January 2011

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.

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.

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. 

The so-called "American Stonehenge" was built in 1979, when a mysterious person going by the name of "R. C. Christian" (which was possibly a reference to Rosicrucianism) hired a local stone work company to make and install them for him.

Known more formally as the Georgia Guidestones, this monument stands in Elbert County, Georgia.  It is comprised of four gigantic granite slabs arranged around a fifth central slab, a capstone, and an explanatory footnote in stone set nearby.  The Guidestones have ten commandments written in eight different languages, one per face of the four main stones.

Just as the year's odometer ticked over in Arkansas, a huge flock of between 4,000 and 5,000 blackbirds fell from the sky, stone dead.  About 125 miles away, scores of dead drum fish wash ashore in the Arkansas River.

End of days?  Or just a coincidence?

Although many theories have been proposed, the most likely cause of the death of the blackbirds is a high-altitude weather event, like heavy hail.  All of the dead birds showed large amounts of massive trauma to their internal organs, of the sort that could easily be explained by a sudden and severe high altitude hail storm.

Blackbirds as a species tend to form extremely large flocks, which migrate at high altitudes.  Many songbirds migrate at night, taking advantage of a time when predators are likely to be asleep.  These migrating birds take flight invisibly in huge flocks, and they fly high, in order to avoid night-roaming owls.