Is [fill in the blank] Trying To Take Over the Earth?

I read a lot of conspiracy theories about various alien factions attempting to take over the Earth. And I have to wonder: why? Why would an alien civilization which is manifestly able to travel across vast distances of space - presumably at faster than light speeds - spend more than ten minutes maneuvering their metaphorical troops?

Why don't they just do it, already?

This is a question which is never quite answered in a satisfactory fashion. Now granted, there are many reasons why an alien civilization would want our planet. It is rich in minerals and animal life and vegetation and clean water and catchy pop music. So why sequester yourself inside our hollow planet* and silently manipulate our world's leaders? Why not just, like, take it?

Let's face it: we as a civilization have little in the way of defenses. Not against aliens with faster than light travel. Even in our cinematic masterpieces, our fellow humans occasionally resort to just punching the aliens in the face.

Nukes? Please. Alien ships probably eat nuclear weapons for breakfast, and poop ICBMs the next morning after having a nice cup of coffee.

Plus, our nuclear weapons systems are kind of geared towards hitting other targets here on Earth. I'm not sure you could even shoot them up into the air at an alien ship if you wanted to. And even if you did, surely those ships move fast enough to get out of the way.

Of course, there is the standard old excuse. I remember a scene in a book (maybe by David Brin?) where a young kid asks an old military guy why the aliens did such-and-such. And the older more experienced guy replies, "That's the thing about aliens, kid. They're alien. Who knows what they're thinking." Who knows why aliens would hide in the shadows and manipulate the United States slowly towards a state of martial law! Those wacky aliens!

The Matrix movies had an interesting take on this question. This is one of the few movies where aliens are depicted as coming to Earth and just plain taking it over a hostile non-human force just plain takes the planet over. The conspiracy then becomes one of covering it up. (Their little project, using humans as batteries, is pretty dumb. But no one ever said aliens intelligent self-replicating robots were smart enough to understand geothermal energy.)

I can absolutely believe in human groups conspiring to alter or control world events. People are small and weak and kind of stupid. We like to control things, and some of us like to control things a LOT. But aliens? It just doesn't make any sense. If the reptilians want to harvest our flesh, then I have to believe they would just come down here and harvest it.

This is where you start edging strangely towards religious discussions. The human-centric view of the universe is a very Christian one. And it's not hard to spot biblical elements in the theme of evil aliens trying to manipulate or control us. Maybe reading the Bible too much makes you see demons everywhere, the same way that watching too many horror movies will have you seeing a zombie in every lurking shadowy hatrack.

* You know Earth is hollow, right? There are dudes down there and everything! I should write about that in an upcoming post.

UFO hovers over Jerusalem

Item from ITN News -- "Two different films have surfaced of a glowing ball hanging over the Dome of the Rock." See the video.

What is it? An UFO? A solid object? Or is it the just the creation of jokers running a gag? Doing a light show? Or is it a physical manifestation of a spiritual presence? Is it a sign? The sign? The return of the Holy Spirit?

Whatever!

Well, there is buzz on the Internet and believers will believe what they want. The image in the video could be a clever hoax devised by a clever lad or lass. It would be ET dropping in and flying about, on a visit. It could be a spy craft. Jerusalem is just the kind of space where everybody is spying on everybody. Which ever it is, the video is entertaining. Why? Because it is grabbing eyeballs and making heads wonder. Well, some heads.

Is Jay-Z In The Illuminati?

I ran across an off-handed comment today about how Jay-Z is a member of the illuminati, or maybe a Satanist, or maybe a Freemason. Like so many things, my first reaction was, "Whaaaa?"

I did some investigation and I'm prepared to agree that Jay-Z deliberately displays occult symbols. What this means is a little more difficult to determine.

Perhaps the best article on this topic can be found on Vigilant Citizen. Author VC covers Jay-Z's use of various occult symbols, and thoughtfully deconstructs the music video for "Run This Town Tonight." (I was particularly impressed by this article's lack of incoherent nonsense, which is what most conspiracy theory discussions eventually break down into.)

The article addresses the disconnect between the song's lyrics and the music video. It may be foolish to make too much out of a music video, which are typically produced as a throwaway or ancillary product meant to be flashy and cool more than illustrative of the song. Even given this, it's jarring to hear a song that's all about being super rich, which is being illustrated by a music video that's all about being a small but powerful trio staging a coup to take over a dystopic, "Escape From New York" future city.

What these two things have in common is: power. Being very wealthy gives you power. In the video, the theme of power is much more overt and physical. It consists of (e.g.) hitting the other guys with sticks. With overtones of rioting and race wars.

This is, shall we say, a common theme in rap music. Who's got power, where they got it from, how they hold onto it. About 9/10ths of rap songs can be described as "I'm a badass." In fact, both the song and the video can probably best be understood in the context of the rap industry's endless internecine wars for the control of the music business, as well as for the hearts and minds of the audience. (Even Jay-Z's Wikipedia article notes that "Jay-Z is known for quarrelling with other artists in the rap industry, the most famous feud being between him and fellow New York rapper Nas.")

Seen from this perspective, it's perhaps not surprising that Jay-Z (who is, it must be noted, already pretty much the king of the world) chooses to appropriate cultural symbols of power. The jumbled collection of symbology (including everything from Freemasonry to Aleister Crowley's Satanism) argues in favor of this interpretation. Surely Jay-Z isn't a Freemason, a Rosicrucian, a Satanist, AND a member of the Illuminati?

Jay-Z also no doubt appropriates these symbols as a form of trolling, to tweak the kind of person who freaks out at the sight of a t-shirt screen printed with the head of Bathomet. I would be inclined to dismiss it entirely, except that Jay-Z isn't just wearing items like a black hoodie printed with Crowley's mantra "Do What Thou Wilt" - he's actually selling them under his clothing line Rocawear.

Photo credit: Flickr/NRK P3

Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory: Great Lakes

We begin with a western scene: multinational corporations, big agriculture, and distant cities are draining Lake Mead in California. The thrust of this episode is that "big business is stealing our water from us, then selling it back to us at a profit."

This is another phenomenon which is patently true. It just isn't the kind of thing that most people would call a "sinister plot" or "worldwide conspiracy." But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe we should.

We take it as a given that these companies take tap water, bottle it, and sell it back to us at a profit. Happens all the time. Dasani is just the water they use to make Coke, without the Coke stuff. Check the label of your bottled water for the phrase "bottled from a municipal source." That phrase means "tap water." It's hardly a secret.

Ventura and his team frame this as "the privatization of a substance critical to human life." And they're not wrong about that. I guess my only real complaint about Ventura's framing is that a conspiracy must, by definition, be something kept secret. And none of this is secret in the least. It's on the evening news and the front page of the newspaper just about every day. It's practically trite to say that if the last war was fought over oil, the next one will be fought over water. Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens has shifted his business strategy from oil to water.

Once again, the unacknowledged heart of the conspiracy is capitalism and the free market. Perhaps Ventura is wise not to tackle this angle, because he'd surely lose a lot of the paranoid right-wing members of his audience. It is capitalism, for example, which leads Nestle to drain the Great Lakes and ship the water to China for sale.

Ventura calls them the "Great Lakes water thieves," but the term "thief" implies that their actions are illegal. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is it perfectly legal, but a lot of people would wrap themselves in the flag while waving red white and blue sparklers and declaiming that it's part of What Makes This Country Great.

So far, so good. But then Alex Jones shows up (inexplicably in a speed boat tied to a dock), and things get wacky. According to conspiracy theorist Jones, the corporations want to start adding lithium to the water in order to keep the population sedated and happy.

(This apparently all stems from a thought experiment posed by a bioethicist. He claimed that adding lithium to the water supply would save 12,000 people a year from suicide, so should we do it? It wasn't any kind of a plan.)

As a diehard environmentalist I'm well-versed in the evils of bottled water. But I must say that, accurate though it may be, this was definitely one of the odder screeds against it. In hindsight, I'm surprised they didn't bring up claims of a fluoridation conspiracy. Perhaps that's a theory too wacky even for Jesse Ventura?

Photo credit: Flickr/NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Hurricane Katrina Conspiracies

After watching an episode of "Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory" about the Gulf oil spill yesterday, I was put in mind of all the various conspiracies surrounding Hurricane Katrina. A lot of these conspiracies mesh with those about the Gulf oil spill, to create a truly alarming picture indeed.

There are four basic focal points for conspiracy theories about Katrina:

1. The Hurricane Itself

A lot of people claim that Hurricane Katrina was deliberately manufactured, by one shadowy entity or another. One "Idaho weatherman" claimed that it was the work of Russian mobsters. Many people - perhaps primed by the Bush-related 9/11 conspiracies - blamed George W. Bush.

The technology itself is usually hand-waved away with terms like "electromagnetism" or "temperature seeding." Or people blame HAARP, of course.

2. The Levee Breaches

The main evidence for this is that people claim to have heard explosions right before the levees breached. Frankly, I don't know how anyone could hear anything during a hurricane. Much less isolate that noise to specific levees which might be blocks away. I can think of at least a dozen things that could have caused a loud bang right before the levees breached, but whatever.

One theory is that the Army Corps of Engineers deliberately breached the levees to flood poor black neighborhoods, in order to spare the richer white neighborhoods. It is true that the flooding seems to have unduly impacted poor black neighborhoods. But I am not convinced that breaching the levees early would have saved the richer white neighborhoods, which had the good fortune to be located on higher ground.

Another theory is that Halliburton breached the levees, in order to profit off the disaster clean-up. Halliburton's "no-bid contracts" are a continuing scandal and shame upon the government. And Halliburton did make a fortune off New Orleans' misery. But it's quite a jump to get from there, to someone giving the order to blow up the levees and kill thousands of people.

3. Lack of Response

A lot of poor black people died, because they were the ones left in the city. All the affluent people had the resources to flee ahead of the storm. Couple that with the government's appallingly slow response time (and the violence of its response) and you've got yourself a recipe for race riots.

I try to live by the mantra, "never blame evil for something that could be due to stupidity." And in this case, the massively slow response time can easily be blamed on stupidity. Stupidity, and your basic bureaucratic incompetence.

Which is to say, I empathize with Kanye West's assertion that "George Bush hates black people." But I have trouble envisioning George W. sitting in the White House, cackling and rubbing his hands together and chortling over the suffering and death of thousands of black people. (Frankly, I think that gives him too much credit.)


4. Martial Law/State's Rights

Many people saw this as a chance for the federal government to march in and take control of everything, those jack-booted thugs. A "beta test for the police state," to quote SwearBear, a mameber of the Above Top Secret forums.

I understand where people are coming from with this but again, if that's the case, they did a damned poor job of it.

Photo credit: Flickr/leobaby

Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory: Gulf Oil Spill

This episode features an exhausting and complicated series of interlocking conspiracies, any one of which would be pretty astonishing. Taken together, they fall apart into a mess that's just barely this side of gibberish.

* A doctor claims that the oil spill was designed to depopulate the Gulf Coast, so that it could be taken over by "corporate interests." Like Disneyland, but for evil, faceless, multinational corporations.

* A woman believes that the disaster was planned by BP months ahead of time, in order to kick the profits for the cleanup to Halliburton. Essentially, because they can make more on clean-up than they can by pumping and producing oil.

* A conspiracy to conceal the true volume of oil being spilled. (Actually, this one is almost certainly true.)

* BP insisted on using a toxic dispersant called Corexit. Corexit itself is bad for both humans and wildlife. And it doesn't make the oil go away; it just hides it from view. Spraying Corexit on an oil slick basically causes it to break up and sink to the bottom of the ocean, where it's harder to photograph for the evening news, and virtually impossible to measure in scope. (This is true, as well.)

* BP continued to use Corexit even after the EPA told them to stop. (True.) BP owns the company that makes Corexit, and therefore profits off its use. (Also true.) Because they deliberately wanted to poison the population while simultaneously making a fortune off the use of Corexit. (Um…)

* Corexit has gone airborne "almost like a weapon of mass destruction" and has caused significant health problems for Gulf Coast residents.

* Both the spill and the use of Corexit are part of a planned depopulation (in conjunction with Hurricane Katrina), in order to convert the entire Gulf to one big private oil refinery, "without having to worry about regulations or environmentalists."

* A quick detour into Katrina conspiracies, which a man named Alfred Webre claims was the first phase of the plan. A lot of people claim that the government blew up the levees in order to deliberately flood New Orleans.

* Both Barack Obama and George W. Bush were Mancurian candidates, hand-picked by the CIA, ostensibly on different sides, but who kept the exact same policies in place.

* The oil spill was deliberately designed to stop the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic current, and bring about climate change. By "breaking the loop" of the current which brings warm water to the North Atlantic it will create a mini ice age - thus driving up the cost of fuel and heating oil.

* The ultimate intent is to starve us to death. (???)

A lot of the "evidence" for a depopulation plan is what some people might call an evacuation or relocation plan. It's true that if something bad happened, the US Army Corps of Engineers has plans in place to move everyone out of the way. I guess that one person's "emergency relocation in case of natural disaster" is another person's "conspiracy-driven depopulation." Potayto, potahto.

Photo credit: Flickr/AB83

Blood Type Horoscopes

Last week we learned that not only does every American know their horoscope sign, but many people are surprisingly protective of it, as part of their identity! Meanwhile in Japan, few Japanese people know their astrological horoscope - but everyone knows their blood type.

As far as Asian birth predictions go, most Westerners are familiar with the animal horoscope by year. (Primarily, it must be said, via the medium of Chinese restaurant placemats.) But few Westerners are aware that your blood type is taken much more seriously than your birth year animal.

There are four human blood types: A, B, O, and AB. Each blood type is said to have certain traits, in much the same way that your astrological horoscope sign is said to determine your personality. People with type A blood are thought to be creative and sensible, but also tense and conservative. People with type O are the outgoing social type, and so forth.

This pervasive belief in the power of blood types can be seen everywhere in contemporary Japanese society. Japanese morning news shows will often read off quick daily horoscopes for blood types. Japanese dating sites and matchmakers put a lot of stock in blood type compatibility charts. At one time, employers included a field for blood type on their job applications. Applicants were then sorted into departments by blood type.

As a measure of how pervasive this belief is, consider that Facebook Japan is the only Facebook regionalized site which includes a field on your profile for blood type!

For the most part, this belief in blood type horoscopes is harmless. However, it has historically led to discrimination based on blood type. People with type AB blood are said to combine the worst traits of type A and type B blood.

The Wikipedia article lists the worst traits for AB blood type as being "critical, indecisive, forgetful, and irresponsible." That hardly sounds like the kind of person you would want to hire or marry, right? And thus, people with type AB blood have often been discriminated against, without them ever having a chance to demonstrate their skills or actual personality traits.

In the late 1920s, two Japanese scientists published a wholly unscientific (and surprisingly racist) scientific paper about personality groups based on blood type. The research behind the paper tied into the Nazi regime, which spent a lot of time thinking about blood types and blood purity.

Japan lost interest in blood type from the 1930s until it was revived in the 1970s by a series of very popular books. And it has remained popular today, with a recent set of four blood type personality books occupying four slots on the "top 10 bestsellers" list for 2008.

If it would be odd for someone in the West not to know their horoscope sign, it is considered similarly odd in Japan for someone not to know their blood type. In fact I have been told that if a Westerner visiting Japan doesn't know their blood type, many Japanese people assume that they do know it, but don't want to admit to having an unflattering or unpopular type! (Protip: just say you're type A.)

Photo credit: Flickr/carpediem37

Zodiac Panic! Who's Ophiuchus?

The recent announcement about the zodiac has believers in an uproar, and skeptics gloating insufferably. The zodiac we are familiar with was created by the ancient Babylonians around 3,000BC, who determined the zodiac spans based on the position of the sun on the day someone was born. 

However, the Earth's axis has shifted since the Babylonian's time, and the sun is no longer in the same positions.

The Minnesota Planetarium Society released a new astrological chart on Thursday which has the internet in an uproar. Most signs have been shifted one to the right, and a thirteenth sign (Ophiuchus) has been tacked on at the end.

(Disclosure: as my birthday is July 20, I am one of the few people whose sign did not change.)

More peculiar even than this big date shuffle is the introduction of a thirteenth astrological sign, Ophiuchus, the serpent-carrier. (Also called Serpentarius, which sounds much more snappy.) Ophiuchus rules those who were born November 29th through December 17.

Although Ophiuchus is apparently unknown in the West (judging by the number of people on Twitter who have tweeted some version of "WTF?" since Thursday), it has been somewhat popular in Japan since the mid 1990s. Ophiuchus has been used along the edges of astrology since at least the 4th century, often as an "extra-zodiacal indicator."

Ophiuchus was popularized in Japan after a book by Walter Berg about "13-sign astrology" was released in 1995. Berg's book was a bestseller in Japan, and became infused into pop culture. If you are wondering about the traits of someone born under Ophiuchus they are not very flattering and incude hypochondria, paranoia, and prudery.

Berg's 13-sign astrology was designed to correct for exactly the astronomical conditions which have caused this big dust-up in the news. The 13-zodiac system uses the actual constellations, and the position of the sun in each. Because of the shifting which takes place over time, the length of each zodiac sign varies.

The Western 12-sign astrological community has been trying to stem the tide of panic, with little success. It turns out that astrologers have known about this for several thousand years. (How could they not?) They maintain that the Babylonians' original predictions remain correct.

Most laypersons believe that the astrological signs directly influence a person's life and personality. But astrologers believe that they are simply a useful indicator. Confusing the stars' alignments with the force behind personality traits is like confusing a road sign that says "Seattle 120 miles '" with the city of Seattle. The road sign merely indicates the conditions, it doesn't create or predict them. 

So what does make the zodiac work? Any reputable astrologer will tell you that the sun sign predictions in the daily newspaper are junk. Even the broader by-sign personality descriptions are borderline. According to professional astrologers, it is the position of the planets which determines your personality and fate. This of course varies day by day - minute by minute - which is why a true astrological chart reading requires the date and time of your birth.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

What Is Blood Libel?

Jews have been persecuted throughout history for many reasons, most of which amount to casting Jewish people as "the other" whenever a scapegoat is needed. Hard as it may be to believe today, the Jewish religion has often been equated with Satanic worship and worse. 

One of the persistent beliefs which crops up throughout history is that Jews steal the babies and children of their neighbors, and use their blood in various rites.  Interestingly, this is also a belief which has been applied to witches throughout history.  In the minds of many unsophisticated, xenophobic cultures, the Jewish religion becomes equated with witchcraft.

These incidents often start with the unexplained death of a child.  I think parents of all nationalities can relate to the horror of finding your child mysteriously dead, or simply missing.  This fear has stalked humanity for thousands, perhaps millions of years. 

Although the fear of losing a child is rational, all too often it can drive people to irrational lengths.  Today it drives parents to throw away drop-side cribs, always lay babies on their backs to sleep, and compile a list of forbidden foods as long as your arm. 

The fear of theft of a child has completely rearranged families' lives, such that children are never left alone or in the company of strangers.  But in medieval Europe, it might lead to rounding up a group of "foreign" people and torturing them to death. 

This accusation, that Jews steal children and use their blood in religious rites, is called the "blood libel."  This distinguishes it from other forms of libel, and is a term specific to the homicidal persecution of Jews. 

Blood libel is one of three main anti-Semitic allegations made throughout history.  The other two are well-poisoning (which was actually the work of cholera or bad sanitation) and desecration of the host.  Host desecration is similar to blood libel in that both stem from the persistent belief that the Jews killed Jesus.  And more so, that they celebrate the death of Jesus through various occult rituals.

In the myth of host desecration, Jews are said to steal the host from churches and desecrate them in their rituals, thus "crucifying Jesus anew."  The flip side of this is blood libel, in which Jewish people were said to collect the blood of Christian children and bake it into their own ritual bread, the Passover matzos.

Strange as it may sound to many people today, Jews have been slandered with these monstrous acts throughout history.  And in fact, it continues today.  As recently as 2007, when an Islamic leader giving a speech in Israel informed the crowd that Islam is better than Judaism because Islam has never baked the blood of children into ritual bread.  Also in 2007, an anti-Semitic group in Russia demanded that the government investigate the Jews after two young boys were found dead.

"Blood libel" is not a broad term which encompasses a wide territory.  It is in fact a specific term, with a specific meaning.  As you can see, it is in the same category as a Holocaust reference (as when Mel Gibson recently called Winona Ryder an "oven dodger").  Which is to say, not the kind of term you want to throw around lightly.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

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