DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

If ever there was an iconic death to match that of JFK, it was the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Diana died, along with boyfriend Dodi Fayed and Ritz securityman Henri Paul, when their speeding Mercedes crashed into the Pont d’Alma tunnel in Paris on 31 August 1997. Speeding to avoid the paparazzi, the driver, Paul, had been drinking beforehand. Tragic and needless, the logical answer is, nevertheless, to accept the event as an accident.
Conspiriologists say otherwise. Rather, Diana was killed. One popular myth argues that the killer rode on a motorcycle in front of the car and used an anti-personnel flash gun to blind Paul, thus causing the crash. Yet another myth speaks of a white Fiat Uno, which the Mercedez clipped, being involved in the ‘assassination.’
As to motive for the assassination, Diana was causing much embarrassment to western governments over her landmine campaign, or, alternatively, sections of the British establishment, including the Royal Family, couldn’t bear the thought of the mother of a future king being married to, or having a child with, a muslim.

__________

9/11

The destruction of the World Trade Centre on 11 Sep 2001 was one of the most dramatic turning points in modern history. Al Qaeda crashed a plane into each tower, as well as into the Pentagon, whilst a fourth crashed before reaching its target. But in the world of conspiracy theory, nothing is as simple as that.
In June 2004, an official inquiry into the incident narrated a catalogue of errors by the US authorities that convinced many conspiriologists that, if the government hadn’t carried out the attack itself, it had certainly been a party to it.
Typical was the well rehearsed scenario for scrambling fighters to react to hi-jacked aircraft. Many exercises in the year up to the attack had proved remarkably efficient, but on the day, no fighter got close.
Even more disturbing was the rumour that President Bush talked about watching the first plane go into the towers on a monitor. The only footage known to exist was captured by a French film crew, and it wasn’t shown until well after the event.
Another source of conspiracy is the damage done to the Pentagon. It is simply not enough. For an airliner with a wingspan of over a hundred feet to plough into the building, the gap of destruction should have been far wider. But if a missile had been used instead?
Of course, simple answers DO exist. Military incompetence and lack of leadership answers the failure of the fighters. Such an iconic building as the World Trade Centre – which had already been attacked by Al Qaeda – was bound to be under constant surveillance by the security services (including video cameras). And when the front of a plane smacks into a large building, the immediate explosion could well have collapsed the wings.
But never mind. Conspiracy theory will have it different. 9/11 will continue to provide more and more information for conspiriologists to ponder, and there will be even more astonishing theories to come. And let’s face it, wouldn’t the world be dull without insanity to remind us that WE, at least, are sane?

__________

THEY ARE OUT TO GET US

The problem with rubbishing conspiracy theory is that we are conspired against constantly. Politicians are a prime example. It is in the nature of a politician to crave power and dictate to the population. Why else is he where he is?
We can immediately see, here, an inherent need to conspire against us at the heart of any governing body. When politicians come up for election, they conspire within their parties to over-inflate their good points and hide the bad.
This is conspiracy of the worst kind – deceiving us is a valid political tool. Hence, the party we vote for is never the true reality of the particular party. We are not only conspired against and lied to, but totally duped.
Even a ‘popular’ government is intrinsically conspiratorial in nature. This is so because no party can ever have the total vote of the population. There are always those who will feel disenfranchised, and everything a government does is conspiratorial against those people.
With realities like this in society and politics, I find it surprising that there are as few conspiracy theories as there are.

__________

JFK

President John F Kennedy was assassinated on 23 November 1963 as his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.
Amid several shots, the killer bullet hit just below Kennedy’s Adam’s Apple, going on to split his skull. Accompanied by his wife, Jackie, and Texas Governor John Connally, the image of the event is one of THE iconic moments of the 20th century.
Racing him off to the Parkland Memorial Hospital, Kennedy died just before one o’clock. Meanwhile, just after the event, loner Lee Harvey Oswald walked out of the Texas School Book Depository where he fired the shots from a sixth floor window.
A sniper’s rifle was later found. Arrested shortly afterwards, Oswald was himself shot dead two days later by club owner Jack Ruby, a man with close Mafia connections.
Despite the following Warren Commission which claimed no conspiracy was involved in the assassination, from that day to this, the idea that Kennedy was assassinated through conspiracy has remained.
Organised by either Mafia or Right Wing elements in America itself, evidence of a conspiracy is thought to be in the amateur film footage taken of the assassination by Abraham Zapruder.
For instance, Kennedy’s driver seems to turn round and point a gun at Kennedy. On a summer’s day, a man in the crowd holds an umbrella, lifts it and seems to pump it at the car – a poisoned flachette? Even eyewitnesses are sure there was more going on, such as those stood by a grassy knoll who heard a shot whizz past them.

__________

HOLY GRAIL

The success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code rebirthed the popularity of the Holy Grail. Traditionally the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, it has come to mean much more. Various coinspiracy theories exist concerning the grail. I’ll put them together to tell a marvellous fairy story.
The Carolingian Frank king, Charlemange, created the Holy Roman Empire in 800AD, guaranteeing the ascendancy of Roman Catholicism in Europe, after usurping the Merovingian dynasty in France. The Merovingians are thought to be behind legends of the Holy Grail, which is said to really means the Blood of Christ.
This is so because they were his descendants. Christ, having survived the Cross, had a family with Mary Magdalene and they, or she and his child, moved to the Riviera. As Catholicism ls based on the Resurrection, knowledge of Christ’s survival had to be stamped out. But enter the secretive Priory of Sion, an organisation operating even today to reinstate the Merovingian line throughout Europe, and the real power behind the EU.

__________

ROBERTO CALVI

Many deaths attract the conspiracy theorist. Typical is ‘God’s banker’, Roberto Calvi, found hanged from Blackfriar’s Bridge, London, on 18 June 1982. President of the Italian Banco Ambrosiano, he worked close with Vatican finance, but was facing dozens of charges for embezzlement and Mafia connections.
Was it suicide or was he murdered? At the centre of the theories is P2, an Italian secret society set up by the Gestapo during World War Two. Thought to be at the centre of Italian intrigue, a secret organization that connects Mafia, government, the Vatican and, so it is believed, the CIA, it would be impossible for conspiracies not to arise, or for conspiriologists to exaggerate them.

__________

WHEN AN EVENT IS MORE THAN AN EVENT

Let me upset all you conspiracy theorists. JFK was assassinated by a loner called Lee Harvey Oswald and Princess Diana died in a tragic car accident. Yes, I know, it’s so boring, but so is much of life. And maybe this is the point about such events.
The reality of the life of JFK and Diana was that they were far from boring. Rather, they were sensational; so to admit that their deaths may not be as sensational as their life is a bit of a let down. Maybe we need to invent something more, to do justice to who they were.
This does, infact, fit into a historical pattern. Although seemingly different people, JFK and Diana were charismatic and died tragically young.
The template for this kind of death was set two millennia ago with Jesus Christ, who was also charismatic and died tragically young. With Jesus, it was not acceptable that he could have a normal death, so almost immediately we find the beginnings of a conspiracy. Judas betrays him, and the Sanhedrin conspire to have him executed.
After the event, the death cannot, of course, be normal. Rather, he is Resurrected – he cheats death – and finally ascends to Heaven under his own terms. And in this way, the whole thing is sensational.
JFK and Diana share the sociology of the above – and in more ways than this. For instance, all three were in the business of changing society. Indeed, following them, society DID change. So could it be that it was the event of the death that became a catalyst for change?
If we accept this as a possibility, then we can see how additional factors are placed upon the death by a social need for them to be seen as iconic. Which brings us to a simple point about an event. Is an event a circumstance in itself, or does our appreciation of the event after the event become part of the event too?
Basically, what I’m hinting at, here, is that there is a ‘relativity’ to an event which automatically takes into account the impressions people have of the event. And what is remembered is not the event itself, but a social history stamped upon it.
In times past the social processes involved formed new religions. Today, we live in a more secular society, so to satisfy the need to sensationalise a point of social change, we have invented conspiracy theory to keep the process going.
Hence, conspiracy theory may be a thing to be ridiculed by many. But it could well have an important social function. But I still think JFK was killed by a nutter, and Diana died in a pointless accident.

__________

MARTIN LUTHER KING

A similar character to Oswald was responsible for the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, shot in the early morning of 4 April 1968 as he took a breath of fresh air on his balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, Memphis.
He died 12 hours later in hospital. Within an hour of the murder the police began looking for petty crook, James Earl Ray, who had been seen with a rifle, found close by. Ray initially escaped, making it to Britain where he was arrested on 8 June. In his subsequent trial he was sentenced to 99 years, found guilty of murder.
Conspiracy theories soon arose that Ray was a patsy, and the man who was really behind the assassination was FBI director, J Edgar Hoover. Clearly, Hoover did not like King, to the point that he had tried to discredit him as a homosexual.
Similarly, King was causing much trouble for the US government with his protest movement.

__________

THE TRUE CONSPIRATORS

Conspiracy theories come and go, but one thing that has been constant in recent US history is that there has always been a continual spread of conspiracies involving the US government. And the supposed missing aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 is a perfect example.
Why isn’t there any film to prove that a plane DID crash into the building? The simple fact is there is. If the Pentagon isn’t constantly filmed from all angles by security, then they are remiss. But this film will never be published, and for a very good reason.
It is now known that, during the hey-day of the UFO phenomenon, the US government purposely allowed stories of UFOs to circulate – they even encouraged them. The reason was simple dis-information.
Whilst supposed ‘crack-pots’ continued to witness strange lights in the sky, and identify them as flying saucers, advanced American aircraft such as the SR-71 could fly without suspicion, sightings of the aircraft dismissed as delusions from UFO freaks.
The US government likes nothing better than stirring up conspiracy theorists so that the public do not take secret US projects seriously. And in this light, they would purposely not disclose the evidence of the Pentagon attack that is so obviously there.
The only problem is does this prove that they ARE conspiring?

__________

ROBERT KENNEDY

Senator Robert Kennedy was, like his brother and King, a moderate left politician, who particularly stalked the Mafia in his role as Attorney General. Going for president himself, he won an all important Californian primary on 5 June 1968.
Holding a celebration party in the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel, he was being escorted through the kitchens when Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan jumped in front of him, shouted Kennedy, you son of a bitch, pulled out a pistol and fired off a number of shots. Kennedy fell with a bullet in his head. He died a day later.
Sirhan Sirhan was, like Ray and Oswald, a relative non-entity. Were such killers working alone or were they part of a wider conspiracy? For instance, Sirhan’s pistol held eight rounds. How is it that thirteen rounds were fired?
And taking into account the possibility of such murderers being part of such conspiracies, wouldn’t the conspirators have been better off hiring professional gunmen?

__________

JOHN LENNON

John Lennon was letting himself into his New York flat on 8 December 1980 when a young man called Mark Chapman casually walked up to the ex-Beatle and shot him dead. When the police arrived a short time later, Chapman was stood close by, reading a book.
Making no attempt to escape, he claimed madness at his trial, but the jury decided he shot the star simply to gain notoriety. A loner throughout his short life, Chapman had an unusual defence.
In his own words, he said: ‘ (Lennon) walked past me and then I heard a voice in my head: ‘do it, do it,’ over and over again …’ ‘I don’t remember aiming. I must have done, but I don’t remember “drawing a bead” or whatever you call it. And I just pulled the trigger a steady five times.’

__________

WE’RE THE CONSPIRATORS

The vast majority of conspiracy theories say that the government is conspiring against us. But there is a logical variation that argues we are conspiring against them. It is all to do with official forms – you know, tax returns, censuses, benefit applications.
A question. When you fill one in, do you tell the exact truth? Do you let them know everything? Do you under-estimate or exaggerate? Go on, admit it, you don’t tell them all. And what happens if everyone who has dealings with government bends the truth, if only a little? Government gets a distorted view of the people they serve. And the outcome of all this is that policies are based on that distortion rather than the true reality. And in being distorted, we don’t like what they do. They have no idea what they’re doing, or they’re purposely out to control us how they see fit.

__________

MK ULTRA

The spate of assassinations in the 1960s are said to be due to the techniques of sinister US organisation MK-ultra, who indulge in mind control. The idea of such mind control became popular following Richard Condon’s book, The Manchurian Candidate, in which a US soldier was caught by the Chinese in Korea, brain-washed, and sent back to America, hypnotically programmed to assassinate a Presidential candidate, even though he was not aware of this fact.
An actual CIA backed MK-Ultra programme ls known to have been run from 1953-73, which included research in control techniques. However, the programme was shut down due to lack of success and over indulgence. Details of its activities were revealed by the Rockefeller Commission into CIA abuses in June 1975, and by the investigations of conspiriologist John Marks.
Their many experiments included taking prostitutes to safe houses, giving them cocktails of LSD, and photographing the effects. In another test, a Dr Gottlieb, one of the researchers into hallucinogens, spiked the drinks of many of his co-workers with LSD. One of them, Dr Frank Olsen, became psychotic and, in 1953, threw himself out of a window.
Was it suicide, or had his mind been adapted? It is highly unlikely that such experiments could have been successful; and it certainly doesn’t answer the above assassinations. Indeed, what is often forgotten is that the assassins involved fit neatly into a definite pattern of behaviour that also arose in the 1960s.
These assassinations came in line with a huge rise in the number of serial and spree killers. Rising particularly in America, a whole frustrated generation seemed to produce a large number of frustrated loners who were determined to hit back at society.
Some took out their frustrations with a semi-automatic on a group of people, others chose certain weak members of society to kill one at a time on dark nights. It is therefore reasonable to assume that some of these loners would aim higher, and assassinate major figures.

__________

THE FUNNY THING ABOUT CONSPIRACY THEORY

Conspiracy theory is a troubling area of research. Let me make something plain. I hardly believe any of them. But I am aware that to be totally sceptical is a ridiculous stance to make. It is ridiculous for the following reason.
Whatever happens in society must have a reason. To dismiss something out of hand, without searching, seriously, for the reason, is to ignore impulses within society. And when impulses are ignored, we are not aware that trouble is brewing.
Conspiracy theory must, therefore, be taken seriously. For instance, consider this. A theorist cannot work alone. They must have the oxygen of publicity to become a conspiracy theorist in the first place. Without an audience, no one knows what they are, so they cannot be what they are.
The audience and the theorist are therefore conspiring against us.

__________

LANGUAGE HYPNOSIS

Why do people believe in conspiracies? One rather subtle reason is the prevalence, in society, of language hypnosis. We are all open to self-delusion, but if a large number of people in a society suffer a delusion, then it turns from psychology to sociology, with society itself holding a large dose of delusional tendencies.
The most subtle form of this delusional ability concerns words. A word can be much more than its letters and literary meaning. Consider, for instance, Auschwitz. In reality, a tiny village, but with the establishment of a death camp there, the word has become the embodiment of evil, and fills the mind with meaning above the word itself.
This reaction to a word is a form of social language hypnosis. Its power has been known throughout history, evidenced by the importance of word magic in the occult, and even the Jewish Cabala tells us that the alphabet is an element used in creation.
In this way, an element of society can be stereotyped in a word, with sinister meaning piled upon it. Typical is the use of the ‘Jew.’ In reality the word describes a race. But place language hypnosis upon the word, and enculturation can turn it into an incorrect statement of malevolence, fuelling a whole alternative history of false cabals ruling the world.
Language hypnosis is one of the primary tools of the conspiracy theorist. Through the manipulation of words, and placing simple doubt upon something, reinforced by those words, a delusional need to believe in the false meaning is assured; and another ‘conspiracy’ takes on a life of its own.

(c) Anthony North, December 2008