murder of 3,000 innocent men, women and children. But he will never stand trial, because he is already answering to a higher power. How long the US keeps up this charade, and how many more videos appear depends entirely on how long the ghost of Bin Laden remains of use to the Pentagon. I'd guess that shortly before the last US marines climb aboard the final flight out of Helmand, you'll hear a news report that sounds remarkably similar to one from December 2001 - Osama Bin Laden is dead...

Al Megrahi - Lockerbie Bomber or hapless fall guy?

2009-08-26T16:33:45Z

The Case

The hero's welcome that has greeted the return of the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdulbaset Ali Al Megrahi to his native Libya has sparked outrage in the US.
With the Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill playing the villain-in-chief, America's less than diplomatic rhetoric has shown that the release of such a notorious figure threatens the stability of Britain's "special relationship" with our transatlantic cousins.
Megrahi has less than three months to live, but his release could have long term implications for the British government and our role in the American "war on terror" that so consumes the superpower's foreign policy.
While no-one in Edinburgh, London or Washington is openly questioning Megrahi's guilt, maybe they should be.
The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and the incumbent loss of 270 lives, the vast majority of those being US citizens, still represents the single worst terrorist act in the UK.
That Libya and the despotic Colonel Gaddafi are behind the crime seems possible but by no means certain, with conspiracy theorists raising questions about links between the bombing and other state terror sponsors including Iran and Syria.
However, while Megrahi is the convicted, tried and imprisoned "face" of the atrocity, there are major questions about the evidence that convicted him and whether or not he is a patsy presented to appease the US by a remorseful yet unbowed Libya.
Other theories about the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 include suggestions that the aircraft was downed by Palestinian militants backed by Hizbollah, or even that the CIA was responsible for the attack to hide a drug smuggling route it had established from Europe into the US.
The diplomatic furore over Megrahi's release will surely settle down, but questions about what really happened at Lockerbie are set to continue for generations to come.

The Official Story

On the evening of 21 December 1988, residents in the sleepy Scottish town of Lockerbie were safely tucked up beside their fireplaces watching TV and enjoyed family meals ahead of Christmas.
At 7.03pm the tranquillity of the bitterly cold evening was ripped apart as 10,000ft above, a bomb exploded aboard Pan Am flight 103, ripping a whole in the clipper's fuselage and sending the flaming aircraft crashing into the tiny town.
Within hours, it became clear to accident investigators that this was no mechanical fault and that the case before them was the result of Britain's worst ever terrorist act.
Suspicion immediately fell on Middle Eastern Islamist groups, with the tactics seemingly out of step with those of domestic terror organisations such as the IRA.
At the time, Libya was one of the world's most dangerous "rogue nations" on the planet, acting as a state sponsor of terror, and providing training for everyone from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation to Irish Republican militants.
Perhaps motivated by the US air raids which had targetted Tripoli two years earlier, or the protracted naval battles that took place between Libya and the US throughout the 1980s, Gaddafi's men are officially "credited" with orchestrating an attack against the Pan Am flight.
When the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) completed their investigation they came up with the names of two Libyan intelligence officers Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah.
For more than a decade Gaddafi defied the international community, and cost his nation billions of dollars in UN trade sanctions, by refusing to hand over the two men to the Scottish or American authorities.
Finally, in 1999, after back room diplomacy involving then foreign secretary Robin Cook and South African leader Nelson Mandela, the two suspects were handed over to face a trial in Holland under Scottish law.
Megrahi, a former security official with the Libyan Arab Airlines based in Malta, was convicted largely on the evidence of Maltese clothes shop owner Tony Gauci, who said he sold the bomber the clothes which were found wrapped around the bomb in the Samsonite suitcase that was used to smuggle it on board Flight 103.
The suitcase bomb was supposedly loaded onto the plane in Malta by Megrahi, and then detonated using an intricate remote device, fragments of which were found in the Scottish countryside around Lockerbie.
The discovery of fragments from a Toshiba Bombeat cassette player and a timing device made by Swiss firm Mebo, which formed the key components of the bomb which brought down Flight 103, were used as evidence against the Libyan.
No forensic evidence was ever presented to prove that Megrahi handled the bomb or detonated the explosives.
His appeals against his conviction were turned down, despite support from leading Scottish lawyers and barristers who visited Megrahi and heard his protestations that he was an innocent man framed for a heinous crime.
On 20 August 2009, the dying Megrahi was released from prison in Scotland, and received a hero's welcome as he flew home to Libya aboard Colonel Gaddafi's private jet.

The Conspiracy Theory

There are so many threads to the conspiracies that whirl around the Lockerbie bombing investigation that any detailed examination of the evidence inevitably leads to more questions than answers.
The main plank underpinning most of these theories is that Megrahi was framed, either by Gaddafi to protect those truly responsible for the attack, by the CIA and MI6 to implicate Libya, or by a rival Islamist group from Palestine, Syria or Iran.
Megrahi's trial raises serious questions about whether or not he had any involvement in the bombing, and more than one appeal has fallen on sympathetic ears in Scotland.
No forensic evidence was presented to the three judge panel that found him guilty, and the prosecution case hung on the less-than-reliable account of a Maltese shopkeeper allegedly paid off by the CIA to finger Megrahi as the terrorist.
Bomb fragment evidence also appeared to have been tampered with, as a Swiss engineer, Ulrich Lumpert, later confessed to stealing part of a circuit board that had been sold in bulk to Libya and handing it over to one of the Lockerbie investigators, presumably to be used in a "frame up" of Megrahi.
Indeed so little evidence was produced that the consensus of opinion in the media during his trial was that Megrahi would have to be acquitted, and it was something of a surprise when he was found guilty of 270 counts of murder by the Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in Holland in January 2001.
In 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) found evidence that Megrahi might have "suffered a miscarriage of justice" and recommended that he be granted a second appeal, which was later turned down.
While he remains a convicted mass murderer, Megrahi has all the hallmarks of a man set up to take the fall for someone else's crime. But if we accept the premise that the Libyan may be innocent, the plot only thickens from there.
The three other main theories to explain the Lockerbie Bombing are:
1. Iran organised the attack in retribution for the downing of its own commercial jetliner by a US ship in 1988
2. Notorious terror mastermind Abu Nidal blew up the US plane at the instruction of Gaddafi, with Megrahi handed over as the fall guy
3. The CIA orchestrated the bombing to wipe out rogue agents and eradicate the evidence of a secret drug smuggling route into the US
If Libya was not behind the bombing then a combination of Syrian, Iranian and Palestinian Islamic terror groups are the most likely culprits.
Suspicion initially fell on ex-Syrian army captain Ahmed Jibril and his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), who had warned in 1986 that "There will be no safety for any traveller on an Israeli or US airliner".
Backed by Iranian money Jibril is thought to have been determined to bring down a US plane following the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the USS Vincennes in July 1988, which cost 254 Iranian lives.
A PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt, where Pan Am Flight 103 originated, was set up in October under the stewardship of bomb maker Marwan Khreesat, who specialised in making similar IED explosives to the ones that were used to carry out the Lockerbie bombing.
The second theory features Osama Bin Laden's predecessor as the world's most wanted terrorist. Abu Nidal was the poster child of early Jihadist missions against airliners, carrying out the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi which killed passengers and wounded 150 others.
He was reportedly told to produce the timer device that triggered the Lockerbie bomb, and then handed it over to Gaddafi's head of intelligence to carry out the plot.
The CIA drug smuggling theory has attracted more derision from critics, but the presence of four US intelligence operatives on Flight 103 means it cannot be totally discounted.
According to sources close to the intelligence agency, in the 1980s the CIA had established Operation Corea, a protected drug smuggling route to allow Syrian narcotics dealers to transport heroin to the US aboard Pan Am flights in exchange for information on terrorist groups operating in the Middle East.
Pan Am's lead investigator into the crash, ex-Mossad agent Juval Aviv, claims the CIA protected the drug filled suitcases from airport security and that the terrorists who targetted Pan Am Flight 103 had simply swapped one of these cases for a bomb-filled piece of luggage.
The lack of evidence linking Megrahi to the bombing suggests that while none of these conspiracies may have actually taken place, the version of events presented to the Scottish court that convicted him is just one in a long line of implausible scenarios as to what really happened at Lockerbie.

Pros

- Huge question marks hang over the bomb fragment evidence used at Megrahi's trial. Edwin Bollier, owner of the Swiss company Mebo which produced the circuit board used in the attack, later revealed he was offered $4 million to testify that fragments of the timer were consistent with devices that were sold to Gaddafi. And Mebo employee Ulrich Lumpert, who gave evidence at Megrahi's trial, later swore before a Swiss court that he had lied under oath and stolen parts of the MST-13 timer circuit board presented to the Lockerbie panel and handed them to a US investigator in 1989.

- The fragments of timer device found deep in the Scottish countryside were an amazing stroke of luck for investigators scouring a huge and heavily wooded area for miniscule pieces of physical evidence. Had Megrahi been allowed a second appeal, his legal team planned to argue that no explosive residue was found on the circuit board remains, suggesting they were planted.

- There were four American CIA operatives heavily-linked to Middle Eastern troublespots aboard Pan Am 103 when it was brought down. These men included Matthew Gannon, the deputy CIA station chief for Beirut in Lebanon. They would have known about any protected drug smuggling routes and could have been heading home to blow the whistle.

- The evidence presented by Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness, appears to be unsafe, and he changed his account of events on several occasions during the police investigation, once after seeing a news report which picture Megrahi. At one stage he even identified a leading Palestinian terror kingpin as the man who brought clothes from his store. Reports have also surfaced that he was paid off with $2 million to testify against Megrahi.

- Bomb maker and double agent Marwan Khreesat made five bombs out of Toshiba Bombeat Cassette players, similar to the one that exploded on Pan Am 103, which were handed over to Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-GC terror organisation and never recovered. Some Lockerbie relatives, including Dr Jim Swire who maintains that Megrahi was not behind the attack, believe the similarities between the devices points directly to Iran and Syria as architects of the bombing.

- Megrahi has consistently protested his innocence, even when it seemed pointless to do so, and has been backed by some of the Lockerbie relatives, and leading lights from the Scottish judicial system. Even the SCCRC, when hearing his appeal found grounds for a second appeal and evidence that a miscarriage of justice may have taken place.

- Megrahi only dropped his appeals against his conviction when forced to in order to return home. This action sees him remain the convicted "face" of the bombing, while awkward questions that haunt US and British security services will remain unanswered.

- The British government has refused to hold an independent inquiry into the bombing which would allow questions over the identity of the terrorists behind the atrocity to be debated, and mean that all the evidence used by prosecutors would be made available to the public.

- The US embassy in Helsinki was allegedly contacted 16 days before the Lockerbie bombing with a coded warning that terrorists planned to use a bomb to target a US plane from Frankfurt to America. The intelligence was never acted upon, supporting the theory the US may have allowed the attack to happen in order to eliminate the CIA agents that were about to blow the whistle on Operation Corea.

Cons

- The Libyan government has paid more than $2 billion into a fund to compensate the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, effectively taking the blame for the attack.

- Megrahi has dropped his appeal against his conviction, but remains convinced he will be exonerated.

- Through his role as an intelligence officer working in the airline industry, Megrahi was ideally placed to deliver the bomb to the Pan Am flight, and had the expertise to hide it from airport security.

Conclusion

The decision to free Al Megrahi on compassionate grounds has simply reignited public anger over the bungled official investigation into the Lockerbie bombing. A close look at the evidence, or lack of it, shows clearly that this Libyan father-of-five is nothing more than a fall guy. Whether it was a CIA drug smuggling operation gone bad, an act of terror by Iran or a simple intelligence failure by US officials, the real story behind the downing of Flight 103 has not yet been told. The amount of evidence linking the Iran/Syria backed PFLP-GC to the bombing is hard to ignore, and though Tripoli has effectively accepted responsibility, it seems the real finger of blame should be pointing squarely towards Tehran.....

Michael Jackson - The King of Conspiracies?

2009-07-15T14:03:13Z

The Case

The coffin is buried, the celebs have cried on camera and a podgy lad from Britain's Got Talent has sung his heart out.
Finally the carnival surrounding Michael Jackson's death has stopped.
Now it's time for the conspiracy theories to start.
Wacko Jacko is the conspiracist's dream, with his bizarre personal life, reported battle with drugs and the constant accusations of child molestation turning him into a disturbing and controversial figure.
While his musical prowess and commercial pull dwarf any pop artist before or since, it is Jackson's antics away from the limelight that have led to fevered speculation over the "truth" about his death.
Any man who hangs around with a chimp, uses plastic surgery to deform his face into a grotesque mask and builds a creepy ranch in the countryside so that he can "sleep" with young boys is bound to attract the wrong sort of press attention.
But just how far did Jackson's eccentricities lead him, and what finally led to his downfall?
With the Los Angeles coroner still to confirm a cause of death, and pathologists keeping the king of pop's brain for extra analysis, wild explanations as to how he ultimately met his maker are springing up all over.
Meanwhile, as with Elvis before him, many ardent fans are convinced that Jackson is still alive, prompting further rumours that the singer may be in hiding to escape debts and avoid his gruelling gig commitments in London.
So did Jackson die from a combination of exhaustion, drug addiction and stress, or was he killed in some complicated conspiracy, or better yet, could he be lurking in the Californian countryside outrunning his debtors and cuddling children?
One thing is clear already, the Michael Jackson conspiracy theories are here to stay.

The Official Story

Anyone who hasn't been living in a cave, under the sea, on Mars, has heard the official story of Jackson's untimely death.
The star was found in bed, not breathing and showing only a weak pulse at around midday on June 25. He was given CPR by his personal physician, Dr Conrad Murray, who feared that the king of pop had suffered a heart attack.
He was rushed by ambulance to the Ronald Reagan UCLA hospital near to the California mansion he was renting to prepare for a string of 50 sold out gigs at London's O2 arena.
Medics continued attempts to revive Jackson for more than an hour, but eventually they were forced to give up.
He was pronounced dead at 2.26pm. A televised memorial service, which attracted millions of viewers worldwide, and featured stars including Lionel Ritchie, Stevie Wonder and Mariah Carey, took place on July 7 before a private family burial.
Jackson's body was subjected to a post mortem examination, but the cause of death was deferred while further tests on Jackson's blood, tissue and brain are carried out.
As yet, those tests have not been finalised, leading the conspiracy community to reach their own conclusions.

The Conspiracy Theory

When a global icon like Michael Jackson dies, some conspiracy theories are taken as read.
He was assassinated by the CIA.
He was abducted by aliens.
He is still alive and hiding out with Elvis.
He has been dead for years, and was being played by a look-alike.
But with Jackson, there are serious questions over how he died, who was providing the lethal cocktails of prescription painkillers that left him so fragile and whether or not the king of pop was actually murdered.
The conspiracy theories have been fuelled by endless speculation and rumour from US gossip site TMZ.
The web magazine, which broke the world exclusive story of Jackson's demise, has been relentless in its pursuit of the truth behind the fallen idol's final hours.
Stories of drugs, deceit and duplicity have run rife as the arguments begin over MJ's fortune, his reported $400 million debts, the rights to his lucrative back catalogue and the paternity of his three children.
Debbie Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson's kids, has positioned herself as their safest option, while Michael's abusive father Joe and his mother Katherine fight to keep the youngsters with the family.
But as revelations emerge about the sheer scale of the king of pop's substance abuse, his bizarre addiction to plastic surgery and the hand-in-mouth existence he was forced to eke out, a darker side to the circus surrounding his life is becoming apparent.
The doctors who made their living prescribing extra-strong pain medication including demerol and propofol are now being closely scrutinized by investigators.
Jackson's plastic surgeon, Arnold Klein, who has been named in some quarters as the possible biological father of Jackson's eldest kids, has come under fire and his offices have been raided by the LA coroner's office.
The star's family have insisted that his untimely end was sparked by the "bad circle" of advisors, medics and promoters who they say was forcing him into the O2 gigs.
Latoya Jackson, who became close to her brother in his final years despite branding him a child molester at the height of the paedophilia scandal that engulfed his life in the mid-90s, has said that she believes Michael Jackson was murdered.
The LAPD have refused to rule out murder and TMZ reported recently that senior sources inside the Police are already treating the case as a homicide investigation.
Dr Murray has been asked to give his side of the story, and may be the only man who truly knows what happened in Jackson's final 48 hours.
His family, the scandal-hungry US media machine and his legions of fans are demanding answers, and at the moment they are forced to speculate on a whodunnit mystery that could rumble on for decades.

Pros

- The LAPD are taking the murder investigation very seriously, and have publicly stated that they are keeping an open mind about the possibility of homicide.

- Jackson's family say Dr Murray disappeared for several hours after MJ's death, and has still to answer the family's questions about his final hours.

- Detectives have taken a number of drugs from Jackson's home, and his dependence on prescription pain killers was widely documented. Reports also suggest that an injection was administered to him just hours before he died.

- The cause of death on the official death certificate has been deferred. Clearly the coroner needs to examine factors other than a weak heart or a standard medical condition that would lead to cardiac arrest.

- There are several motives for murder or manslaughter. The king of pop may have owed the best part of $400 million, but in death his songs, his image and his memorabilia represent a licence to print money. Could any member of his entourage have hatched a plan to exploit these potential riches?

- Dogged by child abuse allegations, his body ravaged by years of performing, touring and drug taking, there are those who believe Jackson may have asked one of his assistants to help him end his own life rather than face the 50 gruelling gigs he had to fulfil at London's 02 arena.

Cons

- There can be no doubt that suggestions that Jackson is still alive somewhere, waiting for the storm to die down and his massive debts to be paid off are entirely false. A thorough post mortem by the LA coroner revealed that birth marks, scars, surgical alterations and blood samples all matched those of the troubled star.

- Dr Murray has now fully co-operated with investigators, and though his account has not yet been made public, that is no reason to suppose that there is anything untoward about his behaviour.

- The decision to defer the cause of death on his certificate does not immediately mean that Jackson died as a result of foul play, it is quite common in cases where extensive blood work needs to be analysed.

- While he was under pressure to perform the O2 gigs, there was no suggestion from anyone in his family or his entourage that Jackson appeared suicidal before his death.

Conclusion

Michael Jackson's sad demise may never be fully explained. His reclusive lifestyle, reliance on pain killers and gruelling schedule mean that at this early stage it is all but impossible to find out whether his death was a result of murder, suicide, or sheer exhaustion. In death Jackson has the chance to escape the paedophilia allegations and crippling emotional baggage that his life and turned him from a fresh faced showman into a decrepit wreck hiding behind a mask of plastic surgery. His legacy may prove to be the spectacular musical talent he brought to the stage, rather than the disturbing reports of goings-on inside his creepy Neverland ranch. Speculation over his "murder" may be excessive, but it is clear that the collection of enablers who offered him nothing but drugs and demands for cash had a hand to play in his untimely death. The media spotlight that plagued Jackson throughout his career, may ironically help expose the truth about his death. One way or another this conspiracy is set to run and run.

The Freemasons Conspiracy - Masters of the New World Order?

2009-06-09T12:28:13Z

The Case

Who exactly are the Freemasons?
For many they are a perfectly harmless group.
Little more than a working men's club, they hold meetings, swap silly handshakes, have a few drinks and go back to their day jobs.
But for some conspiracy theorists, they are a bizarre cabal of dastardly occultists banded together to control the world.
Of all the conspiracy theories explored in this blog, none can match the Masonic theory for sheer scale.
With a hand in everything from global warming to Iraq, 9/11 to devil worship, the Freemasons have become the conspiracy community's bogeyman, responsible for all the ills that affect our world.
The most popular theory is that the Masons are the modern branch of an ancient sect who aim to shape global events and ensure that their interests are furthered in the New World Order they seek to create.
With their use of occult symbols, their highly secretive meetings and their notable members, the Masons are to conspiracy theorists what a candle is to a moth; irresistible.
But how much truth lies behind the myths?
How powerful are this group, and what happens behind the closed doors of their "grand lodge" get togethers?
Could these men really organise a global powerplay to control our lives, or are they just a bunch of drunken, aging frat boys?
With more than six million members worldwide, they are certainly a force to be reckoned with.
If they were to turn their hand to world domination, it could be tough to stop them.

The Official Story

Debate rages about how far back the "original Freemasons" can trace their roots, but the modern day group appear to have been founded around the 16th century.
Organised in a series of semi-autonomous grand lodges, the Masons have developed a series of handshakes, greetings and symbols to signify their membership of the shadowy organisation.
Ostensibly a charitable group, the Freemasons were initially founded as a fraternity for working men in urban areas of Britain, with the movement later spreading to the US.
The first grand lodge was started in London in 1717, though many texts and smaller lodges pre-date the meeting of the Grand Lodge of England that took place that year.
Often painted as evil and corrupt the group has grown more open in recent years, and while its meetings and rituals remain secret, Masonic organisations have taken an active role in voluntary education, health care and housing projects.
Wannabe members must be introduced and supported by an existing Mason, and declare a belief in a "supreme being" before they are allowed to join.
The ambiguity over the identity of this supreme being has opened the organisation up to members from all religious backgrounds, but also placed it at odds with the Christian church which for generations feared the Freemasons were a form of cult, brainwashing members into believing in a separate God.
Ever since the Taxil Hoax in the late 19th century, where a French author wrote a fictitious account of Masons being involved in Satanism, relations between the Freemasons and religious groups have been strained.
What started as a small union of workers has grown into a huge and influential group spanning the globe, but the secrets, the rumours and the suspicion remain as strong today as ever they were.

The Conspiracy Theory

The Freemasons are linked by many theorists to the New World Order and Illuminati conspiracies.
In fact the three theories overlap so much that the Masons are thought to form the upper echelons of both groups, with the powerful elite who secretly control our world linked through their membership of Masonic lodges.
The conspiracy states that many of the millions of Masons around the world are blissfully unaware that their leaders are in fact bent on world domination.
Controlling everything from war to oil prices as well as creating economic misfortune and social uprisings to further their own interests, these men have allegedly banded themselves together for centuries to dominate global events.
The use of religious imagery, so-called "satanic rites", secret handshakes and covert ceremonies, are pointed to as clear indicators that the Masons are far more than a fraternity of working men.
Their tentacles extend to many of the plots that have made up the bulk of this blog to date.
Anywhere that the Illuminati, Skull and Bones or the New World Order are thought to have been at work, so to the hand of the Freemasons is said to have operated.
Responsibility has been laid at their door for the JFK assassination, the faked moon landings, even 9/11, allegedly part of an ancient war between Islam and the Masons.
In America, many theorists link the founding fathers, some of whom are believed to have been part of the order, to the Masons and see the line of succession of US Presidents reflecting the power and influence of the group. Even the nation's greatest modern leader, Franklin Roosevelt, was said to have been a master Mason.
And it is not just American conspiracy theorists who fear the Freemasons. Islamist group Hamas believes them to be part of a global Jewish conspiracy, and linked to the Israeli government and their oppression of the Palestinian people.
In Britain, many religious groups reject the order for fear that they worship a separate "Masonic God", and they have been linked to various conspiracies, including the Jack the Ripper murders, said to have been carried out by senior Masons.
Perhaps more worrying are claims of institutionalised sexual abuse and violence practised by modern day Masons who remain above the law thanks to their connections in high places.
In many ways the Masons have become a catch all group, responsible for every shady deal, every conspiracy, every catastrophe, and are said to wield almost unimaginable power.
It seems far fetched, but their links to senior levels of government and their influence in society suggest the Masons are a force to be reckoned with.

Pros

- British and US history is littered with Masons occupying senior positions in both elected offices and the civil service.

- While they may have opened up in recent years, the Masons remain a highly secretive organisation, and the religious nature of their symbols and rituals adds weight to the arguments of those who see them as occultists.

- The Masons sign up new members dependent on a declaration that they believe in a "supreme being". This suggests some quasi-religious element to the group, and explains the church's hostility towards them.

- In common with other shadowy groups, the Masons are fiercely protective of their reputation and their right to secrecy. Several websites have sprung up exposing organisations and individuals who are considered "anti-Masonic".

Cons

- No link from the Masons to any of the specific "conspiracies" they are charged with orchestrating has ever been proved.

- While they do request belief in a supreme being from their members, there is no evidence of rituals praising a separate Masonic God.

- Some former Presidents and senior government figures may have been Masons, but it would take more than a handful of men in senior positions to shape world events in the way the Masons are accused of doing.

- Many of the so-called conspiracies that the Masons are accused of involvement with are short of credible evidence. The idea of a global Jewish conspiracy, as expounded by various Islamist groups, has been widely discredited.

- The Taxil Hoax, as its name suggests, is a piece of anti-masonic fiction rather than a credible basis for accusations of occultism and evil.

Conclusion

Secret societies are nothing new, and while many remain harmless escapes for bored middle-aged men, some do have the whiff of something a little more sinister. As with almost all conspiracy theories surrounding the so-called New World Order, the Masonic theory lacks concrete evidence. However, they play into the hands of conspiracists with their secrecy, their religious imagery and their influential membership. With so little in the way of hard facts available, it is impossible to say for sure what exactly goes on behind the doors of those Grand Lodge meetings. Can being a part of the Masons get you out of a parking fine or help you beat the rap for a drunken punch up? Almost certainly. Can those same Masons guarantee you a role in the global power elite that secretly shapes world events based on its own twisted agenda? Almost certainly not.

PEAK OIL - What price will we pay?

2009-05-08T14:07:52Z

The Case

It is widely accepted that the modern world's unquenchable thirst for oil has left mankind facing a dilemma.
We are told that global oil production is nearing its peak, and that soon this most precious of resources will have run out.
As governments scramble to find alternative fuel sources, oil rich nations are enjoying a "black gold" rush.
The future scarcity of oil has handed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a blank cheque and left the oil markets in turmoil.
With the cost of oil soaring past the $100-a-barrell mark, the producers are recording record profits, while the public is facing unprecedented price hikes at the petrol pumps.
We are told that all of this is necessary, a market adjustment, an inconvenience born of the natural clash between decades of excess and a slowdown in oil production.
But there is another theory.
What if this oil peak is a myth, a spook story created by the multi-trillion dollar petrol companies and the oil rich nations that control the supply lines?
What if instead of a scientific, evolutionary fact, the idea of a peak in production is a tool to control the markets and keep pump prices high?
Surely such a conspiracy is unthinkable, who could orchestrate such a complex and dastardly plot?
If it was going to be done, it would require a group with massive sway over global financial markets, influence over the leading governments of the world, a huge amount of cash and a ruthless desire to exploit human suffering and poverty in order to make a profit.
Conspiracy theorists are torn as to who this group may be. The famed "illuminati", a shadowy cabal of New World Order devotees and the oil companies themselves are among the main candidates.
Whoever the conspirators are, the idea that peak oil is nothing more than a money-making myth drives right to the heart of the global economic meltdown we are currently experiencing.
If this is a conspiracy, then everything from politics to finance, from industry to the military is being manipulated, and that is a very worrying thought indeed.

The Official Story

The Hubbert Peak Theory, that there is a point of maximum oil production which will be reached in the next few years, has become the basis for the official story on peak oil.
The idea that oil demand is now, or soon will be, outstripping supply is widely accepted in the scientific community.
Repeated so often it has become an integral part of our understanding of global energy strategy, the bell-shaped Hubbert graph paints a clear, if worrying, picture of the future.
With the peak in oil production either imminent or already behind us, the supply of oil will become increasingly scarce.
As oil takes millions of years to form beneath the earth's surface, and the discovery of new, untapped oil fields becomes rarer, alternative fuels must be sought to satisfy the modern world's energy demands.
The Hubbert Peak Theory has spawned a global effort to find sustainable alternatives to oil, with governments around the world ploughing money into wind farms, solar power projects and ethanol production.

The Conspiracy Theory

With petrol prices sky high and OPEC nations demanding more than $100-a-barrell, it is not hard to see who benefits from the peak oil "conspiracy".
But theorists believe the hype about peak oil is not backed up by scientific fact, and that shadowy forces may be using the peak oil panic to control more than just the price of crude.
Many of those who believe that peak oil is a myth point to the fact that there are numerous untapped oil resources, but many of them are situated in hard to access areas of the earth's surface.
The snow plains of Alaska, the tar fields of Alberta Canada, and the vast wintery bleakness of Siberia all offer rich rewards for any firm that can tap them.
What may be running low is the easy to access crude oil fields that have so far offered oil companies cheap extraction costs and massive profits.
If oil is to continue to fuel our society, these out of the way spots will have to be exploited.
But the oil wells of Saudi Arabia are still producing enough to satisfy demand, as are the Russian rigs that continue to make billionaires of the wheelers and dealers who make up the former Soviet state's nouveau riche.
So if we are running out of oil, why hasn't the flow of crude stopped, and where are the fuel shortages we should be experiencing?
The conspiracy theory is simple, the vast globalized companies that rely on high oil prices for their sky high profit margins are deliberately misleading the public into believing they should be paying over the odds for their fuel.
The science has been manipulated, and the actual Hubbert Peak is centuries away. Oil executives and Arabian princes have created a panic about dwindling oil supplies to feather their own nests.
With the price of oil able to dictate the economic fortune of the world and even create wars in the Middle East, many theorists believe the people behind the peak oil conspiracy are in fact controlling much more than just the price of petrol.
Believers in many of the secret society theories believe that one of these shadowy cabals, either the Illuminati, the Skull and Bones Society or even the Freemasons, are using peak oil myth to control the global financial system, and pit nations against one another.

Pros

- The President of Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Abdullah Jum'ah, has said that he believes peak oil is not likely to happen for centuries. In January 2008 he said: "I do not believe the world has to worry about 'peak oil' for a very long time."

- "Oil doom" theories have been doing the rounds for 80 years. Numerous economists have dismissed the idea of "peak oil" as unfounded since the rate of consumption relies on political and financial factors, as well as scientific issues.

- The OPEC nations have an inordinate amount of power over the price of crude, and can therefore alter the global economic climate with the stroke of a pen or the click of a mouse.

- There are vast amounts of untapped oil that could satisfy our thirst for fuel in out of the way spots around the world. While these supplies may be difficult to extract, the huge rise in prices created by the peak oil theory means it is now profitable for companies to spend extra cash recovering this "difficult" oil.

Cons

- The Hubbert Peak Theory is widely accepted by both the scientific community and the governments of the world.

- It stands to reason that there can only be a finite amount of oil under the earth's surface, the planet is only so big. Whether it is imminent or many years away, the fact that oil supply will peak is inevitable.

- As a method of controlling nations through the economy, oil supply manipulation is extraordinarily risky. You cannot guarantee the outcome of a rise or fall in the price. If the Illuminati or the Freemasons are in charge, they would need a better tactic for securing their goals.

- Unprecedented investment in alternative energies, global conferences on energy policy and climate change, major scientific research projects and a worldwide consensus on the issue suggest peak oil is all too real.

Conclusion

It seems clear that the Hubbert Peak Theory is correct, and that oil production will eventually dwindle. Whether or not that point has arrived, will arrive soon or won't arrive for another thousand years is for geology students to argue about. The question here is has the peak oil theory been deliberately used to jack up fuel prices. It certainly hasn't harmed the profits of the oil companies and it may well have been used for a little price gauging, but there is nothing to suggest that peak oil is a myth created to control the global economy. It is simply a widely accepted scientific fact, and though the oil may still have hundreds of years to go, it is only sensible that governments begin to look beyond oil to fuel economic expansion in the 21st Century.

AIDS - A man-made nightmare?

2009-04-16T10:35:40Z

The Case

AT the height of the cold war the US government was pouring billions of dollars into highly classified biological weaponry projects.
The plan, as early as the 1950s, was to develop a disease so deadly, so potent, that it could wipe out whole communities, even paralyse an entire nation.
Most of this research remains buried in top secret files, and we may never know just how far these experiments went, and how close the US came to perfecting the deadly biotechnology they craved.
But what if we are already witnessing the devastating results of their tampering?
What if one of those experiments got out of the lab?
What if AIDS, a disease that has claimed almost 40 million lives since the early 1980s, was created by the American scientists who dedicated their lives to creating a weaponised virus?
The origins of the deadly disease are still shrouded in mystery.
The official story about monkeys in deepest Africa transmitting the infection to humans is scoffed at by conspiracy theorists, who are sure that AIDS began as part of a dastardly government plan to eradicate those groups hit hardest by the disease - homosexuals, drug users and black people.
Many leaders in the African American community, including the Black Panthers and the new Nation of Islam, have leant their support to the conspiracy theories, making them widely accepted.
Could it be that the worst epidemic of modern times is a man-made nightmare?
Or are theorists simply turning a tragedy into a conspiracy?

The Official Story

Many teams of scientists have studied the origins of AIDS over the past two decades.
Though their findings may differ on the exact details of when and where the first human infections took place, the explanation as to how the disease came to be passed on to mankind remains consistent.
The "cut hunter" theory, that a Central African tribesman caught HIV through contact between a wound on his skin and the blood of an infected chimp, is widely accepted as the primary cause of the outbreak.
In 1999, a team from the University of Alabama used the remains of a chimpanzee named Marilyn to prove that AIDS was transmitted to humans from a single subspecies of chimps that carry the strain of virus that affects man.
Consensus on exactly when the virus was communicated is hard to come by, but most scientists seem fairly convinced that it happened at the start of the 20th century, although cases may have existed as early as 1880.
The first reported human victim of AIDS was discovered in the Leopoldville region of the modern day Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959.
When the virus started to spread, it was mainly carried through sailors, merchants and other travellers who visited Central Africa and returned to the West.
It was initially carried to the US through Haitian immigrants who had worked in the Congo, and began to spread undetected thanks to its long incubation period and lack of obvious early symptoms.
Suggestions that it could have been carried to America through a gay Canadian air steward called Gaetan Dugas are little more than an urban myth.
Though Dugas did spread the disease to 40 of the first 248 people to catch it, he was not the "patient zero" character some have made him out to be.
In all likelihood, the virus had already been spreading for a decade before Dugas even contracted it, and would certainly have devastated the US regardless of the role of one individual.

The Conspiracy Theory

In the mid-90s a book by Dr Leonard Horowitz lit a fire under the conspiracy community.
Emerging Viruses, which argues that the government used a Hepatitis B vaccination programme to secretly spread AIDS to the black and gay communities, became one of the most controversial texts on the AIDS conspiracy.
Horowitz argues that the virus was weaponised by the US government and used as a means of population control.
His book brought the conspiracy theory to the attention of the mainstream media, and gained the backing of scores of black community leaders who argue to this day that the government deliberately spread the virus inside the US.
The most notable believer in the theory is Dr Jeremiah Wright, the firebrand priest who almost scuppered former congregation member Barack Obama's presidential bid with his controversial views.
A large part of the black community's conviction that AIDS was spread deliberately comes from the precedent set by the Tuskegee syphilis study in the 1930s. During this controversial experiment, for which President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology in the mid-90s, government-funded researchers denied treatment to black patients infected with a sexually transmitted disease to study the effects.
Conspiracy theorists claim any government that would consider an approach like this is more than capable of spreading the AIDS virus on purpose, covering the project up and then blaming the gay community.
Not all theories on the AIDS virus blame direct government connivance for the spread of the disease.
The "polio vaccine" theory suggests that a contaminated chimpanzee kidney may have been responsible for the disease being transmitted to millions of people in the Congo.
According to this hypothesis, a Polish virologist called Hilary Koprowski's experiments with an oral polio vaccine derived from a chimp kidney culture could have spread the animal form of the infection to millions during the late 1950s. This led to a mutation in the virus to form the present HIV infection.
These two schools of conspiracy theorist thinking bitterly oppose one another, but are united in their belief that the official story is a fabrication, and that the origins of AIDS are yet to be fully explained.

Pros

- In a 2005 study almost half of African Americans surveyed by Oregon University said they believed the AIDS virus had been invented in a government laboratory. Prominent backing from senior black priests, including Jeremiah Wright, has helped the conspiracy theory gain traction in the community.

- Dr Koprowski's polio vaccine experiments were hurried, and could have been the gateway for the chimp form of HIV to enter enough human hosts in order to allow a mutation.

- The US government did pour billions into biological weapons research in the 1950s and 1960s. AIDS has all the same characteristics as the killer disease they aimed to create. While there may be no direct link to a US lab, the circumstantial evidence suggests it could have been possible for the US to invent AIDS.

- The Tuskegee syphilis experiments in the 1930s reveal a worrying precedent of the government covertly experimenting on the black community. The Hepatitis vaccine theory clearly has its origins in this historical conspiracy.

- While the "cut hunter" official story is widely accepted in medical circles the scientific evidence produced to back it up has been questioned by notable scientists. It may be the most likely theory, but it has yet to be comprehensively proved.

Cons

- No direct link has ever been established between the US government and the development of the AIDS pathogen.

- The Hepatitis vaccine theory has no supporting medical data. No cultures were taken, no experiments were carried out and no evidence has been produced to show that those vaccines administered to members of the black community contained the AIDS virus.

- While the Polio vaccine theory is more plausible, it fails to establish a conspiracy and rather points to incompetence and haste leading to the outbreak.

- The hypothesis that the infection was originally transmitted through a diseased chimp to a hunter may not be watertight, but it is the most plausible scientific account so far, and would explain how the virus mutated and why it spread gradually through sailors and Haitian workers to the West.

- The fight against the AIDS epidemic has consistently been hampered by urban myths, conspiracy theories and prejudice. Not only are theories about the government administering the disease factually suspect, they present a real risk to efforts to control the further spread of the infection.

Conclusion

The global AIDS epidemic has devastated millions of lives. It's origins may be shrouded in mystery, but the same could be said of almost any major disease outbreak throughout history. The fact that the US government had the resources and may have had the know-how to invent a virus as deadly as HIV is undeniable. But there is absolutely no evidence that they did so. Furthermore, they had little to gain by destroying vast swathes of their own population and killing millions in Africa and Europe along the way. The disease almost certainly came from a single colony of chimpanzees, and spread to humans through the ancient hunting and slaughtering practices that African tribesman have practiced for generations. Far from being a man-made nightmare, AIDS is a tragic reminder of the power of nature, and the catastrophic impact that a new disease can have on mankind....

Jade Goody: Club 27 - Too much too young?

2009-03-23T15:25:21Z

The tragic death of Jade Goody at just 27-years-old has left the nation in mourning.
But for conspiracy buffs is raises once more one of the most morbid, yet interesting, theories out there.
Club 27, as it has become known, is a group of notable stars who have all died at just 27.
The membership list reads like a who's who of celebrities, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, all lost their lives at the dreaded age.
In the case of some of these legendary figures, their deaths have been shrouded in mystery.
Cobain's final hours, depressed, drugged and alone, will remain a riddle, but conspiracy theories abound as to whether he would have been able to pull the trigger on the shotgun that claimed his young life.
Hendrix's end was also drug-linked, while Joplin lost her life to the same heroin addiction that had so consumed Cobain.
Guitarist Jones died in very suspicious circumstances. The former Rolling Stone was found at the bottom of his swimming pool by his Swedish girlfriend, who later wrote a book about how her lover had been murdered.
As for The Doors' frontman Morrison, his demise is particularly mysterious. He was found dead in a bathtub at his Paris apartment, but no autopsy was ever performed, allowing theorists to speculate on everything from murder to a faked death.
Jade's sad end may not have been a mystery, but the mere fact that she died at 27 will start tongues wagging again about the curse that stalks young celebrities at that tender age.

Operation Paperclip - A Fourth Reich?

2009-03-17T14:01:39Z

The Case

Germany 1945.
The Third Reich is crumbling, and the military victory of the allies is assured.
With the world only just learning the true horrors that lay behind the barbed wire of Auschwitz and Dachau, the US army is uncovering a rich treasure trove of military and scientific knowledge.
Under Hitler, the German army had invested more money in research and development than any military unit in human history.
The results were staggering.
Not only had the Nazis mastered previously unknown methods in the field of rocket science and munitions, they had used gruesome experiments in the death camps of Eastern Europe to learn the secrets of chemical warfare and medical manipulation.
But the scientists who had so callously and cruelly exploited the suffering of the holocaust victims were now freelance, no longer shackled by the constraints of the Nazi regime.
Their knowledge and expertise were going to prove crucial over the coming years, but their distasteful views and their appalling actions meant the Allies would baulk at accepting them as refugees.
So where did these brilliant, brutal men end up?
More to the point, what did they end up doing, and did some of their inhuman experiments outlive the Nazi regime that spawned them and cross the Atlantic to the US?

The Official Story

By the end of 1945 Germany was well defeated and newly installed US President Harry Truman knew only too well that the next war would be with communist Russia.
As the Red Army and the US troops converged on Berlin, it became clear that whoever controlled the military secrets and scientific might of the fallen Nazi state would be starting the forthcoming conflict from the box seat.
The US took steps to discover who and where the leading Nazi scientists were. Some had been brutally oppressed during the Third Reich, and were forced to work menial jobs rather than further their scientific research.
These men were obviously acceptable to the US, and could easily be allowed into the country without public outcry.
The others were more complicated.
Many of the leading minds in German science were committed and active Nazis who had leant vital support to the evil empire.
Initially the American focus was on rocket technology, specifically understanding the V2 rockets that had spearheaded the technological advances made by the Nazi regime.
The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency quickly set about creating a system for bringing these gifted technicians to the US, codenamed Operation Overcast.
CIA spies began to compile a black list of key scientists they needed to interrogate, starting with the father of the V2, Wernher von Braun.
With the Russians within touching distance of his rocket lab in Peenemünde, Von Braun, fearing persecution in Siberian PoW camps, handed his legacy to the advancing Americans.
Von Braun would go on to become a central figure in the space race, helping the US defeat Moscow and conquer the moon before their Soviet rivals.
As the Cold War deepened, Operation Overcast became Operation Paperclip when it was finally given official approval by Truman in 1946.
Paperclip was a systematic programme to recruit any scientists and technicians that might be of use to the US. But not all of the ex-Nazis would be as welcome in the land of the free as Von Braun.
Men like Walter Schreiber, who had authorised experiments on holocaust victims, were chased out of the country in the 50s as the press began to expose the nastier side of the relocation programme.
Undoubtedly, Operation Paperclip was a success in terms of the military advances, code-breaking achievements and general scientific excellence the 1,600 men and women who were recruited went on to contribute.
However, as time has passed and more details of the dark side of this research have emerged, the moral and ethical implications, as well as some of the practical applications of these advances have spawned several conspiracy theories.

The Conspiracy Theory

Many of the men recruited from Germany to work in the US were complicit in murder and torture.
The fear from conspiracy theorists, is that this background of evil may have crept into their work in the US, leaving behind a legacy of Nazism that could come back to haunt the world.
Programmes carried out by Nazi scientists included the controversial MK Ultra mind control programme, which sought to influence the very thought processes of its subjects.
It fitted perfectly with Hitler's concept of a global war of the mind, in which people could be brainwashed into following an ideology, regardless of their own beliefs.
Some of the men brought to the US to carry out projects like MK Ultra were convicted war criminals, who had experience of the foul human experiments carried out inside Dachau.
Kurt Blome, who stood trial before the Nuremberg tribunal, would surely have been executed by the court had the US not saved him to assist with the development of their own biological and chemical warfare programmes.
He admitted experimenting with plague vaccines on concentration camp inmates, but still went on to work on top secret US projects before finally being arrested, tried and convicted for war crimes in France.
MK Ultra was by no means the only controversial scheme devised by the brilliant, but brutal Nazi scientists.
An offshoot of MK Ultra, Operation Midnight Climax, saw Paperclip scientists experimenting on punters who had been lured to CIA safehouses by prostitutes working for the US government.
The unsuspecting clients were given covert druggings to help analysts explore the effects of LSD on the human mind.
Experiments like these, displaying the callousness and lack of humanity that characterised the Nazi scientific research, have led conspiracy theorists to speculate that other covert projects may have gone much further in the scope of their cruelty.
For many theorists Paperclip represents the gateway, the starting point for fascist domination of the upper echelons of the US establishment and the military-industrial complex.
Paperclip has become linked to conspiracy theories on everything from the Illuminati to the Freemasons, from MK Ultra to UFO cover-ups.
The lasting effect of Operation Paperclip in the minds of many conspiracy theorists is the concept that the evil Nazi regime lives on through the work of these men, laying dormant in secret societies and sects waiting for a ripe time to enslave humanity.

Pros

- Many of the men brought over to the US were die hard Nazis who were incapable of changing their repulsive political and racial views.

- The fact that monsters like Blome were spared punishment for their crimes and given asylum in the US points to the depth of human suffering and immorality that the CIA was prepared to put up with in order to unlock the secrets of the Third Reich's scientific advances.

- The scale of the project, bringing over 1,600 Nazi scientists, spies, engineers and code breakers across the Atlantic, is a strong indication that Paperclip must have had a deep impact on the political ideology of the technological elite.

- Some of the Paperclip recruits went on to national fame, particularly Wernher Von Braun, who became head of NASA and even featured on a documentary about space travel for Disney. Their prominence indicates the clear influence they held in key areas of the US military-industrial complex.

Cons

- The US government has released hundreds of documents revealing the scale and depth of both Operation Paperclip itself and the experiments carried out by those who came to America through it.

- That morally questionable research projects like MK Ultra existed is well documented. However, there is no suggestion of any element of racial profiling or Nazi ideology influencing the choice of subjects in any way.

- While men like Von Braun were accepted and celebrated for their achievements, they were never able to influence the political sphere. Moreover, the vast majority of Germans in the US were shunned, avoided and even attacked by yanks angry after the losses they suffered in World War II. Being a former Nazi was hardly a brilliant position from which to seek career advancement.

- Ex-Nazis were utilised rather than trusted by the Americans. Every project was supervised by the CIA, with US intelligence agents closely monitoring progress and methods. At no stage were the Paperclip recruits allowed enough of a free reign to follow any sort of fascist agenda.

- When incontrovertible evidence of war crimes was produced by one of America's allies, as France did with Blome, the US did send the scientist back for trial, though not before they had pumped him for information about his Nazi research projects.

Conclusion

It is clear that the US deliberately ignored the gruesome pasts of some of the Nazi scientists they employed. Operation Paperclip was an ethically bankrupt concept, allowing war criminals and former fascists freedom and prosperity in exchange for the secrets they had learned working for the Führer. Strategically, however, it was crucial to America's victory in the cold war and subsequent rise to superpower hegemony. Have these men influenced the prevailing political, social and economic climate of their adopted nation? No. Are they, their offspring, and a loyal band of committed laying low in secret societies ready to grab power in the future? Surely not. These men were not ideologues like Bormann and Goebbels, they were scientists and engineers whose life was their work. Many were simply happy to be operating in stability and calm. Though it was morally reprehensible, there is no evidence that Operation Paperclip was the precursor for a covert Nazification of the US.

GEORGE W BUSH - The Election conspiracy

2009-03-10T17:29:43Z

The Case

George W Bush left office with the lowest approval rating of any US president in living memory.
So great was the impact of his catastrophic leadership that it handed the White House, Congress and the Senate to the Democrats, and left the Republican party so desperate for leadership that they turned to Sarah Palin.
But what if it was all a con?
Could Bush really have stolen not one but two elections to grab hold of and keep the most powerful office in the world?
Conspiracy theorists believe the former President and his party did just that, exerting influence over election officials, using the position of his brother Jeb as Governor of Florida and blocking hundreds of thousands of democrats from having their votes counted.
The potential ramifications of such a conspiracy are almost too extreme to comprehend.
How different would history have been if Al Gore had been sitting in the Oval Office on 9/11, or had John Kerry been commander-in-chief in Iraq?
If Bush did steal the elections then where does that leave the most proudly democratic nation on earth, and how easily could it happen again?
Both the 2000 and 2004 elections saw Bush beat the pundits and confound the opinion polls to claim the White House.
The big question is, did he do this through skillful politics and well-planned campaigning, or did he use Machiavellian cunning to dupe a nation into handing him power?

The Official Story

George W Bush won the 2000 presidential election by the narrowest margin in more than 100 years.
He lost the popular vote, meaning more Americans voted for Al Gore to take up the White House than chose the eventual winner.
Bush was handed power thanks to the complex electoral college system under which each state has a certain number of electoral votes based on its size and population.
To sit in the oval office, a candidate must gain 270 electoral college votes, Bush scraped home with 271.
The key swing state was Florida, whose 25 electoral college votes decided the election. Controversy over the methods of vote counting, the handling of a recount and the influence wielded by the Republican party has raged ever since.
In the official final tally, Bush won the state, which has a population of more than 18 million people, by just 537 votes.
What happened next, as they say, is history.
Bush was faced with the impossible task of finding a proportional response to the 9/11 twin towers attacks, and subsequently launched the "War on Terror" which deeply scarred America's moral authority around the world and eventually became as unpopular at home as it was overseas.
With public support for the Iraq war waning by the day, the 2004 election saw Bush challenged by Vietnam veteran and Massachusetts senator John Kerry.
On the face of things Bush won the election by a much clearer margin than in 2000.
He carried 286 electoral college votes and won the popular count by a margin of just under three million.
However, unlike 2000, where Florida and a few disputed counties formed the basis of the democratic party's grievances, the allegations in 2004 were much more serious, and implied organised vote rigging and suppression of voters.
The opinion polls throughout the election had favoured Kerry, leaving plenty of his supporters to question how the incumbent had held his office with seeming ease, and whether their voices had been heard?
Whatever the grumbles of the Democrats, Bush was duly sworn in for a second term, surpassing the achievement of his father, and writing himself into the history books as one of the most deeply unpopular Presidents ever.

The Conspiracy Theory

The 2000 general election, and in particular the Florida ballots, have been poured over and analysed for almost a decade.
The conspiracy runs that George W Bush, with the full might of the notoriously tough Republican party behind him, cajoled, bribed, and swindled his way to the narrowest of victories in the swingiest of swing states.
Florida was called for Gore initially, then for Bush, then put back in the "too close to call" column by TV pundits as the election descended into farce.
It took more than a month to sort out the melee and declare a winner, and many conspiracy theorists were unsurprised to find that Bush, brother of the state governor, was given the nod.
Much of the controversy centred on the "hanging chads" that had been punched through thousands of ballots, leaving the voting machines unable to count them, and forcing Gore to call for a hand recount.
Frustrated by the pace of work, the obstacles presented by Republican election officials, and the verdicts of the conservative state supreme court, the Democrats had to abandon their calls for a manual vote count, and accept the possibly faulty machine readouts.
Theorists see this as a deliberate conspiracy by the Republicans to make sure only their votes made it to the final count, and ensure that their man landed in the White House.
Conspiracy theories surrounding 2004 take a much darker turn, with some convinced that Bush was able to suppress voters, purge registers and use faulty voting machines to influence the outcome of ballots in several key states.
If Florida was the focus in 2000, then Ohio took centre stage in 2004.
The poster boy for the 2004 conspiracy theorists is Robert F Kennedy Jr, who wrote a detailed article for popular magazine Rolling Stone in 2006, claiming that scheming by Republican officials had cost 350,000 Ohio citizens their right to vote.
Republicans stand accused of blocking voters from getting to the ballot box, and targeting democrats, and in particular black democrats, with various underhand tactics including caging lists.
RFK Jr claims one in every four Ohio voters arrived at their polling place to find they were not registered, and points to the role of Republican election officials in making sure Democrats were not on those lists.
One thing is for sure, if Bush and his party did pull off this conspiracy, it goes down as one of the most elaborate and successful schemes of all time.

Pros

- It is almost impossible to say with 100 per cent certainty that Bush gained more votes in Florida in 2000 than Al Gore. With no recount by hand, there was no way the state supreme court and the returning officers could accurately reflect the outcome of such a tight election.

- Evidence that caging lists and other nefarious tactics were employed to keep voters from having a voice in the 2004 elections is persuasive.

- Thousands of Ohio voters did report being unable to vote when they arrived at the polls in 2004, despite having registered beforehand.

- Some voters, particularly black men, found themselves wrongly listed as felons in both the 2000 and 2004 elections.

- The exit polls from 2004 were wildly wrong, predicting wins for Kerry in states that would have seen him easily into the White House.

Cons

- What has been pointed to as "election fraud" by many democrats, is, in fact, common electoral game playing by both sides.

- The election of Bush in 2000, though by the narrowest of margins, was fully ratified by the US Supreme Court, who upheld the state laws of Florida and deemed the new President to have been properly elected.

- George W Bush won the 2004 popular vote by almost three million, showing that unlike 2000, the vast majority of American voters wanted him to remain in the White House.

- The co-ordination of a conspiracy on the scale being alleged would require thousands of election officials, not one of whom has come forward since to provide evidence of a cover-up.

- Voters not being registered, some being wrongly listed as felons and some ballots being missed by faulty machines are all evidence of poor equipment and bad organisation, not a conspiracy.

Conclusion

It is easy to look back on the disastrous Presidency of George W Bush and feel we have all somehow been tricked. Maybe there is some comfort in the theory that this was a conspiracy, a scam, an elaborate plan to install this man and further the conservative agenda that gripped America under his leadership. But the truth is that where theorists see a plot, those who examine the facts see a nation that became complacant about its democracy. The debacle of 2000 and the cheap cons of 2004 broke no serious rules. This was not conspiracy, but incompetence. In a nation so bitterly divided along strict partisan lines, it is imperative that the US refines and improves its haphazard election system. George W Bush may not have been a great President, but he was not an election thief.....

JACK THE RIPPER - A Right Royal Conspiracy?

2009-02-12T18:48:35Z

The Case

No murder case before or since has captured the public imagination in quite the same way as the Jack The Ripper killings.
Brutal, ritualistic, depraved, the murder spree enthralled Victorian London with the sheer scale of its cruelty and disregard for human suffering.
In 1888 the capital was in a state of morbid fascination as a vicious killer stalked the streets of East London's poorest areas, seizing prostitutes and subjecting them to inhuman acts of torture.
This was the first serial killing to take place in the age of readily available newspapers, whose editors revelled in the sordid details of the Ripper murders, whipping the public into a frenzy.
The more vice girls that went missing, the more the Ripper's legacy grew, and the harder Scotland Yard found it to track their man.
Newspapers took a perverse pleasure in the failure of detectives, who turned up at several of the grisly crime scenes just moments after "Jack" had fled.
Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the string of killings stopped.
With no arrests, no real suspects and a total lack of evidence, the police were forced to admit they had no solution to the case, leaving one of the most notorious murder sprees of all time unsolved.
As the years have drawn on, conspiracy theorists have speculated on the true identity of the killer. Clearly this was not the work of a member of the vast economic underclass that had developed in East London.
The Ripper was smart, ruthless and cunning.
While a number of suspects have been put forward over the past century, it is the possibility of a Royal connection that has truly excited the conspiracy community. If a Royal was involved, many say that a vast network of freemasons and members of the so-called "Illuminati" could have protected his identity.
So could the Ripper really have been Prince Eddy, the heir to the British throne?
Historians claim it is impossible, but the dark side of the ill-fated Prince's character is well documented, leading some theorists to maintain that he was the man behind one of the most heinous crimes in British history.

The Official Story

The Metropolitan Police archive lists 11 victims of the unsolved "Whitechapel Murders" between 1888 and 1891.
Emma Smith, Martha Tabram, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly and Rose Mylett were all found dead between April and December 1888. In July 1889 cops discovered the body of Alice McKenzie and just two months later stumbled across an unknown female torso thought to be the handiwork of the Ripper.
The body of the final victim, Frances Coles, was found stashed under a railway arch on Friday 13 February 1891.
All of the women had their throats slit, while only the corpses of Stride and Mylett escaped vile mutilations.
Both Chapman and Eddowes had their uterus' ripped from their bodies by the crazed killer, while the ritualistic slaying of Mary Kelly was so stomach-churning that even the blood thirsty press baulked at reporting the grim details.
On 27 September 1888, just three days before the double murder of Stride and Eddowes, the Central London News Agency received a detailed letter purporting to be from the killer.
Describing his blood lust and the horrifying scenes of his crimes, the writer signed off as "Jack The Ripper" giving a name to the beast stalking London's streets, and creating a legend that would last for more than a century.
In the aftermath of the Stride and Eddowes slayings, cops discovered a piece of graffiti, scrawled on a wall just above a scrap of bloodied apron from one of the victims. It read: "The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing".
Investigators took it as an attempt to direct them towards the growing Jewish immigrant population of London. Historians are split on whether it was written by the Ripper or was simply the work of angry locals bent on rioting against their new neighbours.
The list of official suspects was long, with any gentleman visiting the red light district of Whitechapel during the killings liable to be hauled in front of detectives and forced to explain himself.
However, the official story ends there, not one of these 11 killings was ever solved, and no-one was prosecuted for the Whitechapel murders. With the Police unable to bring about a conviction, conspiracy theorists have been left to fill in the gaps.

The Conspiracy Theory

Almost immediately, the Ripper case spawned hundreds of theories and suspects.
Religious zealots were convinced that an evil demon was loose in the sinful streets of East London, local residents angry at the influx of Jewish immigrants were sure these newcomers were to blame, while those who read every gory detail were of the opinion that a doctor or surgeon must be behind the eviscerations and torture.
From this latter group emerged the theory that Dr Francis Tumblety an American quack, who was arrested in November 1888 for gross indecency, and fled the country days later after buying his way out of jail, may have been the killer. The surgical precision involved in the removal of whole organs from the victims led many to speculate that the Ripper must have been medically trained.
But the real conspiracy theory, the one that goes all the way to the top, is the suggestion that Prince Albert Victor ("Eddy" to his family) was the real killer.
In 1970 Dr Thomas Stowell wrote an article for an edition of The Criminologist, which described in detail the life of a potential Ripper suspect and member of the aristocracy whose life seemed to mirror that of Prince Eddy.
Stowell based his piece on notes from Sir William Gull, a Royal physician who had treated Prince Eddy, and who has also been proposed as a possible suspect thanks to his medical training and aristocratic background.
Gull's notes supposedly describe Eddy's visit to the Caribbean, his infection with Syphilis, the creeping insanity caused by the disease and his eventual descent into homicidal mania.
The saga linking Eddy to the killings intensified in 1976 when a book was released entitled Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution, which reignited interest in the Prince and his notoriously dark character.
The book featured evidence from Joseph Gorman, who claimed to be the son of Victorian painter Walter Sickert, and suggested that the slayings were part of an elaborate conspiracy by the Royals and the freemasons to protect Prince Eddy from a love child he fathered with a poor Catholic girl.
Gorman claims Mary Kelly and other ripper victims sheltered the illegitimate youngster, but were bumped off one by one as the Royals, freemasons, and government sought to obscure the Prince's infidelity and hide the Catholic heir to the throne.
Finally, theorists claim that the murders were carried out at the behest of the masons, using masonic rituals, and that the head of the Metropolitan Police, a freemason, covered his cronies' tracks by destroying evidence.

Pros

- Dr Stowell's son burnt the private notes of Sir William Gull after his father's death, thus blocking any attempt to get hold of them and find out what the physician really said about Prince Eddy and the killings.

- Prince Eddy was withdrawn and prone to dark moods. If contemporary descriptions of his character flaws are to be believed, he may well have had the temperament to carry out murder.

- Any scandal involving working girls, deprived areas of town and members of the Royal family would certainly have been swept under the rug by the British establishment during the Victorian era, as paranoia over Republican elements in society remained strong.

- Theories linking Gull to the murders on behalf of the Royal family are more persuasive than those linking Eddy to the crimes. Gull was medically trained, intelligent, capable and matches some of the descriptions given of the Ripper.

Cons

- Dr Stowell wrote a letter to The Times shortly before his death in which he claimed that he had not intended to suggest that Prince Eddy had been Jack The Ripper.

- No evidence of Prince Eddy being involved with prostitutes has survived, and of course, there is no firm proof linking him to any of the murders.

- Court records from the time show Eddy was often out of the country and certainly out of London at the time of most of the killings. On the night of the double murder of Stride and Eddowes he was in Balmoral, Scotland.

- Historians say the more convincing of the Ripper's letters to the media and police bear the hallmarks of a commoner rather than an aristocrat. However, the nature of the killings and the fact that the murderer escaped massive police efforts to capture him point to a more intelligent and aristocratic individual.

- None of the notes taken by officers investigating the case at the time name Prince Eddy, Sir William Gull or any other member of the upper classes as a suspect in the slayings.

- Joseph Gorman, one of the main players in suggesting the conspiracy theory, is a singularly unreliable source. Even though the author of Jack The Ripper: The Final Solution, came to believe some of his theories, he described Gorman's claims as "rambling" and "vague".

Conclusion

The Jack The Ripper conspiracy theory is a classic. From Royal madmen to secret societies and sickeningly brutal murders, it really has it all. All, that is, apart from believability. The theory is simply not confirmed by historical fact. With Royal court records, police files and contemporary news reports to hand, no serious historical researcher has ever proven a link between the Prince and the killings. The Ripper mystery remains one of the most fascinating, and disturbing unsolved crimes ever. But the solution clearly doesn't lie with the fanciful belief that the heir to the throne somehow concocted a massive conspiracy to hide his penchant for hookers in a bloodbath that terrorised Victorian London, and provided the modern serial killer with a blueprint for mass murder...

BARACK OBAMA - Too good to be true?

2009-01-29T16:47:39Z

The Case

BARACK Obama's sensational run to the Oval Office has left the world stunned.
The rapid pace of this seismic shift in US history, the destruction of centuries old racial divisions with seeming ease and the establishment of a totally new political philosophy in the world's most powerful nation created a whiplash reaction across the globe.
How did a man of such humble origins rise through sheer willpower, determination and ability to the role of commander in chief?
How did a black man, with a Kenyan father, schooled overseas, and brought up in Hawaii, trump the combined might of the Clinton dynasty and the Republican party?
How did an inexperienced one-term senator triumph in an electoral system that revolves around money, influence, lobbying and dirty tricks?
For most people who watched this amazing journey the answer was simple. Obama is a man of destiny, a symbol of renewed hope and restored purpose, the man chosen by a huge majority to lead America out of the desperation of the Bush years towards prosperity and global respect.
However, with an event that promises such dramatic change, an election so touched by history, conspiracy theorists are having their say about what really happened.
With the mud slinging of the campaign over, theorists are left to levy charges of links to domestic "terrorist" Bill Ayers, raise questions over Obama's birth certificate and add to a growing clamour over the fumbled oath of office.
Could Obama be a shadowy figure, handed power as part of a dastardly conspiracy?
Or is he simply an honest, decent politician, keen to remodel his beleaguered nation and restore it to its former glory?

The Official Story

Barack Hussein Obama was born on 4 August 1961 in the Hawaiian capital Honolulu.
His father Barack Snr, was a Kenyan born economist, while his mother Ann Dunham, was an anthropologist from Kansas, USA.
Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother in 1967, attending foreign schools in Jakarta, before returning to Hawaii in 1971 to live with his grandmother and complete his high school education.
He went on to study political science at the prestigious Columbia University in New York before he moved to Chicago in the mid-80s to work as a community organiser in the deprived South Side area of the city.
In 1988 he was accepted by the world famous Harvard Law School, and went on to marry his wife Michelle in 1992.
For the next five years Obama lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago.
He turned to professional politics in 1997, when he was elected as a State Legislator, before claiming the junior Illinois senate seat in the US House of Representatives in 2004, becoming only the fifth black man to be elected to the senate.
His inspirational speech at the Democratic National Convention in that same year, catapulted him to nationwide fame, and in February 2007 Obama announced his candidacy for President of the US.
Most political commentators wrote him off, and much of the early media attention focused on his main rival, former First Lady Hillary Clinton.
But in the Iowa primary, Obama beat Clinton, setting him on the path to the White House. His campaign harnessed the fund raising power of the internet, and galvanised support from African Americans and intellectuals.
After a long and bitter primary campaign, Clinton endorsed Obama on 7 June 2008.
As the economy crumbled and anger at the outgoing administration deepened, Obama pulled clear of his Republican opponent, war hero John McCain.
On 4 November 2008, Obama waltzed to a landslide victory, and was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on 20 January 2009.

The Conspiracy Theory

During both the primary and presidential campaigns Obama was hit by a barrage of allegations regarding his lineage, political allies and business dealings.
While most of these were successfully debunked or deflected by his aides, many of them have taken up root in the conspiracy theories that now surround his dramatic rise to power.
One of the most widely believed theories is that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but was actually delivered in Kenya, a claim allegedly proved by a "secret" tape of his grandmother recalling his birth in Africa.
Another persistent rumour is that he was raised as a Muslim, and that his education in Indonesia, the world's most populous Islamic nation, saw him schooled in radical ideas.
When he fumbled his lines during the inauguration, the conspiracy community went into overdrive, claiming he wasn't really President, and that the oath had to be taken again.
To avoid a furore, he swore the oath of office again in the Map Room of the White House, putting in a word perfect performance this time.
However, the conspiracy theories did not stop there.
Obama did not place his hand on a bible during the second oath, though he is under no constitutional obligation to do so, leading right wing bloggers to claim this as a clear piece of evidence that he was secretly a Muslim man posing as a Christian, determined to destablilise America.
Indeed most of the Obama theories revolve around linking his name with the word "terror".
Having failed to come up with a plausible theory questioning Obama's devout Christianity, the conspiracy community has turned to his relationship with former Weather Underground "domestic terrorist" Bill Ayers.
Obama was tainted by this relationship in the campaign, but the story did not gain traction in the mainstream press due to the casual nature of their association.
However, this violent, firebrand liberal has become the focus of the conservative conspiracy community's attention, with theorists suggesting that he co-wrote Obama's hit book Dreams From My Father, that he was a spiritual and political mentor to a young Obama, and that he is secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes of the new White House administration.
As with all major public figures, Obama has attracted huge attention, and an equally massive number of conspiracy theories. Many are repellent and racist, some, including the suggestion that he is Malcolm X's illegitimate son, are plainly bonkers.
All of the theories, though, share a common theme. Without fail they seek to paint Obama as a danger to America, a threat to national security and a usurper of the highest office in the land.

Pros

- It is true that Obama fumbled his first attempt at being sworn in, and he did not have a bible in his hand as he swore the second oath.

- He did go to school in the most populous Muslim country on the planet, but this by no means provides proof that he is or was Islamic or that he came into contact with any sort of radical ideas (it was primary school after all).

- He did know Bill Ayers, a self-confessed and unrepentant member of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organisation.

- If it exists, a tape of his Grandmother recalling his birth in Kenya would be a devastating blow to his credibility.

Cons

- The fumbled oath was a result of Chief Justice John Roberts attempting to recite the vow without notes in front of over a million spectators. Obama simply repeated what was said to him. It was not a deliberate attempt to retake the oath without a bible, as he is under no legal obligation to use a bible anyway.

- During the campaign the Obama team produced a birth certificate proving he was born in Hawaii. Contemporary reports from the Honolulu Advertiser back up this document.

- There is no evidence that Ayers played any significant role in Obama's campaign or that they are still in touch. Obama wrote the vast majority of his memoir overseas, without any help from a man he barely knew.

- Despite the slurs about his religion, his association with Ayers and the determined Republican effort to paint him as a danger to America, Obama was elected in a landslide, and enters office with one of the highest approval ratings in US political history.

Conclusion

Barack Obama's rise to power was always going to spawn some bizarre conspiracy theories. But the fact that so little evidence has been produced and so much prejudice and bitterness has been folded into these theories makes them seem implausible and unfounded. Obama was born in the US, he is a strongly Christian man, he does not "pal around" with domestic terrorists and most importantly he has been chosen by the vast majority of Americans to lead them out of the crisis-struck Bush years, and back to greatness. Maybe the mainstream US media gave him an easy ride, maybe his flaws were not fully exposed, but whatever the conspiracy theorists may choose to believe the American people have spoken with a clear voice, and Barack Obama is their man.

The Illuminati - Who's really in charge?

2009-01-15T19:34:30Z

The Case

The Illuminati conspiracy is the focus for global secret society theorists everywhere.
When President George Bush Senior delivered his now infamous New World Order speech on 11 September 1990 the conspiracy community went into overdrive.
Bush's turn of phrase opened the floodgates for a deluge of conspiracy theories about who really runs the world around us, and what role secret societies play in our lives.
The prospect of an Illuminati or "enlightened" group ruling the armies, banks and governments of the world is a terrifying one.
Reports of their powers are staggering, with a handful of Illuminati elders able to send nations to war, bring down economies and rule countries through their secret links with one another. With sinister motives and satanic beliefs, the Illuminati are the conspiracy community's equivalent of the bogeyman.
According to theorists they possess a quasi-religious presence, able to dictate events and overseeing almost every aspect of the world around us.
Signs of their presence are supposedly dotted around modern culture, with everything from the all-seeing eye on a $1 bill to snatched photos of secret ceremonies offering proof of their existence.
The Illuminati are depicted as the controlling force that holds together the shadowy collection of secret societies that make up the power elite behind the New World Order conspiracy.
The Skull and Bones Society, the Council on Foreign Relations and even the Masons are said to be part of this band of privileged leaders who control our destiny.
To many the Illuminati are the multipurpose, one-size-fits-all conspiracy.
Planes have been flown into the Twin Towers? Must be the Illuminati. The global banking system has imploded? Clearly the work of the Illuminati. Reptilian Humanoids are taking over the world? Surely they are part of the Illuminati.
Many of these arguments have damaged the reputation of the original theory, which is that the men who really control our fate are part of a secret gang bent on world domination and the preservation of their own power.
But how much of this can we really believe, and how much is paranoia and hearsay?

The Official Story

In terms of modern membership, there is no official story as no politician or government accepts the existence of an "Illuminati".
The idea of the Illuminati, in some form or another, can trace its roots as far back as the Babylonian Empire.
However, the Bavarian Illuminati, the group who's existence gave birth to the modern day conspiracy theories surrounding the movement, only dates back to 1776.
Founded by former mason Adam Weishaupt, legal professor at Ingolstadt University in Bavaria, the secret society aimed to overthrow religion and replace it with secular rule by an enlightened academic elite.
While it attracted prominent members from across Europe, the order was officially disbanded in 1785.
It is from the offshoots of this group that conspiracy theorist believe the modern Illuminati has emerged.
The secret society has appeared in novels, movies, even computer games, as a make-believe group of conspirators controlling world events.
But to conspiracy theorists, this fictional depiction is all too close to reality.

The Conspiracy Theory

At its most basic the conspiracy theory suggests that far from disappearing in the late 18th century the Illuminati are alive and well in the modern world.
The tentacles of the organisation reach from the White House to the Federal Reserve bank; from Westminster to the Reichstag.
Joined together in a secret society to control global events, the Illuminati are responsible for all the earth-shattering changes that have shaped the 20th and 21st centuries.
Their numbers include almost every influential politician, business mogul and intellectual of the modern era.
To conspiracy theorists the Illuminati are the DNA that provides the blueprint for every act of evil from the terror attacks of 9/11 to the murder of JFK.
For evidence of this, believers point to the dynastic families and "old boys' networks" that have produced so many of our leaders.
The Skull and Bones society at Yale University is said to be a breeding ground for future Illuminati power brokers, so too Oxford, Cambridge and all the most prestigious universities in the world.
Once they rise through the ranks, Illuminati elders are said to meet behind closed doors to rig elections, plan battles and tamper with the financial markets.
Theorists claim that all the surviving US Presidents meet with captains of industry and political heavyweights from across the world in a secret ceremony in Northern California every July.
Photographs from Bohemian Grove in California appear to show meetings taking place with unusual rituals featuring men in bizarre costumes standing in front of open fire pits. But hard evidence of who these men are is supposedly being repressed by the Illuminati themselves.
With so much power, and so little accountability the Illuminati are able to guard their identities and promote puppet political leaders to do their bidding.
The only clue to their existence is the hidden symbols placed by members such as Franklin Roosevelt, who was President of the US when the all-seeing-eye was placed on the $1 bill.
In short the theory, though it differs wildly, is that the Illuminati are a group of ultra-powerful intellectuals who run the world through a secret government set-up to dictate their vision of a New World Order.

Conclusion

The very fact that a ruling class of politicians exists in Western culture would suggest that on some level the idea of the Illuminati is valid. On both sides of the Atlantic the "old boys' network" is crucial to success in politics, business, banking, academia etc. But the suggestion that this ruling class is made up of an ancient secret sect bent on world domination through the orchestration of events from the faked moon landings to the Roswell UFO crash seems fanciful. The fear of some higher force organising our lives in a "big brother" arrangement, has led conspiracy theorists to the Illuminati idea. However, there is so little evidence to support the theory, that there was no point in even drawing up the traditional Grassy Knoll list of Pros and Cons. There are no facts, there is no conspiracy, just paranoia that we are being dominated by evil forces who hide in the shadows. In the end the Illuminati conspiracy theory is a bit like religion, you either choose to subscribe on faith alone, or you don't. Frankly, I am not a believer.

Top 10 Most Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories Of All Time

2008-12-17T10:37:49Z

In celebration of the festive period and the inevitable journalistic silly season, I thought I would share my ten favourite crackpot theories in order of stupidity. Enjoy!

1. Kentucky Fried Chicken causes impotence in Black Men

Surely the strangest conspiracy theory of all time.
Colonel Sanders, the face and founder of the fast-food giant, was rumoured to have left 10 per cent of his earnings to the Ku Klux Klan in his will.
This sparked scurrilous rumours that the chain was being run by the KKK after his death, and that a drug was being used in the Colonel's "secret blend of herbs and spices" to render African American men sterile.
This most bizarre of theories even has a wonderfully ironic twist.
KFC is now owned by a black man.

2. The Nazi Moon Base

Hitler and his evil reign have spawned no end of urban myths, cults and conspiracy theories.
By far and away the most unbelievable of these is the theory that the Nazis had conquered space by 1942 and erected a base on the moon.
Not only had they constructed a military facility in outer space, but theorists would have us believe that the Nazis had also made contact with advanced alien races.
So palpably false is the theory that it would be condescending for me to point out the obvious flaws.
Suffice it to say that if Hitler had been capable of space travel, surely he would have done a little better against the allies in World War II.

3. Paul McCartney is Dead

Apparently the legendary Beatles singer was killed in a car accident in 1966 and replaced by a look-a-like/sound-a-like.
Theorists have pieced together what they think are a string of clues from various tunes released by the Fab Four after his supposed "death".
They claim that if you play Revolution 9 backwards you hear the sound of a car crash and the words "turn me on, dead man".
Fanatics also point to the iconic cover of the Abbey Road album with John Lennon dressed like a clergyman, Ringo Starr wearing a black suit, Paul walking without shoes out of step with the other Beatles and George Harrison's denim outfit resembling that of a grave digger.
There is absolutely no evidence to back up the bizarre theory, and it is likely that any "clues" planted in later songs were done so either unwittingly or as part of an in-joke between band members.

4. The Reptilian Humanoids

Playing in goal for Coventry City would not appear to be the most logical first step to revealing yourself as the son of God and saviour of the universe.
But you try telling that to David Icke.
The shell suit-clad former goalie remains convinced that his divine duty is to warn us of the impending doom our world faces at the hands of 7 ft tall, blood-drinking lizard people.
According to Icke, a string of US Presidents, senior diplomats and even the British Royal Family are reptilian overlords bent on war mongering and the creation of negative emotions to sustain them.
Strangest of all, he is not alone in his misguided world view, with hundreds of people across the globe buying into the reptilian humanoid theory.
Needless to say, evidence for this theory is thin on the ground.
Until they can produce a snap of the Queen shape shifting into a lizard, Icke and his pals are doomed to failure.

5. Elvis Is Alive

The King is dead, long live the conspiracy theory.
An alarming number of Elvis Presley fans still refuse to believe that their idol has passed on.
There have been numerous unsubstantiated sightings everywhere from Michigan to Manchester, thousands of fans have convinced themselves that Presley is still wandering the earth, just looking for some peace and quiet.
Of course the idea that the most famous musician ever to have lived could be pottering around the planet unobserved in the age of mobile phone cameras and the paparazzi is ludicrous.
But for many of his devoted fans, the fact that he died a drug-addled, bloated wreckage of a man is just too much to swallow.

6. Barcodes

The barcode system is not a simple way to tick your groceries through the supermarket tills.
Far from an innocent method of pricing goods, the barcode is a tool of satan.
The "number of the beast" 666 is encoded into each one, and the whole barcode system was designed by the devil to infiltrate the minds of the unsuspecting general public.
Is this convincing anyone yet? Nope, me neither.

7. Princess Diana

The most tedious and pathetic conspiracy theory of all time, it is also one of the most ridiculous.
Not only has the obsession with Diana lasted for more than a decade, but we have all been subjected to the most unpleasant and unreasonable conspiracy theories imaginable.
From the moment the "people's Princess" met her end in a Parisian tunnel, the conspiracy community went into overdrive.
It was the CIA, she knew too much, it was the Royal family, she had become an embarrassment, it was the Reptilian Humanoids, she was.........etc etc etc.
As if having to put up with this utter tripe wasn't enough, we were then made to pay up for a pointless inquest costing more than £10 million.
And still Mohammed Al Fayed won't drop his fanciful claims.
She was killed in a speeding car driven by a drunk driver, deal with it!

8. Marilyn Monroe was Murdered

How did the "sexiest woman in history" meet her maker?
Most sane people would have to conclude that it was either suicide or an accidental drug overdose.
But there are a small number of theorists who believe she was the victim of a sadistic murder plot.
Her supposed killers range from Mafia bosses to her alleged lover President John F Kennedy.
Some theorists even claim JFK sent his brother Bobby to inform Monroe that their relationship was over on the night of her death, and that the Kennedy boys somehow conspired to ensure her silence by bumping her off.
An absurd and offensive conspiracy theory to the memory of both Kennedy brothers, this one really is better off ignored.

9. Wingdings contains hidden messages

A corporation as powerful and wealthy as Microsoft was always going to attract attention from the conspiracy community.
But when the big "Microsoft Controls the World" theory was unveiled, it was such a farce that even the most hardened of theorists laughed it off.
Following the 1992 launch of the Wingdings font, students with too much time on their hands began to play with the typeface, which replaces letters with well-known symbols.
Satanic teachings, secret plans for world domination and even future terror plots are among the weird and wacky messages supposedly contained in the font. In particular the letter NYC are spelled with a skull & crossbones, the star of David and a thumbs up, a signal to some conspiracy theorists that Microsoft was encouraging attacks on Jewish targets in New York.
Not surprisingly the company issued a strong denial, saying the Wingdings symbols were randomly selected.
They need not have bothered, this is a conspiracy theory only suitable for the truly delusional.

10. Michael and LaToya Jackson are the same person

To call this a conspiracy theory may be a little too kind to those who believe it.
This is more of a delusion, or a weird obsession with the Jackson family.
Both the King of Pop and his sister are rumoured to be big plastic surgery fans.
And they do look surprisingly similar.
I suppose you have to ask yourself this, have you ever seen them in the same room at the same time?

Pearl Harbor - A conspiracy that will live in infamy?

2008-12-05T22:03:25Z

Aloha conspiracy fans! You may have been lamenting the lack of new material on The Grassy Knoll over the past month. Sadly I was unable to compile any blog entries as I was on holiday in sunny Hawaii. So in celebration of my return I have examined a classic conspiracy theory centred on the paradise islands of the pacific. Enjoy!

The Case

On 7 December 1941 the tropical naval base of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was ripped apart by a brutal sneak attack.
The Japanese assault marked a turning point in the conventions of warfare, and dragged the US into World War II just as Nazi strength in Europe was reaching its peak.
US President Franklin D Roosevelt famously dubbed the assault, which killed more than 2,400 servicemen, "a date that will live in infamy".
But the question of how much advance knowledge the President had and whether or not those sailors could have been saved has lingered throughout the decades.
To many conspiracy theorists, Pearl Harbor is the ultimate betrayal, where thousands of men were left to die by their leaders in order to justify America's entry into the battle against Hitler in Europe.
The timing seemed too convenient, the base too badly prepared, for the attack to have been a genuine surprise.
Many conspiracies surrounding Pearl Harbor revolve around when the US was able to break the Japanese military code, and how much information they had.
The movement of the Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers out of Hawaii, combined with recently released documents highlighting the amount of intelligence available to US military before Pearl Harbor, have prompted some theorists to conclude that Roosevelt and his commanders deliberately sacrificed their men.
Many historians reject this account of affairs, suggesting that incompetence, rather than ruthlessness, was the key to America's failure to prevent Pearl Harbor.
Yet doubts remain over what really happened that day, and why the US Navy was caught out so badly
How much did the US know in advance and could any government really be callous enough to sacrifice thousands of lives for its own strategic aims?

The Official Story

The Japanese Imperial navy, under the direction of the fascist government in Tokyo and the command of Admiral Yamamoto, launched a surprise attack on the US base early on the morning of 7 December, 1941.
Yamamoto's fleet of six aircraft carriers had advanced into the waters surrounding the Hawaiian islands two weeks before, establishing a base to launch a full on assault with more than 400 planes targetting Pearl Harbor.
A wave of bombers from the Japanese ships into targets across the main Hawaiian island of Oa'hu was launched just before 7am.
Aerial bombardment paralysed the US aircraft at Ford Island and Wheeler Field, leaving Pearl Harbor exposed to a bombing raid by the Japanese air force.
Almost 200 planes took to the skies over Pearl Harbor in the first wave, and a similar number followed in a second string of attacks, and rained down fire on the key naval base.
Around 2,400 US sailors lost their lives in the onslaught, which lasted little more than two hours.
The pride of the US pacific fleet, the monstrous battleship Arizona, was sunk by an armour-piercing missile, entombing 1,177 military men under the waters of Pearl Harbor.
In all the fleet lost five battleships, including the heavily armoured Arizona and Utah.
The fleet's air craft carriers were not in docks at the time of the Japanese attack, but two destroyers and 188 air craft were obliterated.
As a result of its scale, and its sheer disregard for the conventions of warfare, the siege of Pearl Harbor led to an outraged reaction by the American public.
President Franklin D Roosevelt declared it "a date that will live in infamy", and quickly sent his nation to war with the Japanese.
The attack also provided political cover in the US for the President's previously unpopular support for American intervention against Nazi aggression in Europe.
Pearl Harbor not only marked the turning point in the war in the Far East, but ensured the US would send troops to Europe to stave off the German march across the continent.

The Conspiracy Theory

The central conspiracy theory is that commanders on the ground were denied crucial intelligence on the Japanese attack in order to provoke a war with Japan and Germany.
Theorists have used declassified documents and Freedom of Information legislation to show that some branches of the US government did have a degree of prior knowledge about the attack.
One of the most important documents to come to light is the so-called "McCollum memo".
Sent on October 7, 1940, by naval intelligence officer Arthur McCollum to Navy chiefs Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox, two of President Roosevelt's most trusted military advisors, it details an eight step plan for provoking Japan into "an overt act of war".
To many theorists, the fact that the US army's Signals Intelligence Service and Office of Naval Intelligence had already broken many Japanese codes is clear evidence that the government must have known about an impending attack.
By late 1941 cryptographers had even deciphered "Purple" the highest clearance Japanese code.
The conspiracy is said to have revolved around the intelligence services accessing the plans for Pearl Harbor, but failing to pass that knowledge on to Admiral Kimmel and General Short of the pacific fleet.
If the theory is to be believed, it was this act which cost 2,400 sailors their lives, but helped Roosevelt to turn the war in Europe in the allies' favour.

Pros

- The McCollum memo. Though not quite the "smoking gun" that many conspiracy theorists believe it to be, the memo does show that the US government was attempting to provoke a Pearl Harbor-esque attack.

- The Purple code. With access to the most sensitive information the US should have been able to at least pick up that an attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent. The fact that none of this was passed on is suspicious.

- Phone taps. The US were listening in on all calls between the Japanese embassy in Hawaii and Tokyo. Surely this would have given them advance knowledge of the attack?

- War warnings were sent out in early November 1941 to let all pacific fleet posts know that combat with Japan was imminent. Given the grave nature of these warnings, the failure of radar operators and commanders at Pearl Harbor to realise that an attack had been launched is inexplicable.

- Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga, the three aircraft carriers based at Pearl Harbor, were all out of port when the Japanese struck. If the US had lost these ships, it could have spelt disaster for their efforts in the Pacific. The fact that Enterprise returned late from its posting (it had been due back the day before the attack) is seen as evidence that the government moved its most valuable ships out of docks to save them from a raid it knew all about.

- Radar operators did track a large number of aircraft approaching Pearl Harbor and reported it to the base. The warnings were ignored. Was this because the base was aware of the attack and had been told to ignore all warnings?

Cons

- What appears to be collusion and even deliberate efforts to allow the attack to take place, could just have been incompetence. The intelligence services worked in a sporadic way and disparate agencies rarely managed to combine to any great effect. Lots of pieces of the intelligence jigsaw were in different departments, resulting in a failure of intelligence rather than a dastardly conspiracy.

- The Japanese were highly adept at changing their codes and the JN25 code, which was used by the navy, was not cracked until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is possible that the Imperial Navy had realised that "Purple" was compromised and switched all discussions over the attack onto JN25.

- The tapped phones at the Japanese embassy would have been little use if the embassy staff were aware of them. This was clearly the case, as the bugs were disconnected by staff in the week before the Pearl Harbor attack.

- Though war warnings were in place, the main threat was perceived to be against US assets inside the theatre of war in the Far East. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise mostly because it took place on US soil, not because it was launched by the Japanese at a time of heightened security risks.

- The three aircraft carriers were all out of Pearl Harbor on standard pre-planned missions. Saratoga was having a refit, while Lexington was delivering aircraft to Midway Island. The supposedly "fishy" delay in the return of Enterprise was due to weather conditions, not a complex government conspiracy.

- Radar intelligence on the approach of the craft was dismissed by Lt Kermit Tyler, an inexperienced officer, as he had been told to expect a large deployment of planes coming in from the mainland. He simply believed they were friendly aircraft, a human error rather than a deliberate act.

Conclusion

The sheer enormity of what happened at Pearl Harbor has led many to believe that someone, somewhere in the US army, must have had advance knowledge that an attack was being planned. If all intelligence and cryptographical services within all allied countries had been working as one homogenous unit then there is a chance that the US government might have known about Pearl Harbor in advance. However, this was simply not the case. The fact that the attack was carried out was due to failures in the intelligence system. It was not a callous act by a President hungry for war in Europe. There is no compelling evidence to prove that Roosevelt deliberately sacrificed his own men.