Right-wing Websites like the Daily Paul (Congressman Ron Paul's site) have latched onto a brochure that was published for prospective attendees at the International Swine Flu Conference, held in Washington, DC late last week.

No, the conference was not a meeting by World Health Organization officials bent on taking over the world; and the brochure, which is presented below, does not convey nearly as much ominous threat as some of the rather strange conspiracy theorists like Jesse Woodrow claimed in a YouTube video that's working the rounds at conspiracy theory Websites.

However, the brochure is not without its disconcerting — perhaps even downright disturbing — passages, particularly with regard to the themes of some of the Friday workshops.

Read the brochure by clicking here, and note the titles of all the different workshops being provided for attendees.

Regular visitors here at The Dark Wraith Forums are not wild-eyed conspiracy theorists, at least not for the most part. In fact, I dare say that I am probably more of a conspiracy theorist than most of you who read my articles, although — as I've mentioned before — I long for a return to the days before the Right-wing crazies ruined good conspiracy theory management practices with their bizarre stuff about Obama's birth certificate and the health care reform bill "death panels." It's just not much fun anymore trying to be a moderate of any kind, even a moderate conspiracy theorist.

Anyway, enough nostalgia.

Read the brochure for yourselves. See what you think. Do aspects of the conference bother you, or are the topics that were covered nothing other than comprehensive, responsible planning and training?

Speak your peace. If things about the conference bother you, let everyone know; if not, say so.


The Dark Wraith awaits your judgment.

How can you tell the difference between a drummer who is a conspiracy theorist and a drummer who is a cynic?

Answer: The cynic doesn’t show up.

Uh... why not?

Answer: The cynic already knows there won’t be an audience.

So, why does the conspiracy theorist show up?

Answer: He just pretends to play for the audience; he’s really there just to hear himself.

But the cynic could do that, too.

Answer: Yes, but if he’s really a cynic, he won’t even listen to himself.

At 6:00 p.m. on Friday, December 19, 2008, Michael Connell was killed when the single-engine Piper Saratoga he was piloting crashed on approach to the Akron-Canton Airport in northeastern Ohio. The plane was about 2.5 miles out when it went down, hitting the ground between two houses in the Stark County city of Uniontown, 10 miles southeast of Akron.

Michael Connell was the information technology expert some activists claim was the mastermind behind the rigging of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Mr. Connell was about to testify in Ohio, where his consulting business is based, about aspects of his vote rigging work in the Buckeye State. The non-profit group Velvet Revolution claims that a "tipster close to the McCain campaign" warned an investigator for the group last Summer that Connell's life was in danger and that he should not fly his plane because of the possibility of sabotage.

In late October of 2002, the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air A100 carrying liberal Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone crashed on approach two miles from Eveleth-Virginia Airport in Minnesota, killing Sen. Wellstone, his wife Sheila, their 33-year-old daughter Marcia, and five others people. The 58-year-old Wellstone was campaigning for re-election to his U.S. Senate seat. His death paved the way for his Republican opponent, St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, to win the election. The National Transportation Safety Board ultimately ruled that pilot error caused the plane crash that killed Wellstone.

On October 16, 2000, then-Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, his son, and an aide were killed when the plane in which they were flying, a Cessna 335, crashed just weeks ahead of the election in which Mr. Carnahan was vying for a U.S. Senate seat against the incumbent Senator, John Ashcroft. Although dead, Carnahan went on to win the election against Ashcroft, whom President George W. Bush would subsequently appoint as United States Attorney General. Jean Carnahan, Mel Carnahan's widow, was appointed to take her late husband's seat in the Senate until a special election in 2002. Carnahan's wife lost the special election to Republican Jim Talent. The National Transportation Safety Board ultimately ruled that the primary cause of the accident that killed Mel Carnahan was disorientation of the pilot, Carnahan's 44-year-old son Roger, who had not long before the crash taken special training to handle flight emergencies involving the Cessna 335.

How can the cynic still call himself a 'musician' if he hates what he does so much?

Answer: Because music is his life, man.

And now, for some audio levity:




The Dark Wraith encourages readers to always be prepared for the occasional interruption.

An article by Naomi Wolf at Alternet was passed along to me this morning by Big Brass Blog contributing writer Foiled Goil. The title of the article is, "Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out 'Crowd Control'," and the lead summary reads as follows:

Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn't pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.

The article provides a link to the YoutTube video of Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) on the floor of the House of Representatives putting into the record, "...[A] few members [of the House of Representatives] were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted 'No' [on the bailout bill]."



Consistent with this allegation of a threat of the imposition of martial law is the report in the Army Times that the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division, having served in Iraq for "35 of the last 60 months," will for the next 12 months serve in the United States under the service wing of the Northern Command, ostensibly "...as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks."

Perhaps related to this deployment and to the threat allegedly conveyed by unnamed persons to members of Congress is the incident described in my article, "March 13, 2008," the day a rare, secret session of the House of Representatives was held. The closed-door meeting was supposedly held so some House Republicans could share secret information concerning reasons to vote for the privacy wrecking ball otherwise known as the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; but the conspiracy theory angle was emerging that the session was really about an impending economic and financial collapse and the steps that would be necessary to control the situation and protect the members of the federal legislature.

Reports of threats, second-hand allegations made on the floor of the House of Representatives, and even confirmed deployments on American soil of U.S. troops for crowd control do not add up to proof of any active plan or scheme by the Bush Administration to impose martial law. Far more evidence would be required, including but not restricted to sworn statements from Congressmen who were, themselves, actually threatened. Should affidavits to that effect actually be executed, however, sufficient grounds would exist for immediate proceedings in the House of Representatives pursuant to expedited impeachment of the President and Vice President of the United States: it would be in such forum that further evidence could be acquired and, more importantly, any possible plot exposed.

Again, though, only an allegation has been made, albeit one consistent with facts, rumors, and other allegations which in their sum are deeply troubling but by no means cause for panic by citizens worried about the continuity of the United States as a democratic republic functioning under the rule of law.

Right now, concern about a possible coup d'etat of some sort is entirely unwarranted; however, a public allegation by a federal legislator that a threat of martial law was conveyed to obtain passage of a piece of legislation is of more than passing concern. If Rep. Sherman was engaging in hyperbole, then he is a fool, and those in his congressional district who vote for him are even greater fools. If, on the other hand, he truthfully reported what actually happened, then he is to be thanked, and those who vote for all of the legislators in the House and Senate who voted for the $700 billion bailout giveaway to the welfare queens of Wall Street are to be condemned for their reckless spending and damned for their capitulation to an outrageous, unconstitutional threat.


Dark Wraith Publishing will provide further reports on this matter should more information become available.

Rumors of what happened are as wild as any conspiracy theory could get. This much is clear: on March 13, 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives went into secret session, the fourth such closed meeting in recent memory. Ostensibly, the session was closed to outsiders so a "debate" about the then-pending revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) could be held.

This version of what was going to happen is supported by the following video capture of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) raising an objection to the proceeding long enough to probe House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on the need for the secrecy.



As can be heard, once he had put into the record his concerns, Kucinich withdrew his objection and stated that he would not attend the secret session; this, unfortunately, means he cannot attest to what actually happened in that meeting of the House on March 13, 2008, although he would have been prohibited by House rules from revealing the content of the proceedings, anyway, even if he had attended.

While the topic of the meeting was set forth in public record, the rumor mill has recently brought forth claims that the content of the secret session was considerably different from a debate about revising FISA. AfterDowningStreet.org, among other sites, asserts that insiders are saying the following matters were discussed:

• The United States economy is facing 'imminent collapse' late this year.

• The 'financing system' of U.S. government is facing 'imminent collapse' early next year.

• A 'civil war' resulting from the economic chaos is possible.

• Citizens likely to be involved in an uprising will be pre-emptively rounded up.

• Those detained will be incarcerated in REX 84 camps being built throughout the country.

• Members of Congress may become subject to 'retaliation' because of the severe problems that will ensue if the economy collapses.

• Provisions have been made for relocating Members of Congress and their families to safe locations should civil unrest threaten their safety.

• The collapse of the U.S. government's means of financing operations, along with the collapse of the United States economy, will compel, or perhaps propel, the binding of the United States with Canada and Mexico into the North American Union.

• This North American Union will then issue a new currency, called the "amero," which will function as a fiat currency similar to the euro of the European Union.

As can be seen from the progression of items in the list above, the rumor slides gracefully into full-blown, North American Union conspiracy theory by the end. Moreover, it is somewhat difficult, although not impossible, to see how a session of the House that was approved on the pretext of a debate about revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act could become a closed-door tell-all about the death of the United States as an independent republic. It is, of course, possible that some of those who supported the revision of FISA might use the occasion of a closed-door session to show a coming economic apocalypse that requires extraordinary measures be available to federal law enforcement authorities. This might explain why so many otherwise sane members of the federal legislature voted to pass the abomination of the revised FISA that is now the new law of the land with respect to spying on people.

As an alternative, it is also quite possible that many members of the federal legislature are simply too stupid to grasp the fact that law enforcement authorities now, thanks to the new FISA, have free rein to write and use computer code for routing wiretaps and aggregating the acquired data that is so complex that not one federal judge currently on the bench has even the slightest prayer of ever figuring out what the snoops are doing to comprehensively eliminate American citizens' right to privacy.

All of the back-and-forth about what really happened in the U.S. House of Representatives on March 13 aside, the cautionary tale from the conspiracy theory version is this: a government that conducts its business behind closed doors invites not just bad legislation, but also wild conjecture about what is really going on.

Imminent collapse of the U.S. economy and the federal government's ability to finance operations, FEMA concentration camps operationalized to hold malcontents by the hundreds of thousands, the end of the United States of America as a sovereign nation: these are all the stuff of rank conspiracy theories now given life by federal legislators who clearly believe the public's business is none of the public's business, at least when it comes to debating legislation to eviscerate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution of any practical meaning whenever federal law enforcement deems necessary.

Instead of cracking down on the staggeringly common use of National Security Letters by the FBI to circumvent judicial control over searches and seizures, the Congress has handed law enforcement at the federal level carte blanche to spy at will; instead of condemning telecommunications companies for working with the Bush Administration to illegally spy on Americans, the Congress has handed those criminal conspirators immunity from civil actions by the citizens whose rights they violated; and instead of openly conducting what was apparently an important debate about further degrading the constitutional protections of the citizens of this country, the House of Representatives went into secret session.

Whether or not there is a grain of truth in what the conspiracy theorists say happened during that closed-door debate, the salient question is quite obvious. If our elected representatives do not trust us in their deliberations, why, then, should we ever trust what they say when they condescend to address us?

It seems that, whatever was said in that closed-door session of the United States House of Representative on March 13, 2008, it was all too important for us to hear.

The good news is this: eventually, we will find out.

Unfortunately, that's also the bad news.


The Dark Wraith will now accept applications for conspiracy theorists-in-training.

The 2002 horror movie The Ring wove a tale about a horrific video that would predicate the death in seven days of anyone who watched it. The only way to avoid this fate was to further propagate the video, allowing others to suffer its fatal curse. Personally, I enjoyed the movie; but, then again, I'm a sucker for scary movies, although I can pretty much always do without gore-galore festivals (unless the victims were really, really bad actors). The Ring was satisfying for me to the extent that it presented a kind of terror too remote to make me worry about some real-world version of its central premise coming true.

Therein was my potentially grave error in assessing the story line of The Ring, and I have now decided that the only way I can dispense with what could otherwise be an unwanted curse upon my soul is to invite—indeed to encourage—readers to watch a 139-minute film by über-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Prison Planet. The movie is herewith embedded near the end of this article.

Long-time readers of my articles might recall that I have mentioned Mr. Jones in the past, specifically with respect to the fact that maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul appeared in a film of his. In my tradition of diplomatic understatement, I wrote of Alex Jones that, "[He is] believed by at least some rational people to be a few cheese cubes short of a snack tray..."

That aside, for readers who want a remarkable, although incomplete, rundown of a principal branch of conspiracy theory, allow me to recommend Alex Jones's 2007 movie, Endgame. It is sweeping, and it is compelling. It is also deeply flawed, primarily by the way it, like most conspiracy theories, constructs conspiracy by virtue of mere associations, some of them familial, others chronological, still others even less well-defined. For example, Jones connects the evolution theory of Charles Darwin to a cousin's twisted ideas on eugenics, and then he goes on to associate the early eugenics whackos—admittedly including a number of Charles Darwin's subsequent family members—to the later eugenics whackos like Adolf Hitler and the better-race promoters in the U.S., including the predecessor to Planned Parenthood. In all fairness to Jones, however, he does not directly attack the theory of evolution, nor does he condemn the idea of the right of women to choose abortion; but he does seem to have an intense interest in offering a less-than-dim view of the foundations of many modern-day organizations, including everything from the World Wildlife Federation to the Federal Reserve system. Along the way, as well as going after the predecessor to Planned Parenthood, he jumps on the usual list of conspiracy theory hot buttons like the United Nations, the European Union, and NAFTA. I roll my eyes every last time the conspiracy theorists trot out these worn-out whipping boys, although the matter of that trans-America highway corridor is a little less of an eye-roller than meets the eye, particularly since officialdom in Washington acts to this very day like the thing doesn't even exist.

I must admit that, within the sweep of his attack, Jones goes after some of my favorite rich-boy charlatans. One of them is Al Gore, a gentleman who in my own, personal opinion is a PowerPoint-wielding, sky-is-falling elitist-opportunist. My published writing and comments about him are harsh and unyielding, and I am not in the least impressed by his Nobel Peace Prize, awarded as it was to a quite comfortable, upper-class gentleman at the same time in history that genuine heroes the world over are rotting in prisons, being tortured, and getting executed for demanding such trivial things as freedom in unfree lands. Yes, the Presidency of the United States was stolen from Mr. Gore; but, no, sometimes it is not better for the Republic that its wronged meekly stand down, for their surrender is not theirs alone, but is also the sacrifice of the millions who will then suffer under the reign of the venal thieves wretchedly proclaimed victor.

Enough with grinding the personal axes; this post is about Endgame, which is, as noted above, incomplete. While it fabulously explains the Bilderberg Group—a favorite sore spot of any self-respecting conspiracy theorist—it completely avoids mentioning the Illuminati, Opus Dei, Freemasonry (although a stylized version of the All Seeing Eye is presented several times), the Jewish conspiracy, and anything whatsoever having to do with UFOs. (Those who know about these matters will, however, notice in the movie all kinds of visual hints of other conspiracy theory threads.) Strangely, avoiding a free-fall involvement of all these other branches of conspiracy theory keeps the movie from drifting into complete silliness.

Along the way, the movie gets a little slow in some places, but the tenor re-attains fever pitch at several places in the last half. Without giving away too many details, the mention that Hillary Rodham Clinton did a half-day appearance at the 2006 Bilderberg Group conference is worth noting. No, she's not a Bilderberger: a half-day visit would mean she was there to briefly present herself for the core group to consider. At that 2006 conference, by the way, Jones got photographs of none other than the disgraced Ahmed Chalabi of Iraq pre-invasion disinformation fame; Chalabi was slithering around at the hotel like some kind of creepy denizen from the depths, apparently a welcome participant in the confab of the rich and powerful.

Another fun part of the movie is the interview into which Jones suckered a young Rothschild heir, a fellow heavily into promoting save-the-planet concerts. Jones threw a rather ludicrous "fact" at the dear boy, who took the bait like an idiot and responded with one of the most self-defeatingly stupid answers I've ever heard from an ostensible heir to shadowy greatness. I actually had to get out of my chair and walk a few feet away during the Rothschild pup's blithering oral dance. Whether or not Jones knew his "fact" about other planets in the solar system exhibiting signs of warming was ridiculous, he certainly got a future Bilderberger to make an ass of himself.

I should also point out that Endgame touched a soft spot in my heart as it took on such historical icons as Bertrand Russell, a man whose bizarre statements about depopulation made him someone I have reviled both as a person and as an intellectual inspiration my whole adult life; Russell resides in the same level of my esteem with self-fawning sods like Ayn Rand and Henry David Thoreau. Another joy to my heart came in the mention that Vice President Dick Cheney, in making his triumphal return to the Council on Foreign Relations some years back, commented on the use of ethnic bio-weapons. (Gee, with stuff like that being talked about by White leaders of the Free World, it's no wonder people like Rev. Wright are considered total lunatics when they start their bizarre rants about AIDS being human-manufactured to kill Blacks.)

I tell you, if all that wasn't enough, I became downright giddy when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were trotted out for a brief flogging.

Yes, for me, Endgame was a veritable orgy of evil, sinful, wrongful delight, the kind of stuff I know very well is just plain mind-rotting in the same way a rare, fatty, 20-ounce steak cooked on an open fire and a nose-piercing, mucous-clearing cigar are bad for me. God! but it was sweet.

For me, the list of pleasure points in Endgame was rather long; but just because Jones and I have a common manifest of disliked creeps and just because we share a deep concern for the emergence of an authoritarian state, I simply cannot allow that I agree with the scope of his conspiracy theory. I do not, and the reason is quite simple: even though the Bilderbergers really do imagine themselves controlling the fate of the world, and even though their idiocy has caused actual harm, they are pathetically incompetent in their silly plans, schemes, and dreams. Unless their master plan really was to crater the world economy with a blithering combination of neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, communists, Right-wing thugs, religious nutcases, and assorted other thunderously ignorant operatives, where we are headed would be the very last place putative global controllers would have wanted to go: down this path we are plunging lies what will in all likelihood be a horrendous, destructive clash of classes over everything from food to shelter to freedom. As enfeebled of mind as Americans have been for a long time, and as weak and reckless as political opposition has been to the insanity of the Bush Administration, its military adventures abroad, and its ever-expanding, ever-more-intrusive law enforcement machinery at home, the dynamic will change, and the change will be dramatic.

It will also be ugly.

Shadowy, filthy rich cretins who meet once a year to plan the fate of the world would be awfully stupid to risk a global economic collapse that could just as easily lead to anarchy as it could to some pretext for a one-world, authoritarian government solution.

Certainly, those shadowy, filthy rich cretins are not that stupid. Such an idea is every bit as crazy as saying that the richest, most powerful nation on Earth would allow itself to be ruled, and thereby economically destroyed, for eight long years by a vicious, moronic, inarticulate, power-mad, secretive, incompetent fool.

The very idea is laughable.

Anyway, grab some popcorn, pour a drink, close the curtains, and spend a little more than two hours watching Endgame. If nothing else, it's certainly worth a laugh.




The Dark Wraith gives it two thumbs way up.