Conspiracy of Ignorance
By Stephen Tuttle via Northern Express
There are those among us who believe nearly everything is the result of a conspiracy. All of it.
They don’t believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, don’t believe we ever landed on the moon, believe our own government orchestrated 9/11, and believe Bill and Hillary Clinton are murderers. They believe the food we eat, the medical treatment we receive and climate scientists are all part of grand conspiracies designed to somehow do them wrong.
More troubling is a subset of this group that has convinced themselves nearly all mass shootings are hoaxes perpetrated by shadowy, unnamed groups trying to upend the Second Amendment. They claim there are no victims, just “crisis actors” trained to pretend they’re victims.
The leader of this pack has been Alex Jones, a radio host and creator of the infamous web site, Infowars. Jones uses both platforms to spew conspiratorial nonsense about mass shootings.
He referred to Sandy Hook, where 20 first-grade children and 6 adults were massacred, as a “complete fake” and a “giant hoax.” He’s claimed the parents were actors and fakers. He’s been singing the same rancid song for years.
Now, two sets of parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook have had enough. After years of harassment, intimidation and even death threats generated, at least in part by Jones’ accusations, they’ve sued him and others for propagating this defamatory foolishness.
(It should be noted Jones, three days after the lawsuit was filed, finally acknowledged the Sandy Hook murders did occur. His attorney said his previous comments were “misunderstood” or “misrepresented.”)
Mr. Jones and his co-defendants will now hopefully have the opportunity to explain to a civil jury how he arrived at his conspiracy theories. It should be interesting hearing him tell us how dead people aren’t actually dead. If he could present just one of the hundreds of mass shooting victims still alive it would certainly be an eye-opener.
No such revelation is forthcoming because these horrors that keep repeating themselves are not hoaxes at all. Nobody is pretending to be dead or pretending to grieve a lost loved one. Any other notion is absurd.
Maybe some common sense is in order here.
Continue Reading @ Northern Express – – –
The Cult of Debt Forgiveness
A cult and a conspiracy.
With inequality growing exponentially over the past decades, people around the world have assumed massive debts. In Indonesia, a mysterious cult with the impressive name Swissindo World Trust International Orbit has attracted a global following for its promise to magically make one’s debts go away.
The group is led by Soegihartonotonegoro, a charismatic leader who calls himself M1, and presents himself as a godlike figure who can erase the world’s debt due to a seemingly limitless ancient inheritance. To find out the truth behind this bizarre story, VICE Indonesia correspondent Arzia traveled to visit the Swissindo Headquarters in Cirebon, Indonesia, and interviewed M1, and his followers.
We also met with the manager of a local bank that had been targeted by Swissindo for its debt services, and a client of Swissindo’s whose experience with the group was not exactly as anticipated.
