The Shag Harbour UFO
Comparing the actual evidence to the Canadian claim of best evidence for alien visitation.
by Brian Dunning via Skeptoid
They call it “Canada’s Roswell”, supposedly the strongest evidence of extraterrestrial visitation ever in Canada. It happened at Shag Harbour, a small fishing port near the extreme southern tip of Nova Scotia. On the clear night of Wednesday, October 4, 1967, shortly before midnight, a number of witnesses observed a row of lights, said to be on a craft about 60 feet long, descend with a bomb-like whistling sound, hover above the water for a moment, and then submerge. Emergency crews responded to what they thought was a plane crash. Divers spent a few days scouring the harbor bottom, but found nothing. But then, a quarter of a century later, the story exploded into something the like of which we’d never seen. The Shag Harbour UFO became one of the best cases ever for proof of alien visitation… supposedly.
On the night the incident was reported, Coast Guard and civilian boats swarmed Shag Harbour looking for what they hoped would be plane crash survivors. All that was found was a patch of foam, described by the fishing boat captain who saw it as “At least 80 feet wide”, and that in the darkness he thought it was “yellowish in color.” Divers spent three days combing the bottom of the bay in the area where everyone thought the crash had happened, but they found nothing at all.
Often cited as the reason that Shag Harbour should be considered Canada’s best evidence for alien visitation is the number and reliability of the witnesses. The lights descending into the water were reported by about a dozen people, including a Mountie. Two more Mounties and a few other people called to the scene reported seeing one light bobbing in the water for a short time.
Another reason it’s cited as an important case is that a few other UFO reports were made in the weeks before and after this one in various parts of the province. But in fact, rather than strengthening the case, it dilutes and complicates it.
Continue Reading (or listen to the podcast) @ Skeptoid . . .
Conspiracy Theory & Conspiracism – TIP Sheet
Source: Butte College
You say you believe the government is hiding something at Area 51–captured alien spacecraft, perhaps? The conjectures and rumors surrounding Area 51 comprise a revered conspiracy theory (many theories, actually). Do you believe the aliens among us are the hidden driving force in human history? That top world leaders (and they aren’t who most people think they are!) are cooperating for personal gain with the alien “reptile overlords” to bring about the enslavement of our species? You might be a conspiracist.
You might buy into one or more conspiracy theories without being an all-out conspiracist. Conspiracism is a world view that sees history as driven primarily by interwoven webs of secret conspiracies. Conspiracy theories are leaner, more restrained, more limited in scope than conspiracism. A conspiracy theory alleges that a secret conspiracy involving hidden actors is behind particular historical events. Its explanation for events usually runs counter to the official or mainstream account, which is itself seen as an elaborate fabrication.
Test your favorite conspiracy against the following components typical of conspiracism and conspiracy theories:
- THEY (the conspirators) are a relatively small group, but powerful and corrupt. They are evil, or at least selfish, acting in their own interest and against the public interest. They have great foresight, patience, and deviousness. Nevertheless, they are not all-powerful or even that smart, really, since WE have figured them out.
- WE are a small, dedicated group of freedom fighters and freethinkers. We are soldiers, rebels in the fight for good against evil.
- YOU are clueless. Why can’t you see what’s going on here? (Conspiracy theorists place most people in this group.)
- THEY have hidden or destroyed all the evidence that would implicate them and have manufactured false evidence that exculpates them.
- YOU are close-minded. In fact, you are probably one of THEM.
The comfort of conspiracy theory is that it provides a well-defined enemy and a sense of control (or at least structure) in the face of upheaval and disempowerment; the tendency to perceive conspiracy is more common in groups experiencing social isolation or political marginalization. The freedom fighters of conspiracy theory need not see themselves as being at the mercy of irresistible, inexplicable, or random natural or social forces, but as soldiers in a just cause. Many, if not most, conspiracy theories probably result from the human tendency to look for pattern in chaos-even if there isn’t any.
Conspiracy theories and conspiracism share three problems:
- Unfalsifiability
- Fallacy
- Naivete
Unfalsifiability
The main problem with any particular conspiracy theory is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s inarguable; not that it’s false, but that it is unfalsifiable. Because it is unfalsifiable, a conspiracy theory is not provable or disprovable.
Continue Reading @ Butte College – – –
America’s Secret Airline Flies Non-Stop To Area 51
By Collin Krum via flightclub.jalopnik.com


Profile view of the “Gold Coast” terminal at McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas, NV.
illumiCorp – Training Module I
Originally posted May 13, 2013
Hello initiates and welcome to module one of the Illumicorp video training course. I would like to officially welcome you as a member of the team.
You’ve joined our organization at perhaps the most exciting point in our long history. Our founders shared a passionate dream. To transform this country, and eventually the whole world to one cohesive organization.
This presentation is designed to enlighten you about our organization’s goals and achievements. As your guide, I will help to answer some basic questions you might have about Illumicorp, and familiarize you with the valuable role you will play in helping us reach our prime objective. So please, take a tour with me as we march together towards an exciting new world.
Start this video to continue your training:
Ancient Aliens Debunked
Vacation Post: By far THE most popular and hotly researched topic here at Illuminutti is the Ancient Aliens section that was originally posted May 2, 2012.
Enjoy 🙂
The information contained in this 8 part series is based on the work at “ART and UFOs? No Thanks, Only Art” by Diego Cuoghi.
If you wish to conduct more investigating into this subject matter i highly recommend visiting ART and UFOs? No Thanks, Only Art. The website is written in Italian, but some pages have been translated into English. The Italian pages are translated using MicroSoft Translator:
- Introduction
- Part 1 (English)
- Part 2 (English via MicroSoft Translator)
- Part 3 (English via MicroSoft Translator)
- Part 4 (English via MicroSoft Translator)
- Part 5 (English via MicroSoft Translator)
- Part 6 (English via MicroSoft Translator)
- Part 7 (English via MicroSoft Translator)
- Part 8 (English via MicroSoft Translator)
8 Secret Bases: Real or Fictional?
Do you know which of these secret military bases around the world are real?
by Brian Dunning via skeptoid
Read transcript below or listen here
Governments and militaries have secret bases; that’s just a simple fact. But usually the part that’s secret only concerns what’s done there; the actual existence of the facility itself is not usually in question. It’s kind of hard to hide a big complex of buildings. Even NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain command center, which exists entirely inside a mountain in Colorado, is marked with plenty of obvious external infrastructure. Since governments own the land and control access, there’s not really any reason to try and hide the facilities within. Satellite eyes in the sky observe everything being constructed anyway, so other governments will always know there’s something there whether the final product is hidden or not. And yet, stories remain about certain secret establishments. Let’s take a look at eight of these.
This super-secret military base in the UK is said to have performed all sorts of illegal and unethical human experimentation:
1. Porton Down
Real. It’s there in Wiltshire, England, freely available for anyone to drive past or view on Google Earth. Porton Down was formed during World War I, a time when wars were fought with poison gas. Their main focus was to develop gas mask technology, and to create better ways of deploying gases against the enemy. Such horrible weapons as mustard gas and chlorine were routinely used here.
Porton Down’s darkest legacy, and the main reason for its reputation, comes from its cold war years. At the same time that the Americans were experimenting with LSD in the MKULTRA program, Porton Down was doing the same, administering LSD to servicemen without their consent, in an effort to develop mind control and interrogation techniques. Human experimentation was also done, resulting in at least one death and a number of later lawsuits, using the nerve agents VX and sarin, and the endotoxin pyrexal.
And what about that favorite grandaddy of all secret bases:
2. Area 51
Real. The biggest confusion with Area 51 is that it has nothing to do with Roswell, NM or the alleged 1947 saucer crash. They’re in different states, and Area 51 hadn’t even been built yet; so there wasn’t much reason for any dead aliens to have been brought there. It was built in the 1950s, mainly to develop the super-secret A-12 and SR-71 reconaissance planes. Nobody actually calls it Area 51, it’s usually informally called The Ranch and formally the National Classified Test Facility. Contrary to popular rumors, the military doesn’t now, or in the past, deny its existence. That big word “classified” in its name simply means they don’t discuss what happens there.
Much of its history has since been declassified, and nothing has really surprised anyone who works in aviation journalism. Most secret American aircraft that were classified before they became publicly known, such as the A-12, SR-71, F-117, and TACIT BLUE have been tested and developed there. That’s why it’s out in the middle of nowhere, safely hidden behind off-limits mountains.
But if the aliens weren’t taken to Area 51, maybe they were taken to this alleged underground facility in New Mexico, home to gray aliens and reptilian beings:
3. Dulce Base
Fictional. Despite its having been featured in a number of television shows, comic books, and novels, there is no evidence that any underground “base” of any kind exists inside Archuleta Mesa, about 5 km north of the city of Dulce, NM. It’s frequently referenced on UFO web sites and conspiracy web sites, and usually described as a joint operation between aliens and the US military. The story began when a local UFO enthusiast, Paul Bennewitz, believed he was receiving radio transmissions from underneath the mesa in the 1970s. Within a few years, another UFO fan, Phil Schneider, claimed to have been an employee there, and has given detailed descriptions of its 7-level underground structure, its population of 18,000 aliens, and descriptions of the terrible experiments they perform on human subjects. It also supposedly has an underground train connection to Los Alamos National Laboratory, 130 kilometers away.
It’s trivial to study Google Earth images of Archuleta Mesa and see that there’s nothing there at all, certainly nothing like Schneider’s elaborate descriptions that include surface buildings and radar installations. And that no subway exists between there and Los Alamos. It also seems a little suspicious that Phil Schneider would be freely allowed to go around talking about his supposedly top-secret job. For a great discussion of All Things Dulce, see the Skeptoid blog article on the web site.
Some say that the United States maintains an underwater Area 51 in the Bahamas. It’s called:
4. AUTEC

AUTEC History Channel viewing party, tinfoil hats and all
Photo: Chickcharney Newsletter
Real. The US Navy’s Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center is on Andros Island in the Bahamas, and it was once hyped by History Channel’s TV show UFO Hunters as being some kind of secret alien underwater thing. The employees there thought the show was pretty funny; they had a viewing party and sent me a photo of them goofing around and wearing tinfoil hats. Seriously.
AUTEC isn’t underwater. It’s better described as a beach resort, with a small protected harbor and a boatramp and wharf, and the obligatory beach club with cabana bar. Although the Navy does not disclose the nature of their specific projects, it does freely list their assets and capabilities. They’re concerned with underwater warfare, mainly torpedos and mines. They also dabble quite a lot in unmanned underwater vehicles, electronic warfare, and acoustics. Their principal ship is called the Range Rover; it goes out and does most of the grunt work, often at their Shallow Water Range and Minefield about 120 km north of Andros Island. It’s a very thoroughly surveyed plot of real estate, and most useful when they’re not dodging the cruise ships that are constantly pounding back and forth through the channel.
And while we’re underwater, what do we think of the plausibility of a gigantic underground submarine base in China?
10 Curious Theories about Aliens
Via YouTube
Whether you think they’re flesh-eating lizard men or Nazis from space, we all have our own theories about the Little Green Men.
Take a look at the video to discover if you agree with these ten curious theories about aliens
illumiCorp – Training Module I
An oldie, but goodie! Enjoy! 🙂
Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB)
Hello initiates and welcome to module one of the Illumicorp video training course. I would like to officially welcome you as a member of the team.
You’ve joined our organization at perhaps the most exciting point in our long history. Our founders shared a passionate dream. To transform this country, and eventually the whole world to one cohesive organization.
This presentation is designed to enlighten you about our organization’s goals and achievements. As your guide, I will help to answer some basic questions you might have about Illumicorp, and familiarize you with the valuable role you will play in helping us reach our prime objective. So please, take a tour with me as we march together towards an exciting new world.
Start this video to continue your training:
The World’s Underground Bases
By Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know via YouTube
How many underground bases exist today? Is there any way to figure out what’s stored in the world’s various secret bunkers? Learn more in today’s video.
Canada’s former defense minister: aliens will give us tech if we quit wars
By Rob Beschizza via Boing Boing
Paul Hellyer was Canada’s Minister of Defense in the mid-1960s. He is now a critic of the United States’ willingness to trigger an interstellar war with aliens—aliens who might give us more advanced technology if only we were less belligerent.
“They’ve been visiting our planet for thousands of years,” Hellyer told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze in a televised interview.
“There’s been a lot more activity in the last few decades, since we invented the atomic bomb. and they’re very concerned about that, and about the fact that we might use it again,” added Hellyer, who said that a cold-war era commission determined that at least four alien species had come to Earth. “The whole cosmos is a unity, and it affects not just us but other people in the cosmos, they’ve very much afraid that we might be stupid enough to start using atomic weapons again. This would be bad for us and bad for them too.”
Scientists are at fault for dismissing the evidence of “authenticated” alien contacts, added the longest-serving member of Queen Elizabeth Canada Privy Council. “This information is top secret in the way that government isn’t talking about it, but if you talk to the whistleblowers … there’s a lot of information and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to find it”
Delysid’s Guide to Thinking and Debating Like a (bad) Conspiracy Theorist
by Delysid via dailypaul.com
Step 1: Start with the premise that any tragic incident is a massive, intricate government conspiracy.
Step 2: Denounce any information presented by a mainstream, non-conspiracy source that directly counters the predetermined conspiracy narrative as corrupt and part of the conspiracy.
Step 3: Monitor these same mainstream sources for information that supports the predetermined conspiracy narrative, even if only remotely. Mainstream media reporting mistakes that support your conspiracy (or any conspiracy really) must be treated as rare moments of truth, glimpses inside the Matrix. Any mainstream media reports in favor of the conspiracy should be treated like the word of God. Spam that information everywhere.
Step 4: Imagination is the same thing as undeniable fact. There is nothing wrong with manipulating Youtube videos and using Photoshop to edit information to make it more obvious for the stupid sheeple to understand.
Step 5: Reject the skeptics to the conspiracy theories aggressively. Call them out for being sheep, shills, Cointelpro, paid agents, et cetera. Do not ever doubt yourself, because if you think they are any of these nouns, then it is undeniably true. After all, the conspiracy theory you are trying to wake the world up to is a fact. Only a sheep would think otherwise.
Step 6: Bring up the founding of the Federal Reserve, the Bay of Pigs, The Gulf of Tonkin, and other well known deceptive schemes by the government often (every conversation if need be.) These actions were confessed by government, therefore every other conspiracy theory is true!
Step 7: Cite declassified documents often, as they are invaluable. If the government reports that a secret program was started and ended 60 years ago- DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. The secret programs for sure are still occurring and are now more massive, sinister, and successful than before.
Step 8: Remember that most of witnesses and victims involved in conspiracy event are actors. Medical examiners, emergency responders, the police, reporters, they are almost all in on it. The innocent people caught up in the conspiracy were either killed or have been threatened by the conspirators and are too afraid to come forward (or they possibly never existed to begin with.)
Step 9: Blitz the world with the truth until everyone deletes you on Facebook or you are banned from your favorite web sites. Lay low for a period, regroup at your favorite alternative web sites, get encouragement and reinforcement from the other awakened truth seekers, and start the process all over again with a new conspiracy.
[END]
5 Things I’ve noticed about… Conspiracy Theorists on Youtube
by The Locke via The Soap Box
If you’re someone that makes a hobby of investigating conspiracy theories, you will eventually be lead to one place: Youtube.
Youtube seems to the gathering center conspiracy theorists on the internet due to the huge amount a conspiracy theory videos on that website (and I mean huge).
Now there are a lot of things that I have noticed about conspiracy theorists on Youtube that I could talk about, but I have narrowed it down to five different things.
So here are five things that I’ve noticed about conspiracy theorists on Youtube:
5. They can come up with some pretty bizarre conspiracy theories.
If you want to find a really bizarre conspiracy theory, then there is no better place to look than Youtube, because the conspiracy theorists on that website can come up with some very bizarre conspiracy theories. In fact some of the weirdest conspiracy theories that I have ever heard of are from videos on Youtube.
These conspiracy theories on Youtube can get so strange, and combined with a person’s own behavior either in a video, or in the comments section, that it makes one wonder if that person is either a poe, or a fraud that is looking for attention (or to scam people), or severely mentally ill. In fact some conspiracy theorist on Youtube have been proven to be either mentally ill or frauds.
Some of these videos are so bizarre that I’ve had to stop watching them at times because I felt that it was driving me crazy (mostly rage) and making me want to destroy my computer in frustration over not only how some one could come up with some thing that crazy and stupid, but also in frustration over why Youtube would allow such a video to stay on the website.
If such videos make me nearly go crazy then I can’t imagine what they do to people who take these videos seriously.
4. Their videos can be extremely long.
Sometimes a conspiracy theorist’s video on Youtube can be short, sometimes they can be half an hour long, and sometimes they can go on for hours and hours.
Some of the longest videos that I have ever seen on Youtube have been from conspiracy theorists, and I’m not talking about an hour or two long. Some of these videos can be three to four to six hours long. In fact I think the longest one I have ever seen (I didn’t actually watch it, I just noted the time) was forty hours long!
The only way someone could watch such videos is if they were unemployed and/or had no life what so ever. They would have to spend all of their time infront of a computer watching these poorly made and researched Youtube videos which would become essentially their only source of information about the world…
Besides just making abnormally long videos, conspiracy theorists on Youtube also tend to do this:
3. They create videos of an event quickly after an event happens.
Thanks mostly due to cheap (many times free), widely available, and easy to use video capturing and editing software, conspiracy theorist can now create videos at astonishingly amazing speeds after some event happens, sometimes even within hours of an event happening.
Usually these videos are . . .
Related articles
- 5 Things I’ve noticed about… Bizarre Conspiracy Theories (illuminutti.com)
- How “The Matrix” inspired Conspiracy Theorists (and Vice-Verse) (illuminutti.com)
- If the Government is shut down, then who is paying the shills? (illuminutti.com)
- A Conspiracy Theorist’s Theory. (caedasun.wordpress.com)
- 5 Conspiracy Theories that would be easy to prove (illuminutti.com)
- 5 Things I’ve noticed about… 9/11 Conspiracy Theories (illuminutti.com)
- 6 Conspiracy theories that make people paranoid (illuminutti.com)
- Like Sandy Hook, the Washington Navy Yard Shooting Will Soon Be Co-opted By Conspiracy Theorists (illuminutti.com)
7 Reasons why aliens haven’t talked to us
by The Locke via The Soap Box
For decades now we have been trying communicate with other intelligent life else where in the universe, or at the very least find proof that they are other intelligent life forms out there in the universe.
Despite all of our efforts through SETI and other programs like SETI, we still haven’t found any proof that there are other intelligent life forms out there.
So why is it that despite all of our efforts to find and communicate with other intelligent life forms in the universe we still haven’t done so?
Well, there are a few reasons why we haven’t yet:
They don’t exist.
As difficult (and statistically improbable) as it may seem to be, there is a very real (yet microscopic) possibly that the reason why aliens haven’t talked to us yet is because their is no other life in the universe, or at the very least that there are no other worlds besides this one that has life on them that have evolved into intelligent life forms.
They’re not advanced enough to communicate with us or get here.
One of the reasons why aliens may have never communicated with us or have come to our planet is because they are not technologically advanced enough to either travel to the stars, or create a communication system that would allow them to send out signals into interstellar space. This isn’t very surprising since we are barely able to do this ourselves (By the way, we are able to travel to the stars, and we do have a technology that would allow us to do so if we were to give it the funding. It’s called nuclear pulse propulsion).
Despite the fact that the universe is around 13.8 billion years old, there is no reason to believe that there are any other civilizations out there that are just as advanced, if not more advanced than we are, and that we may be the most advanced civilization in the universe. But, considering how old the universe is, there is also no reason to believe that there are no civilizations out there that are far more advanced than we are as well, and can easily get from one star to another.
They are able to communicate with us and even get here, they are just very far away.
Maybe they are able to travel between the stars, and even able to send out radio signals, but they just haven’t gotten here because of one simple reason: distance.
The universe is a very vast place, and the fact is that unless you have a way to travel and/or communicate faster than the speed of light, it can take years, even centuries, for a radio signal or a space ship to get from one star system to another, so it is entirely possible that the reason why we have never found an alien radio signal, or that an alien space ship has never come here, is because it just hasn’t reached us yet.
They are unaware of our existence.
One of the reasons why aliens have never communicated with us is the same reason why we haven’t communicated with them: they don’t know we are here.
It is entirely possible that an intelligent alien species has seen and heard our radio signals, and either can not figure out where it came from, or they can’t understand it and dismiss it as natural phenomenon (which we could be doing with radio signals from space right now that we believe are natural radio signals given off by stars, but are really alien radio signals).
Plus, who is to say that they are even looking for other intelligent life out there like we are? For all that we know aliens might not even believe that it is possible for intelligent life to exist on other worlds, and thus aren’t even trying to find other intelligent life forms out there in the universe.
Related articles
- New Tech Could Transform Search for Intelligent Alien Life, SETI Says (space.com)
- Is There Anybody Out There? (astrosalford.wordpress.com)
- How do we know we are not alone? (stuff.co.nz)
- The new equation for estimating alien life across the universe (theguardian.com)
- Why I’m Listening for Radio Signals from Space (bigthink.com)
The Disclosure Project (Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know)
Does the US government really possess top-secret proof of alien life? The members of the Disclosure Project think so. Tune in to learn more about the Disclosure Project’s quest in this episode.
MORE . . . The Disclosure Project – CLASSIC – YouTube.
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- Alien Attack Planned as described by the Disclosure Project (disclose.tv)
- Disclosure Project is a Scam to Make you believe in UFO’s (unifiedserenity.wordpress.com)
- UFO Sightings False Flag UFO Invasion Warning? Disclosure Project Dr Greer Explains 2013 (disclose.tv)
- Six (6) Alien myths Debunked (lunaticoutpost.com)
- Dr Steven Greer: When Disclosure Serves Secrecy (goldenageofgaia.com)
YouTube University
I made this image today in honor of all those conspiracists who cite YouTube videos as their source of information to support their wacky theories. Enjoy and share everywhere! 🙂
MIB
8 clues your friend is becoming a crazy conspiracy theorist
By Robyn Pennacchia via Death and Taxes
It’s happened to all of us. Some friend we had in elementary school or from an old job is all of a sudden making super weird comments on Facebook, or you’re in a bar and some random [person] is trying to talk to you about fluoride for some reason. It’s not always immediately clear. Like, I realized one day that people saying crazy things were always following it up with “Do your own research!” and then finally discovered that it was sort of a “buzzphrase” for conspiracy theorists.
So, I thought I’d compile a list of the ways to know that someone in your life is starting to head down to tin foil hat alley.
1. Says insane things (probably about chemtrails), and if you dispute, insists that you “Do your own research!”

“I’m a University of YouTube graduate!”
This is one of the earliest signs of this type of crazy- and it’s also a major Glenn Beck-ism. I don’t know about you, but when I state a fact, I’m usually able to explain that fact. Especially if it’s something that may be controversial.
For instance, I do not so much believe that Joan Crawford beat her children. This is a thing that most people believe, because of the movie “Mommie Dearest”– however, when asked to explain, I don’t yell “Do your own research!” at people, I explain that all of the other children (save for Christopher) have refuted Christina’s book, as well as Crawford’s actual personal assistant, and Myrna Loy, and pretty much anyone else who was around during that time. I’m not saying I’m 100% definitely correct on this, but I err on the side of “probably not.”
Still, I don’t throw out something weird, get mad at people for not immediately taking me at my word, and then yell at them to do their own research. I mean, if they want to, that’s fine, but I’m usually quite able to support my arguments.
2. Freaking Flouride
UGH. These people and their fluoride. They love to make up crap about how the government puts fluoride in the water to keep us dumb and rebellion-resistant, like no one has ever seen “Dr. Strangelove” before or something. This is usually what they start with, probably because it sounds slightly more realistic than like, Lizard People.
It is not, however, true. At all. And yes, I’ve “done my research.” But don’t tell that to these people, especially if they are drunk at a bar, because they will, in fact, start screaming at you about it. Fluoride and the “vaccinations cause autism” thing are like the gateway drugs into tin-foil hat land.
3. Rejecting the tyranny of paragraph breaks
I swear to god, this is a thing. Whenever I see a comment that’s just a giant block of text with no breaks in it, I immediately just go “Welp, this one’s gonna be crazy” and I am pretty much always right. I don’t know why this is a thing, it just is.
4. When a person who you already kinda know isn’t too swift starts trying to pretend that they are some kind of intellectual who is totally going to school you on “how things are in the world.”
I hate to say this, but it’s true. It’s always the dumb ones. I feel bad, because like, they’re usually just coming across this stuff for the first time and it is totally blowing their minds. Like, I already know that some people think that the Rothschilds control the world and that there are Mason things on the dollar bill and also THE MOON LANDING WAS FAKED or whatever. I’ve known for years, and I’ve already figured out that it’s all bullshit.
The more you read about history, the more you realize that people are so not getting it together to form a whole “New World Order” anytime soon. While there have been “conspiracy” type things throughout history (MKUltra, Tuskeegee, Project Paperclip, the COINTELPRO that actually existed and not the one people pretend still exists), they have been discovered fairly quickly. Because someone always has a big mouth.
Related articles
- Not all Conspiracy Theorists are Conspiracy Theorists (illuminutti.com)
- How to tell a Conspiracy Theorist from a Conspiracy Believer (illuminutti.com)
- Info-Spats: Even Conspiracy Theorists Are Sick of Alex Jones (illuminutti.com)
- 5 Conspiracy Theories That Are Shockingly Easy to Debunk (illuminutti.com)
- Weirdly, None of the Conspiracy Theorists at Bilderberg 2013 Made Any Sense (illuminutti.com)
- My First Conspiracy Theorist (mariatestarosa.wordpress.com)
- Conspiracy Theorists Worst Nightmares Confirmed: The US Government Is Poisoning Us! (fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)
Why people believe in conspiracy theories
By Alex Seitz-Wald via Salon.com
We’ve written before about the historical and social aspects of conspiracy theories, but wanted to learn more about the psychology of people who believe, for instance, that the Boston Marathon bombing was a government “false flag” operation. Psychological forces like motivated reasoning have long been associated with conspiracy thinking, but scientists are learning more every year. For instance, a British study published last year found that people who believe one conspiracy theory are prone to believe many, even ones that are completely contradictory.
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Western Australia, published a paper late last month in the journal Psychological Science that has received widespread praise for looking at the thinking behind conspiracy theories about science and climate change. We asked him to explain the psychology of conspiracy theories. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
First of all, why do people believe conspiracy theories?
There are number of factors, but probably one of the most important ones in this instance is that, paradoxically, it gives people a sense of control. People hate randomness, they dread the sort of random occurrences that can destroy their lives, so as a mechanism against that dread, it turns out that it’s much easier to believe in a conspiracy. Then you have someone to blame, it’s not just randomness.
What are the psychological forces at play in conspiracy thinking?
Basically what’s happening in any conspiracy theory is that people have a need or a motivation to believe in this theory, and it’s psychologically different from evidence-based thinking. A conspiracy theory is immune to evidence, and that can pretty well serve as the definition of one. If you reject evidence, or reinterpret the evidence to be confirmation of your theory, or you ignore mountains of evidence to focus on just one thing, you’re probably a conspiracy theorist. We call that a self-sealing nature of reasoning.
Another common trait is the need to constantly expand the conspiracy as new evidence comes to light. For instance, with the so-called Climategate scandal, there were something like nine different investigations, all of which have exonerated the scientists involved. But the response from the people who held this notion was to say that all of those investigations were a whitewash. So it started with the scientists being corrupt and now not only is it them, but it’s also all the major scientific organizations of the world that investigated them and the governments of the U.S. and the U.K., etc., etc. And that’s typical — instead of accepting the evidence, you actually turn it around and say that it’s actually evidence to support the conspiracy because it just means it’s even broader than it was originally thought to be.
Are there certain types of people who are more prone to believing in conspiracy theories than others? Does it match any kind of political lines?
I don’t think there is a systematic association between political views and the propensity to believe in conspiracy theories. There are some studies that suggest people on the political left are inclined to it, and there are some that suggest people on the right are. But it’s always a weak association.
Related articles
- Conspiracy theories only create more conspiracy theories (illuminutti.com)
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The Black Knight Satellite
By Brian Dunning via Skeptoid
Read transcript below or listen here
Stories say it’s up there in the blackness right now, just outside the Earth’s glow. It tumbles slowly and deliberately through the darkness, sweeping smoothly along its unrelenting orbit. The Earth spins below, largely unaware of its unauthorized parasitic visitor. It is the Black Knight satellite, a mysterious object cirling the Earth, of unknown (and possibly alien) origin — the story says it’s up there right now, and has been for 13,000 years.
Like so many stories of weird phenomena, the Black Knight satellite legend starts with Nicola Tesla. It’s said that he picked up a repeating radio signal in 1899, that he believed was coming from space, and said so publicly at a conference. In the 1920s, amateur HAM radio operators were able to receive this same signal. Next, scientists in Oslo, Norway experimenting with short wave transmissions into space in 1928, began picking up Long Delay Echoes (LDEs), a not fully understood phenomenon in which they received echoes several seconds after transmission. The apparent explanation finally came in 1954 when newspapers (including the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the San Francisco Examiner) reported an announcement from the US Air Force that two satellites were found to be orbiting the Earth, at a time when no nation yet had the ability to launch them. It appeared that Black Knight had been detected by multiple lines of evidence, and was confirmed by the US Air Force.
By 1960, both the United States and the Soviet Union had hardware in orbit. But on February 11, 1960, newspapers everywhere reported some alarming news: that somebody else also had something in orbit. A radar screen, designed by the US Navy to detect enemy spy satellites, had picked something up. It was described as a dark, tumbling object. It wasn’t ours, and it wasn’t the Soviets’ either.
The next day, newspapers reported a bit more information. The mysterious object was orbiting at about 79 degrees off from the equator, not the 90 degrees of a proper polar orbit. Its orbit was also highly eccentric, with an apogee of 1,728 km but a perigee of only 216 km. The object made a complete orbit every 104.5 minutes.
At the time, the Navy was tracking one known casing from an old Discoverer launch, a half shell a bit less than 6 meters long. Discoverer VIII had launched on November 20, 1959, a stepping stone toward launching a man into space and then recovering him in a parachuting capsule. The launch went as planned, but its mission to eject its 136 kg capsule didn’t go so well. The capsule’s casings came off as planned, but the capsule itself went astray into an orbit somewhat similar to that of the mystery object, and was eventually declared lost. The Navy tracked one of the casings, which was then orbiting every 103 minutes at 80 degrees, with an apogee of 950 km and a perigee of 187 km. Black Knight’s object was similar, but not exactly the same.
And then, in 1963, astronaut Gordon Cooper reported seeing a greenish UFO during his 15th orbit on board Mercury 9. It was witnessed on the radar screens by approximately 100 people at NASA’s Muchea Tracking Station near Perth, Australia. An official explanation given later was that Cooper’s electronics malfunctioned, and he breathed in too much CO2 which gave him hallucinations. Black Knight’s reality seemed to be undeniable.
Related articles
- Skeptoid #365: The Black Knight Satellite (skeptoid.com)
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The Declassification Engine: Your One-Stop Shop for Government Secrets
The CIA offers an electronic search engine that lets you mine about 11 million agency documents that have been declassified over the years. It’s called CREST, short for CIA Records Search Tool. But this represents only a portion the CIA’s declassified materials, and if you want unfettered access to the search engine, you’ll have to physically visit the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.
Using the Freedom of Information Act, historians and researchers have urged the CIA to provide them with their own copy of the CREST electronic database, so that they can seek greater insight into U.S. history and even build up additional checks and balances against the government’s approach to official secrecy. But the agency won’t do it. “Basically, the CIA is saying that the database of declassified documents is itself classified,” explains Steve Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, who oversees the federation’s government secrecy project.
It’s an irony that represents a much larger problem in the world of declassified government documents. According to Aftergood — a researcher some have called the “the Yoda of Official Secrecy” — most government agencies haven’t even gone as far as the CIA in providing online access to declassified documents, and as it stands, there’s no good way of electronically searching declassified documents from across disparate agencies.
“The state of the declassified archives is really stuck in the middle of the 20th Century,” says Aftergood. He calls it a “fairly dismal picture,” but he also says there’s an enormous opportunity to improve the way we research declassified materials — and improve it very quickly — through the use of modern technology.
That’s the aim of a new project launched by a team of historians, mathematicians, and computer scientists at Columbia University in New York City. Led by Matthew Connelly — a Columbia professor trained in diplomatic history — the project is known as The Declassification Engine, and it seeks to provide a single online database for declassified documents from across the federal government, including the CIA, the State Department, and potentially any other agency.
The project is still in the early stages, but the team has already assembled a database of documents that stretches back to the 1940s, and it has begun building new tools for analyzing these materials. In aggregating all documents into a single database, the researchers hope to not only provide quicker access to declassified materials, but to glean far more information from these documents than we otherwise could.
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Info-Spats: Even Conspiracy Theorists Are Sick of Alex Jones
Hath Frankenstein’s monster begun killing its creator?
Alex Jones, the boisterous voice of a cult of conspiracy that questions, quite literally, everything from the legitimacy of terrorist attacks to the use of artificial sweeteners like aspartame, might have started getting just a tad too paranoid for the community that he’s had such a huge part in building.
Whether he’s ranting incoherently about gun control on Piers Morgan or arguing that the bombing at the Boston Marathon was a government orchestrated “false flag” attack complete with actors, more and more conspiracy theorists are doing their best to distance themselves from Jones.
The latest, and one of the most public, efforts to push back against Jones’ particular brand of government distrust comes from Films for Action, a popular hub for the promotion of alternative, independent films and media.
After being questioned numerous times at their failure to include any Infowars or Prison Planet documentaries, Films for Action took the opportunity to release a statement about why their decision to steer away from Alex Jones was a conscious decision from the get-go.
Here’s a sizeable chunk from their lengthy statement:
Unfortunately, we feel it would be irresponsible to promote Alex Jones, his websites, or any of his films. His films were always overly sensational and hyperbolic, but over the years the assertions he makes in his films and on his radio show have gotten increasingly outlandish and unsubstantiated. There are nuggets of truth and important perspectives hidden in the films, but they are buried under so many wild claims, tabloid style rhetoric, fear-mongering, and misleading conclusions that sifting the valid points from the misinformation would take more time than most folks have the patience for. See this, this, this,this, and this, for a handful of examples.Most skeptical people will have written off his ideas (and anything associated with it, including, likely, this site) long before the film finishes.
We believe the goal of the alternative media is to eventually become the mainstream media – a media for and by the people, rather than a media for and by corporate interests. The alternative media that we imagine is one that has the potential to be welcomed into the homes of virtually everyone. We want to demonstrate the best of what the alternative media is and could be.
This means presenting information in a credible fashion, and not promoting misinformation or misleading meta-narratives about our world. It means following diligently the ethical principles and standards of the best journalists.
Infowars appeals to a certain niche conspiracy audience, but beyond this niche, it is not of much use for reaching people ‘beyond the choir’ – in fact the presentation and substance of Infowars is quite alienating and off-putting to most people. Right now on Infowars minded sites and Facebook pages, they are focusing their attention on occult messages being placed in the movies The Dark Knight Rises and The Hunger Games that allude to the latest two gun massacres being pre-planned events staged by the New World Order. Stuff like this has become conspiracy porn for a growing audience, which we find quite troubling, as focusing on these types of dead ends keep people distracted from doing anything that could effectively end the systems of power these websites claim to decry.
We must regretfully conclude that Alex Jones does more harm to the movement than good.
That last line seems to pretty well sum up a growing opinion for conspiracy theorists, an opinion that when it comes to spreading the “truth” – their truth, however suppressed, uncomfortable, or bizarre that “truth” may be, Alex Jones is no longer the right man for the job.
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- Yes, Alex Jones Is Still Nuts. Want Proof? Here’s Him Going Bonkers On Google & Facebook: ‘Use ‘Em Like A Toilet!’ (illuminutti.com)
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Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories
By MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER via NYTimes.com
In the days following the bombings at the Boston Marathon, speculation online regarding the identity and motive of the unknown perpetrator or perpetrators was rampant. And once the Tsarnaev brothers were identified and the manhunt came to a close, the speculation didn’t cease. It took a new form. A sampling: Maybe the brothers Tsarnaev were just patsies, fall guys set up to take the heat for a mysterious Saudi with high-level connections; or maybe they were innocent, but instead of the Saudis, the actual bomber had acted on behalf of a rogue branch of our own government; or what if the Tsarnaevs were behind the attacks, but were secretly working for a larger organization?
Crazy as these theories are, those propagating them are not — they’re quite normal, in fact. But recent scientific research tells us this much: if you think one of the theories above is plausible, you probably feel the same way about the others, even though they contradict one another. And it’s very likely that this isn’t the only news story that makes you feel as if shadowy forces are behind major world events.
“The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories,” says Viren Swami, a psychology professor who studies conspiracy belief at the University of Westminster in England. Psychologists say that’s because a conspiracy theory isn’t so much a response to a single event as it is an expression of an overarching worldview.
As Richard Hofstadter wrote in his seminal 1965 book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” conspiracy theories, especially those involving meddlesome foreigners, are a favorite pastime in this nation. Americans have always had the sneaking suspicion that somebody was out to get us — be it Freemasons, Catholics or communists. But in recent years, it seems as if every tragedy comes with a round of yarn-spinning, as the Web fills with stories about “false flag” attacks and “crisis actors” — not mere theorizing but arguments for the existence of a completely alternate version of reality.
Since Hofstadter’s book was published, our access to information has vastly improved, which you would think would have helped minimize such wild speculation. But according to recent scientific research on the matter, it most likely only serves to make theories more convincing to the public. What’s even more surprising is that this sort of theorizing isn’t limited to those on the margins. Perfectly sane minds possess an incredible capacity for developing narratives, and even some of the wildest conspiracy theories can be grounded in rational thinking, which makes them that much more pernicious. Consider this: 63 percent of registered American voters believe in at least one political conspiracy theory, according to a recent poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
While psychologists can’t know exactly what goes on inside our heads, they have, through surveys and laboratory studies, come up with a set of traits that correlate well with conspiracy belief.
Related articles
- Conspiracy theories only create more conspiracy theories (illuminutti.com)
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The Internet: A Superhighway of Paranormal Hoaxes and Fakelore
By Sharon Hill via The Huffington Post
It’s been a hot time for hoaxing thanks to the Internet. With Photoshop, citizen journalism sites, YouTube, and postboards for the latest photo leaks, it is way too easy to send a lie half way around the world before the truth can pull its shoes on.

This iconic image of the Lock Ness monster was hoaxed by Hugh Gray in 1933. (source)
In this post, I wrote about a busy week in paranormal-themed news. In chatting with a correspondent — Jeb Card, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department of Miami University — over a shared interest in the state of the paranormal today or “occulture,” we got to talking about the state of hoaxing.
Make no mistake, hoaxing has always been around. Hoaxers have been trying to fool people by displaying their special skills (scams) or stupendous stories since the beginning of civilization, I think. But there is a particular history of hoaxing in occulture. Lately, it has gotten more frequent (or we sure notice it more), more absurd (to outdo the last one) and more involved (because the payout can be big while the scrutiny greater).
There are many famous hoaxes from this scene. It’s hard to say if it’s more common now than in the past. Some of the hoaxes, notes Jeb, have been very influential in the creation of popular folklore. Big ones have defined UFOlogy: Roswell and the Men in Black. Not everyone would conclude these are deliberate hoaxes — there is a grain of truth to them — but they went way out of control and now there are hoaxed videos, documents and tales based on these events that never happened the way the lore says it did. Stories like that, which have taken on a life of their own as if they were true, are called “fakelore.”
The Bigfoot field is trampled over with fake footprints, stories, casts, photos and videos. It can’t be denied that the majority of Bigfoot stories are unbelievable, without supporting evidence, or obvious hoaxes. Every new bit of Bigfoot “evidence” these days makes us roll our eyes and say “SERIOUSLY!?” This reputation is damaging to those who truly believe something is out there to be found. The credibility of Bigfoot researchers scrapes the bottom of the barrel. The history of hoaxes colors this topic deeply when we realize that the seminal story of “Bigfoot,” Ray Wallace’s trackway, was revealed to be a hoax.
Actually, the same can be said for the Loch Ness Monster. The iconic Nessie photo — the long-neck arching out of the rippling water — was hoaxed.
A longtime follower of the occulture fields, Jeb says he can’t think of a time when these communities weren’t awash with . . .
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illumiCorp – Training Module I
Hello initiates and welcome to module one of the Illumicorp video training course. I would like to officially welcome you as a member of the team.
You’ve joined our organization at perhaps the most exciting point in our long history. Our founders shared a passionate dream. To transform this country, and eventually the whole world to one cohesive organization.
This presentation is designed to enlighten you about our organization’s goals and achievements. As your guide, I will help to answer some basic questions you might have about Illumicorp, and familiarize you with the valuable role you will play in helping us reach our prime objective. So please, take a tour with me as we march together towards an exciting new world.
Start this video to continue your training:
The Conspiracy Theory Flowchart “THEY” Don’t Want You To See
via crispian-jago.blogspot.com
Had enough government rhetoric? Tired of following the sheeple? Fed up with believing what THEY want you to believe? Maybe it’s time to branch out and discover THE TRUTH.
If you’re new to the exciting world of conspiracy theories and just can’t decide which paranoid delusion best suits you, then why not use this handy flowchart to find your ideal conspiracy theory. Then you too can go and stick it to THE MAN.
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