Fluoridation

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img addition="" alt="the" border="0" decay="" drinking="" fluoridation="" fluoride="" of="" prevent="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAvEqZZ1phxoiHGOXz6vaUx_LTXzbk4AuU94tR5YOMaOYNL2pUXMrCTmq0OyBXk2QFnQL7F3-NuzydseIjb2yaO6bniGZ3UwiIVsXgnIKPUIcvWOSFdZ3HxQs35c1pnIf4skqrWPC2UUY/s1600/tapwater.png" title="Fluoridation" to="" tooth="" water="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fluoridation</td></tr> </tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"></div>Fluoridation, the addition of fluoride to drinking water to prevent tooth decay, has been associated with numerous conspiracy theories beginning in the 1950s when it was first promoted nationally as a public health measure. <br /> <br /> Throughout the fifty years that fluoridation has been controversial in the United States, the antifluoridation movement has been receptive to conspiracy theories because the basic premise of the movement has been that there is sufficient scientific evidence to prove that fluoridation is either dangerous or ineffective, and that the promoters of fluoridation know this. <br /> <br /> Blaming the promotion of fluoridation on a conspiracy has been one way antifluoridationists have tried to explain efforts to promote fluoridation despite their evidence. As part of their theories, opponents of fluoridation also often rejected the official version of how fluoridation was discovered. <br /> <br /> According to promoters of fluoridation, a dentist in Colorado discovered that excess fluoride in drinking water discolored teeth. When the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) attempted to confirm his observations, they discovered that low levels of fluoride did not cause discoloration but in fact inhibited tooth decay. <br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583227008/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1583227008&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=WTFQ6YYLXBGXP2D6"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1583227008&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img addition="" alt="the" border="0" decay="" drinking="" fluoridation="" fluoride="" height="1" of="" prevent="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1583227008" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" to="" tooth="" water="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002B22W5Q/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002B22W5Q&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=TYXD3K7VAFS2RJLM"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B002B22W5Q&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img addition="" alt="the" border="0" decay="" drinking="" fluoridation="" fluoride="" height="1" of="" prevent="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B002B22W5Q" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" to="" tooth="" water="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table><br /> Even when antifluoridationists accepted this version of history, to support their theories they cited the role that alleged conspirators, such as the federal government, played in the discovery. Although antifluoridationists shared similar views about the dangers of fluoride and questioned its origins, they disagreed on who was responsible for the promotion of fluoridation, and their motivation for promoting it.<br /> <br /> In the 1950s, during the McCarthy era, some antifluoridationists believed that fluoridation was part of a Communist plot to destroy the United States. All of these antifluoridationists rejected the official history of fluoridation’s discovery, but disagreed over how fluoridation was actually discovered. Some believed the Nazis in 1930s Germany had discovered that fluoridation made those drinking it docile and easily controlled. <br /> <br /> The Nazis had allegedly used it in concentration camps and to stifle opposition in their campaigns against Poland and Czechoslovakia. Other antifluoridationists claimed fluoridation caused sterility, and was used by the Nazis in Eastern Europe as part of their plan to eliminate local populations and replace them with German settlers. <br /> <br /> According to this theory, Soviet scientists learned about the uses of fluoridation either through meetings with the German General Staff during the brief period of time between the signing of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of 1939 and the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 or when the Soviet army overran Eastern Europe in the simpulan days of World War II. <br /> <br /> Some antifluoridationists did not speculate on the origins of fluoridation, but focused on how the Soviet Union had used fluoridation in its prisoner-of-war camps and gulags during World War II to keep their prisoners docile. <br /> <br /> As proof that the Soviet Union had used fluoridation during World War II, these antifluoridationists cited the memoirs of a soldier who claimed that during the war he witnessed numerous lend-lease shipments of fluorides to the Soviet Union for the purpose of controlling prisoners.<br /> <br /> Antifluoridationists who believed the promotion of fluoridation was a Communist plot considered three possible motives. Some believed that fluoridation would weaken Americans’ mental abilities and their will to resist communism, preparing the way for a political takeover of the United States. <br /> <br /> Others believed that fluoridation was the first step toward a military invasion of the United States. Communist saboteurs would slip into water-treatment plants in key cities and military bases across the country and use the fluoridation equipment to dump a lethal dose of fluoride into the drinking water, paving the way for a Soviet invasion. <br /> <br /> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img addition="" alt="the" border="0" decay="" drinking="" fluoridation="" fluoride="" of="" prevent="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIaUAeDnErwyHE1Nv8aBCn_-eGGsaiuGPtY3C6Cujj0jDNhEd5BQmAlABbLp8G0379H-sjFAEPtbmI2xEqJXdFzd0Mu2EHE-BVbTa5wpsXloxo4XFJvD1DsJq1gf0FQhi9YpuCCMiYMOQ/s1600/Fluoridation.jpg" title="Fluoridation" to="" tooth="" water="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">stop fluoridation</td></tr> </tbody></table><br /> Another version of this theory held that fluoridation would cause cancers and other diseases, particularly in children, so that in ten or twenty years, when the <a href=" " target="_blank">Soviet Union</a> attacked, the United States would not have enough healthy men to raise an army for national defense. <br /> <br /> Some antifluoridationists suggested that the ultimate goal of fluoridation was not simply the destruction of the United States, but the poisoning of all human beings in preparation for their replacement by a new kind of human being specially bred by the Soviets.<br /> <br /> Antifluoridationists who believed fluoridation was a Communist conspiracy were never a very large segment of the antifluoridation movement, although they were extremely vocal. They reflected the general atmosphere of the 1950s, when many Americans worried that the federal government and society had been infiltrated by Communist agents and were concerned about the possibility of military conflict with the Soviet Union. <br /> <br /> As those concerns lessened in the late 1950s and early 1960s, antifluoridationists believing in these conspiracies diminished in importance in the movement, although profluoridationists continued to stress their views as a way of discrediting all antifluoridationists. Antifluoridationists who believed in a Communist conspiracy came to be seen as humorous and absurd, not only among profluoridationists, but also in the broader society. <br /> <br /> The best example of this image can be seen in the black comedy Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964), a movie in which a madcap U.S. general initiates a nuclear war because he believes that the Soviet Union is poisoning the United States through fluoridation.<br /> <br /> After the Communist conspiracy faded away, two other conspiracy theories gained prominence within the movement: one claiming the promotion of fluoridation was a conspiracy by businesses interests; the other identifying the federal government as the force behind the conspiracy. <br /> <br /> Each of these groups was identified as the source of the money to fund scientific research favorable to fluoridation and finance campaigns encouraging communities to adopt fluoridation. Sometimes these two groups, business interests and the federal government, were considered to be working together in the conspiracy.<br /> <br /> For some antifluoridationists who blamed the promotion of fluoridation on business interests, the primary conspirator behind the promotion of fluoridation was the aluminum industry, particularly the biggest corporation in the industry, the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). ALCOA was promoting fluoridation as a way to dispose profitably of the fluoride compounds that were a waste product of the aluminum manufacturing process. <br /> <br /> As proof of this conspiracy, antifluoridationists noted that an ALCOA chemist had assisted the Colorado dentist in some of his water tests leading to the discovery of fluoride. They also believed it was not a coincidence that Oscar Ewing, head of the government agency responsible for initiating the promotion of fluoridation in the 1950s, had previously been a high-level lawyer for ALCOA.<br /> <br /> In the 1960s and 1970s, when environmental issues became a concern in the United States, some antifluoridationists argued that ALCOA was using fluoridation not only as a disposal method, but also as a way of undermining environmentalists’ efforts to stop industrial pollution. <br /> <br /> These antifluoridationists reasoned that if ALCOA could win widespread acceptance of the idea that fluoride in drinking water was safe, it could argue that there was nothing wrong with the company releasing those compounds from its factories into the environment. <br /> <br /> Other antifluoridationists expanded the conspiracy to include all businesses that generated fluoride compounds as part of the manufacturing process, from glass- and brickmakers, to weapons manufacturers. As proof of these theories, antifluoridationists stressed the minor role the Mellon Institute, a business-financed research institute, played in early tests on fluoridation.<br /> <br /> For others, the force behind the promotion of fluoridation was the sugar industry, which wanted to find an easy way to prevent tooth decay so that it could encourage consumption of sugar. Sometimes, the entire processed food industry was considered part of this conspiracy. Antifluoridationists argued that the safe and effective method of preventing tooth decay was the elimination of processed foods, especially refined sugar and flour, from the diet. <br /> <br /> These industries, by backing the use of fluoridation, were seeking to prevent tooth decay through a dangerous and ineffective method that would allow Americans to continue to consume their products. These antifluoridationists rarely offered any proof to support their allegations, although they sometimes mentioned the Mellon Institute’s role in fluoridation research as evidence of these views.<br /> <br /> The federal government was also considered involved in a plot to force fluoridation on the U.S. public. Within the federal government, the USPHS was the agency primarily responsible for promoting fluoridation; antifluoridationists claimed this agency was only backing fluoridation as a way to extend federal authority. <br /> <br /> These antifluoridationists argued that once the federal government won public acceptance of treating tooth decay through chemicals in the water supply, the next step would be birth control or psychiatric medication administered to the entire population through the public drinking water, or forcing exercise and diet regimes on the entire population to control obesity. <br /> <br /> Another explanation for the USPHS’s continued promotion of fluoridation was that the USPHS was involved in a cover-up; the USPHS promoted fluoridation because it could not admit that its scientists, when they determined that fluoridation was safe, had committed a mistake that may have endangered the health of millions of Americans.

Fluoridation

Fluoridation Fluoridation, the addition of fluoride to drinking water to prevent tooth decay, has been associated with numerous conspirac...

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Film and Conspiracy Theory

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6A5GNEiMVgRFZTUDSwRnMH5FUrTINjCOfR7ckNH-5ohaM9KQs8x8Is4z1L8HhcedLXLcEXTjWfvktJnempzW4OIjxgFnFZJNrpMWs2Pcrb2R9J19M0SvqSXSXUlmfqnNCj6juxgkaDlA/s1600/Conspiracy-theory.jpg" that="" theory="" title="Film" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Film and Conspiracy Theory</td></tr> </tbody></table> Films that center on or significantly include a conspiracy have been around as long as most other genres of fiction films. To take one notorious early example, The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith 1915) portrays the original Ku Klux Klan (KKK), positively, as a conspiracy by Southern whites to overturn gains made by African Americans during the post–<a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Civil War Reconstruction</a>. <br /> <br /> Generally, though, traditional “secret societies” such as the KKK have appeared in films only sporadically. (Two recent examples are the organization based on Yale University’s <a href=" " target="_blank">Skull and Bones society</a> in The Skulls [dir. Rob Cohen 2000], and the legendary <a href=" " target="_blank">Illuminati</a> in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider [dir. Simon West 2001].) As in many conspiracy theories, conspiracies in films tend to be amorphous. <br /> <br /> And as with all genres of popular film, conspiracy movies follow cycles that vary with changing trends in the wider culture (Altman). There have been three major cycles: from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s during the cold war, from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s in the postVietnam, post-Watergate era, and from the early 1990s to the present.<br /> <br /> <b>The Cold War and the “International Communist Conspiracy”</b><br /> <br /> The first important cycle of conspiracy films begins in the late 1940s with the start of the cold war and concern over the so-called international Communist conspiracy. Some of these films follow the efforts of federal agents to combat Communist spy rings and fifth columns, such as <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B002DQQ96S" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="9569b4b0dba424d4fb198d6d6cae8137" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="I Was a Communist for the FBI" href="http://www.amazon.com/Communist-Philip-Carey-Dorothy-Lovejoy/dp/B002DQQ96S/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=theconthist-20&linkId=9569b4b0dba424d4fb198d6d6cae8137&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_2167553" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I Was a Communist for the FBI</a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_2167553" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=theconthist-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=9569b4b0dba424d4fb198d6d6cae8137&_cb=1457003036848" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="0" /> (dir. Gordon Douglas 1951); the similarly premised TV series I Led Three Lives (1953– 1956), scripts for which were vetted in advance by the FBI; Walk East on Beacon (dir. Alfred Werker 1952); and the perfectly ludicrous Big Jim McClain (dir. Edward Ludwig 1952), featuring western stars John Wayne and James Arness as agents of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) foiling a Soviet plot to take control of Hawaiian ports by infiltrating waterfront labor unions.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006WWE2BI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B006WWE2BI&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=KJJYYYLKZE6R2A2C"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B006WWE2BI&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="1" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B006WWE2BI" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KG2S00O/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=94dd16991593881846c177e07ef7a467" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B00KG2S00O&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="1" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=B00KG2S00O" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Another group of Communist conspiracy films concerns the protagonists’ discovery that people close to them are secretly Communists: a woman’s husband in Conspirator (dir. Arthur Hornblow 1949) and I Married a Communist (a.k.a. Woman on Pier 13) (dir. Robert Stevenson 1950); a war veteran’s girlfriend in <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B00AOO5OSK" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="c71903a30107da108229ad0e7fa1c548" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="The Red Menace" href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-Menace-Robert-Rockwell/dp/B00AOO5OSK/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=theconthist-20&linkId=c71903a30107da108229ad0e7fa1c548&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_197478" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Red Menace</a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_197478" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=theconthist-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=c71903a30107da108229ad0e7fa1c548&_cb=1457003106786" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="0" /> (dir. R. G. Springsteen 1949); a couple’s son in My Son John (dir. Leo McCarey 1952); and a man’s coworkers in The Fearmakers (dir. Jacques Tourneur 1958). <br /> <br /> These and dozens more along the same lines, none of them successful at the box office, were probably released to allay suspicions about the patriotism of people in the film industry (Leab, 26) at a time when it was widely alleged that Hollywood had been infiltrated by clandestine subversives, and many film workers, especially writers, were blacklisted by the studios and some (the “Hollywood 10”) were even jailed by the government. Unsurprisingly, no real effort to understand the Communists and their aims is made in these “red” conspiracy films, except to suggest that they are motivated by greed, hunger for power, and so on. <br /> <br /> A pastiche with a clever twist is The House on Carroll Street (dir. Peter Yates 1988), written by Walter Bernstein, who had himself been put on the blacklist, about a leftist writer persecuted for refusing to cooperate with the HUAC who teams up with an FBI agent to uncover a government conspiracy to smuggle Nazi war criminals into the United States to aid in the cold war. Blacklisted screenwriters feature in The Front (dir. Martin Ritt 1976), also scripted by Bernstein, and in The Majestic (dir. Frank Darabont 2001).<br /> <br /> The classic Communist conspiracy film <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B00AEFYLBU" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="410691d742429c9c74eb45b19bbf78e3" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="The Manchurian Candidate" href="http://www.amazon.com/Manchurian-Candidate-The-Blu-ray-Various/dp/B00AEFYLBU/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=theconthist-20&linkId=410691d742429c9c74eb45b19bbf78e3&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_7496969" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Manchurian Candidate</a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_7496969" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=theconthist-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=410691d742429c9c74eb45b19bbf78e3&_cb=1457003141630" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="0" /> (dir. John Frankenheimer 1962) was released at a time when relations with the Communist bloc were already beginning to move toward détente and the fear of communist subversion within the United States had greatly diminished. In consequence, films began openly critiquing cold war paranoia, as in Seven Days in May (dir. John Frankenheimer 1964), in which opposition to U.S.<br /> <br /> Soviet nuclear disarmament inspires a plot to overthrow the government and install a military regime. (The generals’ coup concept was more recently, and prophetically, recycled in <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B000OT6V0K" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="5bc7c5c1ab2864e9b35dc0a07ac8853f" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="The Siege" href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Siege-Martial-Law-Edition/dp/B000OT6V0K/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=theconthist-20&linkId=5bc7c5c1ab2864e9b35dc0a07ac8853f&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1221605" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Siege</a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1221605" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=theconthist-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=5bc7c5c1ab2864e9b35dc0a07ac8853f&_cb=1457003172357" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="0" /> [dir. Edward Zwick 1998], in which a terrorist campaign by Arab fundamentalists in New York provides the military an excuse to impose martial law.) By the late 1960s, international conspiracy paranoia had become spoof material in The President’s Analyst (dir. Theodore J. Flicker 1967) and in James Bond movies. <br /> <br /> Subsequent “straight” cold war conspiracy suspense films usually seem like throwbacks to a distant past, although a few are quite well made, such as Telefon (dir. Don Siegel 1977), with its Soviet agents preprogrammed to blow up military installations, and The Package (dir. Andrew Davis 1989), in which rogue U.S. and Soviet spies conspire to undermine progress toward peace.<br /> <br /> <b>Alien Invasions and Body Snatchers</b><br /> <br /> Three excellent alien invasion films from the early cold war period, Invaders from Mars (dir. William Cameron Menzies 1953), It Came from Outer Space (dir. Jack Arnold 1953)—in which, however, it turns out that the intruders are not invading but only want to repair their spaceship—and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Don Siegel 1956), along with less memorable knockoffs like The Brain Eaters (dir. Bruno VeSota 1958) and Invisible Invaders (dir. Edward L. Cahn 1959), are often regarded as commentary on the Communist witch-hunting hysteria of the time. <br /> <br /> They were freer to criticize or even ridicule this anticommunism owing to their fantastic plot lines, involving ordinary people whose identities are “taken over” by extraterrestrials in a conspiracy to wrest control of the earth from humans. Siegel’s film in particular lends itself to complementary interpretations as both a metaphoric, perhaps even satiric exaggeration of the internal Communist menace and as a critique of the rigid conformity to traditional “American values” that was seen as a sign of loyalty (Bartholomew, 374). <br /> <br /> Also worth mentioning in this context is the archly titled Red Planet Mars (dir. Harry Horner 1952), which, before descending into vacuous spiritualism, flirts with the intriguing idea of the Soviets faking an alien contact in order to destabilize the West.<br /> <br /> The body-snatching concept—whether the aliens appropriate real people’s bodies or disguise themselves to resemble humans—reappears not only in two remakes of Siegel’s film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Philip Kaufman 1978) and <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B000HF0IMI" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="12455b2a540435c1231d590970e7da9b" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Body Snatchers" href="http://www.amazon.com/Body-Snatchers-Gabrielle-Anwar/dp/B000HF0IMI/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=theconthist-20&linkId=12455b2a540435c1231d590970e7da9b&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_9533241" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Body Snatchers</a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_9533241" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=theconthist-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=12455b2a540435c1231d590970e7da9b&_cb=1457003237459" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="0" /> (dir. Abel Ferrara 1993), and in more or less direct imitations such as two TV series, The Invaders (1967–1968) and Dark Skies (1996–1997), the miniseries V (dir. Kenneth Johnson 1983), and The Puppet Masters (dir. Stuart Orme 1994), and the made-for-TV Target Earth (dir. Philip Markle 1998), but also in several other films, in each case with a different angle in keeping with the changing zeitgeist. <br /> <br /> The Stepford Wives (dir. Bryan Forbes 1975) echoes—or perhaps the word should be confirms—feminist critiques of the patriarchal nuclear family in a “male fantasy” about men in a small town turning their wives into docile automatons, “living dolls” (Borzello, Kuhn, Pack, and Wedd, 14). The 1990s resurgence of environmental activism is reflected in The Arrival (dir. David Twohy 1996) when aliens from a hot planet who have assumed human identities plot to replace us by hastening the global warming that we instigated. <br /> <br /> Young “slackers” are targeted for takeover by aliens who have bodysnatched their teachers in The Faculty (dir. Robert Rodriguez 1998), and in Disturbing Behavior (dir. David Nutter 1998) a similar contingent from Generation X is mind-controlled through brain implants administered by a mad scientist in collusion with the teenagers’ own parents. <br /> <br /> Late-twentieth-century anxiety about illegal immigrants is humorously played upon in Men in Black (dir. Barry Sonnenfeld 1997) (Dean, 155), in which an ultrasecret agency polices extraterrestrial “aliens” who have been living on earth for decades in the guise of humans, domesticated animals, and even celebrities such as Newt Gingrich, Dennis Rodman, and Sylvester Stallone. (Elvis too, but he has since returned to his home planet.)<br /> <br /> <b>The Post-Vietnam, Post-Watergate Era</b><br /> <br /> Given the cinematic obsolescence of the international Communist conspiracy, the next significant cycle of conspiracy films, which begins in the early 1970s, can be attributed to a variety of causes, domestic and international, cultural and commercial. First, the assassinations, ghetto rebellions, and other upheavals of the 1960s had left a legacy of disappointed hopes, cynicism, and pessimism, which was further augmented by the lightless tunnel that was the war in Vietnam. <br /> <br /> Then, as the new decade wore on, there were additional blows to national self-confidence: Watergate and other political scandals, the energy crisis and resulting recession, the ignominious fall of Saigon, and the Iran hostage crisis. The early to mid-1970s also saw a downturn in movie attendance, leading the studios, uncharacteristically, to take chances. <br /> <br /> One result was the “Hollywood renaissance” sparked by the emergence of “movie brats” (young, sophisticated directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola) who were given unprecedented freedom to pursue their visions, and another was an opportunity for African Americans to make films for the major studios in the so-called blaxploitation boom. <br /> <br /> Hollywood’s unaccustomed risk-taking, combined with the mood of the times, also helped make it possible to bring forth a slew of darkly antiestablishment films involving evil conspiracies, often perpetrated by forces within the government. Fredric Jameson perceptively characterizes these films as “an unconscious, collective effort at trying to figure out where we are ... in a late twentieth century whose abominations are heightened by their concealment and their bureaucratic impersonality” (Jameson, 3).<br /> <br /> <b>Governmental, Corporate, and Police Conspiracies</b><br /> <br /> A few of the films are directly inspired by the political assassinations of the 1960s. Executive Action (dir. David Miller 1973) anticipates Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991) in dramatizing a conspiracy theory of the <a href=" " target="_blank">Kennedy assassination</a>, while Winter Kills (dir. William Richert 1979, reedited 1983) is about the cover-up of a conspiracy in the assassination of a fictional president, and more recently the made-forTV First Target (dir. Armand Mastroianni 2000) also concerns a presidential assassination conspiracy. <br /> <br /> The Parallax View (dir. Alan J. Pakula 1974), which follows a reporter’s investigation of a shadowy corporation that carries out assassinations, is more representative of the decade’s pessimistic new demam isu as Jameson describes it. A similar aura of sinister hidden power pervades the conspiratorial Nixon White House in Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976). <br /> <br /> The president’s paranoid personality is explored in Secret Honor (a.k.a. Lords of Treason) (dir. Robert Altman 1984) and Nixon (dir. Oliver Stone 1995); the intelligence community in Three Days of the Condor (dir. Sydney Pollack 1975), The Killer Elite (dir. Sam Peckinpah 1975), and The Osterman Weekend (dir. Sam Peckinpah 1983); and the nuclear power industry in The China Syndrome (dir. James Bridges 1979) and Silkwood (dir. Mike Nichols 1983), in which a brave woman dies while trying to expose practices that could lead to environmental disaster. (Although both stories are based on fact, it is in keeping with their respective timeframes that in Erin Brockovich [dir. Steven Soderbergh 2000] another female whistle-blower is successful in exposing a corporate conspiracy to cover up an environmental disaster. <br /> <br /> By contrast, in the barely coherent Chain Reaction [dir. Andrew Davis 1996], the conspiracy, which is connected to the CIA, rather than causing or covering up an environmental disaster, seeks to prevent the development of an environmental panacea: a cheap, nonpolluting energy source.)<br /> <br /> In more recent reworkings of this dark motif, the tobacco industry is in collusion with a major television network to hide the truth about nicotine addiction in The Insider (dir. Michael Mann 1999); the United Nations is the locus of a murky plot (in both senses) to sabotage a global free-trade agreement in The Art of War (dir. Christian Duguay 2000); a Microsoft-like software company secretively but ruthlessly pursues worldwide domination of electronic communications in AntiTrust (dir. Peter Howitt 2001); and in the conspiracy film parody Zoolander (dir. Ben Stiller 2001) the clothing industry maintains a healthy profit margin by washing the unimposing brains of male fashion models until they become supporters of child labor and Manchurian Candidate–like assassins of would-be reformers. (The Insider also inspired an ingenious antismoking public service short designed to resemble a trailer for a fictitious conspiracy film.) There should also be mentioned in this context three films from African American filmmakers that concern deep-rooted racist conspiracies in law enforcement. <br /> <br /> In Deep Cover (dir. Bill Duke 1992) an undercover black policeman discovers that his Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) handlers are permitting corrupt Latin American governments to saturate his own community with hard drugs, while in both The Glass Shield (dir. Charles Burnett 1995) and the made-for-cable Gang in Blue (dir. Mario van Peebles and Melvin van Peebles 1996), other young black officers uncover white vigilante organizations within the police force. <br /> <br /> In view of the widespread currency of similar conspiracy theories, regarding, for instance, the origin of AIDS/HIV, in African American culture (Turner), which some call “black paranoia,” it is strange, perhaps suspiciously so, that there have not been many more such films.<br /> <br /> <b>Surveillance and Control</b><br /> <br /> In keeping with Watergate-era revelations of secret tape recordings and government surveillance regimes, high technology in such areas as media manipulation, advanced weaponry, and above all surveillance quickly became a prominent fixture in conspiracy films. <br /> <br /> A sound surveillance specialist unwittingly becomes an accomplice to a murderous conspiracy in The Conversation (dir. Francis Ford Coppola 1974), and another soundman accidentally discovers a politically motivated conspiracy in Blow Out (dir. Brian De Palma 1981), while a high-tech helicopter with a secret aktivitas of surveillance and crowd control is at the center of Blue Thunder (dir. John Badham 1983). <br /> <br /> NASA conspires to deceive the public with a faked Mars mission in Capricorn One (dir. Peter Hyams 1978), and in Alien (dir. Ridley Scott 1979) a faceless organization called “The Company” with vast, apparently quasi-governmental powers surreptitiously arranges for the crew of a deep-space mining ship to sacrifice themselves in retrieving a lethal life form for development as a weapon. Similarly, and in anticipation of <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B016YVK31Y" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="4143734454e147dd8f9e0f318ee2e320" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="The X-Files" href="http://www.amazon.com/X-files-Season-Blu-ray-David-Duchovny/dp/B016YVK31Y/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=theconthist-20&linkId=4143734454e147dd8f9e0f318ee2e320&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_5052267" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The X-Files</a><img a="" alt="Films" and="" around="" as="" been="" border="0" center="" conspiracy="" film="" have="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_5052267" include="" long="" mo="" on="" or="" significantly="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=theconthist-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=4143734454e147dd8f9e0f318ee2e320&_cb=1457003306104" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" theory="" width="0" />, politicians plot to keep secret a captured UFO in Hangar 18 (dir. James L. Conway 1980). <br /> <br /> Two additional science fiction films of the 1980s anticipate another conspiracy demam isu of the 1990s, of surveillance and media manipulation becoming almost literally ubiquitous: in Videodrome (dir. David Cronenberg 1983), television signals exert strange powers over viewers, while aliens disguised as humans keep the population under constant surveillance and control through nonstop subliminal advertising in They Live (dir. John Carpenter 1988). A more recent variation on Cronenberg’s idea about mind-destroying video signals occurs in Batman Forever (dir. Joel Schumacher 1995), in which The Riddler distributes a set-top box in order to assimilate viewers’ brainwaves. <br /> <br /> Carpenter’s idea about hidden commercials is echoed in the teenpic Josie and the Pussycats (dir. Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan 2001), as the music industry inserts subliminal messages in pop tunes in order to further, in the words of the film’s title character, a “conspiracy to brainwash the youth of America.”<br /> <br /> <b>The Contemporary Period</b><br /> <br /> Several significant trends of the 1990s show little sign of abating in the new century. First, the number of films (and TV programs) with a conspiracy angle has grown enormously. Second, the nature of film conspiracies has moved beyond the normal channels of politics, whether traditionally left or right, cold war international or Watergate domestic. <br /> <br /> Now film conspiracies are not only vast in size and/or in power and could be unfolding anywhere at any time, but the participants, rather than individuals implementing perfidious but intelligible left- or right-wing schemes, seem to have no goals except expanding the conspiracy. Moreover, the conspirators seem to be discrete individuals in appearance only but in fact are part of a seamless whole, in some films even to the extent of having a collective mind, like the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact. <br /> <br /> Finally, rather than merely projecting an illusion of innocuous normality in order to mask its subversive reality, the new-style conspiracy so pervades every facet of existence, from the universal to the singular, as to cast doubt on the reality/illusion distinction itself.<br /> <br /> Observers are divided on how to explain these developments. Jonathan Romney, interestingly, sees the demam isu as a consequence of new cinema technology such as CGI (computer graphics imaging), which has disrupted the relationship between what we are actually seeing (computer simulations) and what we think we are seeing (physical objects that have been photographed), instilling a paranoia that is more epistemological or even existential than political. <br /> <br /> “The new paranoia movies,” he writes, “have less to do with political anxieties, more to do with the feeling that there is little verifiable reality in the screen image itself and, by extension, in the world we know through visual media”. Other commentators adopt a more analytical approach. <br /> <br /> Mark Fenster follows Fredric Jameson in attributing it to an unthought-out but justified discontent with the status quo among the general population, while Peter Knight argues that globalization has made conspiracy theory less a political position than a “default mode” of experiencing culture in the New World Order, and Timothy Melley points to what he calls “agency panic,” which he describes as “a feeling that individuals cannot effect meaningful social action, and, in extreme cases, may not be able to control their behavior” (Melley, 11). <br /> <br /> Unquestionably, whatever the specific cause of the increased preoccupation with conspiracy, it is fed by the realization that more and more aspects of daily life, and not only in the popular culture, are being subsumed into regimes of manipulation, surveillance, and control, for no obvious reason, unless merely as an end in itself (Garfinkel, Rushkoff).<br /> <br /> <b>Obscurity and Inscrutability</b><br /> <br /> A rogue intelligence group that not even its enemies can identify exerts mind control to jadwal assassins and even uses the space shuttle to cause earthquakes in Conspiracy Theory (dir. Richard Donner 1997). The film’s protagonist, a taxi driver who is also a conspiracy theorist, conceives of the entire world as dominated by two “opposing factions” that “at some levels [are] at war but at other levels [are] the same.” He learns that the extent to which he is under constant surveillance exceeds his wildest paranoid nightmares, which is a common experience in these films. <br /> <br /> In The End of Violence (dir. Wim Wenders 1997) the government (or some unspecified part of it) seeks to suppress street crime by secretly installing satellitecoordinated hidden cameras in all public places, and in Enemy of the State (dir. Tony Scott 1998) a similar but even more omnipresent surveillance regime has been instituted by the <a href=" " target="_blank">National Security Agency</a> (NSA), apparently to no purpose other than for the sake of having it. (The story is premised on covering up the murder of a congressman who opposes a Telecommunications Security and Privacy Act that would give the NSA greater power to violate the latter in the name of the former. Such is their electronic reach that they wipe out all traces of the hero’s identity, as had happened to the heroine in an earlier film, The Net [dir. Irwin Winkler 1995]). <br /> <br /> There is a similar obscurity or even inscrutability about the plotters’ true goals in a spate of White House coverup films that all appeared in 1997, inspired perhaps by the cumulative effect of years of pre–Monica Lewinsky Clinton rumors: Shadow Conspiracy (dir. George P. Cosmatos), Absolute Power (dir. Clint Eastwood), Murder at 1600 (dir. Dwight Little), and the best of the lot, the brilliant satire Wag the Dog (dir. Barry Levinson), in which a war is manufactured in order to divert attention from sex allegations concerning the president and an underage girl.<br /> <br /> <b>Antiestablishment Conspiracies: Beyond “Left” and “Right”</b><br /> <br /> In several films the source of the conspiracy is found not in the establishment or some part of it, but comes from the opposition to the establishment. The nature of the conspiracy is nevertheless the same: it is usually vast, has sweeping but (at best) only vaguely defined goals, and can operate anywhere at any time, with everyone potentially a secret adherent of it. In political terms, these antiestablishment conspiracies resist ascription to traditional categories like right- and left-wing. <br /> <br /> The all male and almost all white members of the aptly named Project Mayhem conspiracy in Fight Club (dir. David Fincher 1999) seek to blow up corporate buildings, but not so much to subvert capitalism as to restore their masculinity, which they believe they have forfeited in the empty consumerism of modern life. <br /> <br /> Threatening a police commissioner with (appropriately enough) castration for trying to shut down the “fight clubs” from which he recruits volunteers, their charismatic leader boasts that “we know everything about you ... We control every part of your life.”<br /> <br /> Going one better than The Parallax View’s Joseph Frady, who was blamed for the political assassination he died trying to prevent, Michael Faraday in Arlington Road (dir. Mark Pellington 1999) unwittingly delivers the explosives that blow up the FBI building, for which he also takes the blame posthumously, rather than the antigovernment conspirators, who appear to be ordinary middle-class suburbanites with no interest in politics of any kind. <br /> <br /> Similarly opposed to the status quo is the eponymous conspiracy in Twelve Monkeys (dir. Terry Gilliam 1995), which plans to return the planet to the animals, a goal that is accomplished by releasing a plague virus that affects only humans.<br /> <b><br /> </b> <b>Epidemics, Medical Experiments, and the Unexplainable</b><br /> <br /> The epidemic motif has featured in other conspiracy films, notably The Andromeda Strain (dir. Robert Wise 1971) and Outbreak (dir. Wolfgang Petersen 1995), in both of which scientists are co-opted by the military into developing as weapons new disease organisms, from outer space in the former film and from Africa in the latter. (The cold war masa film The Satan Bug [dir. John Sturges 1965] also has a secret government lab experimenting with deadly microorganisms, one of which is stolen for use in an extortion plot.) Sometimes the government experiments on people directly, but without their knowledge, to alter them in desired ways. <br /> <br /> This happens during the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vietnam War</a> to the protagonists of both Jacob’s Ladder (dir. Adrian Lyne 1990) and the Roger Corman-produced The Capitol Conspiracy (a.k.a. The Prophet) (dir. Fred Olen Ray 1999). In the former the purpose is to enhance soldiers’ will to fight and in the latter to endow orphaned children with extrasensory powers. <br /> <br /> Paranormal children are also created by the government in the miniseries Sole Survivor (dir. Mikael Salomon 2000), while a conspiracy of mutant teenagers to take over the world is opposed by pro-human mutants in X-Men (dir. Bryan Singer 2000), and a conspiracy to use massproduced human clones to do the same features in The 6th Day (dir. Roger Spottiswoode 2000).<br /> <br /> In four eerie films from the mid-1990s, so little is revealed about what seems like a conspiracy that it is left uncertain whether there even is one. In Safe (dir. Todd Haynes 1995) and The Trigger Effect (dir. David Koepp 1996), something in the environment causes mysterious allergic reactions in the former film and a general breakdown of the entire social fabric in the latter. <br /> <br /> The prisoners in Cube (dir. Vincenzo Natali 1997) are unacquainted with each other and have no idea who imprisoned them or why, while the mathematician protagonist of Pi: Faith in Chaos (dir. Darren Aronofsky 1997) finds himself pursued by stockbrokers and Orthodox Jews because he may possess a secret that no one can begin to explain rationally. These are so-called independent films and their quirkiness might be dismissed as typical of “indies,” but in the late 1990s conspiracy films more in the mainstream displayed comparable characteristics.<br /> <br /> <b>Conspiracies of Infinite Regress</b><br /> <br /> As billionaire Nicholas Van Orton learns in The Game (dir. David Fincher 1997), the employees of Consumer Recreation Services (CRS) could be anyone and everyone he might encounter, and therefore what he takes to be the real world populated by real people could be just that, but then again it might also be an elaborate fiction engineered as a birthday present from his brother for making his life more exhilarating; or as a scheme for stealing his money in which his brother may or may not be complicit; or as a benign plot to help him overcome the childhood stress berat of his father’s suicide; or as a malign plot to induce him into following in his father’s footsteps (i.e., off a roof); or as something the film cagily refuses to reveal, inasmuch as the ending leaves open the possibility that the “game” is still being played, or even that there has never been a time when it wasn’t. <br /> <br /> In other words, the real world/game world distinction is in an infinite regress that doesn’t need to be sustained by resorting to more obvious devices like “virtual reality” (VR)—although the VR concept can be intelligently exploited, as in The Thirteenth Floor (dir. Josef Rusnak 1999), in which the solution to a murder in “our” world must be sought in a VR world inhabited by virtual “people” whose motivations, despite their preprogramming, are ultimately as indeterminable as those of the CRS employees in The Game.<br /> <br /> <b>The Truman Show, Dark City, and The Matrix</b><br /> <br /> Three important conspiracy films from the last years of the last century add a further twist. Not only is the conspiracy vast, beyond politics and existential in its implications, but all of us are made to feel a part of it, actually or potentially.<br /> <br /> Truman Burbank in The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir 1998) lives in an artificial world, but for him, and for him alone, there is no other world, because everyone except him is complicit in a conspiracy to sustain his belief that his world is the only one. <br /> <br /> This is because the town in which he has been raised since birth and subtly prevented ever escaping from is really a giant television studio equipped with countless hidden cameras and microphones, and all the people he has ever known whether intimately or casually are, unknown to him, actors in the employ of a director with the sacrilegious name of Christof. <br /> <br /> At the same time, everyone in the world Truman has never met is a voyeur of his life as Christof arranges it to unfold in his round-the-clock TV show, the popularity of which implies acceptance of the ever-increasing surveillance and control in their own daily lives on the part of the television audience and, by extension, of the film’s audience. As Christof says of Truman, he “prefers his cell.”<br /> <br /> In Dark City (dir. Alex Proyas 1998) another artificial world has been created in space and populated with kidnapped humans by a dying race of aliens, the Strangers, who possess “the ability to alter physical reality by will alone,” as explained in the opening voice-over narration from Daniel Paul Schreber, a psychiatrist ironically named after a turn-of-the-last-century paranoid whose delusions were studied by Sigmund Freud. <br /> <br /> Every night, while the Strangers are altering physical reality, Schreber rearranges the entire population’s memories so that the aliens can experiment on them. One human, Murdoch, discovers that he has the same powers. But after defeating the Strangers he simply takes their place, instituting a regime that, although presumably more benign, is no less total in its control over the malleable populace.<br /> <br /> So total and all enveloping is the conspiracy in The Matrix (dir. Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski 1999) that it has a name that evokes the womb. In the far future renegade computers have imprisoned most of the human race in pods in order to harvest their bodies’ electrical energy, while keeping them pacified with the cybernetically induced illusion that they are in 1999 New York. <br /> <br /> As Agent Smith puts it (he is part of a special jadwal that hunts down members of the human resistance who have escaped their pods and reentered the VR environment of the Matrix to carry out sabotage), in their own minds they are merely “billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious.” <br /> <br /> But unfortunately for them (or so it would seem), the contentment they experience in their “prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch,” as the rebel leader Morpheus describes the Matrix, is so great that “they will fight to protect it.” This means that, in order to prevail, Morpheus’s people, who of course also constitute a conspiracy, would need to destroy all those oblivious billions.<br /> <br /> <b>Freedom versus Security?</b><br /> <br /> In these films, ordinary people’s acceptance of and complicity in a conspiracy against their own autonomy, their privacy, their individuality and even their existence leave a depressing aftertaste despite saccharine romantic endings. <br /> <br /> Perhaps the message is one of resignation: the emerging regime of surveillance and control is inexorably eroding what remains of our freedom, and many of us, if not all, are resigned to accept this, and, perhaps in hope of greater security as a trade-off, even to embrace it.

Film and Conspiracy Theory

Film and Conspiracy Theory Films that center on or significantly include a conspiracy have been around as long as most other genres of f...

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Federal Reserve System

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="skulking" border="0" complete="" concoct="" federal="" island="" of="" off="" reserve="" secluded="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY2xYIFPZUn72ZceKMzpre19xdevMdidsoYj0jqT2j8_1FMZCVvpiPWCNp3k2rea2w5mfduj8rJZnBk3lCXYYzVVQ8tKLzXaB-6d-t7NslogPPtdfObeS50tYbBnr5xooGMQDd_YEOtX4/s1600/Federal-System.jpg" system="" the="" title="Federal" to="" transformation="" u="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Federal Reserve System</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> It was a conspiracy theorists’ dream come true: a group of wealthy bankers, supported by academics and politicians, skulking off to a secluded island to concoct a complete transformation of the U.S. banking system. The meeting in November 1910 on <b>Jekyll Island</b>, Georgia, which established the blueprint for the Federal Reserve System, played to long-held Populist fears of “Eastern Money Interests,” Jews, and large banks. When the plan was presented to Congress, it effectively increased the authority of the federal government—at least, indirectly—over the nation’s banking system.<br /> <br /> Ever since concerns about “foreign interests” in the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">First and Second Banks of the United States</a>, some Americans had viewed banks suspiciously. Writers such as William Gouge and politicians such as Thomas Hart “Old Bullion” Benton advocated a metallic standard of gold and silver coin only. These “hard money” proponents supported <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Andrew Jackson</a>’s “war” on the Bank of the United States and distrusted all forms of paper money. <br /> <br /> Although “hard money” advocates were in the minority in most states, they appealed to farmers and laborers who distrusted moneyed elites. After the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Civil War</a>, ironically, this same distrust evidenced itself in a demand for paper money (“Greenbackism”) and/or for coinage of silver, a position best associated with William Jennings Bryan.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/091298645X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=091298645X&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=6PQALDSJDZNBKZDG"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=091298645X&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="skulking" border="0" complete="" concoct="" federal="" height="1" island="" of="" off="" reserve="" secluded="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=091298645X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" system="" the="" to="" transformation="" u="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0609801724/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0609801724&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=6AYJHY3MHYFFGPTH"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0609801724&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="skulking" border="0" complete="" concoct="" federal="" height="1" island="" of="" off="" reserve="" secluded="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0609801724" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" system="" the="" to="" transformation="" u="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> By the late 1800s, however, although most Americans were satisfied with the nature of the banking system, they realized that important weaknesses existed. The banking system was not sufficiently “elastic,” meaning that it could not expand or contract the money supply when economic conditions changed. <br /> <br /> Another concern for those familiar with the financial sector was that in several panics—1873, 1893, and 1907—a single banker, <a href=" " target="_blank">J. P. Morgan</a>, had stepped in with a consortium of bankers to rescue the system. After the 1907 panic, even Morgan admitted that any future bank runs might be beyond his ability to contain.<br /> <br /> A series of commissions and studies by the American Bankers Association and the federal government produced a number of recommendations, most notably the need for a central bank and nationwide interstate branch banking. (Many states did not permit intrastate branch banking, and interstate branch banking was viewed as illegal, although no express challenges to interstate banking had occurred.) <br /> <br /> Virtually all of these studies concluded that any reforms in the banking system would require a powerful national bank capable of acting as a “lender of last resort” and tasked with providing liquidity to the banking system as a whole to allow for greater “elasticity.”<br /> <br /> An unstated, but widely held, goal of many of the reformers was also to limit or reduce the power of the New York banks, such as National City Bank, J. P. Morgan, and Kuhn, Loeb, and Company. Despite the fact that Morgan himself and most of the officers of National City were Protestants, a widely held suspicion existed in the rural United States that the New York banks were dominated by Jews. (The presence of Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb among the Jekyll Island group of “conspirators” reinforced the fear of “powerful New York Jews.”) <br /> <br /> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="skulking" border="0" complete="" concoct="" federal="" island="" of="" off="" reserve="" secluded="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3PrzR1E7NQVn_j4ZaySNZPDyOzcS_lz2WIsi-BGk3maufFzmkkhqb23KpbsPeF6wucDgeH5iUNOX0QYbkSjRvdQJVEC83HCLmEpBVO2bdWDlzjiOujtZyCfL2p_GDWLKXv3eMZVlkAvc/s1600/FRS-building.jpg" system="" the="" title="Federal" to="" transformation="" u="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Federal reserve building</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Whether many Americans indeed feared a Jewish element in the “money power” or not, a popular conception was that banks in New York wielded inordinate power. Thus, the reformers’ plans also involved different strategies for minimizing the influence of the New York banks.<br /> <br /> By 1913, the United States had what is termed a “dual banking” system consisting of state-chartered banks (which could not issue money), and national banks, chartered by the federal government, which could issue banknotes. The comptroller of the currency had authority over all national banks, while state authorities (bank examiners and such) supervised the state banks. There was no central bank or “lender of last resort,” or any national source of credit expansion.<br /> <br /> Following J. P. Morgan’s formation of a consortium of banks to bail out the banking system during the panic of 1907, concerns arose over the “consolidation” of banking power, especially in New York. Congressman Arsene Pujo’s House Banking and Currency Committee, which convened in 1911, investigated Morgan and First National’s George F. Baker, and concluded that New York banks controlled far more financial assets than they actually owned through various investments, interlocking directorates, and trust companies. New York, Pujo claimed, controlled 43 percent of the money in the United States.<br /> <br /> When the Jekyll Island meeting took place, all of these concerns played upon the reforms to which the participants agreed. The central individuals who drafted the basis of the Federal Reserve Bank system were Senator Nelson Aldrich (head of the National Monetary Commission); Henry P. Davison of J. P. Morgan; Charles D. Norton of First National Bank; Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb; and Colonel Edward House (one of <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">President Woodrow Wilson</a>’s closest advisors). <br /> <br /> Not only was this a small group, but conspiracy-minded people could point to the fact that Warburg was Jewish, or that House had connections to London banks and that he had written a futuristic novel Philip Dru, Administrator, a story in which Marxist socialism triumphed. Worse, the meeting took place in secret. Aldrich, especially, was concerned that if a plan was not drafted in secret, “special interest” lobbyists would nitpick it to death.<br /> <br /> Aldrich’s presence convinced some that <a href=" " target="_blank">John D. Rockefeller</a> was manipulating the meeting. Morgan, according to one conspiracy view, was a “Rockefeller stooge”—an astonishing claim about one of the richest men in the world. Morgan controlled the Fed bill through Aldrich, his “floor broker in the Senate”. <br /> <br /> Rockefeller then used the Fed, according to this view, to “bankroll” the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, manipulate stock prices through inflation, and push the agenda of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Trilateral Commission in later years.<br /> <br /> There is no question among historians that the Jekyll Island meeting resulted in the essence of the Federal Reserve Act, introduced by Congressman Carter Glass of Virginia, chairman of the House Committee on Banking. Far from being drafted in secrecy, the Federal Reserve Act was debated extensively and was subjected to much compromise before being passed overwhelmingly by the House (298 to 60) and the Senate (43 to 25). <br /> <br /> Under the act, twelve Federal Reserve District Banks were established in different regions across the United States. Each of these banks was a corporation owned by the member banks in its district, and while all national banks had to be members, state banks were not required to join the Federal Reserve System. <br /> <br /> Member banks had to place 6 percent of their capital and surplus in the district bank. One of the significant factors of the act was the location of the district banks: New York, of course, had one, as did Philadelphia and Boston. <br /> <br /> But Minneapolis, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, and Richmond all had district banks, and the state of Missouri—the heart of the Midwest—had two (St. Louis and Kansas City). Clearly, Congress had gone out of its way to dilute the “money power” of New York.<br /> <br /> Any district bank could act to stop runs by providing emergency cash from its vaults, and in theory, if one entire district was in trouble, other districts would come to its aid. The “elasticity” masalah was addressed through the Fed’s manipulation of discount rates to lend money to member banks to either expand, or contract, credit.<br /> <br /> In reality, though, New York retained its power through its overall influence, its dominant leadership, and its connections to corporate America. Congress intended that a Federal Reserve Board of Governors should be instituted, made up of five members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, as well as the comptroller and the secretary of the Treasury. <br /> <br /> The Banking Act of 1935 changed this by moving key decisions to the Federal Open Market Committee, composed of seven members of the Board of Governors and five of the twelve district bank presidents, including the New York president.<br /> <br /> The Federal Reserve Act was established on the assumption that the nation’s money supply would remain tied to gold, and thus its open-market activities were always balanced with an eye toward the gold stockpiles. When the stock market crashed in 1929, many contended that the Federal Reserve had encouraged the stock market “boom” by providing “easy credit.” <br /> <br /> Subsequent research has shown that if anything the Fed failed to expand the money supply in proportion to the rapid growth in the industrial sector, and that a slow but destructive deflation had occurred. After 1930, the Federal Reserve engaged in a deliberate massive credit contraction that helped plunge the nation into the Great Depression, still under the assumption that the Great Bull Market had resulted from “loose money.” <br /> <br /> The contraction also ensued, however, because as other nations left the gold standard, and as the gold backing of U.S. banks eroded, depositors withdrew funds at an alarming rate. President Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard, stabilizing the banks. But his prohibition of individual gold ownership in 1934 was viewed as part of the conspiracy to place all financial power in the hands of the Federal Reserve System.<br /> <br /> The entire gold standard controversy pits a number of conspiracy theories against one another. For example, if the Bank of England sought control over the U.S. economy, it might have attempted to weaken the economy by leaving the gold standard. With the United States left as the only nation in the world whose currency was still tied to gold, U.S. gold reserves would have flooded out, and U.S. banks would have collapsed—as nearly happened. <br /> <br /> On the other hand, the solution, and the path taken by <a href=" " target="_blank">Franklin Roosevelt</a>, was to secure the banking system’s gold asset base by prohibiting individual gold ownership, except for jewelers and dentists. Yet this is viewed by other conspiracy theorists as evidence of Roosevelt’s plan to centralize the economy and make citizens dependent on worthless paper money.<br /> <br /> In fact, only a perfectly coordinated international conspiracy, assisted by the deliberate actions of totalitarian states that hated each other—Germany and the Soviet Union—could have possibly manipulated such events. Not only would the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System have needed to operate in unison, but so would the Bank of France, the Reichsbank, and virtually every other central bank in the world, all coordinating vastly different command-and-control structures, governance systems, and national goals. <br /> <br /> Over these conspiracies, one can stretch yet another layer, namely that of “international Jewry,” which was manipulating economic developments to its own ends, some in concert with, and some antithetical to scenarios involving the British or a Roosevelt dictatorship. <br /> <br /> Since <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World War II</a>, some have been convinced that the Federal Reserve’s open-market activities were designed to ensure that those presidents favored by the Fed maintained their office, and those who displeased the Fed lost theirs. Despite the Fed’s supposed independent status, many argue that it has conveniently lowered rates to support the economy of leaders to whom it was favorably disposed. <br /> <br /> Yet one of the most despised presidents of modern times, <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bill Clinton</a> (whom conspiracists have accused of being a “Trilateralist and Bilderberger”), witnessed multiple interest-rate hikes by the Fed during his two-term presidency. Thus, either he had no control over the Fed, or the Fed was working in direct opposition to the ends of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderberger group.<br /> <br /> In the post–World War II era, the Bretton Woods agreement pegged foreign currencies to the dollar, and although the dollar was legally required to be convertible into gold, it was nevertheless pegged to gold in price. That system collapsed in 1968 after consistent federal budget deficits made it impossible for the dollar to hold its value. After that, the world’s currencies entered a more competitive periode in which they “floated,” or competed, against each other.<br /> <br /> A more consistent criticism of the Federal Reserve is that it has virtually eliminated gold and silver coinage, supposedly in violation of the Constitution. With all paper money in the control of the federal government, the economy would be at the mercy of either the White House or the Fed, and individuals would become slaves to “fiat money.” For more than two decades after the Great Depression, the prohibition against holding gold remained in place, but in the early 1970s, the government once again allowed individuals to buy and sell gold coins. <br /> <br /> Although the value of Canadian Maple Leafs and other popular gold coins fluctuated wildly with the price hikes in oil emanating from OPEC, in the 1980s the Fed’s anti-inflation policies nearly eliminated any premium on gold. For the next twenty years, gold hovered steadily at historically low prices, causing consternation among those who pointed to gold as a key indicator of government-generated inflation.<br /> <br /> If anything, the Fed has consistently lost control of the banking system and seen its influence over the economy weakened. The appearance of electronic funds transfers and high-speed satellite transmissions made information on financial markets available anywhere in the world, instantaneously. <br /> <br /> No government could hide weaknesses in its monetary or fiscal policy for more than a few hours. Meanwhile, the speed of banking transactions brought the United States— and the world—increasingly closer to competitive money, if not in actual paper form, at least in electronic form and in credit/debit card substitutes.

Federal Reserve System

Federal Reserve System It was a conspiracy theorists’ dream come true: a group of wealthy bankers, supported by academics and politicia...

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Federal Emergency Management Agency

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img agency="" alt="The" border="0" emergency="" federal="" management="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFNqDGedTfYMmfwnomj-R7IcZ8Wb00Bv1G-vZQB30hIZ5NCt3J2ZAUrpBhU_N9yGcmWW7AGPs-nDWR3ASk4_q0HCFc7bHWPyxwbO8ACZ2dY8bdorRwuXFL-t4gGs1ebB3mPSaMiNR1m4s/s1600/FEMA.jpg" title="Federal" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Federal Emergency Management Agency</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an independent disaster management agency that reports to the president of the United States. Although it has been frequently accused of being involved in conspiratorial activities by those on the far right of U.S. politics, FEMA’s official role is “to reduce loss of life and property and protect [America’s] critical infrastructure from all types of hazards through a comprehensive, risk-based emergency management kegiatan of mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery” (FEMA 2002). <br /> <br /> This means that FEMA plans for and deals with problems caused by such natural phenomena as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, as well as man-made disasters such as chemical spills, nuclear accidents, and fires. <br /> <br /> It also has responsibility for emergencies created by war, terrorism, and other acts of civil disturbance. The agency has 2,500 fulltime employees, supplemented by over 5,000 standby reservists. FEMA’s headquarters are located in Washington, D.C., but it maintains regional and area offices around the country.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1482511959/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=e7d1a16647451a150125bf992fae17bc" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1482511959&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img agency="" alt="The" border="0" emergency="" federal="" height="1" management="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1482511959" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/148265377X/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=c2cebbc3d6895e8d7fde399a03cd2364" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=148265377X&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img agency="" alt="The" border="0" emergency="" federal="" height="1" management="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=148265377X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Many members of the American Patriot movement in particular, however, do not accept the official version of what FEMA does. For them the agency is a key part of a global conspiracy to impose a tyrannical and oppressive New World Order on the United States. <br /> <br /> Believers in this conspiracy theory contend that less than 10 percent of FEMA’s staff are actually assigned to preparing for and dealing with natural disasters such as storms and earthquakes; the rest, it is argued, are involved in formulating plans to overthrow the Constitution and turn the United States into a military dictatorship. In 1992 the Liberty Lobby’s newspaper, the Spotlight, reported that blueprints for this dictatorship could be found in a top-secret safe in FEMA headquarters.<br /> <br /> According to such members of the Patriot movement, FEMA is best understood as a “secret” or “shadow government” that is waiting to assume control of the United States once a presidential declaration of martial law has been made in response to either a sufficiently serious genuine national emergency or one that can be convincingly “manufactured.” <br /> <br /> Examples of such an emergency are said to include the threat of imminent nuclear war, massive terrorist attacks, an outbreak of rioting occurring in several U.S. cities simultaneously, a series of natural disasters affecting a large section of the U.S. population, or a major environmental disaster. <br /> <br /> Martial law having been declared, FEMA’s extensive emergency powers will then come into operation. Patriot groups argue that FEMA, acting under these powers, will be able to ignore all existing laws, move entire populations at will, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and hold them without trial, seize property and food supplies, and even suspend the Constitution itself. <br /> <br /> For the Militia of Montana, in such circumstances the “American people and all their belongings become chattel of FEMA, and <a href=" " target="_blank">the United Nations</a> Peace Keeping Forces will be in absolute control of our country” (Militia of Montana).<br /> <br /> Led by Gerald “Jack” McLamb, a retired police officer from Phoenix, Arizona, the Patriot organization Police Against the New World Order (PANWO) has further contended that the Los Angeles riots of 1992 were carefully planned by FEMA as a test to see how Americans would react to the imposition of martial law. According to PANWO the test worked out much better than <a href=" " target="_blank">New World Order</a> “social planners” had expected. This was because very few citizens complained about the presence of army personnel on their city streets in the mistaken belief that they were there simply to restore order. <br /> <br /> FEMA personnel are also said to fly many of the unmarked “black helicopters” operating around the United States in preparation for a United Nations takeover of the country; to be engaged in the construction of concentration camps for the imprisonment of U.S. dissidents; to be implicated in the abductions undertaken by visiting UFOs; and to be operating a secretive state-of-the-art monitoring installation in a hamburger processing plant in Salt Lake City where over 800 telephone numbers are monitored, with particular attention being given to companies engaged in the sale of guns and ammunition.<br /> <br /> In 1998 the idea that FEMA allowed the White House to suspend constitutional government following a declaration of martial law was given widespread public exposure when it was expressed by one of the leading characters in The X-Files movie, Dr. Kurtzweil (Martin Landau). <br /> <br /> The movie also made the case that FEMA was one of the principal agencies involved in covering up the alien genesis and human extermination project, a theme that had been a mainstay of the “mythology” aspect of the long-running television show of the same name. FEMA responded by suggesting that viewing its activities as part of a global conspiracy to hide the presence of aliens from the U.S. population was to seriously confuse the “true mission” of the agency (FEMA 1998).<br /> <br /> FEMA was created under executive order by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. At this time it took over the activities of various other agencies such as the Federal Insurance Administration, the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, and the National Weather Service Community Preparedness Program. Civil defense responsibilities were also transferred to the new agency from the Defense Department’s Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. <br /> <br /> Some of the major disasters and emergencies FEMA has been involved in since its creation include the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, the Loma Prieta earthquake in California in 1989, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and the <a href=" " target="_blank">Oklahoma City bombing</a> in 1995. The “true mission” of FEMA was brought into renewed focus by the <a href=" " target="_blank">September 11</a> al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. <br /> <br /> Under its director Joe M. Allbaugh, and in conjunction with the newly created Office of Homeland Security, FEMA was given new responsibilities for dealing with issues of national preparedness and homeland security in the wake of the attacks. This included training and equipping what FEMA calls “the nation’s first responders” in how to deal with weapons of mass destruction (FEMA 2002).

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Federal Emergency Management Agency The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an independent disaster management agency that re...

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Federal Bureau of Investigation

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="and" anticommunist="" border="0" bureau="" countrymen="" during="" federal="" feeling="" his="" hoover="" investigation="" majority="" of="" shared="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBG0kTzSGsgD68o_2bfdZSggkmXcyaz6XpM0tcdgEw52H9iCST1mr__fOhOMYYUZWZQzUN-oiERPwRNody76_iNbNkE-Io3ffaAOt138doLfY9gYSZsBWaY371cuJDBZ_A-jMVl8ev6Xs/s1600/Federal-Investigation.gif" th="" the="" title="Federal" with="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Federal Bureau of Investigation</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is largely synonymous with two things: its longtime director, <a href=" " target="_blank">J. Edgar Hoover</a>, and the anticommunist feeling Hoover shared with the majority of his countrymen during the early cold war. It would certainly be a mistake to assert that the FBI was only concerned with questions of espionage and a self-professed goal of preventing Communist subversion; primary among FBI concerns were such activities as bank robberies, kidnapping, and mail fraud. <br /> <br /> Nevertheless, after World War II, the agency’s primary focus centered around its efforts to contain the spread and influence of communism. Such activity largely defined the organization, and certainly accounts for much of its notoriety in conspiracy circles. Historians have argued that the FBI was “both cause and effect, as well as most obvious beneficiary” of U.S. anticommunism.<br /> <br /> This, however, was not the intention of the FBI’s designers. The brainchild of Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, the agency was born out of Progressive Era impulses toward centralization and efficiency. <br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1632203227/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1632203227&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=44LO3J7YD6PIJEPR"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1632203227&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="and" anticommunist="" border="0" bureau="" countrymen="" during="" federal="" feeling="" height="1" his="" hoover="" investigation="" majority="" of="" shared="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1632203227" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" th="" the="" width="1" with="" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812979230/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0812979230&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=JM4MMPRFLAVFXZO7"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0812979230&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="and" anticommunist="" border="0" bureau="" countrymen="" during="" federal="" feeling="" height="1" his="" hoover="" investigation="" majority="" of="" shared="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0812979230" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" th="" the="" width="1" with="" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Responding to the inadequacy of local authority to address interstate crime, the FBI was originally charged with combating postal and antitrust violations, as well as other types of financially related fraud; only later did the agency’s mandate expand to include organized crime targets such as the <a href=" " target="_blank">Mafia</a>, Prohibition, and the <a href=" " target="_blank">Ku Klux Klan</a>. Three things happened that were to greatly expand the power of the FBI, and the first was the ascent of J. Edgar Hoover to its directorship in 1924. <br /> <br /> Hoover radically increased both the scope and professionalism of the FBI—for example, he inherited an organization with nine field offices; six years later, there were thirty. He was head of the FBI for the next forty-eight years, and the organization’s subsequent history is in large part the biography of Hoover himself.<br /> <br /> Second, the United States passed several pieces of legislation (including the Eighteenth Amendment, beginning Prohibition) that created interstate crimes for the FBI to enforce. In particular the Mann Act, which aimed to combat interstate prostitution trade, and the Dyer Act, which aimed to curtail car theft, provided arenas and authority for the FBI to act. <br /> <br /> Third, during World War I, concerns over espionage justified the broadening of FBI activity to unearthing spy networks. After it, the threat posed by political radicalism set the stage for the most prominent FBI work of the century: combating communism.<br /> <br /> Americans have long viewed radicalism as a potential threat to the stability and security of their country; anticommunism was not born in 1945, merely intensified. Accordingly, the FBI redoubled its efforts in this area, to combat the threat—real and perceived—posed by the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Soviet Union</a>. <br /> <br /> The cold war had military and political aspects; it also had domestic ones, and the FBI was at the forefront of these. It led the way among government agencies concerned about the influences that Communists inside the United States and the U.S. government could have. <br /> <br /> Fear of such insurgency was widespread among Americans, providing fertile ground for Joseph McCarthy. The kala dubbed “<a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">McCarthyism</a>” was characterized by a widespread hysteria throughout U.S. society, wherein many suspected Communists were hounded from jobs, public life, and homes for the most tenuous of (purported) radical sympathies. <br /> <br /> Behind McCarthy’s ability to make accusations lay the FBI; he and like-minded politicians (many on HUAC, the House of Representatives’ Un-American Activities Committee) would hardly have been able to establish any credibility without information supplied by the FBI, and McCarthy freely admitted that he got the bulk of his information from the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">organization</a>. The FBI may have been the silent partner in McCarthyism, but it was in fact the dominant one.<br /> <br /> After Hoover died, revelations about the nature and extent of the information gathered shocked the nation. In an essay entitled “Why I Got Out of It,” a former FBI agent details the myriad ways that the agents would infiltrate potentially subversive political groups to obtain information on the members (as part of COINTELPRO, the jadwal of domestic surveillance and infiltration begun in the 1950s). He also discusses the selection of targets—a process done with almost reckless disregard for the likely level of the threat. <br /> <br /> Suspicion was often confined to “liberal” groups, and black ones were particularly suspect: “It seemed that every politically dissident black man was a candidate for investigation”. Under the guise of investigating potentially subversive groups for dangerous activity, the FBI acted as a political organization, investigating liberal groups with far more abandon than conservative ones.<br /> <br /> These “FBI files,” born out of concern for alleged conspiracy, have become the center of suspected conspiracies themselves—particularly among those on the Left who have felt most threatened by the agency. Web searches can draw a raft of links detailing alleged FBI involvement in conspiracies connected to the Kent State shootings, UFOs, the <a href=" " target="_blank">Kennedy assassination</a>, the Mafia, and the Martin Luther King assassination among many others. <br /> <br /> There is no common thread connecting these alleged conspiracies, but the mid-1970s revelations of the FBI’s wiretapping activity has made the agency a target of conspiracy thinking itself. These revelations coincided with a declining faith in the U.S. government after <a href=" " target="_blank">Watergate</a> and the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vietnam War</a>. Perhaps as a result, the FBI is now perceived as a wellspring of conspiracies as much as a discoverer of them.

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is largely synonymous with two things: its longtime director,...

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Louis Farrakhan

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="an" border="0" farrakhan="" he="" helped="" in="" louis="" organization="" reconstitute="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU8y-EoUd3v2MTXCQ_nQYmEg4XBIMkE0jAkI_1Yq6ghJPhFTzCIt1f3o_TwjcIxtjPDcRNkqjDUWabWoYi88zI-Bq6swhqLzLtRCpdMwjJeG4JXc7A8tj2kCOyujK7xf6akMxuwo_OKEw/s1600/Louis-Farrakhan.jpg" title="Louis" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Louis Farrakhan</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Louis Farrakhan is the leader of the <a href=" " target="_blank">Nation of Islam</a>, an organization he helped reconstitute in 1977. He has been praised by his supporters as an influential and eloquent leader who has used his position of authority to foster a stronger sense of self among African Americans, such as in his organization of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Farrakhan’s detractors, however, have decried him as a racist who traffics in divisive and antagonistic rhetoric.<br /> <br /> His espousal of many specific conspiracy theories as well as his tendency to speak generally of “the enemy” and “ them” has led critics to label him a purveyor of paranoia.<br /> <br /> Born Louis Eugene Walcott in New York City, Farrakhan was raised in Boston by his mother. He never knew his father (who died when Farrakhan was three years old), but his mother was a strong disciplinarian and devout Episcopalian who had a strong influence on his life.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0989977447/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=8b9e69d293939c93b223d7cabc2e8b5c" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0989977447&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="an" border="0" farrakhan="" he="" height="1" helped="" in="" louis="" organization="" reconstitute="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0989977447" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1884855148/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1884855148&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=KVBVVR5JZXZPLGZN"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1884855148&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="an" border="0" farrakhan="" he="" height="1" helped="" in="" louis="" organization="" reconstitute="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1884855148" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> As a young man, he went into show business, becoming a well-known singer, musician, and dancer under the stage name of “Calypso Gene.” Persuaded by <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Malcolm X</a> to attend a speech given by Elijah Muhammad, Farrakhan became a member of the Nation of Islam in 1955. He changed his name first to Louis X, then to Louis Haleem Abdul Farrakhan in 1965.<br /> <br /> Farrakhan rose to prominence in the Nation of Islam, replacing Malcolm X as leader of the Temple in New York City after his assassination in 1965. After the death of the longtime leader of the Nation of Islam, <a href=" " target="_blank">Elijah Muhammad</a>, in 1975, the leadership of the Black Muslims passed to Muhammad’s son, Warith Deen Muhammad.<br /> <br /> The younger Muhammad soon abandoned many of the tenets of his father and changed the name of the group several times. Farrakhan led a movement to reestablish the traditions of Elijah Muhammad, and in 1977, he became the leader of a reconstituted Nation of Islam.<br /> <br /> Farrakhan’s powerful and often divisive rhetoric has won him both staunch support and strong animosity in and out of the Black Muslim movement. After Malcolm X broke with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam in 1964, Farrakhan wrote in the Nation, the newspaper of the Nation of Islam, that such people were “worthy of death.” The fact that these words were published shortly before the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 fueled speculation that Farrakhan was involved in a conspiracy to kill his rival.<br /> <br /> The nature of the relationship between Farrakhan and Malcolm X has continued to be a source of controversy. In 1995, Qubilah Shabazz, one of the daughters of Malcolm X, was arrested on suspicion of plotting Farrakhan’s assassination in retaliation for her father’s murder.<br /> <br /> The case was suspended, however, and Qubilah was sent to a psychiatric care center in Texas. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, reconciled with Farrakhan and Farrakhan stated that both he and Shabazz were victims of a “larger conspiracy.”<br /> <br /> Farrakhan often uses language and imagery that suggest he himself is a target of persecution and conspiracy. He has often hinted that drugs, crack cocaine in particular, were brought into black communities by the federal government as a way of destroying them, and that this was in part a response to his own growing influence during the 1980s.<br /> <br /> Farrakhan has been denounced as an antisemite, largely because of statements in which he has suggested Jews played a dominant role in the <a href=" " target="_blank">slave trade</a>. He has also suggested that Jews created AIDS and intentionally infected black children with it. A number of Farrakhan’s assistants have also caused controversy by making antisemitic remarks.<br /> <br /> He has also been accused of more general racism toward white people for his adherence to many of the teachings of <a href=" " target="_blank">Elijah Muhammad</a> that describe white people as “blue-eyed devils” who have conspired to rob blacks of their rightful place in society. A firm proponent of race separatism, Farrakhan has preached the evils of blacks marrying nonblacks (and whites in particular).<br /> <br /> Farrakhan also invokes well-worn images of conspiracy in his rhetoric, including references to Masonic orders, multinational bankers, and numerology.<br /> <br /> Supporters counter that he is simply carrying on the call for self-reliance that has been at the heart of the Black Muslim movement since its inception. This self-reliance, they argue, necessitates a separation from white culture, but it should not be equated with racism.<br /> <br /> Farrakhan has also been condemned for his role on the international stage, particularly his trips to Libya, Syria, and Iraq. For several years, he was banned from entering Great Britain.<br /> <br /> Yet Farrakhan has often turned his condemnation by others into a political asset, suggesting that he is criticized because he represents a real threat to the political and economic systems that still enslave African Americans. He has often suggested that he is the subject of numerous assassination plots by those who fear his message of black empowerment.<br /> <br /> In recent years, however, Farrakhan has taken some steps to broaden his appeal. In 1995, Farrakhan led the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">organization</a> of the Million Man March, a gathering of African American men in Washington, D.C., for a “day of atonement.” While Farrakhan’s involvement caused controversy, even some of his critics conceded that the march had the potential to be a catalyst for positive change.<br /> <br /> Farrakhan also moved the Nation of Islam closer in its belief systems to traditional Islam, which helped reconcile him with Warith Mohammad. Although they still maintained leadership of two separate groups, Farrakhan and Mohammad announced their unity at the second International Islamic Conference in Chicago in February 2000.

Louis Farrakhan

Louis Farrakhan Louis Farrakhan is the leader of the Nation of Islam , an organization he helped reconstitute in 1977. He has been prai...

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Executive Intelligence Review

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="Executive" border="0" by="" executive="" intelligence="" is="" newsmagazine="" published="" review="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-8kSmSEfKh1yF_YbLTTu9ALnLAotitOgQJZnAchGj8y8-kopzLCrnTF8lOn21VThAf2MxoFV8kPl45aJn6fQgByZbw1PmeCVUd4EmPnZEskartIX4cIawrWcI-wQBT0hoRzVFWIv0lkE/s1600/Executive-Review.jpg" the="" title="Executive" weekly="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Executive Intelligence Review</td></tr> </tbody></table> Executive Intelligence Review is a weekly newsmagazine published by the <a href=" " target="_blank">Lyndon LaRouche</a> organization. LaRouche, the magazine’s contributing editor, published articles and “exposés” that contributed to the development of his conspiracy theories involving Jewish politicians, international bankers, the British royal family, and drug dealing. The editors of the Executive Intelligence Review also published books and shorter monographs on a variety of topics by expanding articles originally published in the magazine.<br /> <br /> The magazine emerged out of Lyndon LaRouche’s 1971 plan to develop a worldwide intelligence operation. He proposed that the operation be organized like a major national news weekly. The New Solidarity International Press Service (NSIPS) was incorporated by three LaRouche followers in 1974. <br /> <br /> As a news service, LaRouche’s intelligence operatives used journalistic cover complete with press passes to gain access to government officials. Executive Intelligence Review was created as money flowed into the operations of the NSIPS. <br /> <br /> During the Ford and Carter administrations, Executive Intelligence Review operatives gained White House press accreditation and participated in a number of presidential press conferences. The news service also opened bureaus in capitals around the world. By 1979, Executive Intelligence Review was producing about $4 billion in revenue—not surprisingly, since the annual subscription rate was nearly $400.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0943235022/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0943235022&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=Q2VP7D2QALKC4E5W"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0943235022&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Executive" border="0" by="" executive="" height="1" intelligence="" is="" newsmagazine="" published="" review="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0943235022" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" weekly="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0943235073/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0943235073&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=5OX6DOMN5HHP3TYD"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0943235073&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Executive" border="0" by="" executive="" height="1" intelligence="" is="" newsmagazine="" published="" review="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0943235073" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" weekly="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Many of the articles that appear in Executive Intelligence Review were expanded into books. One of the more famous books was Dope, Inc.: the Book that Drove <a href=" " target="_blank">Henry Kissinger</a> Crazy (1992). In this book, the editors exposed what they saw as the real aims of the United States government’s “war on drugs.” <span id="goog_1038753791"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_1038753792"></span><br /> <br /> According to the book, “the kingpins of the U.S. branch of the drug cartel, led by Henry Kissinger and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith launched a years-long effort to silence the authors [of an earlier edition], starting with LaRouche, who was railroaded to federal prison in late 1988.” President <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">George H. W. Bush</a> kept LaRouche in prison, according to the book, because LaRouche was about to reveal the complicity of the federal government in the drug trade.<br /> <br /> In The Ugly Truth about the ADL, the editors of Executive Intelligence Review exposed the Anti-Defamation League as “one of the most dangerous organizations in the world.” The book portrays the ADL as a spy <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">organization</a> supplying intelligence data to foreign governments. It cites the 1994 San Francisco spy scandal as an example of the role played by the ADL in spying on the United States. <br /> <br /> At the end of 1993 it was revealed that an ADL operative in San Francisco, Roy Bullock, collected and traded information in a covert spy network involving the San Francisco police, some twenty other <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">California</a> police departments, and police departments outside of California. Over thirty years Bullock compiled a huge computerized data bank including files on close to 1,000 groups and 10,000 individuals. <br /> <br /> Bullock provided information to the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and sold information on antiapartheid activists to both South African agents and the ADL. The Ugly Truth also linked the ADL to organized crime by connecting contributions from reputed gangster Meyer Lansky to the Anti-Defamation League.<br /> <br /> Despite the connection to Lyndon LaRouche, the Executive Intelligence Review received some attention from the mainstream press. In 1988, Nelson Benton, a reporter for the magazine, asked President <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ronald Reagan</a> about the fitness of Democratic Party nominee Michael Dukakis to be chief executive of the United States. A rumor had been circulating for some time that Dukakis twice underwent psychiatric treatment in the 1970s. <br /> <br /> President Reagan answered the question, thus allowing the rumor to gain additional credence. Jeffrey Steinberg, a senior reporter for Executive Intelligence Review, appeared on British television in 1998 to present the theory that Prince Philip ordered British intelligence to assassinate Princess Diana. The latter incident indicated how much the British royal family was a target of the LaRouche network. <br /> <br /> Executive Intelligence Review regularly reported that Queen Elizabeth ran an international cocaine smuggling cartel and that Italian banker Roberto Calvi was murdered by the Duke of Kent. The Executive Intelligence Review also claimed that the 1995 <a href=" " target="_blank">Oklahoma City bombing</a> was a first strike in a British attempt to take over the United States with the eventual goal of world domination.

Executive Intelligence Review

Executive Intelligence Review Executive Intelligence Review is a weekly newsmagazine published by the Lyndon LaRouche organization. LaR...

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