33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True, What Every Person Should Know...

Jonathan Elinoff, New World Order Report
Most people can't resist getting the details on the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-fetched they may seem. At the same time, many people quickly denounce any conspiracy theory as untrue ... and sometimes as unpatriotic or just plain ridiculous. Lets not forget all of the thousands of conspiracies out of Wall Street like Bernie Madoff and many others to commit fraud and extortion, among many crimes of conspiracy. USA Today reports that over 75% of personal ads in the paper and on craigslist are married couples posing as single for a one night affair. When someone knocks on your door to sell you a set of knives or phone cards, anything for that matter, do they have a profit motive? What is conspiracy other than just a scary way of saying “alternative agenda”? When 2 friends go to a bar and begin to plan their wingman approach on 2 girls they see at the bar, how often are they planning on lying to those girls?“ I own a small business and am in town for a short while.Oh yeah, you look beautiful.”
Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end. "The term "conspiracy theory" is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from "the people".
To many, conspiracy theories are just human nature. Not all people in this world are honest, hard working and forthcoming about their intentions.Certainly we can all agree on this.So how did the term “conspiracy theory” get grouped in with fiction, fantasy and folklore? Maybe that’s a conspiracy, just kidding. Or am I?
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China Blasts U.S. as Main Source of Human Rights Disasters Worldwide

AlJazeera

China has hit back at the US over human rights, telling Washington to get its own house in order before criticising others and blaming US policy for the global financial crisis.
The angry comments - the latest in a series of terse exchanges between Washington and Beijing - follow the release of a US State Department report condemning what Washington says is a worsening of China's human rights record.
In what has become an annual tit-for-tat exchange, China published its own report on Friday accusing the US of using human rights as a political tool to interfere in other countries' political affairs.
"At a time when the world is suffering a serious human rights disaster caused by the US subprime crisis-induced global financial crisis, the US government still ignores its own serious human rights problems but revels in accusing other countries. It is really a pity," the Chinese report said.
The report said that while accusing other nations of suppressing freedom of speech and communication, the US has itself stepped up eavesdropping and wiretapping of its own citizens.
It added that US citizens were threatened by "widespread violent crimes", while abuses of power were common among US law enforcement officials.

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Who Rules America?

Don Monkerud, The Liverty Voice
Although some Americans worry about the growing power of the government, few understand the real power that controls their everyday lives.
Private monopolies determine the brand of breakfast cereal we eat, the type of car we drive, where we bank, the medical treatment we receive, the fashion of our clothes, and the kind of toothbrush we use, in addition to the beer we drink, the health insurance we buy, and what we feed our pets.
Under the guise of “the free market,” conglomerates merged and bought up smaller companies, until, today, they dominate their respective markets in every commodity offered for sale in the U.S.
In this race to consolidate, companies “rationalized” their offerings, in many cases dropping up to 40 percent of what they formerly produced. They buy from the same suppliers, use interchangeable parts and common ingredients, and re-name similar brands, essentially placing the same product in different packages. For example, one company produces all of the pet food under 150 different brands.

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Economic Warfare: Wall Street May Finally Have Met its Nemesis in Angry European Governments

For decades Wall Street in its pursuit of endless profits, has preyed on the livelihoods of ordinary people around the world. In 1998, currency speculators led by George Soros, wrecked havoc on Asian economies, sending many (Malaysia, Thailand) in a tailspin from which they never quite recovered. After decimating Asian currencies, the rubble collector in the form of the IMF appeared on the scene to "help" Asian nations emerge from the crisis by forcing them to open their markets/sell off national assets to western corporations. Wall Street opened the door and IMF facilitated the looting of the people's wealth.

Wall Street's reckless looting game continued uninterrupted because Asian nations were too small to have a voice in the global power scheme. In 2008, commodity speculators pushed food and oil prices to the stratosphere, leading to food shortages in many poor nations and closure of many U.S. businesses that operated in the transportation sectors (trucking, shipping, airlines). But no action was taken to rein them in. In fact, even though reckless wall street speculation has been the chief cause of the global financial crisis, no one dared take on Wall Street, not even the powerful U.S. government.

But the long wait for justice may finally be over. Wall Street has finally have taken on a target too big to chew - The European Union. Naked short selling of Greek Bonds via Credit Default Swaps has threatened the stability of the Euro zone pushing European governments to retaliate. Michael Collins of OpEdNews.com recently wrote a brilliant article titled Economic Warfare: Europe vs. Wall Street which we enclose below in its entirety:

Wall Streets is headed toward international pariah status thanks to two recent actions by the European Union (EU). On Tuesday, the EU announced that it was banning Wall Street banks from the lucrative government bond business in Europe. They didn't express official concern or fire off a warning shot. They simply banned Wall Street from financing government bond deals like the one Goldman Sachs sold to Greece.

The Guardian pointed out that Wall Street bond business from European governments has gone down over the last two years. Now the business is gone period. In effect, the EU has labeled Wall Streets business tactics as too dangerous for their governments to handle.

Then on Wednesday, the President of the European Commission said that the EU was considering a ban on government debt speculation through Credit Default Swaps (CDS) President José Manuel Barroso announced that, "the Commission will examine closely the relevance of banning purely speculative naked sales on Credit Default Swaps of sovereign debt." While not an outright ban, the threat of banning CDS on national debt would be a major loss for the world's financial speculators, particularly those in the United States and Great Britain.

These two hostile moves toward Wall Street by Europe were discussed by officials in the context of the current Greek debt crisis. Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs has been implicated in helping the Greek government hide the true nature and size of the debt. Discovery of this sleight-of-hand action exacerbated an already challenging crisis.

While the Greek crisis was presented as the proximate cause of the anti Wall Street actions, these announcements follow a March 6 national referendum in Iceland. Citizens voted overwhelmingly, 93% to 2%, to reject their government's plan to have citizens to cover the losses of Iceland's second largest private bank, around $6 billion.

In January, public opinion polls showed opposition to the bailout in the mid 50% range. The 93% opposition vote Saturday was a startling and bold statement of citizen opposition to subsidies for the private sector.

A few days before the vote, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said:

"The debt that had to be accumulated, when it's going badly, is now becoming the object of speculation by precisely those institutions that we saved a year-and-a-half ago. That's very difficult to explain to people in a democracy who should trust us." Business Week, February 23

Escaping the sinking ship?

The Chancellor is right. It has becomes increasingly difficult to explain socialism for the financial elite and survival of the fittest for the rest of us. Despite promises of trickle down benefits from policies that benefit only those at the top, the record since the 1970's has been one of declining living standards and benefits for those who produce the wealth through their hard work.

The politicians behind the two policies are the center-right Merkel of Germany and hard right President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Could their sudden, harsh actions against Wall Street reflect a general awareness among their patrons, the European financial elite, that citizens have had enough? Are the leaders worried that the contrived government debt crises throughout the continent will be met by citizens with sustained, angry protests and democratic defiance of de facto socialism for the financial elite?

Goldman and other Wall Street banks are a perpetual presence along the corridors of power in Washington, DC. Will this insider influence be used to dictate a U.S. response that reflects the will of Wall Street at the expense of the people?

Merkel and Sarkozy are hardly heroes of working men and women. They're reacting to the excesses of Wall Street as those excesses threaten the Euro currency and its beneficiaries, not their people. To a greater degree, no doubt, their actions reflect fear among the European elite that the entire continent might rise up in a rage if they continue policies that turn the vast majority of citizens into indentured servants.

Citizens all over the world are getting a crash course on the politics of scarcity for the many and abundance for the very few.

A Change of Mindset: Reform Not Stimulus Restores Financial Health

Andy Xie, Ex-Morgan Stanley Chief Economist

The biggest policy debate this year has thus far been when and how fast to exit from last year's stimulus policies. Last year, in a moment of panic over the global financial crisis, central banks and governments poured monetary and fiscal stimulus into the global economy. The side effects of these misguided policies are already showing up: asset speculation has engulfed the global financial market again and consumer price inflation is creeping up uncomfortably fast, especially in emerging economies. Despite the visible need for tightening, the consensus is demanding a slow and delayed exit. Japan's "early withdrawal" is touted as an example of what could happen otherwise.

Japan has experienced two decades of economic stagnation since the collapse of the infamous bubble it suffered in the 1980s. The most popular explanations are that Tokyo wasn't aggressive enough in stimulating the economy after the bubble burst, or that it withdrew its stimulus too early – or both. This line of thinking is popular among elite economists in the US, where it is rarely challenged. But few Japanese analysts buy it.

The Americans liken an economy in a slide to a car with a dead battery: it can be jump-started with a forceful enough push. But there's no sound logic behind such thinking. After a big bubble bursts, an economy suffers a terrible misalignment between supply and demand. Through high prices, a bubble diverts investment and labor to needed activities. It takes time for an economy to normalize. The bigger the bubble, the longer it takes to heal.

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Mullen Worried Israel Will Mousetrap U.S. Into War with Iran

(Courtsey Alan Hart on Twitter)

Ray McGovern, Information Clearing House

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came home with sweaty palms from his mid-February visit to Israel. He has been worrying aloud that Israel will mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran.

This is of particular concern because Mullen has had considerable experience in putting the brakes on such Israeli plans in the past. This time, he appears convinced that the Israeli leaders did not take his warnings seriously – notwithstanding the unusually strong language he put into play.

Upon arrival in Jerusalem on Feb. 14, Mullen wasted no time in making clear why he had come. He insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be "a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences."

At a Pentagon press conference on Feb. 22 Mullen drove home the same point – with some of the same language. After reciting the usual boilerplate about Iran being "on the path to achieve nuclear weaponization" and about its "desire to dominate its neighbors," he included this in his prepared remarks:

"I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action. For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are and ought to be the levers first pulled. Indeed, I would hope they are always and consistently pulled. No strike, however effective, will be, in and of itself, decisive."

In answer to a question about the "efficacy" of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Mullen said such strikes "would delay it for one to three years." Underscoring the point, he added that this is what he meant "about a military strike not being decisive."

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Calling All Rebels

Chris Hedges, Truthdig

There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests.

Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.

Those singled out as internal enemies will include people of color, immigrants, gays, intellectuals, feminists, Jews, Muslims, union leaders and those defined as “liberals.” They will be condemned as anti-American and blamed for our decline. The economic collapse, which remains mysterious and enigmatic to most Americans, will be pinned by demagogues and hatemongers on these hapless scapegoats.

And the random acts of violence, which are already leaping up around the fringes of American society, will justify harsh measures of internal control that will snuff out the final vestiges of our democracy. The corporate forces that destroyed the country will use the information systems they control to mask their culpability. The old game of blaming the weak and the marginal, a staple of despotic regimes, will empower the dark undercurrents of sadism and violence within American society and deflect attention from the corporate vampires that have drained the blood of the country.

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What Would you Say if You Came Face to Face with an ET?

The London Telegraph recently conducted a competition on what messages Earthlings would pose to an extra-terrestrial (ET) if they suddenly encountered one. The poll produced some shocking answers that accurately capture the sad state of world affairs today, and the utter despair, cynicism and helplessness that many people feel. Instead of relaying messages of hope like "Hello, welcome to beautiful planet earth", respondents choose to say quite the opposite:

Whatever you do, stay away from Washington DC. No intelligent life there.

- Richard from Texas.

Keep away from this planet. Mankind is only intent on depleting, abusing and destroying it. They will do the same to yours should they find it. Mankind is the worst virus in the universe.

- Pamela from Sicily

Sorry to drop this on you, but we’ve kinda wrecked our planet. Any chance we could come live with you? We’ve got beer.

- Gary from Dagenham

For more responses and a full view of the Telegraph poll click here.

Ending the War in Afghanistan: Freedom, Democracy and Justice Cannot be Enforced at Gunpoint

On Tuesday, with no security forces in tow, a young Afghan woman who goes by the pseudonym Zoya slipped into Des Moines to speak at a public library. A member of the underground Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which has been in the vanguard of resistance to the Taliban, she shields her real name for fear of being targeted.
She says war and occupation are not the answers, either to eradicate terrorism or to bring peace to her homeland: "Freedom, democracy and justice cannot be enforced at gunpoint by a foreign country."
Ron Jacobs, RAWA (Reality of Life in Afghanistan) News
Perhaps, there was once a time when most westerners could pretend that the US-led onslaught against the Afghan people was a good thing. Perhaps they convinced themselves that because the government of that country had allowed Osama Bin Laden to live in the mountains there that there was reason enough to attack his neighbors and destroy what remained of their nation. Perhaps, too, westerners (especially US citizens) believed that the true purpose of the US-led military mission in Afghanistan was to capture Bin Laden and destroy his terror network.
Yes, perhaps there was a time when the facade of justice and righteous revenge provided enough of a moral veneer to the US war in Afghanistan that even intelligent westerners could live with the death and destruction occurring in their name. However, that time is long past. The war has gone on for more than eight years without any sign of cessation. Indeed, since Barack Obama took up residence in the White House, the casualties in that war have spiked.

There are at least 40,000 more US troops in the country since that date last January and another thirty or forty thousand more getting ready to go there. In addition, the number of mercenaries has similarly increased. The reasons provided for this escalation range from going after terrorists to creating a civil society. As I write, another offensive against Afghans is being prepared. It primary purpose is to install a governor appointed by the US-created government in Kabul. No matter what the reason, it is painfully clear that those of us expecting a truthful explanation for Washington's presence in Afghanistan will not receive it from those who continue to send troops and weaponry over there. Nor will they receive it from those in Congress that continue to fund this lethal endeavor.
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America’s Unending Electronic Troop-less Wars: More Afghan Civilians Killed Under "Peace Prize Recipient" Obama Than Bush

Wars tend to end when soldiers themselves and their families declare they have had enough of the blood-letting. Drone warfare removes such a constraint. When combined with the employ of local satrap forces, it eliminates the main reason why the United States has ended its wars during the past half century: the public’s perception that the cost in U.S. fatalities had in the end become too high.

Marc W. Herold, RAWA (Reality of Life in Afghanistan) News
Prophetically the first victims in 2010 of Obama in his Afghan war were a teacher in a government school, Sadiq Noor, and his nine-year old son, Wajid as well as three other persons. Both were killed on Sunday night, January 3, 2010 in a U.S. drone strike involving two missiles fired into the home of Sadiq Noor in the village of Musaki, North Waziristan in Pakistan. During January 2010, a record number of twelve deadly missile strikes were carried out on Pakistan’s tribal areas. Three Al-Qaeda leaders were killed and 123 innocent civilians. During 2009, 44 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan killed 708 people but only five Al Qaeda or Taliban; that is for each enemy fighter 140 civilian Pakistanis had to die.
Those who pull the gray trigger to fire are located in Nevada, Kandahar, or Pakistan. As Philip Alston points out, “Young military personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill real people remotely using joysticks. Far removed from the human consequences of their actions, how will this generation of fighters value the right to life?” In early 2010, the U.S. Air Force had more drone operators in training than fighter and bomber pilots.

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