2014 in conspiracy theories

2014 in conspiracy theories

Ebola is a bio-weapon designed by the US government. Rosetta was an attempt to make contact with aliens. The leader of Isil is secretly Jewish. We guide you through the headlines They don't want you to know

Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain. 

By Laurence Dodds
6:30AM GMT 25 Dec 2014


There is a saying in computer science: 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity'.

But in the world of global politics, that's just an easy way for the secret masters of our world to pull the wool over the eyes of sheeple.

Here, laid bare before the world, is the secret truth behind nine seemingly simple news events from this year. What you are about to read may change your life forever.

Actually, we cannot emphasise strongly enough that these conspiracy theories are almost certainly nonsense. None of the things below are true. You should not take them seriously.
Or should you?
*


1. The US government blanketed the South with fake plastic snow



Way back at the start of the year, the United States was swamped by a “polar vortex”, flinging snow across even warm areas like Atlanta, Georgia. But not everybody takes snow at face value. A number of Youtube users came to believe that the federal government was using “geo-engineering” techniques to blanket the South with fake snow. In some videos, bloggers take lighters to the snow only to find it does not melt – and also turns black.
But, as many meteorologists explained, this is normal. Snow often turns straight to gas when heated, and butane – the fuel for most ordinary cigarette lighters – leaves black marks on whatever it burns. Some Youtubers had reported smelling a toxic smell – but that, too, was probably the butane itself.
2. David Cameron covered up a gigantic Scottish oil find, then rigged the referendum

Quote :

I enjoyed seeing some Shetland ponies with two children who are on holiday here. pic.twitter.com/ZtbFG3xKp1
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) July 23, 2014

On July 22, David Cameron and the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, made a flying visit to the Shetlands. No advance warning was given for the trip, and only a handful of journalists were with him. Just days earlier, prospectors at the enormous Clair oilfield, 75km west of the islands, had discovered reserves larger and richer than anyone had predicted. The workers were immediately sent home on full pay and told not to return until after the independence referendum. But you won’t hear a word about it on the biased BBC.

Of course, that might be because there’s very little evidence for it all. But the meme that unionists were covering up a mammoth oil find which would skew the economic argument towards Yes, stoked by dubious Facebook posts and spoof press releases, spread through Nationalist cyberspace like a coal seam fire. A YouGov poll of 1,084 Scots found 42 per cent thought it was “probably true”.
That wasn’t all. After the referendum, many people – including the American feminist author Naomi Wolf – claimed the vote had in fact been rigged. On her Facebook page, Wolf claimed she had a list of 500 people who had not received proper ballot papers.

A pro-independence legal group called Lawyers For Yes went through the various claims, describing them as “an impressive collection of misunderstandings, conspiracy theories, and legal howlers…usefully collected by Naomi Wolf.”


3. The Virgin Galactic spaceship was sabotaged by NASA


First it was NASA’s unmanned Antares rocket, exploding just after launch. Then it was Richard Branson’s sub-orbital rocket plane, killing one pilot and injuring the other. Coincidence? Not on your life.
Luckily, internet people were on the case. Russia, explained Agent Smith 2014, “probably managed to insert a space weapon into orbit disguised as a spy satellite.” Both ships, he noted, “were destroyed whilst in the rocket powered phase, which is when they are the most vulnerable to laser attack.”
Others had a different theory. “NASA has been stripped of funding by liberal-backed administrations,” said one anonymous user, “and liberal-backed companies led by tech giants are now entering the space race. I think it was probably sabotage.”


4. The comet targeted by the Rosetta mission was actually an alien spacecraft


For three days in November the world held its breath as the Rosetta space probe reached the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasminko – and promptly lost track of its lander. The poor Philae craft had bounced on landing and ended up in the shadow of a crater wall where its solar panels could not catch the light. But did Philae have a hidden purpose?

According to an email supposedly sent by a whistleblower inside the European Space Agency, 67P is not a comet at all. Instead it is an alien object – possibly a spaceship – with “machine like parts” and “unnatural terrain”. The object had been emitting communications for years, and million-dollar mission to explore it was actually a secret attempt to make contact, said Scott Waring, the UFO activist who published the email. The ESA accidentally fuelled the speculation when it said the comet was “singing” with dolphin-like clicking noises which scientists still hope to explain.


5. Ebola is a bio-weapon which Obama will use as excuse for martial law


Not long after the Ebola outbreak began, an article in the Liberian Daily Observer claimed that the virus was a weapon designed by the United States military to depopulate the planet. Soon, the usual suspects were claiming that the US Centre for Disease Control had patented the virus – and was ready to make a fortune from a new, exclusive vaccine.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, said the virus had been engineered to kill black people specifically. “If you are black or brown, you are being selected for destruction.” Meanwhile, Professor Francis Boyle, a scholar of biowarfare and international law at the University of Illinois, said: “This isn’t normal Ebola at all. I believe it’s been genetically modified…I think the people at the top know. Probably Obama too.”

What was unusual about this conspiracy theory was the extent to which its themes were taken up by the Republican party. Steve Stockman, a congressman from Texas, speculated that Obama was deliberately making America vulnerable to the outbreak so that he could later use “emergency powers to take over control of the economy”. A radio broadcaster, Rick Wiles, feared the President would use Ebola to “round up patriots” and set up “re-education camps”.

This was not so far away from the claims of fringe writer Morgan Britanny, who, pointing to a false rumour about Obama “quietly stockpiling” $1 billion worth of disposable plastic coffins, said: “My fear is that this has all been orchestrated from the very beginning. Maybe the current administration needs this to happen so martial law can be declared, guns can be seized, and the populace can be controlled. Once that happens – game over!”

The idea of using an artificial disease to induce a crisis is hardly new. This was the central plotline of the classic conspiracy thriller videogame Deus Ex, in which a global cabal genetically engineers a deadly disease so they can make politicians compliant by controlling their supply of the vaccine.


6. MH-17 and MH-370 were the same plane


The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 produced an embarrassing wealth of conspiracy theories. While widely blamed on Russia, the circumstances of the crash in territory held by Ukrainian separatists were initially murky enough for a million theories to emerge as to the actual culprit.
Immediately, many claimed the crash was a “false flag” – that is, a brutal act performed by one side but blamed on the other in an attempt to smear them. Chief suspect was the USA itself. Others focused on a resemblance between MH370 and the official presidential plane of Vladimir Putin (both are white with red and blue stripes), and a supposed confluence in their flight paths. The theory was that the USA or the Ukrainian government had tried to assassinate Putin himself and then blamed the fallout on their enemy.
But the most creative theory was the ‘same plane’ plot. Multiple people wondered if the plane from Ukraine could in fact be MH-370, another Malaysia Airlines flight lost over the Indian Ocean in March. MH-370 was hijacked, some said, and flown to Diego Garcia, a British Island in the Indian Ocean hosting US military bases.

The plane was then used to set up the false flag in Ukraine, with a smattering of false passports over the corpses; theorists zeroed in on photos appearing to show “pristine” passports, and claims by Ukrainian rebels that some of the bodies were old. One particularly astute tweeted noted that “Illuminati might have been involved” because both planes were Boeing 777s – one of the workhorse airliners of the world.


7. Isil is a joint creation of Israel and the CIA, and its leader is secretly Jewish


Yes, you read that correctly: Isil's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not even a Muslim, but a Jewish actor named Elliot Shimon trained by Mossad and the CIA to fabricate a convenient enemy.
That’s the theory, anyway. Non-existent documents supposedly released by Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower, say that British, American and Israeli intelligence worked together to create “a terrorist organization capable of centralizing all extremist actions across the world.”

This, obviously, is in service of the Israeli nation, because “the only solution for the protection of the Jewish state is to create an enemy near its borders.” The plan is to lure all the world’s Islamic terrorists into congregating under one umbrella, and then, presumably, drone the tar out of them.

There are even (fake) photos of al-Baghdadi meeting with US senator John McCain, who was beaten by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And all those beheading videos? Fakes, using actors and movie-style special effects. Mark Crispin Miller, a media professor at New York University, explains: “The ‘James Foley’ (seemingly) beheaded in the video is simply not James Foley…neither of these two beheadings is convincing.”

Of course, instead of this nonsense, you could read Martin Chulov’s incredible story about how Isil was born inside a US prison in Iraq.


8. Rihanna, Jay Z, Kanye West and Beyoncé are all members of the Illuminati


The actual, real-world Illuminati were a secret society founded in 1776 by a university administrator frustrated with the Church’s control over learning. The idea was to ape the Freemasons but without the expense, pushing a secular Enlightenment agenda in all areas of public life, but the society was routed in the 1780s by a government crackdown. Or was it?

The symbol of the Illuminati is the eye in the pyramid. Shawn Carter, alias Jay-Z, has taken the pyramid as a logo for his Roc-A-Fella Records label. His wife, Beyoncé, has frequently flashed a ‘pyramid’ hand gesture, as has Rihanna and Kanye West. And do I have to mention the baby, Blue Ivy? I.V.Y.? Illuminati’s Very Youngest? Come ON, people!

Full disclosure: this theory was communicated to The Telegraph via some very excitable teenagers convinced they have found the answer to all pop culture.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11305127/2014-in-conspiracy-theories.html