I don’t usually do short blog entries, but while I’m working on more substantive stuff I thought I’d show you a screenshot of a puzzling but amusing conversation that happened yesterday on Twitter.
A conspiracy theorist who evidently does a podcast on various conspiracy-related topics denounced my opinions on conspiracies as worthless, but yet strangely he wants me to come on his podcast and spread my supposedly worthless opinions!
For the record, I told this fellow that if he wanted me on his show, he should look at my blog and email me with a list of topics covered here that he’d like me to talk about on the show. So far I haven’t heard from him. I don’t even think he’s read the blog.
It seems rather odd for someone who regards my opinions as worthless to try to get me on his podcast, but I’ve given up trying to understand the contradictions of conspiracy theorists.
This blog, originally published January 17, 2012, was updated January 18, 2012. Scroll to the end for the update.
Some of my readers may be aware that I and this blog have become involved in a controversy involving Douglas Mallette, who has been associated with the Zeitgeist Movement. Mr. Mallette was scheduled to give a lecture on his opinions about sustainability and future development at a Green Party event in Sweden. Yesterday, the panel disinvited Mallette after observing disturbing statements he had made, promoting the use of violence against opponents of the Zeitgeist Movement, which were recorded on YouTube several months earlier and about which I wrote a blog article in February 2011. He retracted those statements and apologized for them. If you want to see the full history of this fracas, go here and be sure to scroll to the bottom for the various updates.
Last night Mr. Mallette posted on his Facebook page a long rant in response to the Swedish lecture cancellation and specifically directed at people whom he termed “cyber-bullies” and who he obviously blames for the cancellation. In that message he accused these persons, myself included, of being “paid disinformation agents.” You can see the text of that message, and a response by James Kush, one of the other bloggers so accused, here. In this post I only wish to make a few short statements in response, and to clarify the record.
First: it seems so ridiculous as to be beneath comment to have to deny that I’m a “paid disinformation agent.” It annoys me to do so because the accusation itself is so stupid. But, for what it’s worth, I’m not paid by anyone to write this blog—no person, organization, firm, government agency, business interest, association, or anything. I’m disappointed that Mr. Mallette felt the need to make this baseless accusation. I might also add that this is exactly the type of accusation often made by conspiracy theorists against persons who disagree with them publicly. As Mr. Mallette has stated he isn’t a conspiracy theorist, I’m puzzled why he chose to employ this trope.
Secondly: he seems to be under the impression that the “cyber-bullies” he complains of created this situation and sprang his own words on him as some sort of premeditated trap to try to ruin his speaking tour. This is not the case at all. I can’t speak for anyone else, but my involvement in this issue began I was contacted by a reporter from Sweden who had read my blog on Mallette’s previous statements and wanted to know if the YouTube video of him making them was still available. (Incidentally, that post contained an update in which I embedded Mallette’s apology video as soon as I found out about it). The reporter was investigating Mr. Mallette’s background because there was already a controversy developing in Sweden regarding his credentials—a controversy which was already happening when the reporter contacted me, and with which neither I nor any of the other persons Mr. Mallette accuses of being “cyber-bullies” had anything to do with instigating. I’m not out there lying in wait for Douglas Mallette to say something that makes the Zeitgeist Movement look bad. In fact, until yesterday, I was under the impression that Mallette quit the Zeitgeist Movement months ago.
Thirdly: Mr. Mallette seems to be upset mostly that the YouTube video of him making his troubling comments was made available to the reporter by the “American bloggers” cited in his story, the video of him apologizing for those comments was not. That is the exact opposite of what happened. In fact, when the reporter contacted me, I did a quick web search to see if I could find a mirror of both videos. The only one I found was Mallette’s apology video. That’s the link I sent to the reporter. I didn’t even send him the link to the original comment video that appears embedded on Mr. Kush’s blog and in the reporter’s story. Either the reporter found it on his own or someone else sent it to him. I don’t know which and don’t care.
Let me repeat this in no uncertain terms so Mr. Mallette understands. The only video link I ever sent to the Swedish reporter was a link to his apology video.
I’m going to take the liberty of embedding that selfsame video here in this blog entry so everyone can see it. Everyone has seen the original by now, so I’m going to bend over backwards to be fair to Mr. Mallette by including only the video that he would rather the reporter have seen—which, I stress again, was the video I sent him in the first place. I know for a fact that the Swedish reporter knew about it, and it’s likely the organizers of the speaking tour did too. If they were unpersuaded by it, that has nothing to do with me.
Fourthly: Mr. Mallette claims that the “cyber-bullies” who are out to get him dislike the Zeitgeist Movement because (his words):
“You have a perverse personal vendetta against a few select groups, namely the Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement, for reasons dominantly rooted in conspiracy theory bunk, like Luciferian Cults, New World Order nonsense, UN Agenda 21, etc.”
Not only is this false, it’s in fact the exact opposite of why I oppose the Zeitgeist Movement. As should be well-known to just about everybody, I oppose the Zeitgeist Movement because it promotes conspiracy theories and advances a conspiracist worldview. I don’t believe in any of the conspiracy theories Mr. Mallette mentions—in fact, I don’t believe in any conspiracy theories at all, which is (ironically) much of the reason why Zeitgeist Movement members don’t like what I have to say.
Finally: he says “no act of contrition would satisfy you people” (meaning his critics). To the contrary, it’s quite obvious what actions he could have taken to rectify the words that he now regrets saying: quit the Zeitgeist Movement, repudiate it, and put as much distance between it and himself as possible. In fact I believed Mr. Mallette had done exactly this last summer, when he announced that he was quitting Zeitgeist at the same time many of its high-profile supporters were jumping ship. If he had broken ties with the sinking organization, and could demonstrate that to the Swedish press and the organizers of the speaking tour, it’s much less likely they would have sought to dissociate themselves from him, because then he would be just a nice man giving lectures about sustainability and global development, instead of a (witting or unwitting) ambassador from an organization with a toxic public relations reputation. I dare say he would also find himself and his actions no longer a subject of interest among the opponents of the movement.
Ironically, a supporter of Mr. Mallette’s made this exact recommendation last night on his Facebook page, advising him to distance himself from the Zeitgeist Movement, regardless of how much he might sympathize with what he perceives to be their motives. The comment was promptly deleted.
I should also mention that nobody is talking about falsehoods or fabrications about Mr. Mallette or what he said. The clip that caused consternation in Sweden was a clip of his own words—which he willingly chose to broadcast publicly on a podcast. This isn’t even a case of a person’s private words being used against them—what he said was said publicly, on the Internet, to an audience of anyone who cared to listen. To liken the exposure of this public information to a reporter, who initiated contact with me to ask to see the clip, to a “slander campaign” is ridiculous. Slander involves untruths. This incident involves truths, however unflattering. I’m aware that Mr. Mallette has apologized for his statements, also in public. That’s good. But what the public does with that apology, and whether or not they judge it to be sincere, is no longer in the control of the person making the apology. This seems to be the nub of what’s bothering Mr. Mallette. So far as I know the reporter had the apology before he had the original clip. Yet Mr. Mallette seems to be far less angry with the reporter, and the Swedish municipal authorities who canceled his lecture, than he is with the bloggers who responded to the reporter’s inquiry with truthful information that has been in the public eye for more than a year.
I’m not even very interested in covering Zeitgeist on this blog anymore, and careful readers might notice that it’s received little attention here in the past few months–excluding the year-end wrap-up podcast, only one post I’ve done since August even has significant content about the group. My debunking activities are tapering off for the most part, and what little I am doing, blog-wise, focuses on Thrive. Even that project is starting to wind down. Zeitgeist is pretty much dead. It’s unlikely you’ll see very much Zeitgeist material here in the future, and I even hesitated whether to junk up my blog with this post about it. But, as some facts needed correcting, I thought it might be worthwhile.
I just wanted to set the record straight here. Thanks for reading.
Update 17 January 2012
Right after this blog was published I became aware of a statement attributed to Mr. Mallette responding, it seems, mainly to the Swedish reporter. For the sake of completeness, I reproduce it here. I don’t have the link to the original source, so I’m not 100% sure this is genuine, though I suspect it most likely is.
“‘Formal Reply to Allegations Against Me’
Douglas Mallette
1/17/2012
This is to serve as the official response to a short list of attacks against me that will most like try to be used repeatedly as a way to silence me and my lectures. Sadly, we live in a world where people who don’t like someone or their ideas can use the internet as a weapon for slander and misinformation, instead of formal dialog, debate and discussion.
I will take this moment to address these criticisms against me and give full explanations, not ‘sound bites.’ It is my hope that this letter will be reviewed by any and all organizations who receive slanderous information about me. I will start with the most condemning accusation first:
_________________________________
- Accusation: I advocate violence and genocide.
This accusation stems from a statement I made on a Blogtalk radio show back in August of 2010. Here is the specific statement used against me, “The only thing that would hamper the building or the food would be some nefarious organization coming in and attacking it. And if they did that, then it’s very obvious that that organization and those people are not concerned in any way, shape or form with actually helping people eat. They only want to maintain their power and control, and that’s when you go in and simply annihilate them. That’s where I do advocate military force a little bit. We build these cool facilities that are passive and peaceful, feeding people, and some organization comes in and tries to destroy it or does destroy it, that organization needs to be completely eradicated from the face of the planet. That is pure evil. I don’t care what their ideology is, at some point people need to die. They need to be destroyed. No questions. No jury. No nothing. Your gone. Toast. You are useless waste of skin.”
That statement was uttered when I was a naive, novice activist, and when I was a much angrier man, and that statement was said in irrational anger. As I began to think about how many suffering people would be hurt further if some violent group (terrorists if you will) tried to destroy one of the food facilities put in place to help them, that line of thought got my blood boiling. The result manifested in this completely stupid statement. If I could go back in time and change it, I would, but of course that’s not possible. I do not condone violence.
If one were to do proper investigation, they would find that that is the one and only time I have ever said anything like that, and I’m sorry I did. I have become a lot more peaceful now, working on myself as much as I work on trying to better the world. I never claim to be perfect, and we all make mistakes. I’m sure everyone has moments in their life where they have said or done something they now consider to be completely against their current character.
This bears repeating – I do not condone violence. The world needs to do a lot more thinking and talking, and a lot less swinging of fists. I do advocate protecting people from irrational and violent forces, in non-violent ways if possible, and I find no shame in that. Some people have no defense and need help, at least until we get to a saner world where violence isn’t used to solve issues, and calm reason and discussion is the only tool in the tool box for that. All I can do ask for is forgiveness with regards to this ill advised statement.
_________________________________
- Accusation: I didn’t work for NASA.
I never claim I worked for NASA. In fact, I go to great lengths to make sure people understand the difference between working for the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) and working for NASA directly. The former U.S. Space Shuttle Program was populated mostly by people who did not work for NASA directly, but who worked for contracted companies like Boeing, Lockheed, United Space Alliance and hundreds of subcontracted companies. The government did this to ensure fairness throughout the country, so that the few larger companies would not dominate all the work.
I worked for a subcontractor to Boeing, first with GB Tech, then we moved over to GeoControl when the contract shifted hands to that company. I worked in the Boeing building in Houston, Texas, not far from the Johnson Space Center. I worked with Boeing people, on Boeing materials related to the Space Shuttle. My paycheck might have been from a subcontracted company, but in most respects, I was with Boeing. I make this point again and again, but sad to say, sometimes the translation misses people, and when they hear “Space Shuttle” they tend to think everyone involved were NASA employees. I hope this clears that up.
As for what I did, Boeing dealt with many aspects of the Space Shuttle, from maintenance operations in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center, to logistics and operations in Texas. Boeing basically built the Space Shuttle. NASA contracted them to do it and effectively “rented” it. That’s a simple way to think about how that all worked. I worked in the Boeing SE&I (Systems Engineering and Integration) department, called Configuration Management. We were responsible for tracking and maintaining all the records of the materials that went up and down in the shuttle payload bay as they related to the Shuttle Manifest and technical drawings. This also included interfacing with other departments on a regular basis, like Propulsion, Mass Properties, etc. We attended and delivered updates to Boeing and the United Space Alliance and were responsible for delivering official documentation to NASA that readied the craft for launch. I have professional references to support my work there.
_________________________________
- Accusation: I am the poster child for the Zeitgeist Movement.
Although I do support the Movement, and several other organizations that are working towards making a more sustainable world for mankind, I do not consider myself the poster child for anything. I am simply a man who wants to help people understand how science, engineering and technology can improve the lives of all people on Earth.
My experience in the space industry, coupled with my formal education in Engineering Technology: Space Systems, coupled with my life long passion for space exploration in general (which is why I wrote a book on it), has afforded me the knowledge to speak on such things.
I have spoken at the Initiatives of Change conference in Caux, Switzerland, at Liverpool Hope University, in Liverpool, UK, and at the University of Illinois, in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois (USA), to name a few. None of those were as a ‘poster child’ for the Zeitgeist Movement. In fact, I don’t use my support of the Movement as a means to do speaking, but sometimes supporters of the Movement make it possible for me to attend speaking events. For that, I am grateful. In general, I am more interested in ideas, not the labels of organizations.
_________________________________
- Accusation: I am a Conspiracy Theorist.
As I say repeatedly when asked about conspiracy theories, I personally think they are a waste of time. One could spin their wheels forever on the subject and never really get anywhere, other than convincing themselves of what they want to be true. I do not spend my time on them. I also don’t care about ‘secret societies’ and whether “they” hold sway over the world. I’m more interested in solving problems, not complaining about symptoms. I am not a Conspiracy Theorist.
_________________________________
- Accusation: I am convinced that aliens had a role in human development.
This one kind of makes me laugh. Although I do find that hypothesis fascinating, I do not think aliens had a definitive role in shaping mankind. I have enjoyed films like Ancient Aliens, which aired in America on the subject, but for anyone to assert this as truth is ridiculous. There is no data either way to solidify that hypothesis at all, and to be honest that kind of data will likely never manifest anyway, but it is kind of fun to speculate on the ‘what if’ scenario. Sometimes it’s nice to let the mind wander. Every once in a while you find a kernel of truth there. Now, do I believe that alien life is most likely plentiful in the universe? Absolutely, and so do many, many globally recognized and well respected astrophysicists and space scientists, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku, and the late great Carl Sagan.”
Happy New Year, everyone, and best wishes for 2012! In this, my first blog of the year, I will continue to profile some of the cases of missing persons that I’ve been featuring on my Twitter feed recently (and which are scheduled). This is Part II of the #disappeared series. Part I is here, and in that blog, written in early December, you’ll find an explanation of why I’m doing this, where these cases come from, and some of my thoughts about them.
Here are eight missing persons cases that I’ve linked to on Twitter. While I now profile two missing persons a day, at 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM (Pacific Time), these are cases that have stood out to me for one reason or another. It’s so difficult to choose which ones to showcase, because all of them deserve to be highlighted and publicized. Nevertheless, here are a few cases that I think are worth spending some time reading about. The links in each header are to case files on Charley Project, which I think is a terrific resource.
Torey Newlin, a 23-year-old Colorado State University student, loved the band String Cheese Incident. He, his brother and friends had seen more than 100 concerts of the jam-style band, which has a Grateful Dead-like following. In February 2002, he and some friends went to Hawaii to see the band. At the band’s concert at the Lahaina Civic Center on February 16, Newlin took a tab of LSD and wandered outside after the first set. When he tried to re-enter the venue, the security guards wouldn’t let him. Supposedly Newlin said he didn’t know where—or who—he was. Barred entry to the venue, he wandered off. He’s never been seen again.
Newlin’s disappearance triggered a major manhunt on the Hawaiian island of Maui, and a lot of media coverage. Ground and air searches yielded nothing. Torey Newlin was pretty distinctive, with his long hair and pierced tongue. He wasn’t wearing a shirt at the time of his disappearance. Despite the media attention to this case, he has never been found.
Newlin’s girlfriend was pregnant at the time he vanished. She eventually gave birth to his child. Sadly, that child has grown up fatherless for the past ten years as Torey Newlin remains missing.
If you know anything about Torey Newlin’s disappearance, call the Maui Police Department at 808-244-6400.
The hypothesis in the case of Nancy Elizabeth Branch—that she died in a plane crash—is almost self-evident. What is interesting, and frustrating, is that three other people vanished with her, and I can’t even find a record of their names.
On Sunday, December 6, 1992, Nancy Branch boarded a small airplane, a single-engine Piper Archer, at Santa Barbara Airport in California. I researched this case through NTSB records and found that the plane, registration number N81453, was owned by the West Valley Flying Club, which is still in operation. She and her friends were headed for Palo Alto after a weekend in Santa Barbara. The NTSB record of the case (link here) records these details:
“On December 6, 1992 at 1054 hours, the pilot telephoned Riverside, California FAA flight service station (FSS) and requested a weather briefing for his intended flight from his departure airfield to his destination.…The FSS briefer said the weather would continually get worse throughout the day. The pilot decided to go ahead with his planned flight. The pilot, with his 3 passengers aboard, was cleared for takeoff at 1203 hours. The pilot contacted FAA departure control and received advisories until radar service was terminated at 1214 hours. No further transmissions were recorded from the pilot.”
The pilot, whose name I could not track down, and his three passengers—including Nancy Branch—were never seen again. The Civil Air Patrol conducted an extensive search and rescue operation, utilizing over 50 planes. They expected to find the wreckage of the plane. They never did.
The NTSB report seems to suggest a possible cause—that the plane hit heavy weather, about which the pilot was warned before the flight. However, this may be misleading. What few news reports about the incident that I could find mention that there was no indication of trouble from the plane. It just disappeared. Nancy Branch is the only one of the plane’s occupants whose name was released to the public.
California is a big place, and a surprisingly large amount of it is inaccessible wilderness. Quite probably in a forest or mountain somewhere in this area there lies the twisted wreckage of a small aircraft, undiscovered for nearly 20 years. That, unfortunately, is probably Nancy Branch’s grave. One wonders if someday a hiker, a hunter or a forester might someday find the wreckage and bring closure to the families of Ms. Branch and the others who were lost that day.
Specialist Joseph Bushling, a soldier, was stationed at an Army base in Dugway, Utah. On May 8, 2011, he drove into the desert in a friend’s car for reasons that are unclear. At 7:00 PM he called a friend to report that he’d run out of gas and he was going to try to walk across the desert back to the base. It was raining, he was cold and—the detail that everyone remembers from this case—he had lost his shoes, which were flip-flops. Bushling said that he’d wrapped his T-shirt around his feet. He did not make it back to the base, and no body was ever found.
Bushling’s car, however, was found, 64 miles from the base. It was locked and the keys were gone. Searchers also found his Arkansas Razorbacks hat, and eventually the infamous flip-flops. There are no other clues.
The Army initially classified Bushling as a deserter, but it doesn’t seem like he ran away on his own accord. He liked the Army and wanted to become a nurse. The question of the flip-flops entrances people. How did he lose his shoes? Was he running from something—or someone? No one knows.
The desert outside the Dugway base is a huge, remote place. A body could remain undiscovered for a very long time. Joseph’s, if indeed he is dead, has not been found, and may never be.
Joseph Bushling has a distinctive tattoo. If you’ve seen a man with this tattoo, call the Tooele County Sheriff’s Office at 435-882-5600.
If you click on the Charley Project link to Cynthia Constantine’s case you won’t find much. The all-too-often refrain, “Few details are available in her case,” appears there. What we do know is that this pretty 15-year-old girl went out to walk her dog in Oakdale, New York on a July night in 1969. The dog came back. Cynthia didn’t. She has never been seen again.
There are rumors, of course. Discussion of her case on the Websleuths forum reveals that her brother may have still been looking for her as late as May 2011. There are also cryptic stories of a homeless man who talked about a girl who was abducted and killed in the same area and never found, and someone claiming to be a private investigator from the area who knew something about an illegal abortion ring run by a notorious sexual predator. You can’t believe everything some anonymous person says on the Internet, though—in fact, you can’t believe anything with that provenance in most cases—but, more than 40 years later and the case gone very cold, speculation and rumination is about all we have to deal with. Whatever happened to Cynthia Constantine, it was undoubtedly grisly and tragic. If there is a killer out there, he (or she) has not been brought to justice.
The Sayegh case is heartbreaking, macabre, horrifying, and complicated. It also remains unsolved after nearly 35 years.
On October 25, 1978, six-year-old Cary Sayegh was last seen getting into a stranger’s car in front of the Albert Einstein Hebrew Day School in Las Vegas, Nevada. Three hours later Sayegh’s parents received a phone call where an unidentified man demanded $500,000 ransom for Carey. At the time Cary’s father, who owned a carpet business, was under indictment for attempting to bribe a public official—Harry Reid, who is now in the U.S. Senate. After this initial call, the kidnapper never contacted the family again, and Carey was never found.
Suspicion focused on a man named Jerry Burgess, who had committed a sexual assault near the same school where Cary was abducted, and whose voice Cary’s family identified as the ransom caller. In 1982 he was charged with kidnapping Cary, but the jury acquitted him for lack of evidence. Years later Burgess was arrested again. During the investigation that led to his arrest, he told an undercover agent that he could dispose of a body by welding it inside a steel drum. He’d done it before, he claimed—to Cary Sayegh in 1978.
The Sayegh case was one of the most intensive manhunts in Las Vegas history up until that time, but the case continued to spin strange tangents even decades later. Burgess alleged at his trial that Sayegh was still alive and living in Israel, though no one could prove it. Police evidently investigated at tip that Cary Sayegh was alive and well in Boston in 1999. That same year Cary’s father, heavily in debt from a gambling addiction, fled to Israel. He later came back and made a settlement with his creditors. Jerry Burgess is today in prison for crimes unrelated to the Sayegh case, but he maintains his innocence of the boy’s kidnapping.
Are Cary’s remains hidden inside a steel drum buried somewhere under Las Vegas? Or might you run into him strolling down Boyleston Street in Boston—or at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem? As of yet, no one knows.
The case of Zebb Wayne Quinn, a Wal-Mart employee who vanished from Asheville, North Carolina just after New Year’s 2000, is full of bizarre clues that all seem to point in different directions.
Quinn, 18 at the time of his disappearance, left work at 9PM on January 2, 2000 in the company of a friend, one Robert Owens, each driving separate vehicles. Both cars were seen pulling away from a gas station together. After that, Quinn dropped off the face of the earth. Owens was somehow injured in a car accident—or perhaps more than one car accident—on the night or morning of January 2-3. He told police that Quinn had accidentally rear-ended his truck, then drove away. On the morning of January 3, Owens called the Wal-Mart where Quinn worked and told them he was sick and wouldn’t be coming in. Then Owens refused to cooperate with police.
Two weeks later the police found Quinn’s car in the parking lot of a restaurant. Someone had drawn lips and exclamation points on the rear window. When the police opened the car, they found a black Labrador puppy in the car. Zebb Quinn didn’t own a pet. They also found a plastic hotel room key.
There were rumors that Quinn was having a relationship with a woman whose boyfriend may have threatened him. The police investigated this possibility but evidently couldn’t find any evidence against her or the boyfriend. Owens was not charged with anything, but evidently he has been in trouble with the law since 2000, having been arrested in 2007.
This case sticks out in peoples’ minds because of the bizarre details of the design drawn on the window and the mysterious Labrador puppy. As for Zebb Quinn himself, he has not been seen in twelve years. Until someone comes forward, whatever might have happened to him—at whoever’s hands—can be nothing more than conjecture.
Lester Jones, known to his friends as “L.J.,” was a graduate student at Mississippi State University, studying biomedical engineering. He was a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and extremely well thought-of by those who knew him. On January 11, 2010, L.J. was traveling from his family’s home in Tupelo to visit friends in Jackson. He stopped at a Sprint Mart gas station/convenience store in Flowood, Mississippi. An image of L.J. was captured on the convenience store’s security camera at 10:18 PM. That was the last anyone ever saw of him.
Later, a customer at the gas station found a cell phone in the bathroom and turned it in to the management. It was L.J.’s. There is no telling whether the abandonment of his cell phone is connected to his disappearance.
L.J.’s car is also missing. It’s common for a person who is last seen in or near their car to go missing and then the car is later found abandoned somewhere, but L.J.’s was never found at all. The potential hypotheses to explain disappearances get much more complicated when you have to account for not only a missing person, but a vehicle.
If you’ve seen Lester Jones or his car—a 2002 Ford Expedition, license no. (Mississippi) KTW-714, call the Starkville Police Department at 662-323-4131.
The case of Barbara Zakon, like Cynthia Constantine, is one where there is very little information: once again Charley Project states “Few details are available in her case.” Barbara Zakon, age unknown but about 55 or so, vanished from Brooklyn at about 2:00 PM on the afternoon of December 22, 1984. We know nothing more than that about her disappearance. What we do know is a little bit about Barbara herself: she was a Holocaust survivor and in fact had an inmate number from a Nazi concentration camp tattooed on her forearm.
Barbara’s case is a sad one because it seems like there was very little investigation done in her case. The NYPD’s case file on her has probably been closed for many years. Meghan Good, the woman who runs the Charley Project site, wrote a blog about this particular case. She writes:
“[W]hat seems saddest of all to me is that she is so forgotten. The NYPD missing persons site is pathetic and rarely updated. It no longer profiles old cases like hers and, as you can see, there was little enough to begin with. Online, Barbara exists only on a few private sites like mine. Someone cared enough about her to report her missing, but it’s likely that whoever that was is dead. It’s just as likely that her actual casefile within the police department is either entirely missing or contains little more information than what I have on the Charley Project site. (You’d be surprised to find out how many of those old missing persons reports were simply lost or thrown away without being solved.) And, as you say, all for a woman who went through so much. Last night I found myself looking through Yad Vashem’s database of Shoah Victims’ Names at people named Zakon, wondering if any of them were Barbara’s relatives.”
After reading this blog I did exactly that. (The Yad Vashem database of Holocaust victims is an amazing resource, by the way). There was a Yisrael Zakon, born in 1875 in Lithuania, murdered there in 1941; a Yitzhak Zakon from Neustadt, Czechoslovakia, date of death unknown; a Mordechai Zachon from Warsaw, Poland, the owner of a shoe factory; and numerous others. We have no way of knowing if any of them are related to Barbara, or what her own story is about surviving the Holocaust. If she was 55 in 1984, she would have been born about 1929, thus making her a young teenager at the time of World War II.
I found myself thinking a long time about this woman. The Holocaust is an astoundingly awful and staggering experience to contemplate, and the only way you can do it successfully is by looking at it through the eyes of someone who was there. How did a girl in her early teens, presumably in Poland or elsewhere in Eastern Europe, survive this horror? How many of her family members didn’t make it? How did she eventually come to America? You could write a compelling book or make a movie about such a story, but Barbara’s will never be known. We have no clue what happened to her on that street in Brooklyn in December 1984. Likely we never will. This illustrates the crushing sadness of missing persons.
In the unlikely event that you know anything about Barbara Zakon, call the New York City Police at 212-473-2042.
Conclusion
I am constantly reading missing persons cases on the web and researching details of various cases. I am not an investigator and have nothing to do with law enforcement, but as I said in my first blog I think these cases deserve attention. If you’d like to help, keep up with the Charley Project and a similar missing persons database called Project Jason. I’ll probably keep doing these profiles periodically on my blog as well. In the meantime, hope and pray for the disappeared and their families.
Thanks for reading.
[Note: some of the images in this blog came from the Charley Project--my understanding is that they originally came from law enforcement agencies and thus are public domain, but in any event, as it's difficult to publicize missing persons without photos of them, I hope it is OK that I used them.]
Here is my first (and possibly last?) official podcast, a wrap-up for the end of 2011 highlighting some of the things I’ve written about on this blog this year. In 2 parts:
Enjoy, and I hope everyone has a great New Year’s holiday! Thanks for reading.
Everything in this video is a direct quote from a comment either posted here, or in reference to this blog. Warning: some of the language gets a little saucy toward the end!
I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas. Yes, even the conspiracy theorists!
This blog, originally posted December 4, 2011, was updated January 3, 2012. I added some additional information to the cases of Joseph Crater and Jeremy Bright. Please refer to those sections for the updates.
When you hear the words “missing person,” what—or who—comes immediately to mind? “Amber Alerts?” The faces of children on milk cartons? Soul Asylum’s famous 1992 music video for the song “Runaway Train”? These are the usual associations. Almost all of us, when confronted with the words “missing person,” think about missing children. Perhaps you can even name some famous missing children or young people: Natalee Holloway, Adam Walsh, Kyron Horman, Johnny Gosch, etc. This is certainly what I thought about. Then I discovered a website called The Charley Project, and I began to realize just how complex—and how huge—the problem of missing persons really is.
Hundreds of people disappear in the United States every year. The majority of them are adults. Very, very few of these cases ever attract any significant media attention. In fact, the media’s extremely selective attention to publicizing missing persons has given rise to a phenomena known as “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” Indeed, if you go missing, your chances of winding up on the news are vastly increased if you are a white woman under the age of 25, preferably blonde, like Natalee Holloway. Certainly if a child goes missing it’s crucial that an effort to publicize her or his disappearance should be made immediately. But, children aren’t the whole story. My personal belief is that the media’s obsessive focus on missing children creates the erroneous impression in the public’s mind that most missing persons cases are children, and that the cause of their disappearance is usually abduction by strangers. In fact, the truth is that adults go missing more often than children do, and there are seldom any easy explanations for why they disappear.
Lately I’ve been using this blog to showcase some things I’ve been doing with my Twitter account, such as my “100 Days of JFK Debunking.” If you follow my Twitter, however, you may have noticed that for about the last six weeks I’ve been posting a missing persons report, using the hashtag #disappeared, every day at 4PM. Each one of the links I post is a link to a report on Charley Project, which is a database of unsolved missing persons cases. At first this was a pretty low-key project, but lately I’ve begun to notice some of my followers becoming very interested in these cases. Consequently, I’ve decided to do two things. First, starting this week I’m adding a second daily #disappeared tweet. Second, I plan to do a series of blog entries periodically highlighting some of the more interesting and noteworthy cases that I’ve featured on my Twitter. This is the first article in that series.
Jordan Hall’s case is a sad one. A young man, age 20, with a history of mental problems, he was released from a mental ward shortly before his disappearance. Charley Project sums up his case as follows:
“Hall was discharged from a New York hospital against the advice of his family members and social workers on March 19, 2001. He visited relatives for several days before returning to his residence in the 700 Block of Ashland Avenue in Buffalo, New York on March 23, 2001. Hall phoned his mother during the evening hours and asked her to bring him back to the hospital. He disappeared before she arrived at his home. Hall has never been heard from again.”
In May 2001, the Buffalo News ran an article on Hall’s disappearance, which highlights the impact that a missing relative has on their loved ones. The article states:
“Joan Hall and her husband, Bruce, fear the worst. They know what could have happened, especially after Jordan, just before he disappeared, told his mother about a failed suicide attempt…. The Halls have passed out hundreds of fliers; visited local soup kitchens, shelters, social clubs, colleges and neighborhoods he frequented; called local hospitals repeatedly; and lobbied to get their son listed in various missing persons’ files…. In searching for Jordan, his family has found something to cling to — the extraordinary generosity of workers and cli-ents in soup kitchens and shelters.
“I’m hoping that maybe somebody’s extending that same generosity to Jordan,” his mother said. “I don’t think he could be alive unless somebody were helping him.”
It is easy to dismiss such cases as being beyond hope. Curious about this case, I looked up Hall’s address—700 Ashland Avenue, Buffalo, NY—on Google Earth. There is a large body of water only a few blocks nearby. Certainly it’s possible that the young man was suicidal and might have jumped in the water, but we can never be sure. Surely the police investigated that possibility. If he’s dead, why hasn’t his body been found? If he’s alive, living under the care of someone else as his family hopes, why haven’t they contacted anyone?
These sorts of questions are disturbingly familiar in these cases. As the years go by leads get more and more scarce and activity on cold cases dwindles to nothing. But that doesn’t change the fact that this person is missing, and his family still needs closure. A happy ending to a case like this is entirely possible.
If you know anything about Jordan Hall’s disappearance, call the Buffalo Police at 716-851-4494.
The case of Judge Crater is one of the most baffling disappearances in recorded history. Age 41, an associate justice on the New York Supreme Court, Crater, visiting New York City, had dinner with a friend at Billy Haas’s Chophouse on West 45th Street in Manhattan, then hailed a cab and vanished off the face of the earth. Supposedly he was headed to a Broadway show he had tickets for, but not only did he never arrive at the theater, but there were no records of taxicabs having picked him up. Judge Crater has never been seen again.
Unlike “Missing White Women,” the news media in 1930 did spend a tremendous amount of attention on Crater’s case. Suspicion focused on his supposed political corruption—he was connected to New York political machine Tammany Hall—and his financial dealings. Crater cashed $5,000 in checks the day of his disappearance. Later some strange papers were found among Crater’s effects, including what could have been a potential suicide note, but police thought this may have been planted after the fact.
Even more oddly, Crater was, at the time of his disappearance, having an affair with a woman named Sally Ritz, who herself vanished about a month after Crater did. No trace of her was ever discovered either. Charley Project has a file on her as well, although her case didn’t receive the same publicity as Crater’s did.
Theories abound on what happened to Judge Crater. The most prominent of them is that he was murdered by the Mafia, and then Ritz, having information about the killing, was killed too in order to silence her. Crater was declared legally dead in 1939. More than 80 years after the disappearance, it will probably never be solved, but Crater’s case will endure as one of the more puzzling vanishings of the twentieth century.
Update 3 January 2012
Since I wrote this blog I have done some additional research into the case of Judge Crater. In 2004 Richard J. Tofel published a book, Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater and the New York He Left Behind. I found the book a very absorbing and interesting history, but it offers little insight into the Crater case that hasn’t appeared elsewhere.
There does, however, appear to be some dispute as to whether Sally Lou Ritz, Crater’s dinner companion, disappeared as well. The Wikipedia article on Crater claims that she was alive in 1937. It cites as a source a 1937 Pennsylvania newspaper article. I haven’t seen a copy of this article yet, but I’m curious whether it checks out, so there may be a further update to this blog later on.
I remember seeing a profile of Jeremy Bright on the old Lifetime TV show Unsolved Mysteries. That was about 1988, certainly no later than 1990. A quarter century after 14-year-old Jeremy Bright vanished from Myrtle Point, Oregon, there are still no leads in his case. The case made an impression on me because Bright was the same age I was at the time of his disappearance.
Bright was attending the Coos County Fair along with his sister. At about 9:30 PM on August 14, 1986, he saw his stepfather at a café and borrowed money from him. Bright was supposed to pick up his sister later that evening. No one ever saw him again.
The Unsolved Mysteries report, as I recall, detailed several rumors about what happened to Jeremy. A particularly horrific one was that he went with some rednecks who were conducting target practice with their guns and he was accidentally shot. The rednecks are rumored to have kept him locked in a basement, suffering from his wounds for two weeks before expiring, too afraid of punishment to admit what they did. As I recall (again, it’s been 20 years since I saw the segment) this rumor was not substantiated. Another rumor was that he drowned in the Coquille River, or was accidentally shot while swimming. These too have not been confirmed.
On August 14, 2011, the 25th anniversary of Bright’s disappearance, his family, now evidently believing he is dead, held a memorial service for him. I cannot imagine the crushing grief that this family must have gone through not knowing what happened to him. The police classify Bright’s case as a likely homicide.
Update 3 January 2012
I did a bit more looking into this case. The Unsolved Mysteries episode on Jeremy Bright was broadcast January 18, 1989. I found the segment from the show hosted on YouTube. I can’t vouch for the veracity of the information–I’m frankly a little skeptical of the television show, which also did numerous segments of paranormal activity, UFOs and other “woo” subjects–but there is at least a little more detail here, such as the finding of Jeremy’s wallet and keys at his house (interesting, if true). The picture quality is horrible, but here are the videos.
There is a Wiki site devoted to the show Unsolved Mysteries. I looked up Jeremy Bright on the wiki and found some follow-up information. Again, we cannot take this information at face value. It may be bogus. Nevertheless, this is rumored:
“Several people who would have had information on Jeremy’s fate have since died: Terry Steinhoff, who was with his cousin David, the person covered in blood, died of a drug overdose in prison in 2007 while serving for an unrelated murder. Around 1988, four of Jeremy’s friends died together in a car accident, and his friend Johnny died in January 2011. His stepfather, Orville Gulseth, died in 2003 at age 66.”
Before I really began looking at missing persons cases I assumed that the vast majority of them were hopeless—if a person was missing a significant amount of time, you could safely assume that they were dead and there is little chance of finding out what happened. As I looked at the cases, though, I found this blanket assumption is not tenable in many cases. There are some cases—even decades old—where there is reasonable hope that the person is still alive and can be located.
Elizabeth Gill’s case is one of those. She was not quite three years old when she vanished from her family’s front yard in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. She was in the care of her older siblings at the time; Gill’s parents were in St. Louis. Although she has not been seen since 1965, authorities believe she may still be alive, possibly abducted by a non-family member and raised by someone else under an assumed name. The case was active as of last year and an investigation is continuing.
Because she was so young at the time of her disappearance, if Elizabeth Gill is still alive it’s possible she may not even remember being abducted (if that’s what happened to her). This case posits the fascinating possibility that she may not even know who she really is. I’ve posted two pictures here—one as Elizabeth looked in 1965, and the second an age-progressed picture depicting what she might look like today.
If you have seen her—or if you think you may be Elizabeth Ann Gill—call the Cape Girardeau, MO police department at 573-335-6621.
The Gricar case is especially fascinating, as it contains echoes of the Judge Crater case. Like Crater, Gricar was an officer of the court, having served for 20 years as district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania. On April 15, 2005, Gricar phoned his girlfriend from his car and said he was driving towards Lewisburg, PA. That was the last anyone heard from him. Gricar’s car, a Mini Cooper, was found 45 miles from his home. The car was locked and the keys were gone. Gricar’s cell phone was inside, but his laptop was missing. Furthermore, cigarette ashes found in the car indicated someone had smoked in the vehicle. Ray Gricar didn’t smoke.
A few months later the remnants of the hard drive from Gricar’s laptop was found on the banks of a river. It was too badly damaged to gain any information from it, but it’s possible someone abducted and killed him in order to destroy data on the hard drive. If so, where is the body?
What’s very odd about this case is that Gricar’s brother also disappeared. He vanished in May 1996 in Ohio and his body was eventually fished out of a river. The police ruled Roy Gricar’s death a suicide. Was Ray’s case connected to his brother’s? No one knows.
I remember hearing about the Gricar case when it happened—I was practicing law at the time and I vaguely recall seeing an email or some Internet posting on lawyers’ groups requesting information on the missing D.A. There is obviously a real-life mystery here, and one that may never be solved.
Do you know anything about the case of District Attorney Gricar? If so, call the Bellefonte, PA Police Department at 814-353-2320.
Almost a century ago, four-year-old Robert Dunbar wandered away from the cabins where his family was staying on vacation at Swayze Lake in Louisiana and was never seen again. A set of footprints was found leading out of the area toward a railroad bridge, and there were reports of a strange man in the area at the time. Authorities concluded he’d been abducted. In 1912 there were no milk cartons to put pictures on, no DNA testing and no central databases of criminals, sex offenders or missing persons. A case like this was unlikely to be solved at that time.
What makes this case fascinating is what happened subsequently. In 1913 a man named William Walters was charged with kidnapping Dunbar, largely because he had a child with him matching Dunbar’s description and close in age. Walters said the child had been given to him by friends. The courts decided that child was Robert Dunbar, and they sent him home to live with his family. That “Robert Dunbar” grew up, had children and eventually died. Family members say that even he wasn’t 100% certain he was the “real” Robert Dunbar.
In 2004, DNA testing proved that he wasn’t—he was unrelated to the Dunbar family. That means that Walters did not kidnap him, and we have no idea what happened to the real Robert Dunbar. Indeed we also do not know the identity of the child “given” to Walters who was raised erroneously as Robert Dunbar. He turned out not to be related to the friends who “gave” him to Walters, though the leading theory was at the time that if he wasn’t Robert Dunbar, he must have been the illegitimate son of the female friend, sired by Walters’s brother.
Confused yet? Imagine what the Dunbar family must think. Obviously this case is no longer being investigated by law enforcement, but the mystery of what happened to the real Robert Dunbar, and who the boy mistaken for him actually was, is far from settled.
Even stranger than single-person disappearances are the multiple disappearances. Although it’s much rarer, people do sometimes vanish together. The case of Camp-Britto-Kregear is one of these rare cases.
Charley Project says:
“Camp was last seen with her young daughter, Cynthia Britto, and her sister-in-law, Lisa Kregear, on May 29, 1992. Camp had recently received visitation rights to see her young son, and she, Kregear and Britto visited him at his father’s home in Shamrock, Oklahoma that day. She had not seen him for several months prior to the visit. Camp’s husband told authorities that his wife called him from a pay phone in Shamrock at 5:00 PM and said the visit had gone well and they were on their way home…Camp’s former mother-in-law, Beverly Noe, was supposed to provide transportation…She stated she and Camp had an argument in the car and Noe asked the two women and Britto to get out at a Wal-Mart store in Chandler, Oklahoma at 6:00 PM. They never arrived home and have not been heard from again.”
Camp and Kregear were both 23; Britto was six. What makes this case bizarre is that all three are missing. If Camp had been alone, you can spin a number of horrifying scenarios about what might have happened, but the complications abound when you add another adult woman and a young child into the mix. If they met with foul play, why haven’t any trace of any of the three ever been found? With three missing people you can rule out a lot of typical go-to explanations for missing persons—suicide, freak accident, ending up “off the grid” in a homeless situation or something along those lines. What could possibly have happened to these women and the girl that could leave no trace of any of them?
If you have answers, call the Oklahoma State Police at 405-848-6724.
The case of Jay Pringle is one that illustrates why I find missing persons cases to be so fascinating: sometimes they intersect with debunking.
Jay Pringle, from my home state of Oregon, traveled to the Los Angeles area in the spring of 1977. He was then seventeen. He was last seen on April 19, 1977 in Gardena, CA, a suburb of L.A, carrying a suitcase and a blanket. Evidently he’d had a falling-out with a friend who said they had an argument. The friend traveled from Las Vegas back to Pringle’s hometown of Medford, OR after spending all of Pringle’s money. That person—I could not track down his name—was not charged with anything for lack of evidence.
In researching the Pringle case I came upon a web forum posting by someone claiming to be a psychic. This person claims that Pringle’s body is buried behind an Italian restaurant somewhere. No substantiation is given for this claim. Another forum post, made just last month, conjectures that Pringle may have been a victim of serial killer Randy Kraft, who targeted teenage boys wandering on California freeways in the late 1970s and who also had a connection to Oregon. This theory makes some sense—Kraft, currently on Death Row at San Quentin, is suspected of many more murders than he was accused of—but there is no evidence to substantiate it.
I’m aware that police departments sometimes use psychics to try to gain insight on cold cases. As I am skeptical that psychic powers exist, I doubt this practice has really paid off. Nevertheless, the post about the Italian restaurant made me mad. Here is a family who lost their son almost 40 years ago. The last thing they must want is some Internet psychic making unsubstantiated claims about their son’s last resting place.
Arkadiy Tashman, called “Ark,” was from a family of Russian émigrés who live in the New York City area. In January 2005 Tashman left a friend’s house in the wee hours of the morning. He was never seen again. Later that day Tashman’s parents found a note he’d left in his bedroom that read simply, “Sorry about this. No wake, no funeral.” He was seventeen.
Although this evidence points toward suicide—and it seems Arkadiy may have thought about suicide before—the Tashman family isn’t convinced that he took his own life. Ark was an avid skateboarder, and police have searched for him at skateboard hangouts in the New York area. Tashman’s sister has continued the search for him. She is featured in this news clip, uploaded to YouTube in 2007, which brings home the anguish that family members feel for their missing loved ones.
If you know anything about Arkadiy Tashman, call the New York City Police Department at 212-473-2042.
What’s Coming Up
I intend to continue featuring missing persons reports on my Twitter. I have at least one follower who faithfully retweets them nearly every day. When I asked my followers recently if they like this feature and want me to continue doing it, several people said that definitely, yes I should. I also plan periodically to feature some of these cases on my blog, as I have done today. So, in the next few months expect some more articles like this one.
Missing persons are a huge problem, and they rarely get the media attention that is lavished on high-profile cases like Natalie Holloway or Kyron Horman. I think the Charley Project is a terrific resource and it’s one of my favorite websites. Searching for missing persons is often a shot in the dark, but publicity is the key to cracking these cases. If I can help, even just a little bit, my time will be well spent.
Thanks for reading.
[Note: some of the images in this blog came from the Charley Project--my understanding is that they originally came from law enforcement agencies and thus are public domain, but in any event, as it's difficult to publicize missing persons without photos of them, I hope it is OK that I used them.]
Once in a while you read something that puts a complicated subject into such clear and perfect perspective that it instantly becomes, by virtue of its cogency, virtually the last word on the subject. I had that experience recently with a paper by Ryan Mackey, a former debunker from the JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation) forums, on the subject of 9/11 conspiracy theories. I’m devoting a blog post specifically to bring this article to the attention of my readers because I believe it’s that important and it deserves to be highlighted.
Mackey has written a paper called The Great Internet Conspiracy: The Role of Technology and Social Media in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Currently the paper is available as a .PDF file here. It’s 83 pages long, including footnotes and sources. This paper should be required reading, both for the misguided souls out there who are still unfortunate enough to believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories, but also—and even more importantly—for those of us who have devoted considerable time and effort to refuting and debunking these theories. Mackey’s paper shines a very interesting light on us, our motivations, and our actions, and it does so in a way I have not seen before.
Why Did 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Take Off?
Mackey’s main point in the paper is to analyze how and why 9/11 conspiracy theories rose and eventually fell in the public consciousness. His main thesis is that the short-lived popularity of conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks was largely due to a “perfect storm” of converging factors, chief among them the changing role of the Internet in peoples’ social lives and identities.
Some of the main related points that Mackey makes are:
He argues that “9/11 Truth” peaked in 2006 and has been on a steady decline since then. He backs this up with observations on how popular Truther activism has been since 2006 (not much), how many people are still out there talking about 9/11 conspiracy theories (not many), and what the general public’s view of “Truthers” is today (most people think they’re nuts, or simply ignore them).
He argues that the brief surge in popularity of “9/11 Truth” is not an effect of the content of the conspiracy theory. He gets there by analyzing 9/11 conspiracy theories in the context of other conspiracy theories that have been popular over the past 30 years, such as the “Apollo moon hoax” or Columbine school massacre conspiracies.
He argues that what made “9/11 Truth” seem to have more importance than it did was the activist nature of some of its purveyors—such as Richard Gage, whose tactics of taking the conspiracy theory to the public differ greatly from previous pre-9/11 conspiracy theorists who are mostly content with talking about conspiracy theories in small insular groups that don’t reach out to others.
This is a key point. Mackey says:
“So that is it in a nutshell – there we have the secret ingredient that distinguished the 9/11 conspiracy theories from others. It had somehow mutated from the traditional, imaginative, individual realm of personal fantasy into an aggressive strain of misguided activism. In so doing it had insulted the public and made itself look far more fearsome than it actually was. My Internet-based metric of “popularity” was detecting something different than I had expected. I was not measuring an increase in the number of conspiracy theorists or in their coherent mobilization behind a single cause. Instead, I was only finding the volume and rancor of the arguments between a few noisy Truthers and everyone else. ”
The reason for this misguided activism? Social media, says Mackey. The heyday of “9/11 Truth” was also the heyday of MySpace, the first real social networking site to take off. It was also the time when YouTube burst into the public consciousness. I’ve written before about how and why YouTube is uniquely attractive to conspiracy theorists. The convergence of these factors, says Mackey, meant it was suddenly easy for misguided Truthers, most of whom are too lazy to go out and do any activism in the real world, to pretend to be activists by forwarding links to YouTube videos supportive of the conspiracy theory. This, combined with the ferocity of how Truthers argue with people who don’t support their theories, made it look as if legions of tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists were having a real impact on public consciousness—when in fact their decline had already begun.
Is The Truth Movement Dead? Yes.
The refreshing thing about Mackey’s paper—and one that comes as welcome news to me, as it should to other debunkers—is its confirmation of what I think most of us have suspected for quite a while now: the 9/11 Truth movement is dead. By that I mean, it is not totally extinct, as you can see from a few hard-core dead-enders out there still preaching the faith, but it’s basically “as dead as it’s going to get.” Mackey has this to say:
“With its best days behind it, the Truth Movement is once again just another ordinary conspiracy theory. But there is no reason to assume it will totally disappear. Of the thirty popular conspiracy theories we examined earlier, almost all can still gather attention and spawn debate today, usually in strange corners of the internet such as the David Icke Forum or Above Top Secret. On rare occasions, they may even be seen in real life. I’m betting, however, you won’t catch even a glimpse of the Truth Movement. ”
This is entirely consistent with my own observations. The websites that trafficked in 9/11 Truth in 2005/06 are now either gone or just about dead. Loose Change, which Mackey credits with being a huge boon to the Truth movement, is discredited now—including by its own creator Dylan Avery, who has disavowed most of it. Mark Roberts, the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of debunkers” who ran the single best website to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories on the entire Internet, hasn’t updated the site in almost three years. The ten-year anniversary of 9/11 saw virtually no organized activity by Truthers. Indeed, there is little reason to think that 9/11 Truth is going anywhere but into the dustbin of history.
Mackey is also right that it won’t ever totally disappear. My latest, and possibly, last debunking effort is against a new Internet conspiracy theory film called Thrive, which mentions (in passing) 9/11 conspiracy theories. I still occasionally get angry responses from Truthers on Twitter who don’t like when I say something that supports the “official story.” But the chances of 9/11 Truth having a major resurgence are virtually nil. It’s just not going to happen.
That is, frankly, a relief.
Is Debunking Worthwhile? Yes, and no.
Some of the most startling issues in Mackey’s paper, at least to me, regard his views of debunkers—of which he admits he was (and possibly still is) one. Early in the paper he tackles the very thorny question about whether systematic opposition to 9/11 conspiracy theories—arguing with Truthers on the Internet, basically—has any real point. After concluding that a small portion of his time spent since 2005 pushing back against 9/11 conspiracy theories was worthwhile, Mackey says:
“The majority however was clearly wasted, or more accurately of no value beyond simple entertainment. Like many others, I would often self-justify my involvement with the notion that other readers, those with a less technical background who might be swayed by the Truth Movement, would read my comments and learn from them. Over the years I have received messages and e-mails from a few people who were convinced by my efforts, but only a very few – around ten. Many more (in the hundreds) were those who wrote simply because they too were irritated by Truthers, or engaged in their own arguments against Truthers, and found my contributions useful or amusing. And, of course, there were the Truthers themselves, numbering about forty, who wished only to argue with me on a private channel in addition to the public debate. Some even wrote just to issue vague threats about what would happen to “traitors” and “collaborators” once they achieved their Utopia. There were also a few who were so incoherent that I wondered how they’d managed to operate a computer in the first place. But that’s all – a very small group indeed.”
This also mirrors my own experience exactly. I do occasionally receive messages of thanks from former conspiracy theorists who have read my stuff and taken from it some useful information with which to change their worldview—such as the fellow who recently thanked me for helping him get out of the pro-conspiracist Zeitgeist Movement. But Mackey’s observations about how few these really are, and especially about self-justifying, also ring true.
This may be something that debunkers don’t really want to hear. I mean, we spend a lot of time pushing back against these idiotic theories, demonstrating why they’re wrong and explaining why people shouldn’t believe in them. It’s sobering to have someone tell us that most of this time is wasted. But Mackey may have a point. Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admit it’s worth serious consideration.
Who Are Debunkers? Why Do We Do What We Do?
Even more startling than Mackey’s views on the usefulness of debunking, however, is his description of who debunkers are and why we do what we do. This may also be unpopular in the skeptic crowd, but it’s worth taking a look at what he has to say:
“[T]he “debunkers” opposing the Truth Movement do not merely correct misinformation invented by Truthers, but go further, opposing the mindset and social mechanisms that gave the Truth Movement a place to form. The modern debunkers view the Truth Movement as a defective world view that somehow escaped summary judgment and gained acceptance on the Internet, defying the “system” of the Marketplace of Ideas and thereby requiring a systematic response. Unfortunately, a permanent solution is not actually achievable. There is no way to stamp out all Truthers, particularly not while preserving the spirit of open exchange the Internet supposedly represents.
As a result of this frustration, many debunkers have noticed a reactionary, obsessive behavior appearing in their ranks, one that occasionally manifests with fervor reminiscent of anti-Communism. And strangely, these incidents seem to be increasing, even though the Truth Movement is in full retreat. I uncovered signs of this myself in a small 2009 opinion poll on the JREF Forum, where a plurality of respondents indicated not just willingness, but actual desire, to continue arguing with Truthers to the bitter end.”
Again, my own experience has confirmed absolutely what Mackey has said. I recognize this behavior even in myself. There is no question that I believe conspiracy theorists in general, and 9/11 Truthers in particular, have a defective worldview that should be stamped out if at all possible. If deconstructing this worldview is not possible—as I concede it is not—the next best thing is to relegate conspiracy theorists to a permanent status of marginalization, a lunatic fringe with such immediate negative associations that it can never, and will never, achieve any sort of mainstream acceptance. I’ve certainly directed a lot of effort toward this end, and I believe my efforts have been successful, at least to the limited extent that success is realistically possible in this realm.
In his (and our) defense, Mackey goes on to say:
“But while this kind of determined retaliation is counter-productive, it is understandable. After all, if the free market of ideas seems to be failing, many will rush to shore it up. A Utopian Internet that only educates, never misleads, is certainly a worthy goal. It just isn’t realistic.”
This is also probably true. My own personal motivations for debunking do not stem from a “Utopian” vision of the Internet—I have always accepted, and still do, that the vast majority of the Internet is polluted with worthless crap, and in such an environment toxic mindsets such as conspiracy theories will undoubtedly flourish. I don’t take a very philosophical approach to the Internet in general. However, one of my main motivations in debunking is to make sure that there is at least some factually accurate and logically supportable information out there next to the crap—to make sure that someone who Googles “Thrive movie” or “Zeitgeist Movement” at least gets some genuine information instead of propaganda spun to support a conspiracy theorist viewpoint. So, to this extent, I agree with Mackey’s observation again.
One thing that should be made clear–and one thing that is in danger of being misinterpreted by conspiracy theorists–is the idea that agreement with Mackey’s points regarding the pathology of debunkers implies that any arguments made by debunkers in that context are in any way invalid. Every criticism I have ever made about conspiracy theories, conspiracy movements or cults, or the conspiracy theory worldview is 100% correct so far as I know it, and one of the major tenets of skepticism is to approach things of this nature with facts that can be verified and reasoning that is logically sound. People’s reasons for debunking may vary. Whatever they are, it does not affect the content of the arguments they have presented. This is what separates debunkers from conspiracy theorists. Debunkers employ true arguments and cogent reasoning to destroy conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists will not shirk at deploying demonstrably false arguments to support their views, because in their minds the end justifies the means. This point must be clearly understood in order for this evaluation of Mackey’s thesis to make sense, but it’s a point I suspect will be completely lost on conspiracy nuts.
Do We Have To Worry About Conspiracy Theories?
In the final sections of Mackey’s paper, he makes a very interesting argument. He claims that in today’s rapid-fire Internet environment, dominated by instant social media like Twitter, the rise and fall of a conspiracy theory which in 2005/06 might have taken years can instead now take weeks, days, or even hours. He gives two interesting examples: the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory, and the supposition, promoted primarily by Truthers, that Osama bin Laden was not killed by U.S. forces on May 1, 2011.
About the first, Mackey says:
“The Birther conspiracy theory…made the jump into the mainstream very quickly. Unlike the Truth Movement, it seems to have begun its runaway growth phase in only a matter of months, steeply increasing in popularity from mid-2009 through April 2011. It peaked with something like 30% of Americans believing the conspiracy theory (there is a lot of scatter in the polls), but then rapidly slipped to a stable support level of about 10%. Overall, this trajectory is comparable to the Truth Movement’s popularity, except for the greatly accelerated leap into public view.
This behavior is consistent with our theory of Internet-fueled growth: Unlike the Truth Movement, the Birther conspiracy already had activists and an argumentative public, courtesy of an unusually contentious period in politics, and already had social media to spread its message. However, the type of information being discussed was much less engaging – one might spend hours poring over a .GIF image of an old birth certificate…but there just wasn’t anything as shocking as 9/11 to be found this time. It thus comes as no surprise that it would enter the mainstream more quickly, attract a significant number of low-commitment supporters as before, and then dissipate once the conspiracists had exhausted their argument.”
About the Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory—the “Deathers”–he says this:
“We see a similar pattern in the Deather conspiracy theory, except here the timeline is compressed even further. This conspiracy theory exploded into the mainstream at the same speed as the news story it challenged, reaching the media almost instantly. One amusing note comes from David Wiegel of Slate, who referred to “Osama bin Trutherism” in an opinion piece on the very day bin Laden’s death was announced. A few polls showed a sudden spike of believers, as high as 20% to 30% in various hastily-conducted media surveys, but after only a week it was clear that the conspiracy theory was already in decline. As Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling described it on 10 May 2011, only half-joking, “we’ve got more voters who think the President is the Anti-Christ than think Osama bin Laden is still alive.”
From the standpoint of debunkers, I was on the front lines during the rise and fall of the “Deather” theory. Mackey points out that this theory was spread primarily by Twitter. I am a very heavy Twitter user. On the morning after bin Laden’s death was announced, I was already responding to angry @ replies by conspiracy theorists—many of them undoubtedly Truthers—who had begun to argue that bin Laden wasn’t really dead, or that the circumstances of his death were very different than reported, etc. Within 12 hours of the announcement of bin Laden’s death, I was already armed with links to news stories and other sources that indicated the true circumstances behind bin Laden’s death and especially his hasty burial at sea, and I was deploying them against the “Deathers” who used the same sort of spurious arguments that Truthers used to try to show that 9/11 was an inside job. However, I remember being surprised that “Deatherism” died out (no pun intended) within a week. Now it is extremely rare for me to be directly confronted with a bin Laden death conspiracy theory, on Twitter or anywhere else. This conspiracy theory is also dead.
Is there hope in these examples? Mackey seems to think so. The Internet now moves much faster than it did in 2005/06, and even much faster than in early 2009 when Orly Taitz was out there pushing her Birther garbage. Now, Mackey argues, it is possible to witness the entire life-cycle of a major conspiracy theory in a matter of days. His observations about how conspiracy theories peak among people with “low commitment” to them, and then fade to about a 10% support rate, is extremely interesting. 9/11 Truth is now at about this level, and most of us (debunkers) think 9/11 Truth is the biggest and baddest conspiracy theory on the block. If Birtherism and Deatherism can rise, peak and fade so quickly, do we need to be concerned about future conspiracy theories?
Are we ever going to get another conspiracy theory like 9/11? A theory that is prominent enough to create social movements and cults, like the Zeitgeist Movement? Hopefully an event like 9/11 will never happen again, but even if it does, there is some suggestion in Mackey’s analysis that perhaps the conspiracy theories that would inevitably result from it might have much less public saturation and staying power than 9/11 theories. We can only hope.
Conclusion
9/11 conspiracy theories are utterly untrue. They are asinine, insulting, brain-corroding garbage. That is beyond question. In analyzing why these ridiculous theories took hold—among conspiracy theorists and debunkers alike—Mackey has given us, I think, some very valuable insights not only into the pathology of conspiracy theories, but into the minds of those who believe them and those who push back against them.
I am certainly what Mackey would consider a “high commitment” debunker, meaning, I feel it is particularly important to push back against conspiracy theories. I am also quite possibly a product of my times. I came to the debunking community in 2005, just about the time 9/11 Truth theories were exploding, and my first real forum of debunking was on MySpace, the first serious social networking website. MySpace, of course, is dead. No one goes there anymore. 9/11 Truth is virtually dead; almost no one believes it anymore. We now live in an age of Twitter, Google Plus and communications that move at a speed impossible to believe even in 2005. Perhaps, lurking behind Mackey’s fascinating analysis, is an argument that exactly the thing that propagates conspiracy theories in the modern world—the Internet—can also serve as a limitation on their reach. I sincerely hope that is true.
Today is the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I was not alive to remember the horror that occurred on November 22, 1963, but I’ve certainly read a lot about it, and I didn’t think the day should pass without some acknowledgement. As the JFK assassination is the “grandfather” of modern conspiracy theories, and I’ve done relatively little (publicly) with that theory, beginning today I’m rolling out a new feature on my Twitter feed: for the next 100 days I will be doing one tweet a day presenting a link debunking one or another aspect of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.
More on that later, but first, background. On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, riding in an open-top limousine in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, was struck by shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, a ne’er-do-well Communist sympathizer perched with a high powered rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald acted alone, but many people assumed that he was working with others, or even that he was just a “patsy” who had nothing to do with the assassination but was set up by others who did. The major event that got people thinking about conspiracy was when Oswald was himself assassinated by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, two days later in the basement of the Dallas police department. Ruby eventually died of cancer, in prison, in 1967.
You Mean You Don’t Believe in a JFK Conspiracy Either??!?!?
I do not. There is no credible evidence that there was a conspiracy in the killing of JFK. Indeed, contrary to what most people think, the evidence that Oswald did it–and that he acted alone–is overwhelming. For instance, ballistics tests proved scientifically that the bullets that struck Kennedy were fired from Oswald’s rifle, to the exclusion of all other weapons in the world. All physical evidence–autopsy, etc.–indicates that three shots were fired, that they came from the rear, and they all came from Oswald’s gun. No evidence has ever been found that Oswald was acting in collusion with anyone. That Oswald did it, alone, has been proven beyond all doubt many times, although most people refuse to believe it. A poll taken within the last few years shows that 75% of Americans believe JFK was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.
Oliver Stone’s Movie
One of the major reasons why people believe there was a conspiracy was as a result of a movie made by Oliver Stone in 1991, called JFK. This was a very popular movie in its day, and as Vincent Bugliosi, author of the wonderful book Reclaiming History, put it, Stone’s movie probably had more to do with fostering the idea of conspiracy in the JFK case than any other single factor. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the movie’s release. You can see the original 1991 trailer for it below (if it doesn’t show up, link here):
The problem with JFK (the movie) is that it isn’t very accurate. Bugliosi’s book runs 1700 pages and devotes one lengthy chapter to debunking the film. Stone based the movie on the memoirs of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who brought the only prosecution ever in the assassination of JFK–against an innocent man called Clay Shaw (played by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie) who had nothing to do with the killing. Garrison was the definition of a delusional conspiracy theorist. His “star witness,” Perry Russo, had to be drugged in order to tell the story Garrison wanted him to tell at the trial; Russo later recanted. Shaw was acquitted in 1969 and later sued Garrison for malicious prosecution. Almost everyone connected with the case was astonished at the miscarriage of justice that Garrison created. Indeed, even most JFK conspiracy theorists disavowed Garrison and his faulty investigation, at least until 1991.
Yet, given artistic license, Oliver Stone turns Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) into a hero. The movie makes so many wild and bizarre claims, most of them self-contradictory, that the film is a mismash of faulty logic and half-baked conspiracy theories. Even people who believe in a JFK conspiracy find the plot impossible to figure out because Stone crammed so much crap into it.
Ten years ago a man named David Reitzes created a website of JFK assassination resources, and which contains a lengthy section debunking the film. This is the best information you can find on the web about JFK. When people ask me where they can get good, factual information on the assassination, I direct them to Bugliosi’s book–which few want to read at 1700 pages–or Reitzes’s website. It is this website that’s the source of the links that I’ll be posting on Twitter in the next 100 days.
My History With the JFK Movie And JFK Conspiracies In General
I used to be a conspiracy theorist. I can’t say unequivocally that it was JFK that made me into one, but it certainly helped. I saw the film when it first came out. I was 19 years old, impressionable, and angry at the government–especially George H.W. Bush, who seemed to me like the absolute worst president of all time. (I had no idea how much worse it could get until his son got into office). When I came out of that theater in December 1991, I was convinced that Stone had presented a very compelling case for conspiracy. What I didn’t know was how inaccurate, misleading, and flat-out false the information fed to me by the movie really was. That took ten more years to sink in.
During the 1990s you could say I was a conspiracy theorist. I certainly believed that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. I also believed the government was covering up evidence of UFOs. I thought the stories of Roswell were quite credible. When TWA Flight 800 blew up over Long Island Sound in July 1996, I was convinced that the U.S. Navy had shot it down accidentally during an exercise and then covered it up. This was before 9/11, so that conspiracy theory hadn’t been minted yet. I was never an “activist”–I did not subscribe to conspiracy newsletters or go to conspiracy websites, but these were opinions that I had.
Years later, not long before 9/11, I was watching (on video) Nigel Turner’s film The Men Who Killed Kennedy, which first aired in 1988. When one of the pathologists who claimed there was a conspiracy was interviewed I noticed a curious thing. The doctor–I don’t recall his name–was holding up a diagram of Kennedy’s head, and he said something to the effect of, “The lower back quarter of the president’s head was blasted away.”
There was just one problem: the diagram he was holding up–on camera–did not show that the lower back quarter of JFK’s head was gone. In fact, it showed the top right section of the head gone–completely consistent with a shot from the rear, the School Book Depository.
This was one small clip in this multi-hour movie that went by very quickly, but it stuck in my mind. I started to think, “Hmm. That guy’s words didn’t match the evidence he was presenting. Are there other errors in this movie?”
I started “doing research,” which is what conspiracy theorists urge me to do about every week. (To a conspiracy theorist, “do your research” means “look at conspiracy websites and YouTube videos.” That is not research to me. My job involves research–with real books, in a real library–and research has been a crucial part of my day-to-day work for the last 13 years). When I “did my research” I found that Nigel Turner’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy was so riddled with errors and inaccuracies that it couldn’t even be broadcast legally in England, where it was made, without a disclaimer. Even some of the people interviewed in the film disavowed it. That got me thinking, if that movie was so inaccurate, what about Stone’s JFK?
In around 2000-2001, my thinking on conspiracy theories changed dramatically. Every time I subjected a claim to logical scrutiny, it fell apart. I read the entire Warren Commission report. Contrary to what conspiracy theorists claim, it was not shoddy, incomplete or full of holes. It was very exhaustively researched and left very little out. I started looking at the other conspiracy theories I believed in. After reading a lot of scientific material, I concluded that TWA 800 crashed because its fuel tank blew up–an accident, not a Navy missile. I found out that the documents that I thought “proved” the government knew about aliens were total forgeries. The “alien autopsy” film, broadcast on TV in 1995, turned out to be a fake. Conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory simply crumbled when I touched it.
Nevertheless, I was a holdout on JFK. As late as 2003 or 2004–even as I had begun to push back against 9/11 “Truthers,” whom I regard as believers in a particularly fulsome and offensive conspiracy theory–I still thought it likely that Oswald had help. Then I began to think maybe it was possible he did it alone. I read some more. I did some thinking. A lot of parts of the conspiracy theory simply didn’t add up.
What Surprised Me About JFK Conspiracy Theories
During my period of research on JFK conspiracy theories I learned some things that surprised me–things I accepted as axioms, when I believed in conspiracy, that simply didn’t hold up under scrutiny. For example:
“The magic bullet had to do an S-turn in midair.” No, it didn’t. If you actually see the way the limousine was laid out and where people were sitting, there’s no S-turn needed at all; conspiracy theorists misrepresent where Kennedy and Connally were in relation to each other.
“The bullet was pristine when it was recovered.” No, it wasn’t. Actually it was quite mangled, but conspiracy theorists only show a picture of one side of it in their books and websites.
“Oswald was a poor shot.” No, he wasn’t. His records from the Marine Corps indicate he was actually a pretty good shot.
“FBI sharpshooters couldn’t replicate what Oswald did.” Yes, they could. Not only could they aim and fire as quickly as Oswald did, but in fact they improved significantly on his time and accuracy.
“Oswald couldn’t have fired three shots in 5.6 seconds.” Yes, he could. In fact, Kevin Costner does it on-screen in the movie JFK. If you watch the scene with a stopwatch you can see it for yourself.
“The autopsy was botched.” No, it wasn’t. It was actually done pretty well, given the extreme pressures everybody was under.
“Many witnesses saw/heard shots coming from the grassy knoll.” Not really; most of the witnesses who claim this first made their claims more than 15 years after the assassination.
The list goes on and on. This is not the place to list everything. If you want a comprehensive rundown, see Bugliosi’s book.
So What Happened?
Finally I realized the conclusion was staring me in the face. The evidence was conclusive. Ballistics, witnesses, physics, science, everything. Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
This was not a conclusion I came to because “the government said so.” Very little of the evidence I looked at was government-created. I came to this conclusion because the evidence in the case pointed unmistakably to it.
There was no conspiracy in the assassination of JFK.
What’s Happening on my Twitter
So here’s what will be happening on Twitter. Beginning today at 12:30 PM–that’s the time of day Kennedy was shot–and continuing on, every day at that time for the next 100 days, I’ll be posting a link to one of the “100 Errors of Fact and Judgement in Oliver Stone’s JFK.” Each tweet will have the hashtag #JFK in it somewhere, and a brief statement of what the link contains. It’s not a comprehensive debunking of all aspects of the JFK assassination, or even of the movie, but it’s a start.
It might surprise you to know that, despite my opposition to conspiracy theories, I actually still enjoy JFK as a movie. I find it immensely entertaining, absorbing, and well-made–and those feelings have not changed since 1991. I own JFK on DVD, in a special collector’s edition, and I’d say I watch it at least three or four times a year. That doesn’t mean I believe the factual accuracy of what it claims. I don’t. But, it’s at least a very good piece of filmmaking.
My purpose in doing the “100 Days of JFK” on Twitter is to put some information out there that contradicts the conspiracy theories and serves up a little fact and critical thinking for a change. I also hope to increase the visibility of David Reitzes’s website, which is really a very impressive piece of work. I think Reitzes is to JFK what Mark Roberts is to 9/11–the “Obi Wan Kenobi” of debunkers.
On November 22, 1963, America suffered a terrible tragedy. Let’s put that tragedy in perspective and keep hold of the facts surrounding it. I hope only to present the facts. There’s enough misinformation in the world as it is without taking Hollywood movies as historical truth.
This blog, originally published November 12, 2011, was updated November 13, 2011 and again on November 16, 2011. Scroll to the end for the updates.
Dealing with conspiracy theories is like playing whack-a-mole. Every time you hammer one down, another one pops up in its place.
Just as we are witnessing the terminal decline of one so-called activist organization based on movies about conspiracy theories, another one appears to be rising. Yesterday, November 11, was the worldwide “premiere” of an Internet-based movie called Thrive. Yesterday morning I didn’t even know about it. But a lot of people have sent me links and messages about it, and given its splashy roll-out and the aggressive promotion that’s been put into the film, I can tell right away that I’m probably going to be spending a lot of time over the next few months dealing with Thrive and its fans.
Thrive is basically Zeitgeist 2.0. It’s a slick Internet film that pushes conspiracy theories and advocates for a utopian future that is—and I am not making this up—based on free energy technology given to us by extraterrestrials. The makers of Thrive have taken another page from the Zeitgeist playbook, by seeking to turn the hoped-for popularity of the Thrive movie into a “movement” (see their website). The film and the embryonic group around it seem to be the brainchild of one Foster Gamble, who believes in UFOs, ancient astronauts, free energy and the Illuminati (though he does not use that exact term). What does he want? Well, right now, he wants you to buy the movie for $5 online. I’m sure he’ll want something else after that, but let’s start with that.
The moment I started watching the trailer for Thrive I knew we were dealing with some serious crackpottery. Conspiracy theory media has come a long way in the last ten years. Zeitgeist blazed the trail, followed by Desteni’s low-tech but effective (and now defunct) strategy of proselytizing via YouTube; then came Garret LoPorto’s “Wayseer” thing (which I haven’t yet debunked), and now, Thrive. These are slick movies designed to appeal to frustrated young people—and also designed to induce them to believe in conspiracy theories. One of the people prominently featured in Thrive is arch-conspiracy theorist David Icke, who believes that shape-shifting reptilians secretly control the world. The Thrive Movement website contains a section called the “Global Domination Agenda” which vomits forth all sorts of conspiracy theories including Trilateral Commission, HAARP, FEMA camps, 9/11 and the Georgia Guidestones. If Thrive attains the popularity its makers obviously hope for, it is going to be a serious and troubling gateway drug for conspiracy theorists, the same way the Zeitgeist films were.
This said, you don’t even need to hear me explain why Thrive must be debunked. It must be. Stupidity and distortion on this order cannot be allowed to sit out there unchallenged. Therefore, this afternoon I put together what I believe may be the first debunking material on the Internet specifically targeted at the Thrive movie.
I have not seen the entire movie. (I don’t want to give conspiracy theorists any of my money, and in any event I’m quite sure it will show up free on the net very soon). This article debunks the trailer of the film, which runs 3 minutes, 39 seconds. As you can see, there’s plenty to debunk. Because the trailer is freely available on YouTube, I’m going to go ahead and embed it in this video just for the ease of accessing it. I realize I’m running the risk of increasing the visibility of what could turn out to be a very damaging film, but I think it’s worth it to show what it is I’m debunking.
As you can see, there’s plenty to debunk. Now, without further ado, I give you…Thrive!
The sources I’m relying on appear at the end of each section.
0:09 — Foster Gamble
Foster Gamble is a documentary filmmaker and formerly CEO of MindCenter Corporation. He has been active in issues involving pesticide spraying and an organization called “Stop the Spray.” A graduate of Princeton University—in what field I do not yet know—he is related to the Gamble family (of the corporation Procter & Gamble).
A torus is a geometric figure. It’s defined as a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three dimensional space about an axis coplanar with the circle. In most contexts it is assumed that the axis does not touch the circle—in this case the surface has a ring shape and is called a ring torus or simply torus if the ring shape is implicit.
This shape appears several times in the video. Presumably something about this shape is related to the idea of free energy derived from alien technology.
0:36 – Floor mosaic in Ephesus, Turkey
This is a common pattern in floor mosaics throughout the Roman and Byzantine era. Ephesus was an important city in the Byzantine Empire in the early Christian era. Without seeing the full film, it is not clear what significance is being put on this design.
0:44 – Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut
Edgar Mitchell was a NASA scientist who walked on the moon in February 1971. During the mission he claims to have had a spiritual experience that he described in terms of “Savikalpa Samadhi,” a type of Eastern mystical experience. He believes in ESP and founded a think tank to investigate psychic phenomena. He has been a long time believer in the Roswell conspiracy that claims a UFO crashed in New Mexico in 1947 and alien bodies were recovered from it. NASA has gone on record denying that his claims are true.
John Callahan is a former FAA employee who has gone on record as claiming that the FAA has covered up incidents involving UFOs. He is most closely associated with an incident where a UFO was seen from a Japan Air Lines flight in November 1986, which he helped investigate. Callahan claims there was a cover-up of this incident but the corroboration of his story is sketchy at best.
Another appearance of the “mysterious” pattern. Coupled with the Byzantine mosaic, this is intended to surprise us that the same shape is employed in two ancient cultures. How surprising is it really, though? The shape is a series of interlocking circles. How special is that? Would it take a genius to come up with that shape? Is it implausible to believe that two people, thousands of years apart, might have the same idea for a pattern of ceremonial artwork?
1:00 – “It’s burned into the atomic structure in some extraordinary way!”
I don’t know the story behind this claim, but this is extremely unlikely. Have atomic analyses been done on the artwork in temples from Abydos, Egypt? My (admittedly perfunctory) searching didn’t turn up anything. My suspicion is that this claim is simply false.
Nassim Haramein, Cosmologist, Inventor
Nassim Haramein is a New Age writer who has dabbled in topics involving “unified field theory,” which also pops up associated with Gamble’s name. He gives lectures on metaphysics and something called “the Schwarzchild Proton” that has absolutely no acceptance among mainstream physicists. Haramein evidently claims to be a “physicist,” but I cannot find a specific record of a Ph.D. in physics. He does not list a Ph.D. on his own website. He does not appear to be a real academic. I also found material associating him with various “Ancient Astronaut” theories.
Crop circles are not extraterrestrial, they are not amazing, they are not mystical, and they are not hard to make. They are a fraud, and were debunked a very long time ago.
Gamble gushes about “free, safe energy” supposedly from aliens. Free energy is one of the most common delusions out there, and there are many debunkings of it. It doesn’t exist because it violates fundamental scientific principles.
Adam Trombly is a pseudoscientist who is closely associated with “free energy” devices, most notably something called a “Closed Path Homopolar Generator,” which is—you guessed it—yet another free energy/perpetual motion device. He is also a conspiracy theorist who claims his invention was suppressed (of course). Trombly is billed as a “physicist” but I cannot find any indication that he has a Ph.D. in physics.
Note how the “technology” is shown in this part of the video. It’s obviously a computer generated image superimposed on the table in front of the panelists. But note, in the studio, lights have been shone on the faces of the men to make it look like the thing on the table is emitting light. This is a very curious deception.
1:27 – Nikola Tesla
Conspiracy theorists and pseudoscientists love Nikola Tesla, because he was working on a lot of weird stuff that could theoretically lead to lots of nifty science fiction machines. Consequently, if you want a machine that does X to exist, all you have to do is say that Tesla invented it and that the invention was suppressed, or that it’s an extension of something Tesla invented. After all, he died in 1943 and won’t be able to dispute you. Tesla’s theories, which I presume here are asserted as the scientific “basis” of Gamble and Trombly’s free energy devices, have even been used to explain the nonexistent “beam weapons” that some more extreme 9/11 Truthers like Judy Wood and Abraham Hafez Rodriguez claim destroyed the World Trade Center towers.
If Tesla appears in a “documentary” about free energy, be skeptical…be very, very skeptical.
1:29 – Steven Greer, M.D. – Director, the Disclosure Project
Steven Greer is a conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed UFO abductee who claims he has had contact with aliens. He has offered no proof of these claims. The “Disclosure Project” is his own idea, an organization he started mainly to accuse the government of covering up UFOs. Not surprisingly, Greer has appeared many times on the Art Bell radio program. Art Bell and Whitley Strieber are buddy-buddy.
No evidence to support this claim. I suspect that the full-length movie will contain the word “Roswell.” Just to get a head start, I’ll go ahead and post some links to debunk that.
Oh, you mean the Illuminati? Not that shit again. How many times do we have to debunk this ridiculous conspiracy theory before people will understand that the Illuminati do not exist?
I’m not surprised Mr. C. (I won’t call him “Dr. C” because I’m not sure his Indian doctorate is valid in the US) is popping up in a movie like this. You know him. Alt quackery, health woo, all that sort of thing. In case you need to educate yourself as to why Chopra is not a very good source of scientific and medical information, I’ll post a link to debunk him.
Conspiracy theorists love to “connect the dots.” It’s the only thing they can do, because there’s no direct evidence of their claims. This is a false methodology used by conspiracy theorists to bamboozle people into thinking “this can’t be a coincidence!” It’s also what passes for reasoning behind the Illuminati and puppet master type conspiracy theories, which Thrive seems to traffic in quite heavily.
2:10 – Bill Still, Author, The Money Masters
Still has written books bashing the U.S. money system and grinding his ax against the Federal Reserve, which most conspiracy theorists hate. He gives a patina of legitimacy to the usual hysterical anti-Fed arguments you hear circulating in conspiracy theorist, Libertarian and Ron Paul fanboy circles. Oh, did I mention that Still is running for president in the Libertarian Party? Does that surprise you?
What pan-conspiracy film would be complete without alleging that the Federal Reserve is a private corporation bent on controlling all money in the US? The usual crap from anti-Fed people, made recently popular by Ron Paul and his gang of right-wing fringe followers. The Federal Reserve is not a private corporation, it is subject to law, and it is audited. But facts won’t get in the way of conspiracy theorists’ damning of it, so why should this be different?
2:18 – Alan Greenspan, no one can overrule the Federal Reserve
Doing a search for the text of this quote brought up an explosion of anti-Federal Reserve crazy. It’s going to take days to weed through it all and I’m not sure I want to do it, so I may be lazy and let some debunker come to my rescue with the full text of Greenspan’s comments. I’m 99% sure that this quote is taken egregiously out of context, because that’s what conspiracy theorists do, and if they attach as much importance to something as they seem to have for this quote, the chances of it not being taken out of context are almost zero.
2:16 – Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of US Department of H.U.D.
Catherine Austin Fitts was Assistant Secretary for Housing in 1989-90 under the first George Bush. She is also a Wall Street banker. She currently works for an investment advisory firm called Solari, Inc. I suspect she’s being taken out of context too, because browsing her résumé it seems she’s way too sane to voluntarily participate in a nutty conspiracy theorist documentary.
David Icke is probably the most influential conspiracy theorist in the world, even more so than Alex Jones. He is also insane. He believes that the world is secretly controlled by Jews reptilian shape-shifting aliens, and that the Jews aliens have secret bloodlines, rituals and symbology that they advertise so the whole world can see. Just browsing some of Icke’s stuff leads to two inescapable conclusions: first, that his elevator is not going to the top floor, and second, that he really, really, really hates Jews reptilian shape-shifting aliens.
Any supposed “documentary” that quotes Icke or uses him seriously as a source is automatically disqualified as reliable in any way, for any reason. Icke is absolutely radioactive. His hate-filled conspiracy moonbattery is the ideological basis (if you can call it that) for the Desteni cult.
2:36 – Rockefellers
This belongs in the “Illuminati” category. Here we’re shown pictures of influential people with the name Rockefeller. From this you’re supposed to infer that Rockefellers control the world. My guess is that in the full-length movie the Rothschilds are probably added to the bunch, and I’m confident enough that the words “Bilderberg Group” will appear in the full-length movie that I’m going to go ahead and add a debunking link for it.
2:52 – Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D., Evolutionary Biologist
Dr. Sahtouris is the first person in this movie who actually has a real, verifiable Ph.D. Too bad I can’t quite figure out what it’s in. (I assume biology). Anyway, she lectures on evolution of humanity and how to create a better future. Given that she, like Catherine Fitts, sounds completely sane, I suspect that her inclusion in this movie is somewhat unwitting. Another clue that tells me this is that she appears to believe in global warming. While global warming isn’t mentioned in the Thrive trailer, I would lay odds that most of Thrive’s target audience believes that global warming is a hoax. Most conspiracy theorists do. I do not think Dr. Sahtouris is a conspiracy theorist. Indeed she looks like a very nice person, which makes me wonder what she’s doing in this movie.
3:01 – Paul Hawken, Founder, Natural Capital Institute
Paul Hawken is a California businessman and environmentalist. He advocates for socially and environmentally responsible business practices (and I certainly agree with that). He hosted a 17-part series on PBS about running socially responsible businesses. Again, another sane person who makes me wonder if he was told he was going to be in the same movie as David Icke and Adam Trombly.
3:04 – Kimberly Carter Gamble, CEO, Clear Compass Media
Kimberly Carter Gamble is the wife of Foster Gamble. On the Thrive Movement webpage, she quotes David Icke, not an auspicious start: “Having the courage to risk stepping out of what David Icke calls the “hassle-free zone” is the quality I am most proud to have mustered in this life, and it felt great to infuse the clarity and compassion that come from that process into the story – and production – of THRIVE.” But does she believe in reptoids?
Some shameless self-promotion here by inviting the comparison between Thrive and Dr. Martin Luther King. I hate it when conspiracy theorists do this. When Peter Joseph Merola of the Zeitgeist Movement compared himself to Martin Luther King, it drove me berserk. I have a dream that people would stop comparing themselves to Martin Luther King.
3:12 – angel Kyodo williams
To my surprise, the title card identifying angel Kyodo williams, despite its odd capitalization, is correct—she really does write her name that way. Ms. williams is a Zen Buddhist and wrote a book trying to make Zen accessible to African-Americans.
I am, again, virtually certain that Ms. williams does not fully understand the views and background of the people behind Thrive. I seriously doubt that a person who is obviously a dedicated activist for African-American issues would consent to be in the same movie with David Icke (who as you remember really hates Jews reptilian shape-shifting aliens) if she knew about the baggage he carries. This makes me skeptical of the disclosures that were done during the making of this film.
Democracy Now! is a radio program on the Pacifica radio network, dedicated to progressive causes. I’ve never listened to the show, but browsing their material there seems to be a lot of stuff I agree with. Amy Goodman was arrested along with two other reporters at the 2008 Republican National Convention despite having committed no crime. The charges were eventually dropped.
As with several other respectable names here (Fitts, Hawken, Sahtouris, williams) I wonder what she is doing in a conspiracy theory movie.
Assuming the full-length Thrive movie follows the general pattern of the trailer, I think we can see a basic road map emerging as to how the full-length film and the movement it hopes to spawn can be debunked. I’m starting early, on only the second day that Thrive has been out, in the hopes that the movie will attract some attention from debunkers who can tag it with the facts and expose the errors and misstatements contained in it, which, as you can see from the trailer alone, are considerable. I’d like to say I’m looking forward to seeing the final film, but the truth is, I’m not. I have a feeling it will make me very angry. In any event, it seemed that some people out there thought it appropriate that I take a look at it, so here it is. I’ll be keeping tabs on this movie and this organization and may post updates later on.
Thanks for reading.
Update I, 13 November 2011
Barely twelve hours after this blog was posted the Thrive fans are already out in force denouncing me. I knew that I’d engender angry responses, but as I was watching the trailer I found myself wondering if defenses of Thrive would tend to break down along one of two patterns:
“Thrive makes some wild claims, but it has good things to say about the future of humanity…” (OR)
“Everything in Thrive is true! There really are aliens! The Rockefellers really do control everything! You are a sheeple…” etc., etc.
So far the responses have largely been on the second tack. None have been posted here (I require registration to post a comment on this blog–that’s to defeat spam, not to censor comments critical of me) but many were directed at me on Twitter and some on YouTube. Here’s a sampling of what Thrive fans are saying:
a truth seeker knows that weak people like you are not ready for truth.
david icke is enlightened, you are not.
I get my information from everywhere. Thrive is a good movie regardless of the negative BS you believe. Sorry its true.
I am more awake because that’s how I make my dreams come true. To awaken from the matrix. I am a super human
you probably believe 911. Was done by terrorust.
what a puppet you are – there are conspiracy theories, then there are facts. Free energy and lasers are real, you moron.
IGNORANT humans wake the fuck up….THRIVE and ZEITGEIST are IDEAS being promoted by folks who only THRIVE because they fill your minds with TIME GHOSTS.
I have absolutely no idea what that last comment means.
This one is my personal favorite, where a Thrive fan suggests I commit suicide.
go kill your self this stuff has bin around for years man and why be like this the world is going to change we are at the cross roads and i know what path i am taking and i am going to take as many people as i can as fast as i can. if 7 billion people watch this the world would change over night
I might add that I haven’t even debunked the full movie yet (which one person pointed out on Twitter). Although I strongly suspect the final movie will contain the same crap about ancient astronauts, free energy and Icketilians, I’m perfectly willing to waste two hours of my life and delve into a more in-depth debunking. Again, I’m waiting for the movie to pop up somewhere in a free venue. I know Foster Gamble is very rich, but he doesn’t need $5 more from me.
I’m sure I’ll be posting more on this.
Update II, 16 November 2011
I am working with others on a debunking of the full Thrive movie. In fact I’ve started a special blog just for that purpose. It’s ThriveDebunked.wordpress.com. The first part of the debunking went up tonight. It’s not by me, but by a fellow debunker who fired off a quick analysis that hits some major points in the first half hour of the film. My own notes are progressing but I hope to have something of my own up soon.
In the meantime, definitely check out the debunking!
You may wonder why it’s been more than two months since my last blog about the Zeitgeist Movement, the online cult that promotes conspiracy theories and markets itself through a series of fraudulent Internet movies. The simple answer is that the Zeitgeist Movement is basically dead. As I predicted last April when it divorced from the Venus Project in a messy public row, the movement seems to have shriveled down to a burnt-out nub of hardcore supporters who are finding it increasingly difficult to command any sort of public attention. Their forum has been shut down, replaced with a blog that isn’t exactly lighting the blogosphere on fire. Their “media event” was a total failure. Their ham-handed attempts to insinuate themselves into a position of leadership in the Occupy movement have resulted in them being totally ostracized and excluded from all organized Occupy events. Even some of Zeitgeist’s most vociferous critics haven’t updated their blogs in months. With as bleak as their fortunes have become, there’s honestly not much more I could do that would have any utility. (Incidentally, the other conspiracy cult I have written about, Desteni, is more or less dead too, but that’s another issue).
It is nice, however, to know that my efforts to expose the truth about the nefarious and troubling organization known as Zeitgeist have had an effect. And they have. I cannot and do not take any credit for the decline and eventual extinction of the Zeitgeist Movement. Peter Merola’s conspiracy cult is quite capable of committing seppuku on its own without any help from critics, though I do believe critics have been crucial in making sure that the debunkings of the films and the very legitimate criticisms of the movement they spawned are highly visible to anyone searching for information on Zeitgeist. But I seem to have helped individual people realize the truth about Zeitgeist. One of them emailed me today. He gave me permission to post his words here, and they speak for themselves–an eloquent testament to the power of reason to overcome the irrational thought that seems to be choking the life out of our public discourse.
“My name is ______________ and I read your article the other day on that e-mail the ConspiracyScience guys received. I’ve been meaning to tell you for some time actually that I went through a similar experience with the Zeitgeist movies. It was reading the ConspiracyScience blog and yours that made me stop believing in them.
The thing that really hooked me about it was the Christ Conspiracy stuff at the start. I used to be a really devout Catholic, but lost my faith around 2004, 2005. I was really getting disgusted by the behaviour of the religious right in America, or the Magdalene Laundries and other stuff that happened in Irish history (I’m from Ireland btw). So I was becoming more & more anti-religious over the years and by the time I saw Zeitgeist I was blown away by the idea that Jesus didn’t even exist in the first place. What great validation for someone like me, who was anti-religious, right?
But I was uneasy about the other parts of the movie. As much as I hated George Bush I never really bought the 9/11 thing, although I imagine that’s the reason many people did. I started to think “Surely if one part of the movie is complete bollocks, that calls the rest of it into judgement?” Ironically, I then started seeing debunkings of Zeitgeist Part One on the internet. JUST dealing with the religion part. These were almost invariably done by devoutly religious people which made me dismissive of them and many of them would actually end their critiques by saying “No the other two parts of the movie are fine! Just don’t spread Zeitgeist around! Use Alex Jones or ‘America: Freedom to Fascism’ or whatever.” That wasn’t too far from a verbatim quote. There were people who were focusing solely on the religious part, while fully accepting Parts Two & Three. Again, the question was begged, “Surely if one part of the movie is complete bollocks, that calls the rest of it into judgement?”
But ‘Zeitgeist Addendum’ came out then I felt GREAT! I totally bought the RBE idea and thought it would be a great thing to move towards. I particularly liked the green energy aspects of it, as it’s an area of interest of mine, and I put a clip of that part on YouTube. Studying more about renewable energy though, I’d read Prof. David MacKay’s “Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air” (which I’d thoroughly recommend btw – it’s available as a free PDF here http://withouthotair.com ) which was a painstakingly scientifically accurate assessment of the potential of different energy sources from a PhD physicist. In it, MacKay really downplayed the potential of geothermal energy which PJ Merola LOVES and called into question other info he used. I eventually felt bad about having the video on YouTube, knowing it wasn’t scientifically accurate, so I decided to take it down.
But it was still a long time before I saw any rebuttal of Zeitgeist that didn’t focus solely on the religion part. Then I saw a link to ConspiracyScience’s full point-by-point rebuttal in a conversation about it. Now there were a lot of things that appealed to me about Zeitgeist and the RBE vision for the future. And there was philosophy towards the end of Addendum that I found really relatable. I dunno if it was you or another ConspiracyScience writer who pointed out the irony that PJ’s claim in the movie that “we should be open to new information at all times, even it conflicts with our current worldview” was completely at odds with TZM’s refusal to engage with any criticism. But it was something that rung true for me, so in the interest of scepticism, I read the rebuttal. And man, it really took it apart for me.
Specifically the religion part had been presented with such a tone of authority I don’t blame myself for buying into it. But it’s kind of hard not to when there was such obvious bollocks as “seeing the Sun in front of the Southern Crux – a constellation visible only from the Southern hemisphere where the Bible wasn’t written” or “God’s Son is God’s Sun – a word that sounds the same in English, in spite of it being written in a different language initially”.
I kept reading through the rebuttals anyway, particularly of Addendum. Cuz like many TZMers I’m sure you’ve come across, I would have embraced Addendum while distancing myself from the first movie for a while. The ending was the most crushing critique of all though: something along the lines of “How do you get a single mother working two jobs to spend 4 hours watching your movie only to tell her all we’re going to be doing right now is ‘spreading the word’ over the internet? How selfish is that?” Ouch.
I dunno if I can pinpoint the exact moment I lost faith in TZM but it is mostly to do with reading that blog and yours. That interview where PJ actually compares himself to Martin Luther King AND Socrates, of all people, was probably when alarm bells were ringing for me (to his credit, he can play a mean xylophone though). With hindsight I don’t understand why he didn’t use that more as a marketing tool? Something like:
“The Zeitgeist Movement is not a political movement. It is does not recognise boundaries of race, gender, class, religion or nationality. It is a social movement dedicated to raising global awareness of a ‘resource-based economy’, a global, nationless society where everyone’s means are provided for, based upon the measured carrying capacity of the Earth’s resources and the improvement of human living standards through the application of the scientific method. ……Also, I am the new Socrates.”
LOL
Another development I suppose was increasing disgust for conspiracy theorists. Particularly climate change deniers, to whom I’m glad you don’t give the special treatment they demand; you see them as they are, idiot conspiracy theorists with a retarded worldview just like the rest of them. It becomes a lot easier to engage with them once you remember that. But I guess that tendency and conspiracy theorists in general, are just anti-intellectualist which I hate. It’s such a closed worldview, but at least I understand it. It gives them comfort to think that all of the world’s problems are being caused by a few bad people and once you kill them the world will be paradise. But in order to do this, they cannot afford to be wrong because any evidence that contradicts the theory must be propaganda, just look at how much else the NWO are capable of. So if they admit they’re wrong, it’s like they’re giving up on humanity, which they can’t afford to do. This arrogance & blindness really is exactly like religious behaviour and it’s painfully ironic that it goes against the stated rhetoric within “Zeitgeist Addendum” that I really responded to.
So of course I lost interest in whatever TZM were (not) doing and I was only proven right when I saw the trailer for “Zeitgeist Moving Forward” was 5 minutes long. How indulgent is that? Are you expecting people to watch a 5-minute long trailer, let alone the whole movie? The movie naturally ended up being almost 3 hours long. There’s already 4 hours before that! And another hour & a half if you count that TZM Presentation video. I very quickly skipped through it in the space of 10 minutes and found that it was repeating information already in the other films, its interviewees were mostly white and with the exception of Roxanne Meadows, were all male (for some reason I don’t think white men have had great ideas about how to run the world so far) and the ending had a cringe-inducingly melodramatic song. (And I actually liked the music of the first two movies!) It would have been WAY more accurate to have called it “Zeitgeist: Going Nowhere”.
And I didn’t even HEAR about the TZM/TVP split for months until after it happened. I read about it on your blog. I just love your blog in general, it really articulately captures all the issues around conspiracist thinking and that movement. And I can see how combating that thinking does produce a positive social good. It certainly had an impact on me. All I did was read information that contradicted my strongly held beliefs, like the movie told me to do and I ended up freeing myself from its delusions, hypocrisy and egomaniacal creator. So I really do want to thank you for the work you and the other guys put into that blog. I want to add my thanks to the other thanks you’ve received. Not only do I appreciate it, I just happen to enjoy your writing very much.
Kind regards.”
An email like this is the greatest thanks I could possibly receive for my efforts in debunking conspiracy theories in general and Zeitgeist in particular. It’s also a terrific note upon which to conclude (barring unforeseen major events) my investigation of the Zeitgeist Movement. Just knowing that I made a positive difference and helped turn someone away from conspiracy thinking and a conspiracy-based movement is a great validation. A little positive feedback is always nice to have, and this one is exceptional in my view.
Merry Christmas from Conspiracy Theorists!
Tonight is Christmas Eve, and while waiting for Santa Claus to bring me my fat government check for being a good little disinformation agent that spreads lies about what really happened on 9/11 and criticizes the world-saving Zeitgeist Movement and Thrive movie, I thought I’d bring you a little video that shows, in animation form, some of the choice comments I’ve received on this blog over the past two years.
Everything in this video is a direct quote from a comment either posted here, or in reference to this blog. Warning: some of the language gets a little saucy toward the end!
I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas. Yes, even the conspiracy theorists!