Category: Conspiracy Corner

Every Thursday, about 8:15am, Matthew talks with Zac, with Lucas lurking on the sidelines, on 95bFM’s “Breakfast Show” about conspiracy theories.

I try my best to be sympathetic to the conspiracy theories I hear, because, really, to treat them in a prima facie derisory fashion would be to go against my own arguments (and when the book is published, that would really be embarrassing) but sometimes I do have a “Why would they think that?” moment where any potential sympathy for a conspiracy theory just melts away.

Not Offered In 2014 was one of those moments. I first heard mutterings about the page on Twitter, and then someone sent me a link to a The Daily Blog post about it. My reaction was “Well, if it’s a conspiracy, it’s one that’s been going on for a really long time!”

The conspiracy theory that emerged from “Not Offered In 2014” goes something like this: students enrolling for courses next year at the University of Auckland have noticed that the list of courses scheduled for teaching next year are a minor subset of the courses listed in the University Calendar. Some of the papers that aren’t being offered are things like “After Neoliberalism”, and this lead to the claim that perhaps the government (in particular, Minister of Tertiary Education Steven Joyce) was cutting finding to the Arts to further the Governments sinister (but not admittedly secret) plan to ruin public education in Aotearoa.

Now, I should like to point out here and now that the claim of conspiracy has been thoroughly debunked by the University of Auckland, who presented a very mundane explanation of what was going on, and this explanation by the University of Auckland has been accepted by the people behind “Not Offered In 2014”. As such, the following analysis is very much a reminder of why we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, rather than an assault on the (now reformed) conspiracy theorists of the “Not Offered In 2014” movement (such that it was; my, but I’m fond of bracketed comments at the moment).

The reason why I found the claims behind “Not Offered In 2014” so weird was because it’s always been the case that scheduled courses are a subset of calendered courses: when I first enrolled at the University of Auckland (when Blur were still a new band and Elastica was popular) I remember looking at the University Calendar and selecting the courses I was going to take in my first year, only to find, when I picked up a couple of Departmental Handbooks, that these courses were not offered that year (in those days the notion of a University of Auckland website with easily accessible and centralised information about course offerings was a more distant dream than it is today). It turned out (and it still turns out) that the University has more courses listed in the calendar than it ever teaches in a year. Not only that, but many of the courses in the calendar are very rarely taught: they exist there as a reminder of what was once taught and what might be taught again.

So, my worry about the “Not Offered In 2014” thesis can be summed up as “Why is this suddenly an issue?”

Well, perhaps it was the context. As I’ve already mentioned, the current government really does seem to be going out of its way to make public education increasingly tokenistic, and Minister Joyce has opined quite a bit about how universities need to produce people with skills the market can easily employ. Joyce seems to think that Arts degrees are useless (he’s wrong about this, and demonstrably so, but Joyce and the National Party in general tend to decry evidence-based policies). So, if you were a political interested Art student who thought they had seen a drop in courses in your faculty of choice, you might very well think “Yet another nail in public education!”

However, this theory, nice as it seems, doesn’t fit the evidence, because we can’t just look at paper offerings in one year: we have to look at offerings across several years, and that’s where the theory falters. Either this is a conspiracy spanning several decades or it’s not a conspiracy at all.

As I said, in the mid-nineties the problem of scheduled courses being a subset of calendared courses was well known, and people with more time than me have gone through and looked at offerings in the past few years and compared them to next year. In most cases, departments are either offering 1 more or 1 less paper per semester than they have done in previous years: across the board it looks as if the total number of papers taught in 2014 is roughly the same as in the last few years.

So, no conspiracy. Well, no new conspiracy: it’s possible there is a long-standing conspiracy in operation to gradually run down the Arts, but it’s not Minister Joyce’s conspiracy and, arguably, if such a conspiracy exists, Labour is probably in on it too (the previous administration was no friend to the Arts either).

So, why did the story take off? Why did “Not Offered In 2014” end up being talked about on bFM (and not just by me)? Why did the University have to make a statement about how course offerings in the Arts hadn’t been cut?

I don’t know. I can hazard a kind of educated guess, which is that students are both wary about the increasing role central government has in saying what should and shouldn’t be taught in our universities. Students are also becoming more aware that the leadership at the University of Auckland is focused more on research than it is on teaching. Overall, university students are becoming more worried and thus more politically active (and it’s about time too, methinks). This, I think, lead to people demanding answers to a question the University didn’t expect to be asked: the Arts faculty fumbled their initial response because, like me, they probably wondered why the question was even being asked.

Every Thursday, about 8:15am, Matthew talks with Zac on 95bFM’s “Breakfast Show” about conspiracy theories.

Bensa Magos is the author of “The Phrenology of Barack Obama”, “Holder’s Hero: Oklahoma City, Fast and Furious, and Disarming America”, “Obamacare: The Seven Clones of Barack Obama“ and “Obama Antichrist”. He is a Burma-based occult author who uses techniques like mesmerism and the like to detail the evil plans and machinations of the world elites, particularly that notable servant of Satan, Barack Obama.

I can’t help but think that Magos might be taking the piss; look at this blurb for “Obamacare: The Seven Clones of Barack Obama” in which he reveals the:

fearful hegemony of the bloodline of Obama clones. Wrought by the eldritch Annunaki cloning program of Summeria fixed to the alien DNA of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, the Obama clone-line produced seven failed clones, each horrifically disfigured as they are wicked. Effectively applying the often discredited practices of 19th century mesmerists, Magos reanimates the obscured chronicles of the seven Obama clones, including the shocking revelation of the apostate Seventh Obama clone. Now the current President of the United States, in actuality the Eighth Obama clone, systematically unveils his cyclopean plans to merge Monsanto’s culling “Seeds of Death” with Obamacare’s “Final Solution” holocaust in a tripartite dynasty of economic ruin, endless “War-as-Peace”, and his planned Apotheosis through the calculated subjugation and culling of Human Souls. What forces execute this millennia old cloning program that prove ultimately to shatter traditional historicity? What are the pharaonic drives behind the Eighth Obama clone’s solipsistic domestic and Middle East policies? What abomination lurks in the chilling feud between the Seventh and Eighth Obama clones as they vie for totalitarian control over their human victims, each nudging their herd of mind-controlled masses closer to ineffable Pandaemonium.

It almost seems like a parody of a particular style of conspiracy theorising. That being said, the blurbs of David Icke’s book are similarly baffling and I’m fairly sure he is serious about this reptiloid hypothesis.

Magos’s thesis is that Obama, the result of a long-running cloning program by the Annunaki, is a servant of evil who will bring destruction on all humanity if unopposed. Magos’s researches, then, provide a crucial understanding of why it is that Obama is both evil and a puppet for even more sinister forces who are working behind the scenes. In “The Phrenology of Barack Obama” Magos uses:

the pseudo-science of phrenology. Magos uncovers natural, unnatural, and preternatural features of “Manchurian Candidate” Obama’s cranium and brainpan, including the mysterious “head scar” which the mass media refuses to discuss. Causes for the head scar range from CIA brain-implants to a partial lobotomy by his puppet master handlers, as well as the most shocking revelation: that Obama once had a horn. Magos follows a trail of evidence that leads from Obama’s brain surgery and dehorning, to government Mind Control programs like MKULTRA and MONARCH with roots in the Nazi Occult, and ultimately to the satanic endgame revealed by the Demon Horn of Moloch.

I like how he admits to using pseudo-science to diagnose the terrible nature of Barack Obama (who, in Obama Antichrist he associates with the demonic figure “Baraq-U-Bamah”), but I suspect, like his use of “often discredited practices of 19th century mesmerists” in “Obamacare: The Seven Clones of Barack Obama”, he is talking about how servants of the system (like meself) tell the world that phrenology and mesmerism are bunk despite knowing full well that they work.

Magos is not a major force/contributor in conspiracy theories about Obama, in part because I think his occult focus is a little too trippy for the relatively more reasonable seeming Birthers. However, Magos has has an interesting conspiracy theory of his own about why that is, and specifically the public reception to his book “The Phrenology of Barack Obama”. When Boing Boing broke word of “The Phrenology of Barack Obama” it was around about the time sites like Popular Science and the like decided to close down comments on articles due to new, worry-inducing research which showed that no matter how rigorous your arguments might be, commentators who merely disagreed with you tended to have more sway in the debate. Here’s an article from the always interesting Infowars which presents a particularly conspiracist take on the matter. Magos has alluded on Twitter that talk of “The Phrenology of Barack Obama” and the closing down of comments on articles on Boing Boing are somehow related:

“This happened right around the time Boing Boing featuring my book “The Phrenology of Barack Obama…” — Bensa Magos http://t.co/kmRGeiZRUk— Bensa Magos (@ozemacamp5) September 28, 2013

Now, I’m sure Magos doesn’t believe Boing Boing and Popular Science ended the practice of commenting on articles just to spite him; it’s probably part of a grand conspiracy to stifle dissent (which is how Paul Joseph Watson at Infowars has characterised it), in which Magos is simply one of the many free thinkers affected. Whilst that’s certainly a possibility, it’s also possible that Magos’s theories are just a tad too out there.

Anyway, why not judge for yourself: someone has made some remarkably brilliant promotional videos for the books (which kind of tell you nothing whatsoever, but are worth watching nonetheless):

The Phrenology of Barack Obama

Obamacare: The Seven Clones of Barack Obama:

Obama Antichrist:

Holder’s Hero: Oklahoma City, Fast and Furious, and Disarming America:

Every Thursday, about 8:15am, Matthew talks with Zac (with Lucas or Ellen sometimes lurking on the sidelines) on 95bFM’s “Breakfast Show” about conspiracy theories.

Alien Big Cats (or ABCs) are large-to-big cats seen in settings where such cats should not exist. So, for example, people have reported seeing panthers in Ashburton since the 1970s, and given that there are no cats native to Aotearoa and no record of large cats escaping captivity, sightings of such panthers is, well, just a little incongruous.

No substantial written commentary on the issue from me this week: I am currently navigating the circle of hell reserved for bureaucracies and I need a 22F triplicate form just to write this comment, signed by two Anti-popes and the purveyor of at least one form of sponge-cleaning solution.

Every Thursday, about 8:15am, Matthew talks with Zac (with Lucas or Ellen lurking on the sidelines) on 95bFM’s “Breakfast Show” about conspiracy theories.

I have no shame in admitting I quite like playing video games, in the same respect that I have no shame in saying I like reading books, watching TV and thinking about conspiracy theories: these are all things people are allowed to do and should suffer no opprobrium for enjoying. Video games might be a contentious thing to like–because video games are thought to be for kids–but my suspicion is that the notion “video games are meant to be for kids” is a cultural artefact rather than a view based upon a good argument. I mean, in Germany board gaming is a properly adult affair, yet here we associate it with bad family holidays where everyone argues about the “Free Parking” rule in Monopoly. ((The correct position on the “Free Parking” rule is to be found in the rules for Monopoly. It’s astounding how few people have actually read the rules…))

One video game I haven’t played is Polybius, mostly because it’s likely the creation of an urban legend and therefore (probably) doesn’t exist. Also, it’s an arcade game from 1981 and was apparently only available to play in Portland, Oregon, for a number of weeks. In 1981 I was four years of age, sans pocket money, in Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand). My trips to arcade halls in Portland were rare, even non-existent, in those heady years of my youth.

Everything you need to know about Polybius is contained in the Wikipedia link above, although for even more details you could watch the following short video:

However, for those of you who are too busy to click a link or are reading this post offline ((You know who you are.)), the alleged Polybius arcade machine induced psychotic episodes in its players and the data about these episodes was apparently being collected by mysterious men in grey or black suits. As there’s a lack of hard evidence for the existence of Polybius, the machine is likely the product of either a usenet hoax or it’s just an urban legend.

So, what’s interesting about an urban legend and why did I cover it in the Conspiracy Corner segment? Well, an answer to the second question is easy: a reader of this blog and listener to the segments asked me about Polybius, and I’m quite amenable to suggestions for topics to cover. As for the first question… Well, urban legends sometimes take the form of conspiracy theories, and that fascinates me.

My position on urban legends is that they are folk stories which typically express some kind of moral lesson. Stories about single bananas in shopping trolleys and baby-sitters ignoring their charges are meant to provide us moral fables about what it’s like to live in contemporary society. ((The “single banana in the shopping trolley” story is about how hard it is to meet people, given the busy lives we live, whilst the baby sitter story is a warning to make sure you know who is looking after your children.)) The Polybius story also expresses what I take is an interesting message: “Do you know what your government is doing?” and it does this by linking fears about video games to the kind of mind control research that the CIA undertook in the MKULTRA programme.

MKULTRA is the go-to project for conspiracy theorists of a certain stripe, because it’s true that both America and Russia, in the Cold War, were interested in any technology which might allow them some advantage in spying on each other. Psychic research, mind control and the like all had money thrown at them in the hope something useful would be found. Technically, the CIA’s interest in all of this ended in the sixties or early seventies, when MKULTRA was wound down, but the suspicion is that research continued, just under other names and possibly using black budgets. The story of Polybius fits into this by being an expression of that suspicion, a suspicion which gets linked to a fear that playing video games does something perverse to us. ((See, for example, the perennial debate that playing video games makes us either violent or docile.)) As such, it links fears about video games to the conspiracy theory the government is using media against us as a kind of warning which is both “Do you really know what you are playing?” and “Do you really know what ‘they’ are doing behind the scenes?”

Which are good questions.

Every Thursday, about 8:15am, Matthew talks with Zac on 95bFM’s “Breakfast Show” about conspiracy theories.

Today’s show was a phoner and I have to say I don’t like phoners: not being able to a) see your interlocutor is frustrating (especially when one has speech disfluency) and b) when you are live in studio there are subtle visual clues as to when the segment is going to end you just don’t get over the phone.

The reason why today’s show was a phoner was due to my alarm deciding not to work: technology was at fault and thus I hate it. However, I don’t think there was any conspiracy in it: I wasn’t allowed to have a minor sleep-in because a cartel of evil app developers secretly wanted me to deliver the latest Conspiracy Corner over a crackly phone line.

That was meant to segue into the provision of this link, a Reddit thread about how some notable conspiracy theory sites shutdown the day the US government did. However, try as I might, I was never able to finesse the move from a buggy alarm clock app on my phone to a claim of government malfeasance and control over the internet.

I think I might need my second coffee now.

If you bother to read the link I just provided, you’ll find that on the day Congress decided to play hardball with Obamacare a number of conspiracy theory sites, like Godlike Productions went down. This lead some Reddit commentators on the always interesting “Conspiracy” thread to ask “Are these sites actually run or funded by the Establishment?”, a theory which has been doing the rounds for a while and whose credentials are somewhat extraordinary, since it’s not just the dream of people like Alex Jones and David Icke, but has been promoted by people like Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermuele (in this article).

The Sunstein and Vermuele paper suggests (some would say “advocates”) that the Government should infiltrate conspiracy theory fora and correct (some would say “subvert”) the debates that go on there. Of course, should the Government follow through on Sunstein and Vermuele’s suggestion (and some say they already have), then the fear some conspiracy theorists have, that there is a large scale, Establishment-lead conspiracy to derail conspiracy talk will be matched to an actual large scale, Establishment-lead conspiracy to derail conspiracy talk: if Sunstein and Vermuele really want to take the sting out of conspiracy theories, then they probably shouldn’t advocate conspiracies against conspiracy theorists.

If Sunstein and Vermuele’s arguments were taken seriously by members of some State apparatus, then that would add grist to the mill of the conspiracy theorist who is worried the government is out to get them. Certainly, it makes renders rational at least some ruminating about the possibility that sources of conspiracy talk online are inauthentic. However, any such conjecture needs to take into account other possibilities, such as the fact that just because some users couldn’t get to some conspiracy theory sites on the day of the shutdown, that doesn’t necessarily show said sites are taxpayer-funded.

For one thing, as the Reddit thread shows, not everyone agrees the sites were inaccessible that day, which suggests a DNS issue with certain users rather than grand conspiracy. For another, the shutdown in the US isn’t an all-or-nothing event: some federal agencies continued to work because they still had money in reserve; they just weren’t going to get any more until Congress voted on the new budget. As such, sites shutting down on the day of the shutdown looks a bit coincidental.

And, of course, there’s a the big “This isn’t how the internet works, anyway!” Sites are not funded on a day-to-day basis: hosting and domain names tend to be funded per annum. They wouldn’t just go down because Congress didn’t pass a budget: they’d go down sometime after Congress didn’t pass a budget because the hosting fees would not have been paid. ((Also, many sites continue to be accessible if hosting fees haven’t been paid: what you tend to find is that the site admins can’t do anything to modify their sites until they stump up the cash.))

So, the Reddit thread does end up being not much of a conspiracy theory, but it’s still interesting, in that the kind of suspicion that thread is a symptomatic of is… Well, the jury is out on its plausibility but it’s somewhat more plausible than maybe conspiracy theory skeptics believe.

[Thanks to an Israel-based correspondent for the link to the Reddit thread, which inspired this segment.]

Every Thursday, about 8:15am, Matthew talks with Zac (with Lucas lurking on the sidelines) on 95bFM’s “Breakfast Show” about conspiracy theories.

In the middle of last week, Martyn Bradbury of The Daily Blog wrote a post which said:

Last night, just after about 7pm, The Daily Blog was subject to an extremely sophisticated hack attack that directed people away from the blog to a gambling site.

This attack occurred a couple of hours after we blogged about Seeby Woodhouse being subjected to questions when entering America and re-entering NZ and a day after we hosted and live-streamed a public meeting against the TICS Bill.

The sophistication of the attack, and a couple of tell tale signatures during the hack, for us, suggest something more insidious and serious than a disgruntled member of the public.

Luckily Selwyn was able to save everything and move us to a more secure position.

I would hate to think this is our tax dollars at work.

I was asked by a few people if I was thinking of covering the hack on last week’s “Conspiracy Corner”. After all, what Martyn is alleging is conspiratorial activity. A sinister act committed in secret to achieve some end. Now, I can buy there are groups out there who might find what the Daily Blog stands for problematic (I imagine the Kiwiblog regulars hate it, as I’m sure even parts of the Standard do), but Martyn’s claim insinuates that the hack is more than just one of these groups. No, he suggests the hack may have been the result of our tax dollars being put to work.

An extraordinary claim, and one that needs extraordinary evidence to back it up. However, as there were precious few details in the original post, I didn’t really want to say anything without some evidence to back it up. Given that people like Morgan Nichol had asked for some substantiation for Martyn’s claim, I decided to leave it for the time being, hoping that such evidence would be forthcoming.

It was not.

After the show last Thursday, I got curious and decided to see if I could get some more information about the hack, given that questions about it were going unanswered (or worse). Long story short: I ended up contacting Selwyn Manning, who dealt with the hack at the time it was occurring, and we had a lengthy and very productive discussion about the hack, who might be behind it and why Martyn thought it might be more than the work of “a disgruntled member of the public”. Once you’ve listened to the segment, why not take a look at my analysis of what I think really happened.

[Thanks to Selwyn Manning and Drew Calcott for their input in investigating this matter, both of whom have read through the following prior to my posting it here.]

The Hack

When any blog gets hacked, especially if that hack is directed at a WordPress blog and ends up resulting in the blog’s traffic being redirected to a gambling site, the most obvious explanation is that the hack is nothing more than, as Morgan Nichol claimed in the comment’s thread, the work of:

[O]ne of the thousands of bots that continuously search for and attack all WordPress sites. I administer hundreds of WordPress sites and the hack attempts are pretty much constant

This was my suspicion as well: it looked too much like a standard blog hack and nothing particularly special. WordPress blogs are, after all, notoriously prone to hacks ((The only reason why I’ve never been hacked is not due to great security but due to the fact that I’m almost entirely unknown outside of a few, dear readers.)) I put this to Selwyn, and he replied by noting that he’s perfectly aware of the security concerns around WordPress installs and so has put in place a large number of security devices to protect against common, known vulnerabilities of the WordPress platform. Still, given the hack did occur, new and even better protection is now in place at the Daily Blog, right down to the site being moved to a much more secure server and OS configuration.

As such, Martyn’s claim the attack was “sophisticated” follows from the evidence Selwyn provided him (as Selwyn noted, Martyn is not really the tech savvy person of the Daily Blog and relies, like many of us, on the word of people who know more about this kind of thing), given that this was not just a mere WordPress hack ((I know more about the details of the hack than I am letting on here, but I’m not sharing them because, well, you don’t need the technical details and it’s not really a good idea to share them to all and sundry anyway. You might be one of those people out to get anyone of us!)). In that respect, its sophisticated relative to what would normally be taken to be the most likely hypothesis. However, that doesn’t tell us it was sophisticated to a level that we can infer it was the actions of something more than a disgruntled member of the public.

Why? Well, because I went and talked to a security consultant/forensic analyst, Drew Calcott (no anonymous appeals to authority here) who deals with such hacks professionally and on a daily basis. His analysis was tha it wasn’t so sophisticated that it couldn’t have been the work of a script kiddy interested only in achieving a hack or redirecting a site which has heavy traffic elsewhere.

So, there’s an open question here about the sophistication of the hack: on one level, yes, it’s sophisticated relative to what we would normally take to be the best explanation, but it’s not sophisticated such that it tells us much about the kind of person who might have done it. In the end, all other things being equal, it would have been your child.

Was it?

The Motivation behind the hack

The story doesn’t end there: in conversation with Selwyn we talked quite a bit about who he thought might be behind the hack.This goes towards Martyn’s claim the hack was “targeted”. Selwyn doesn’t think it was taxpayer funded/the government. Rather, he thinks it might well have been the actions of a certain group of activists who, in recent weeks, have been sending him veiled threats, such as claiming they will not tolerate the Daily Blog’s support of particular political parties or candidates. ((I know a little more about the supposed “who” than I am letting on, but I’ve agreed not to be too specific here.)) These threats have ceased post the hack, which kind of indicates that this particular group of activists might well have had a hand in it.

Selwyn isn’t certain this group was behind the hack, but I share his suspicion that it’s at least a plausible candidate explanation for what happened. Certainly, the modus operandi in the hack was a bit weird; the site was redirected to an inactive gambling site, so it doesn’t look like anyone was directly benefitting from the hack other than causing discomfort to the proprietors of the Daily Blog. ((Although its quite possible the gambling site was purpose built to inject malware onto the users who were accidentally sent there: Selwyn, unfortunately, did not keep a record of the site the Daily Blog’s traffic was redirected to, so we can’t go and look at it to find out more.)).

The Government Theory

If the person responsible for dealing with the hack doesn’t think it was our taxpayer dollars at work, why did Martyn Bradbury insinuate it might have been? Well, consider this:

Martyn was one of several instrumental figures who lead a push against the Government about the recently passed GCSB Bill, holding Town Hall meetings and the like. He had also recently returned from a public meeting in Wellington where Seeby Woodhouse, a prominent ISP figure in the New Zealand IT industry, had talked about how he feels he has recently become a surveillance target due to his activism against the GCSB Bill. It’s not too hard to start connecting the dots and go “Hmm…”

However, just because you are suspicious about some activity, that doesn’t necessarily mean your suspicion is justified and the kind of thing you should air publicly to a large audience. The problem with the original post over at the Daily Blog about the hack was the lack of evidence to support the insinuation the hack might have been paid for by our tax dollars. It’s perfectly healthy in this day and age of revelations to be quite suspicious indeed about the various security apparatus in our society. It’s probably also quite healthy to be skeptical about the current government’s sincerity. However, if you are going to associate a hack on your website with something “more insidious and serious than a disgruntled member of the public”, then you really should be willing and able to provide evidence. Otherwise you are engaging in scaremongering and, frankly, the kind of seemingly-vapid conspiracy theorising the Left is constantly tarred with engaging in.

Given what Selwyn has told me, it’s hard to distinguish between the two likelihoods that either the hack was just a script kiddy or the follow-through the veiled threats the Daily Blog has been receiving ((After all, the veiled threats might have stopped not because the group successfully hacked the site but because as the site was hacked, the group inadvertently got what they desired (or just assumed one of their members was responsible).)). However, given the available evidence, the likelihood it was a taxpayer-funded hack seems relatively unlikely, even given, say, Seeby Woodhouse’s concerns because the other possibilities are just prima facie more likely given what else we know.

In the end, I think Martyn, the author of the post in question, was being just a tad hyperbolic in his reaction to the Daily Blog being hacked, and ended up expressing a conspiracy theory which was not warranted by the available evidence. Something did happen last week, and there’s a bit of a mystery behind it, but it’s unlikely to be one of the government’s creation. After all, in the end those of us on the Left don’t need the government to bring us down: we’ve got each other for that.