On August 21st 2010 I attended an annual traveling hip hop festival in San Bernardino, Ca. known as Rock the Bells. The event which spanned 4 US cities this year including San Francisco, DC, and NYC was promoted by a company knows as Guerilla Union. Since it’s inception in 2004, Rock the Bells has been a place where fans of underground hip hop both classic and current can come and enjoy their favorite acts and be exposed to a plethora of art, fashion and counter culture paraphernalia all with no visible corporate sponsorship which adds to the appeal of the event. Some of the notable acts who performed this year and who are also friends of the Alex Jones show were Immortal Technique and KRS-ONE.

Well Guerilla Union has shown its true colors as it waved the flag of controlled opposition in the midst of 25,000 fans. As I entered the NOS Event Center which housed the event I was appalled to find that cash was not being accepted for the purchase of food or beverages, instead; concert goers were informed that they would need to take their Federal Reserve promissory notes and exchange them for credits which would be loaded onto a card deemed the “GU” card. These cards were available at booths located throughout the venue and in the middle of the scorching 98 degree heat; the long lines were an inconvenience to say the least. As I approached the counter the thought dawned on me so I asked,” What if I have money on my card that I don’t use?” in which the reply was, “Oh don’t’ worry you can go to the booths marked refund at any time and they will give you the cash back.”

So here I am with my card which by the way had what looked to be a small microchip etched on the front of it and by this time I was thirsty and in need of refreshment. I approached the concession stand and ordered a beer. The attendant took my card, slid it into a machine and said, “Ok your balance is $87.59.” That’s right amongst other crimes against humanity beers were warm and cost $12.50 for 20 oz.

Feeling outraged and confused by the fact that I was at an underground hip hop event being promoted by a company that I had come to know as one that went against the grain and snubbed its nose at the establishment, I proceeded to ask those around me how they felt about this GU card and the overwhelming consensus was what I expected one of disdain and disbelief.

After watching a few acts in the all but unbearable sun, hunger started to kick in. My wife and I scanned the vendors in search of something that sounded appealing and with a short line and we came upon a BBQ stand offering what looked to be a nice selection of delectable eats. In line in front of us was a pair of event staff employees as indicated by their apparel. We struck up a conversation regarding the GU card and how what money making scheme it was since most people wouldn’t be willing to stand in a long line to get the balance that remained on their card at the end of the night. One of the staff members defended the card and said,”Hey it’s my money and if I want it I’ll go get it!” I tried to explain my position and went into the fact that this was prophetic and a sign of things to come only to be met with sneers chuckles as if I was some weird conspiracy nut which is a typical response from the uninformed masses. Well wouldn’t ya know as if by design people in the line started leaving and saying as they passed by, “The powers out and no one can get food!” WHAT!?!? I couldn’t believe what was unfolding in front of my eyes.

I stayed in line waiting for my chance to as the concession stand attendant what the heck was going on! As we approached the front of the line I could hear the woman behind the counter saying, sorry the power is out we cannot serve anyone right now.” Just as she said this the two employees in front of me pulled out a card of their own. This card was very different, it was red in color but I could not make out what it said but was shocked at what played out next.

The gentleman flashed his card to the attendant and asked, “what about this card?” to which the woman replied, Oh sure we can take that card no problem” and proceeded to get the man and his co-worker a plate of food! I spoke with the woman and asked her when she expected the power back up to which she replied, “I have no idea”. I looked at the woman and told her “This is crazy; you don’t see anything wrong with this?” She had no response for me and as I made remarks regarding the prophetic nature of the event and how this was a sign of things to come I could see the event worker who at this time was enjoying his food shake his head as if to say this guy is crazy.

The hip -hop community has been targeted for indoctrination into the new world order!! If you look at Guerrilla Union’s Facebook page you will see some of the dissatisfaction. Coincidentally, you can no longer leave a message on their page!

This is dutch the deacon reporting to you live from the belly of the beast!!

ARTICLE SOURCE INFORWARS.com

Shouts to SickSince for pointing this out to me.

Conspiracy theory
is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal, or political conspiracy. However, it has become largely pejorative and used almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains an historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning.[1]

Conspiracy theories are viewed with skepticism by scholars because they are rarely supported by any conclusive evidence and contrast with institutional analysis, which focuses on people’s collective behavior in publicly known institutions, as recorded in scholarly material and mainstream media reports, to explain historical or current events, rather than speculate on the motives and actions of secretive coalitions of individuals.[1][2]

The term is therefore often used dismissively in an attempt to characterize a belief as outlandishly false and held by a person judged to be a crank or a group confined to the lunatic fringe. Such characterization is often the subject of dispute due to its possible unfairness and inaccuracy.[3]

According to political scientist Michael Barkun, conspiracy theories once limited to fringe audiences have become commonplace in mass media. He argues that this has contributed to conspiracism emerging as a cultural phenomenon in the United States of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and the possible replacement of democracy by conspiracy as the dominant paradigm of political action in the public mind.[1] According to anthropologists Todd Sanders and Harry G. West, “evidence suggests that a broad cross section of Americans today…gives credence to at least some conspiracy theories.”[4] Belief in conspiracy theories has therefore become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore.

Terminology

The term “conspiracy theory” may be a neutral descriptor for any legitimate or illegitimate claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy. To conspire means “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end.”[5] However, conspiracy theory is also used to indicate a narrative genre that includes a broad selection of (not necessarily related) arguments for the existence of grand conspiracies.[6]

The word “theory” is, in this usage, sometimes considered to be more informal as in “speculation” or “hypothesis” rather than mainstream scientific theory. Also, the term conspiracy is typically used to indicate powerful figures, often of the Establishment, who are believed to be deceiving the population at large, as in political corruption. Although some conspiracies are not actually theories, they are often labeled as such by the general populace.

The first recorded use of the phrase “conspiracy theory” dates from 1909. Originally it was a neutral term but during the political upheaval of the 1960s it acquired its current derogatory sense.[7] It entered the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary as late as 1997.[8]

The term “conspiracy theory” is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at “stealing” power, money, or freedom, from “the people”. Less illustrious uses refer to folklore and urban legend and a variety of explanatory narratives which are constructed with methodological flaws.[9] The term is also used in a pejorative sense to automatically dismiss claims that are deemed ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish or irrational. For example, the term “Watergate conspiracy theory” does not refer to the generally accepted version in which several participants actually were convicted of conspiracy, and others pardoned before any charges were filed, but to alternative and additional theories such as claims that that the source(s) of information called “Deep Throat” was a fabrication.[10]

Daniel Pipes, in an early essay “adapted from a study prepared for the CIA”, attempted to define which beliefs distinguish ‘the conspiracy mentality’ from ‘more conventional patterns of thought’. He defined them as: appearances deceive; conspiracies drive history; nothing is haphazard; the enemy always gains power, fame, money, and sex.[11]

According to West and Sanders, when talking about conspiracies in the Vietnam era, Pipes includes within the fringe element anyone who entertains the thought that conspiracies played a role in the major political scandals and assassinations that rocked American politics in the Vietnam era. “He sees the paranoid style in almost any critical historical or social-scientific analysis of oppression.” [12]

Types

Political scientist Michael Barkun has categorized, in ascending order of breadth, the types of conspiracy theories as follows:[1]

* Event conspiracy theories. The conspiracy is held to be responsible for a limited, discrete event or set of events. The conspiratorial forces are alleged to have focused their energies on a limited, well-defined objective. The best-known example in the recent past is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy literature.
* Systemic conspiracy theories. The conspiracy is believed to have broad goals, usually conceived as securing control of a country, a region, or even the entire world. While the goals are sweeping, the conspiratorial machinery is generally simple: a single, evil organization implements a plan to infiltrate and subvert existing institutions. This is a common scenario in conspiracy theories that focus on the alleged machinations of Jews, Freemasons, and the Illuminati, as well as theories centered on international communism or international capitalists.
* Superconspiracy theories. Conspiratorial constructs in which multiple conspiracies are believed to be linked together hierarchically. Event and systemic are joined in complex ways, so that conspiracies come to be nested together. At the summit of the conspiratorial hierarchy is a distant but all-powerful evil force manipulating lesser conspiratorial actors. Superconspiracy theories have enjoyed particular growth since the 1980s, in the work of authors such as Jim Marrs, David Icke, and Milton William Cooper.

Conspiracism

A world view that centrally places conspiracy theories in the unfolding of history is sometimes termed “conspiracism”. The historian Richard Hofstadter addressed the role of paranoia and conspiracism throughout American history in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, published in 1964. Bernard Bailyn’s classic The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967) notes that a similar phenomenon could be found in America during the time preceding the American Revolution. Conspiracism then labels people’s attitudes as well as the type of conspiracy theories that are more global and historical in proportion.[13] The term conspiracism was popularized by academic Frank P. Mintz in the 1980s. Academic work in conspiracy theories and conspiracism presents a range of hypotheses as a basis of studying the genre. Among the leading scholars of conspiracism are: Hofstadter, Karl Popper, Michael Barkun, Robert Alan Goldberg, Daniel Pipes, Mark Fenster, Mintz, Carl Sagan, George Johnson, and Gerald Posner.

According to Mintz, conspiracism denotes: “belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history”:[14]

“Conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies elites, blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. As such, conspiracy theories do not typify a particular epoch or ideology”.[15]

Throughout human history, political and economic leaders genuinely have been the cause of enormous amounts of death and misery, and they sometimes have engaged in conspiracies while at the same time promoting conspiracy theories about their targets. Hitler and Stalin would be merely the most prominent examples; there have been numerous others.[16] In some cases there have been claims dismissed as conspiracy theories that later proved to be true.[17][18] The idea that history itself is controlled by large long-standing conspiracies is rejected by historian Bruce Cumings:

“But if conspiracies exist, they rarely move history; they make a difference at the margins from time to time, but with the unforeseen consequences of a logic outside the control of their authors: and this is what is wrong with ‘conspiracy theory.’ History is moved by the broad forces and large structures of human collectivities.”[19]

The term conspiracism is used in the work of Michael Kelly, Chip Berlet, and Matthew N. Lyons.

According to Berlet and Lyons, “Conspiracism is a particular narrative form of scapegoating that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm”.[20]
[edit] Criticism

Conspiracy theories are the subject of broad critique by academics, politicians, and the media.

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of a conspiracy theory is the problem of settling a particular theory’s truth to the satisfaction of both its proponents and its opponents. Particular accusations of conspiracy vary widely in their plausibility, but some common standards for assessing their likely truth value may be applied in each case:

* Occam’s razor – does the alternative story explain more of the evidence than the mainstream story, or is it just a more complicated and therefore less useful explanation of the same evidence?
* Logic – do the proofs offered follow the rules of logic, or do they employ fallacies of logic?
* Methodology – are the proofs offered for the argument well constructed, i.e., using sound methodology? Is there any clear standard to determine what evidence would prove or disprove the theory?
* Whistleblowers – how many people – and what kind – have to be loyal conspirators? The more wide-ranging and pervasive the conspiracy is alleged to be, the greater the number of people would have to be involved in perpetrating it – is it credible that nobody involved has brought the affair to light?
* Falsifiability – is it possible to demonstrate that specific claims of the theory are false, or are they “unfalsifiable”?

Noam Chomsky, an academic critical of the United States establishment, contrasts conspiracy theory as more or less the opposite of institutional analysis, which focuses mostly on the public, long-term behaviour of publicly known institutions, as recorded in, e.g. scholarly documents or mainstream media reports, rather than secretive coalitions of individuals.[21]
[edit] Controversy

Aside from controversies over the merits of particular conspiratorial claims, the general discussion of conspiracy theory is itself a matter of some public contention.

The term “conspiracy theory” is considered by different observers to be a neutral description for a conspiracy claim, a pejorative term used to dismiss such a claim without examination, and a term that can be positively embraced by proponents of such a claim. The term may be used by some for arguments they might not wholly believe but consider radical and exciting. The most widely accepted sense of the term is that which popular culture and academic usage share, certainly having negative implications for a narrative’s probable truth value.

Conspiracy theorists on the internet are often dismissed as a “fringe” group, but evidence suggests that a broad cross section of Americans today—traversing ethnic, gender, education, occupation, and other divides—gives credence to at least some conspiracy theories.[22]

Given this popular understanding of the term, it can also be used illegitimately and inappropriately, as a means to dismiss what are in fact substantial and well-evidenced accusations. The legitimacy of each such usage will therefore be a matter of some controversy. Michael Parenti, in his 1996 essay which examines the role of progressive media in the use of the term, “The JFK Assassination II: Conspiracy Phobia On The Left”, states,

“It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in your approach to politics or a ‘conspiracist’ who reduces historical developments to the machinations of secret cabals, thereby causing us to lose sight of the larger systemic forces.”[23]

Structuralist or institutional analysis shows that the term is misused when it is applied to institutions acting in pursuit of their acknowledged goals, e.g. when a group of corporations engage in price-fixing to increase profits.

Complications occurs for terms such as UFO, which literally means “unidentified flying object” but connotes alien spacecraft, a concept also associated with some conspiracy theories, and thus possessing a certain social stigma. Michael Parenti gives an example of the use of the term which underscores the conflict in its use. He states,

“In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy.”[23]

The term “conspiracy theory” is itself the object of a type of conspiracy theory, which argues that those using the term are manipulating their audience to disregard the topic under discussion, either in a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth, or as dupes of more deliberate conspirators.[citation needed]

When conspiracy theories are offered as official claims (e.g. originating from a governmental authority, such as an intelligence agency) they are not usually considered as conspiracy theories. For example, certain activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee may be considered to have been an official attempt to promote a conspiracy theory, yet its claims are seldom referred to as such.[citation needed]

Further difficulties arise from ambiguity regarding the term theory. In popular usage, this term is often used to refer to unfounded or weakly-based speculation, leading to the idea that “It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s actually true”.
[edit] Study of conspiracism

In 1936 American commentator H. L. Mencken wrote:

The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy.[24]

Belief in conspiracy theories has become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore since at least the 1960s, when the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy eventually provoked an unprecedented public response directed against the official version of the case as expounded in the Report of the Warren Commission.
[edit] Psychological origins

According to some psychologists, a person who believes in one conspiracy theory tends to believe in others; a person who does not believe in one conspiracy theory tends not to believe another.[25] This may be caused by differences in the information upon which parties rely in formulating their conclusions.

Psychologists believe that the search for meaning is common in conspiracism and the development of conspiracy theories, and may be powerful enough alone to lead to the first formulating of the idea. Once cognized, confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal reinforcement may equally play a part. Some research carried out at the University of Kent, UK suggests people may be influenced by conspiracy theories without being aware that their attitudes have changed. After reading popular conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, participants in this study correctly estimated how much their peers’ attitudes had changed, but significantly underestimated how much their own attitudes had changed to become more in favor of the conspiracy theories. The authors conclude that conspiracy theories may therefore have a ‘hidden power’ to influence people’s beliefs.[26]

Humanistic psychologists argue that even if the cabal behind the conspiracy is almost always perceived as hostile there is, often, still an element of reassurance in it, for conspiracy theorists, in part because it is more consoling to think that complications and upheavals in human affairs, at least, are created by human beings rather than factors beyond human control. Belief in such a cabal is a device for reassuring oneself that certain occurrences are not random, but ordered by a human intelligence. This renders such occurrences comprehensible and potentially controllable. If a cabal can be implicated in a sequence of events, there is always the hope, however tenuous, of being able to break the cabal’s power – or joining it and exercising some of that power oneself. Finally, belief in the power of such a cabal is an implicit assertion of human dignity – an often unconscious but necessary affirmation that man is not totally helpless, but is responsible, at least in some measure, for his own destiny.[27]
[edit] Projection

Some historians have argued that there is an element of psychological projection in conspiracism. This projection, according to the argument, is manifested in the form of attribution of undesirable characteristics of the self to the conspirators. Richard Hofstadter, in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, stated that:

…it is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship… the Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy. Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist “crusades” openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth.

Hofstadter also noted that “sexual freedom” is a vice frequently attributed to the conspiracist’s target group, noting that “very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments.”[28]

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