Category: Conspiracy Round-up

It seems like I haven’t written one of these posts for a while, and seeming is reality, since I haven’t. I guess I’ve been too busy being on placement in a primary school and driving friends and family away with my constant call for pledges on my crowdfunding campaign.

Do you use lightbulbs? Do you find it annoying that they just don’t seem to last? Well, even if you don’t, you might find this article on a conspiracy to ensure lightbulbs give out earlier than they need to quite interesting.

The death of Michael Hasting’s continues to resonate throughout a certain part of the conspiracy theory sub-culture. Here someone links Hastings to investigations into ISIL/ISIS and Swiss Bank Accounts.

As someone who advocates the teaching of critical thinking skills, the following report on vaccine denialism is depressing: sometimes using evidence-based arguments to persuade people works against you.

People are always slightly surprised when I say that Naomi Wolf’s latter work is conspiratorial in a way that doesn’t seem very evidence-based. This piece from Vox goes into some detail of Wolf’s “I’m just stating my opinions!” way of trying to get away with the kind of murmuring we rightly chide Alex Jones and Glenn Beck for engaging in.

Is Stevie Wonder blind? It’s very suspicious… (apparently).

Finally…

I was going to call this a “Conspiracy Round-up” but given that some of these links are only tangentially related to conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, it’s really just a list of “Things I have Read”.

This article, Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement? is not an easy read if you in any way shape or form identify with the Skeptic movement (I don’t, although I am sometimes asked to present material to the local movement). We all know about the increasingly disturbing outbursts from Richard Dawkins but the material about Michael Shermer is chilling.

Which brings me to Libertarianism, given that, at least in the American skeptical movement, the “philosophies” of Ayn Rand and unreconstructed individualism is popular. Here’s a list of seven extreme ideas Libertarians in the States are committed to.

Can seabirds overfish a resource? Expect this article to be used against the environmentalist movement as proof positive that “These things are part of the natural cycle of things!” whilst ignoring the fact that it shows how fragile the environment is and how we’re not helping.

Is Net Neutrality a Marxist plot? Rich libertarian capitalists, the Koch Brothers, would like us to think so.

Apparently new evidence might kill the multiverse theory. Given that some people have tried to use said theory as a way of arguing for the existence of free will (any action you didn’t take occurs in a near relative universe), the death of the multiverse theory might kill those particularly bad arguments.

Illustrating falsificationism with reference to Bigfoot.

And on that topic, issues in Psychology about replicating key findings and how prominent academics don’t like their work being questioned.

More psychology: our reactions to the famous Trolley Problem — a test as to who you kill to save some other — might not tell us much of import.

Also psychological, the problems we have changing our minds. This is particularly relevant to a) my research on belief in conspiracy theories and b) my teaching practice.

Conspiracy theorist seeks to sue journalists for presenting his work accurately.

This round-up is fifteen days late. Rather than sit on it for another few days, I’m clearing it now so I can focus on something slightly more up-to-date at the end of the week.

Long term listeners to my various radio and podcasting efforts will know that i have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the theories of Noam Chomsky. This article on the bin Laden raid (published this week, so somewhat after the fact) is an interesting read about just how dangerous that raid was in re diplomacy (and the lack thereof).

In my forthcoming book, The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories, I spend quite a bit of time comparing and contrasting the process of peer review with political oversight. Now, one argument that might be leveled against me come the reviews of said book is that I’m too optimistic about the peer review process, as this article on some controversies in psychology ably demonstrates. I’ll probably have more to say on this at a latter point.

As we’ve known for a while, the CIA spied on the USA Senate’s committee that was investigating the spying activities of the CIA. It seems that no one is going to be punished, however. When people ask me why is belief in conspiracy theories about our governments so prevalent, I like to point them to reports such as these. After all, if people in positions of power can get away with knowingly acting in an illegal fashion, it seems reasonable to assume that there are instances just like these we don’t know about and instances like these which are known about but pooh-poohed for the sake of PR.

Vinnie Eastwood is Aotearoa’s most successful conspiracy theorist. He interviews Graham McCready, the person who successfully brought fraud proceedings against the former New Zealand MP John Banks, here (said link also features Ben Vidgen, who tried to get me on a radio debate a year or so back and didn’t like how I wasn’t willing to immediately accede to his every demand about it, which is why it never eventuated).

Adam Curtis, of “The Power of Nightmares” is no stranger to using conspiracy theory rhetoric in his documentaries. This article from the end of July, on systems of control is certainly interesting.

In lighter (?) news, want to visit a North American WWII-era Nazi compound? Here’s how.

The Kim Dotcom story gets murkier with the revelation that, despite what Jonathan Coleman said, he was advised that the FBI were investigating Dotcom prior to said Minister granting Dotcom residency. This makes the Kim Dotcom story all the weirder, since it now seems it is much more probable (than it was before) that the nationstate of New Zealand granted Dotcom residency to make it all the easier for the FBI to get at him.

In other news, the sexual abuse by celebrities scandal in the UK is also getting weirder, what with the stories of Tory MPs refusing to have done anything about it back in the day. Stories like that have led to stories like this: MPs threw parties for sexual abuse of children

Related to last week’s talk about Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, this piece about the time the USA shot down an Iranian passenger jet and then covered it up is fascinating reading. America’s Flight 17 – The time the United States blew up a passenger plane—and tried to cover it up.

Meanwhile, a local website claims there is no evidence Russia did it: US Intelligence: No Evidence Russia Did It

The same website on how MH17 and MH370 are the same plane: Jim Stone’s take on the ‘already-dead dead’ MH17 passengers.

Note: I’m not endorsing these theories. Indeed, this page from the same site is really only of interest because it commits a common move found in many New World Order conspiracy theories: any time anyone in power says something which features talking about doing things in a new, globally-responsible manner, someone will shout out “New World Order!”

Obama calls for collectivised New World Order.

Meanwhile, Jesse Ventura, politian and conspiracy theorist, is suing a dead Navy SEAL for claiming that said Navy SEAL punched him out cold.

Idiot/Savant, over at No Right Turn, blogs about the conspiracy of silence being used by MPs in Aotearoa (New Zealand) to prevent the public knowing which MPs are rankled by not getting a big enough pay increase. It’s part of his “Deserving their reputation” series and even if you think “It’s not really a conspiracy!” it’s the kind of commonplace activity which gets cited in support of other conspiracy theories. The fact that politicians engage in this kind of secretive behaviour provides at least some weight to the claim that they might be up to no good elsewhere.

Morgan Godfrey blogs about Colin Craig and the Conservative Party (which, if it were a band, would mostly play terrible Eagle’s covers in the Mod style). What he writes ties in nicely with my recent and on-going criticisms about John Ansell and his contempt for Māori:

So if the level playing field is true – it isn’t – then you’re poor, dumb and incarcerated because you deserve to be. Where the injustice is not the fact that you are poor, dumb and incarcerated, but that you need and receive targeted rights because of it. The reasoning is absurd: catering for substantive inequality is actually creating legal inequality. On Planet Conservative, the latter is the real crime.

But it’s a very attractive argument – especially among the selfish. If disadvantage is a matter of personal responsibility then it requires no response from the advantaged. The demand that Māori accept “equal rights” – so no legal distinctions between different people – is really a plea for assimilation. Craig is really asking Maori to accept their disadvantages quietly. Well, no thanks.

Do you believe the Earth is at the centre of the universe? Apparently there are some fundamentalist Catholics who still maintain that geocentrism is the truth and modern physics is a lie. They’ve made a film and got a few noted scientists to appear in it, on rather dubious terms.

The Conspiracy Theorist Who Duped The World’s Biggest Physicists

I could link to my recent post about Jamie Whyte and his recent stint as lead race-baiter for the ACT Party (and so I just have), but you deserve fresher links. Why not check out some more of Morgan Godfrey’s wisdom:

Whyte Power: Act and the winner takes all society

Carrie-Stoddart’s wisdom:

Whyte crimes against logic

Russell Brown’s wisdom:

The crybaby philosopher

and Danyl McLauchlan’s wisdom

Why ACT always needs to play the race card.

Also, whether or not you thought that wasn’t a set of people on the Left coincidentally coming to the same conclusion, you shoud listen to the most recent episode of The Podcaster’s Guide to the Conspiracy.

Finally, The top ten: Questions to which the answer is ‘no’.

What ho and welcome to “A new thing I am thinking of doing”: a weekly (maybe fortnightly) collection of links to articles and other things I’ve read online (or, in some cases, mean to read) to do with conspiracy theories and conspiracy theory theories. As this is very much an idea I had this morning, the following list is what I’ve managed to find by cursorily looking over my browser history. Hopefully future installments will be more robust.

On the MH17 tragedy

This week’s The Podcaster’s Guide to the Conspiracy was on the MH17 disaster. Here’s a couple of links.

If you lived in Russia, this is what you’d believe about the crash of MH17

100 AIDS researchers on MH17? Why and how the media got it wrong

Various

A few years ago, at the International Film Festival I saw the utterly facinating documentary, Collapse, which is a long interview with Michael C. Ruppert. Ruppert died earlier this year and the story of his life is intriguing.

The unbelievable life and death of Michael C. Ruppert

The next article is one whose title was initially off-putting (which is why I didn’t read it for three weeks or so, but is really quite good, since it looks at the way in which many conspiracy theory theorists use the term “conspiracy theory” in either ambiguous or politically motivated ways. It’s one of those cases where I now have another book to add to my list of readings for whatever book I write next.

It’s All a Conspiracy: The limitations of research into paranoia and conspiracy theories

A gaming-related interlude: a look into the murky and somewhat conspiratorial machinations behind the Kickstarter campaign for a spiritual sequel to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. Features an highly improbable letter of recommendation from Vladimir Putin.

Get Out Of Here: Areal Kickstarter Suspended

Talking about highly improbably statements by presidents, Obama is complaining that people are only generating conspiracy theories about the TPPA because negotiations are going on in secret. Really? I wonder what the solution to that problem is, then?

Obama Complains That TPP Critics Are ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ Who ‘Lack Knowledge’ About Negotiations

This one is a paid link, but if you have journal access throufgh your institution, then its worth a look. It’s a paper on climate modeling which features amongst its writers Stephan Lewandowsky and Naomi Oreskes. Lewandowsky is, of course, famous for having a paper of his, on conspiracist ideation in certain communities, pulled because of the complaints by conspiracists from certain communities.

Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase