New Studies say ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ Sane - Government Dupes Crazy and Hostile

 

 Recent studies by psychologists

and social scientists in the US and UK

suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes,

those labeled "conspiracy theorists"

appear to be saner than those

who accept the official versions of contested events.

 

 

 

The most recent study was published on July 8^th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent (UK).

 

Entitled "What About Building 7? A Social Psychological Study of Online Discussion of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories," the study compared "conspiracist" (pro-conspiracy theory) and "conventionalist" (anti-conspiracy) comments at news websites.

The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones:

"Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist."

In other words, among people who comment on news articles, those who disbelieve government accounts of such events as 9/11 and the JFK assassination outnumber believers by more than two to one.

 

That means it is the pro-conspiracy commenters who are expressing what is now the conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters are becoming a small, beleaguered minority.

Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility:

"The research… showed that people who favored the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals."

Additionally, it turned out that the anti-conspiracy people were not only hostile, but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well.

 

According to them, their own theory of 9/11 - a conspiracy theory holding that 19 Arabs, none of whom could fly planes with any proficiency, pulled off the crime of the century under the direction of a guy on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan - was indisputably true.

 

The so-called conspiracists, on the other hand, did not pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11:

"For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account."

In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist - a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory - accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it.

Additionally, the study found that so-called conspiracists discuss historical context (such as viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11) more than anti-conspiracists.

 

It also found that the so-called conspiracists to not like to be called "conspiracists" or "conspiracy theorists."

Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press.

 

Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called "conspiracy theorists": The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination!

"The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time."

In other words, people who use the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed, historically-real conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination.

 

That campaign, by the way, was completely illegal, and the CIA officers involved were criminals; the CIA is barred from all domestic activities, yet routinely breaks the law to conduct domestic operations ranging from propaganda to assassinations.

DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context. He points out that a very large number of conspiracy claims have turned out to be true, and that there appear to be strong relationships between many as-yet-unsolved "state crimes against democracy."

 

An obvious example is the link between the JFK and RFK assassinations, which both paved the way for presidencies that continued the Vietnam War. According to DeHaven-Smith, we should always discuss the "Kennedy assassinations" in the plural, because the two killings appear to have been aspects of the same larger crime.

Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed "conspiracy theory" label impedes cognitive function.

 

She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.

In the same issue of ABS, University of Buffalo professor Steven Hoffman adds that anti-conspiracy people are typically prey to strong "confirmation bias" - that is, they seek out information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, while using irrational mechanisms (such as the "conspiracy theory" label) to avoid conflicting information.

The extreme irrationality of those who attack "conspiracy theories" has been ably exposed by Communications professors Ginna Husting and Martin Orr of Boise State University.

 

In a 2007 peer-reviewed article entitled "Dangerous Machinery - 'Conspiracy Theorist' as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion," they wrote:

"If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid…

By labeling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur."

But now, thanks to the Internet, people who doubt official stories are no longer excluded from public conversation; the CIA’s 44-year-old campaign to stifle debate using the "conspiracy theory" smear is nearly worn-out.

 

In academic studies, as in comments on news articles, pro-conspiracy voices are now more numerous - and more rational - than anti-conspiracy ones.

No wonder the anti-conspiracy people are sounding more and more like a bunch of hostile, paranoid cranks.

Bravely Facing the Awful Truth

 

The real full on Truth hits you hard. Right in the heart.

Your family is at stake, humanity is at stake. We’re being relentlessly attacked by some unidentified force and we’re reeling, without much to seemingly stand on.

Our planet’s resources are being polluted faster than we can identify. Everything in every sphere we just years ago held dear and tried to naturally defend has been so drastically altered it’s beyond identification or comprehension.

And we scream as if in a nightmare with no one listening.

Environmental Murder

The Gulf of Mexico and virtually the entire Pacific ocean have been virtually killed. Murdered.

The skies are being poisoned to an incredible degree, killing our plants, animals and fellow humans. Our food and water are horrendously modified. I like to believe in life’s regenerative processes, but we’re talking long term if this doesn’t stop soon.

Perhaps long after our kids and grand kids have then had to endure the horrors of a mutated world, if they live that long.
 

These frackers are playing for keeps. And people had better wake up to that fact.

These earth changes, and so-called scientific and social changes that are obviously engineered, clearly have an agenda.
 

What Agenda Might this Be?

Some Questions to Consider:

• WHY would the elites dig a super underground vault to store seeds from all over the planet while introducing genetically modified seeds growing food they themselves won’t touch?
  
  
• WHY have they built secret underground bases? - that aren’t so secret if you poke around a bit.
  
  
• WHY is the world not told a single fact about the Fukushima radiation readings, and the EPA monitors getting shut off and standards recalibrated?… while the media black out continues?
  
  
• WHY is questioning water fluoridation considered cult science while multiple millions drink the toxic industrial byproduct yet European countries throw the process off?
  
  
• WHY are they pushing vaccines so hard when they’ve been proven to maim children and adults?
  
  
• WHY is cellphone and other EMF technology deliberately set at the range of our brain frequency when it could have been outside that?
  
  
• WHY is the banking system getting off scot free when everyone knows they engineered this economic mess?
   

• WHY is war on terror so accepted when it was based on a staged false premise - a clearly government induced false flag millions identify?
   
• WHY is the education system spewing out dumber and dumber kids while more money is poured in to this endeavor?
   
• WHY is everyone so freakishly fat they can’t see their feet anymore and are suffering accelerated off the charts health challenges?
   
• WHY has questioning anything become a terrorist threat?
   
• WHY is our atmosphere so purposely filled with aluminum and other toxic substances our respiratory illnesses have skyrocketed, never mind other complications like increased seizures, memory loss, and even Alzheimers?
   
• WHY is going through the airport now a radioactive exam and terrorizing experience for even children and the elderly?
   
• WHY is the government now allowed to arrest, imprison and even kill you without trial?... as well as spy on you at will?
   
• WHY is the media swill the same on every channel with literally no independent reporting or investigative journalism?
   
• WHY is our DNA being tracked, our irises scanned, blood tested and our movements monitored?
   
• And why militarize American streets and authorize police and military brutality in crass overkill operations?

...etc. etc. etc...
 

Getting the picture?

We have to wake the hell up, is all I can say. If you don’t get it yet, I pity you.

We’re under attack. There’s a lot to be angry about. And if you’re not angry, you’re not alive. Then turn your anger into activity. Do something! Wake others up!

And most of all, drastically change your own life to reflect what you now know!

Are Individuals The Property of The Collective?

by Brandon Smith

 

 

Mankind has faced a bewildering multitude of self-made catastrophes and self-made terrors over the past few millennium, most of which stem from a single solitary conflict between two opposing social qualities:

individualism vs. collectivism.

These two forces of organizational mechanics have gone through evolution after evolution over the years, and I believe the long battle is nearing an apex moment; a moment in which one ideology or the other will become dominant around the world for well beyond the foreseeable future.

The assumption often made amongst academia is that the philosophy that appeals most to our “natural survival imperative” and caters to our desire for innovation will eventually win the day. That there is no “right or wrong” side; only the effective, and the less effective. The advanced and the outmoded. The transcendent, and the archaic.

It should come as no surprise then that most academics and prominent mainstream talking heads often sing the praises of collectivism as the inevitable champion in the war between cultural engines.

 

Collectivism always presents itself with the flair and sexiness of the “new”, or the progressive, while individualism tends to wear the unpleasant battle scars of hard earned principles and heritage.

 

Collectivism is the hot looking but mentally unstable bombshell blonde making promises of excitement and long term comfort she has no intention of keeping. She is so seductive not because she has any profound inner qualities, but because she has a knack for letting you believe she is exactly what you fantasize her to be.

 

Only when it’s too late do you realize she’s a psychopathic pill popping man-eater…

Collectivism is, in fact, a bastardization of a more useful human condition; namely community. Inherent in all people is the need for meaningful connection with others, and thus, the world around them, without being forced to sacrifice their own identities and their own souls in the process.

 

The best representation of this model is the idea of “voluntary community”, where individuals seek out each other and facilitate their own connections. However, if they can’t find meaningful connection, many people will settle for whatever they can get.

Collectivist structures thrive by shutting down free cultural avenues, manipulating public media, encouraging fear, repression, and bias, and destroying our ability to relate to others in a natural and voluntary way.

 

Collectivism’s first goal is to distract and ISOLATE individuals from one another, so that honest community is difficult to build. Its second goal is to then offer a false community; a cardboard cutout or proxy that entices the public with fabricated and superficial connections that barely satiate our inner hunger for relationship with our fellow man (Facebook, anyone?).

 

It uses our thirst for understanding against us, and lures us into a system of psychological enslavement where no understanding will ever be found.

Karl Marx is famous for stating that “religion is the opium of the people”, a belief that communists like Mao Zedong adopted. But, Mao was not opposed to “opiates for the masses” per se, only citizen organizations that could not be control. Mao simply replaced the various deities of the Chinese people with the religion of the collectivist state.

Like any opiate, collectivism instills addiction.

 

The feeling of belonging to something bigger than oneself (even if it ends up being false) creates ecstatic euphoria, a euphoria that weakens as time passes unless the addict commits himself even deeper into the hive mind. Soon, every original aspect of the person’s character is forgotten and replaced entirely by his hyper-obsession with the collective.

 

The whole of his identity becomes a shallow product of the state and he may even defend that state, no matter how corrupt, to the death. He now treats any criticism of the system as a personal attack on himself, because everything he is has been given to him by the collective.

 

If the collective is a sham, then so is he.

Collectivism as a philosophy is a perfect tool for oligarchy. The men who dominate such systems rarely if ever actually believe in the tenets they espouse. They sell the idea of single-minded society as a nurturing light that will create group supremacy, prosperity, and perfect safety.

 

But the truth is, they couldn’t care less about accomplishing any of these things for the masses. They are only interested in exploiting the promise to galvanize the population into a fraudulent community, a dystopia in which the citizens police each other in the name of the state, giving the elites total dominance.

The most vital aspect of the collectivist process is convincing the public that the individual citizen is not sovereign, but is actually the property of the group

False Flag Operations

The Crisis Route to the New World Order…
 

David Rockefeller said,

“All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”

Rahm Emanuel said,

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

In the Project for a New American Century document Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century we find the following:

“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor.” ^[1]

False Flag (choreographed catastrophes) operations have been used for generations for various motives:

• the seizure of additional land and/or natural/mineral resources (domestic or foreign)
• the acquisition of cheap labor
• economic destabilization
• the military depopulation of indigenous populations
• the destruction of religious or political ideologies
• the establishment of political tyranny or a coup d'état (as experienced after 9/11with the establishment of the PATRIOT Act and the Department of Homeland Security)
• to assist an allegedly threatened ally
• to protect U.S. citizens living in a foreign country

The foundational factor in the majority of all false flag operations is the imposition of greater restrictions on worldwide residential populations in order to implement internationalism or globalism, formerly known as the utopian New World Order under the direction of an elite hierarchy.

False flag catastrophes include,

• terrorist attacks
• assassinations of political leaders
• “natural” disasters
• industrial “accidents”
• armed assaults against citizens (Waco, Ruby Ridge, Kent State)
• economic assaults in the form of economic crashes like 1929 or more recently the banker bailouts, both massive redistribution scams

The prevailing feature in all of these circumstances, whether manmade or “natural,” is the transference of culpability followed by the government’s predictable exploitation of any and all circumstances.

False flag operations manipulate individuals, either dupes or well-paid, skilled operatives - who masquerade as purported enemy aggressors. Aircraft or ships are either camouflaged to conceal their identity or marked in such a way as to confuse witnesses. The operation is compartmentally constructed in such a way that individuals participate in a small part of the venture without knowing the entire scope of the operation.

After the fact, their willing but unwary participation might insure their silence.

False flag operations accelerated after the formation of government intelligence agencies, like the CIA, again at the behest of private interests with the ready assistance of the media who introduce false leads to sustain the preconceived cover story.

A false flag operation where innocent people are murdered invariably supplies the pretext for a military invasion where even more killing occurs including unwary U.S. soldiers who believe they are fighting for their country.

Ambrose Pierce, the satirist, and creator of The Devil’s Dictionary defined politics as,

“A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles, the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” ^[2]

---

• On January 24, 1898, during a Cuban insurrection against Spain, the USS Maine arrived at Havana, where it had been sent to allegedly protect some U.S. citizens living there.
  
  
  In reality, U.S. corporations, with about $50 million invested in the production and distribution of Cuban sugar and tobacco, had concerns about their investments. On February 15, 1898, while it was docked in Havana Harbor, a devastating explosion sank the ship. The incident killed 260 Americans. We now know that is was an internal explosion, not the result of an attack.
  
  
  However, the citizens were fueled by warmongers in the print media who pushed the slogan, “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain.”
  
  
  Outraged citizens agreed to retaliate and go to war against Spain because of the incident. Congress, which was wholly controlled by private interests, declared war on April 25, 1898. Two days later, the U.S. sent 11,000 occupational troops to the resource-rich Philippines, a Spanish colony and the real target.
  
  
  The Filipinos resisted America’s “liberation” efforts for three years during which several thousand civilians were slaughtered.
  
  
  The strategic location of the Philippines would provide easier access to the riches of Asia, a highly populated area replete with abundant resources and almost numberless people who had been hoarding and passing down their gold and treasures for centuries.
  
  With the deceptive establishment of the privately owned Federal Reserve printing press by a compromised Congress, large-scale, debt-based warfare became even more feasible, its costs being shifted to U.S. citizens and their children and grandchildren.
  
  
  
  
• World War I in Europe was initially provoked by the assassination of an Austrian Archduke. But that was hardly an interest to Americans who had to feel some sense of personal outrage in order to justify U.S. military participation in a foreign war where American soldiers were likely to be killed. The Lusitania, an armed British passenger vessel deceptively flew the American flag and carried ammunition from U.S. companies bound for belligerent Britain.
  
  
  The ship, described as “live bait” by Winston Churchill, a Rothschild minion, was deliberately sent into harm’s way. Her military escort inexplicably withdrew and the ship dramatically slowed down and abandoned the defensive zigzag pattern of travel. In early February 1915, the British Admiralty, under the direction of Churchill, had ordered British merchant ships, like the Lusitania, to ram German submarines on sight.
  
  
  The Lusitania, borrowed by the British government and reclassified as an auxiliary cruiser, was equipped with bases for mounting guns. ^[3]
  
  
  Germany was aware of Churchill’s orders by February 15. On April 22, 1915, Germany, through its U.S. Embassy warned Americans not to travel on British ships in the war zone. They also paid to advertise the warning in The New York Times on that same day. ^[4]
  
  
  The warning was not printed in the Times until the day of departure. The Germans predictably attacked on May 7, 1915 and 785 people, including 128 Americans perished, but it ultimately got the U.S. into World War I.
  
  Lenin said,

  “The first World War gave us Russia, while the Second World War will hand Europe to us.” ^[5]

  For Lenin, a true Marxist, world revolution was the goal. 
  
  READ MORE....

Governments ADMIT that They Carry Out False Flag Terror

Forget the claims and allegations that false flag terror - governments attacking people and then blaming others in order to create animosity towards those blamed - has been used throughout history.

This essay will solely discuss government admissions to the use of false flag terror.

For example:

• A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that - under orders from the chief of the Gestapo - he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

  
  

  Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson
  
   

• The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950's to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister
  
   

• Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)
  
   

• The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

  
  

  As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated:

  • "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security" (and see this)

  (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred)
  
   

• As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba.

  
  

  See,

  • the following ABC news report

  • the official documents

  • watch below video interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings:

  
  

(While the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed as a serious proposal for Operation Northwoods to be carried out, cooler heads fortunately prevailed; President Kennedy or his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apparently vetoed the plan) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him "to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident", thus framing the ANC for the bombing An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author) Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton says that a Clinton cabinet member proposed letting Saddam kill an American pilot as a pretext for war in Iraq (and see this) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization. The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror". Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.” United Press International reported in June 2005: U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance. Official State Department documents show that - only nine months before - the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. (While the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed as a serious proposal for Operation Northwoods to be carried out, cooler heads fortunately prevailed; President Kennedy or his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara apparently vetoed the plan) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him "to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident", thus framing the ANC for the bombing An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author) Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton says that a Clinton cabinet member proposed letting Saddam kill an American pilot as a pretext for war in Iraq (and see this) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization. The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror". Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.” United Press International reported in June 2005: U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

State-Sponsored Terror in The Western World

by Philip Coppens

Nexus Magazine,

Inner Terror - Your Government Doesn't Mind Killing You

One of the most controversial and least discussed aspects of Western society is the notion that Western governments would be able to, let alone actually, kill their own civilians. But is reality far worse than what we seem incapable of imagining?

In the movie V for Vendetta, a police detective ponders:

"I want to ask a question. I don't care whether you answer me or not. I just need to ask this aloud... The question that I have to ask is: what if the worst and most horrifying attack in this country's history was not the work of religious extremists?"

His assistant objects:

"We know it was. They were caught. They confessed."

The detective adds:

"And they were executed. I know. And maybe that's really what happened... What if someone else killed all those people? Would you really want to know who that was? Even if it was someone working for this government? That's my question. If our own government was responsible  for the deaths of almost 100,000 people, would you really want to know?"

On 31 December 2006, three people were killed in the Thai capital Bangkok. The military-backed interim regime blamed the ousted prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, and his supporters as prime suspects. But US security expert Zachary Abuza said that "it could be the military trying to justify further crackdowns",¹ thus demonizing the former prime minister so that it could continue to enforce martial law. Whom to believe?

One of the major stumbling blocks to accepting a major conspiracy (such as the claim that 9/11 was an "inside job" performed or allowed by the authorities) is the unwillingness to believe that a nation's institutions would kill its own civilians.

 

Thailand is not a stable Western nation and many believe that the Western world is free of such atrocious acts, whereas the sad truth is that since World War II many Western nations have seen a long series of state-sponsored terrorism-directed against its own citizens.
 

 

 

Russia's 9/99 bombings and the stifling of dissent

The deceased Russian dissident and former spy Alexander Litvinenko argued in his book Blowing Up Russia - Terror from Within that certain Russian terrorist attacks had been engineered by the Kremlin.

 

He alleged that agents from the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the successor to the KGB) coordinated the September 1999 bombings (popularly referred to as the 9/99 bombings) that killed more than 300 people during explosions in three apartment buildings in the capital Moscow and the southern Russian city of Volgodonsk in a period of two weeks.²

 

The Russian authorities, directed by the newly appointed prime minister Vladimir Putin, blamed the bombings on Chechen separatists and, in response, ordered the invasion of Chechnya.

Former FSB officer Litvinenko, Johns Hopkins University and Hoover Institute scholar David Satter³ and Russian lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov have asserted that the bombings were actually "false flag" attacks perpetrated by the FSB in order to legitimate the resumption of military activities in Chechnya and bring Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin and the FSB to power.

 

False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they were carried out by other entities than the ones really responsible. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors, which was practiced in both naval and land warfare. A famous example is Operation Greif, led by Otto Skorzeny,⁴ in which he ordered his men into action in American uniforms during the final stages of World War II.

Litvinenko, Satter and Yushenkov thus charged Putin with ordering state-sponsored terrorism, aimed at its own nation, killing 300 innocent citizens. This is not just a conspiracy theory emanating from Russian dissidents or critics of Putin's regime.

Shortly after the final attack (when a truck bomb exploded on 16 September outside a nine-storey apartment complex in the city of Volgodonsk, killing 17 people), FSB operatives were caught by local police and citizens in the city of Ryazan planting a bomb with a detonator in the basement of an apartment building at 14/16 Novosyelov on the night of 22 September 1999.⁵

 

An alert resident of the building noticed strangers moving heavy sugar sacks into the basement from a car. Explosives experts found that the bomb tested positive for hexogen and all roads from the town were brought under heavy surveillance, but no leads were found.

 

A telephone service employee tapped into long-distance phone calls and managed to detect a conversation in which an out-of-town person suggested to take care and to watch for patrols. That person's number was found to belong to an FSB office in Moscow.

On 24 September, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, stated that the bomb had been a dummy and that the entire operation was a training exercise.⁶ The original chemical test was declared "inaccurate" due to contamination of the analysis apparatus from a previous test. As a consequence, the General Prosecutor's office closed the criminal investigation in April 2000.

But despite these official denials, Yuri Tkachenko, the explosives expert who defused the bomb, insisted that it was real.⁷ Tkachenko also said that the explosives, including a timer, power source and detonator, were genuine military equipment. He added that the gas analyzer that tested the vapors coming from the sacks unmistakably indicated the presence of hexogen-not sugar, as the FSB officially claimed. The police officers who answered the original call and discovered the bomb also insisted that the incident was not an exercise and that it was obvious from its appearance that the substance in the bomb was not sugar.⁸

Litvinenko's prolonged fight for life following the ingestion of radionuclide polonium-210 in November 2006 was popularly depicted as Putin's revenge against this whistleblower. But Litvinenko was not the only or first person to die. Sergei Yushenkov, who shared his interest in the 9/99 bombings, was gunned down at the entrance of his Moscow apartment block on 17 April 2003.⁹

 

In this case, there may not be a direct relationship with the 9/99 bombings, as Yushenkov was a member of parliament and the ninth member of parliament to be shot dead in as many years, none of the cases ever having been solved. Still, one member of the Liberal Russia party, Yuly Rybakov, speculated in the Moscow Times newspaper that Yushenkov could have been killed for his attempts to show that the security services are guilty of the 9/99 bombings.¹⁰

Yushenkov had been responsible for inviting Mikhail Trepashkin,¹¹ a Moscow attorney and a former FSB agent, to assist with an independent investigation of the 9/99 bombings. After Yushenkov's death and the collapse of the official investigation, two Russian-American sisters Tatyana and Alyona Morozova, whose mother was killed in the 9/99 bombings, hired Trepashkin to represent them.¹²

 

While preparing for the trial of the two Russian Muslims who were officially charged with the attacks, Trepashkin uncovered a trail of a mysterious suspect whose description had disappeared from the files. The suspect turned out to be one of his former FSB colleagues. He also found a witness who testified that evidence was doctored to lead the investigation away from incriminating the FSB.

On 22 October 2003, a week before the hearings commenced, Trepashkin was arrested after what appeared to be a traffic stop when, he claims, FSB agents stationed on the side of the road tossed a satchel with a stolen handgun into his vehicle. Trepashkin was imprisoned, unable to attend the hearings and thus smoothing the path for an easy conviction of the two Muslim suspects.

 

However, the Trepashkin story made it into the Western media and on 20 May 2004, an article in the Los Angeles Times gave an overview of his tribulations, adding that the central suspect was FSB agent Vladimir Romanovich. According to Trepashkin, Romanovich was an FSB contact charged with infiltrating Chechen criminal groups in Moscow. As evidence, Trepashkin referred to Romanovich's mysterious release from custody after an arrest by the organized crime squad several years before.

 

Trepashkin added that Romanovich was recognized by the landlord at one of the apartment buildings. The landlord, Mark Blumenfeld, confirmed that he had worked with the FSB on a sketch of the man he'd seen, only to be cast aside when his composite bore no resemblance to Gochiyayev, the man whom officials had identified as one of the masterminds behind the bombing. Romanovich subsequently died in a car crash in Cyprus.¹³

In 2003, Yuri Shchekochikhin, another MP who was on the independent 9/99 commission, died in mysterious circumstances and is believed to have been poisoned. Shchekochikhin was taken ill suddenly and developed awful symptoms: his skin peeled, he was covered in boils, his hair fell out and he eventually suffered respiratory failure.

 

His colleagues were unable to investigate his death because they were told that the autopsy results were secret and would not be released even to his relatives.

 

Shchekochikhin was also an editor at Novaya Gazeta, the independent newspaper where Anna Politkovskaya, the fierce Kremlin critic, worked until she was gunned down in October 2006, weeks before Litvinenko died in a London hospital.¹⁴
 

 

 

NATO's secret war in Belgium

Whereas in the aftermath of Litvinenko's mysterious death in November 2006 people were willing to entertain that Putin could order attacks against his own citizens, "surely" Putin's Western equivalents, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, would be unable to?

 

And as such, a "conspiracy theory" hits its major hurdle: the willingness to accept one scenario, yet reject an identical scenario elsewhere closer to if not at home.

Let us therefore begin in Belgium. In 1983, the Cellules Communistes Combattantes (CCC) was founded in Belgium and claimed to be the only Marxist revolutionary organization that would wage an armed fight against the capitalist system. In 1984 and 1985, 28 "terrorist" attacks were committed by the CCC, allegedly in the hope of engaging the "proletariat" in its revolution.

 

The figure of 28 is actually a record number when it comes to armed terrorist attacks by one group in Western Europe.¹⁵ The CCC targets were, like 9/11 but unlike the 7/7 London bombings, flagships of the Western economy and American hegemony: factories that produced military equipment, the headquarters of political parties or offices, military infrastructure, the police force, a NATO oil pipeline and banks.

 

The CCC furthermore operated not in one specific region but across Belgium, which underlined their capability to strike anywhere and cause fear anywhere. On 1 May 1985, the group exploded a small van that was placed in front of a government office but, unfortunately, two firefighters died in this explosion.

 

"Unfortunate", for the CCC's campaigns were organized to minimize, if not exclude, a human death toll. Indeed, this makes the CCC not fit neatly into those attacks in which civilian casualties are acceptable. But this was just stage one.

The CCC became part of the government investigation after Belgium, together with Switzerland and Italy, set up parliamentary commissions following the discoveries of "stay-behind armies" in 1990. The scope of the investigation was the extent to which the existence of a national secret army, coordinated by NATO (and inspired by the US and the UK in the wake of World War II) within several NATO and non-NATO states, had interfered with these democracies.

The Belgian defense minister, the Socialist Guy Co‘me, who stated to have been unaware of the existence of the secret armies, had this to say about this secret army's involvement with terrorism:

"Furthermore, I want to know whether there exists a link between the activities of this secret network and the wave of crime and terror which our country suffered from during the past years."¹⁶

Co‘me was referring to the years 1983 to 1985 and the CCC, but also to a series of brutal robberies and attacks by the so-called Nijvel gang, in which the geographic area around Brussels saw 14 brutal terrorist attacks on shoppers in supermarkets.

 

These attacks left 28 people dead and many more injured in a series of 17 burglaries and armed robberies, which in late 1985 turned extremely violent. In the three final attacks, 16 people died during armed robberies in supermarkets in Braine-l'Alleud, Overijse and Aalst, the gang stealing (in total) not more than US$56,000 (reducing a human life to $3,500).¹⁷

The Belgian Senate inquiry revealed that the secret army was staffed by Belgian citizens and took its orders from the Belgian State Security, the equivalent of the Russian FBS or the American CIA. The cell was code-named SDRA8 and was directly linked to NATO's stay-behind centers, the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) and the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC).

 

However, the Senate inquiry was unable to clarify whether the secret army had anything to do with the Nijvel gang murders, as the Belgian military secret service refused to co-operate.

Several journalists, including Allan Francovich, suggested that SDRA8 had linked up with the Belgian right-wing organization Westland New Post (WNP), an opinion that was confirmed by WNP member Michel Libert, who stated during a televised interview that he had been told by his SDRA8 handlers that:

"'You, Mr Libert, know nothing about why we're doing this. Nothing at all. All we ask is that your group, with cover from the Gendarmerie, with cover from Security, carry out a job. Target: the supermarkets. Where are they? What kind of locks are there? What sort of protection do they have that could interfere with our operations? Does the store manager lock up? Or do they use an outside security company?'"

Libert added:

"We carried out the orders and sent in our reports: hours of opening and closing. Everything you want to know about a supermarket. What was this for? This was one amongst hundreds of missions. Something that had to be done. But the use it was all put to, that is the big question."¹⁸

A "big question" that would soon be answered, and which had a human death toll of twenty-eight.

The logical conclusion is that there was a NATO-sponsored secret army operating within Belgium, apparently outside the knowledge and control of the government itself.

A most interesting statement came from a member of the inquiry, Hugo Van Dienderen, who said:

"This secret network did more than prepare for a war against a Communist threat... Agents tried to infiltrate peace movements. Certain American groups tried to contact them... A former director of the CIA [William Colby] leaves no doubt that it was their intelligence agencies that were at the basis of these networks."¹⁹

When Jean Bultot, one of the suspected killers in the supermarket murders, spoke from his hideout in Paraguay, he stipulated that certain members of the gang were indeed part of the national intelligence network. He added, without being asked, that the activities of the CCC followed the same formula.

Two police officers, Martial Lekeu and Robert Beijer, made similar statements.

 

According to Lekeu:

"There must exist a type of organization between the members of the national intelligence agency, the gendarmes and the judiciary department.

In my opinion, the attacks of the CCC are part of the same plan. One of the caches of the CCC was hired by a brother of a member of the State Security."²⁰

And thus, the two terror campaigns that Belgium witnessed in the early 1980s were apparently carried out by a group of Belgians operating as a secret army, sponsored by an organization-NATO-to which Belgium not only belonged but whose headquarters it actually hosted.

Furthermore, though politicians were apparently unaware, the Belgian intelligence agencies were not, and they specifically and consistently accused "communists" (the CCC) as well as the "extreme right" (the Nijvel gang) of carrying out terror activity, whereas they were actually part of the planners if not executioners. Remarkably, in 1985, despite never-before-seen protest marches, NATO installed nuclear missiles in Belgium. This time, it seems the intended goal was not an invasion.

In 1995, the Belgian Chamber of Representatives organized a parliamentary inquiry into the effectiveness of the Belgian police and judiciary with regard to the Nijvel gang investigation. The conclusions of this inquiry, as well as the earlier Senate inquiry on SDRA8 and the Chamber inquiry on banditry, resulted in the preparation of new legislation governing the mission and methods of the Belgian State Security, which was passed in 1998.

Unlike the US government with its so-called Patriot Act, which was signed into law on 26 October 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11, the Belgian government decided to contain the powers of the intelligence and law enforcement network as much as possible, so that the willful complicity of the Belgian State Security in allowing, if not organizing, the deaths of people it was supposed to protect would not happen again.