America is going insane

Maybe this blog should specialize in rooting out the loopier conspiracy theories available on the net.

A short while ago, I ran across a doozy -- this fanciful piece on the CIA's Project MKULTRA, written by an entity who calls himself David Michael Dunbar:

MK ULTRA, an acronym for Martin Luther KING, Jr. or
niTRAM rehtUL gniK=CIA Project MK ULTRA aka The Negro Project which began in 1953 (http://www.wanttoknow.info/050626mkultra).
The MK ULTRA program was a communist program designed to run under the guise of the civil rights movement without being detected. If detected, any criticism could be deflected with accusations of racism and the strategy of Division Fallacy accusing the critic of racism rather than addressing the actual matter.

Before you interject: Yes, I know that Project MKULTRA was real. And no, I will not allow discussion of that project here; that is not our current purpose.

Right now, I want you to understand one key fact: Everything Dunbar has written about the project is garbage. All of it. MKULTRA had nothing to do with King; the MK digraph was applied to all projects associated with the Technical Services Division of the CIA. Dunbar links to a source which buttresses none of what he says.

Basically, the guy is making shit up. Like many a conspiracy salesman before him, he presents conjecture as fact.

So who is this guy? There is a David Dunbar who wrote a book exposing 9/11 conspiracy myths. At first, I suspected that a denizen of wackyland has been posting bizarre material under the name of a perceived enemy -- but now it seems that there really is a second David Dunbar who writes extremely strange material, which he self-publishes.

Thanks to the efforts of this bizarre man, thousands of people will now believe that MKULTRA had something to do with Martin Luther King -- and that the CIA was in the business of promoting communism. And, of course, that King was a communist. (Back in the 1960s, the Birchers and their compatriots promoted the very same ideas.)

This is just one further example of how real history gets buried under an avalanche of inanity.

Folks, this shit has gotten out of hand. This country cannot survive if an increasing number of citizens go bonkers.

Case in point: Aurora "Truthers" are now saying that the massacre in Colorado never happened.

Jordan Ghawi, a 26-year-old firefighter and paramedic whose sister was killed in the shooting, explained to Salon how the harassment started. “I think it started with me because my presence online is a little further out there than the rest of the families,” he said, noting his active Twitter feed and website detailing his adventures skydiving and traveling.

The first email came from a man asking, “have you ever seen your sister’s body?” He ignored it. When a second email came, Ghawi replied, saying that he wasn’t going to entertain the man’s questions, but accidentally left his phone number in his email’s signature field. Then the phone calls started: “Did you see her body? It didn’t happen, it was a government coverup, etc., etc.

“From there, it went to threatening emails that included death threats … he did threaten my life at one point,” Ghawi explained.

Also see this piece in the Los Angeles Times.

But beyond Capitol Hill, and outside the popular airwaves, a constant murmur of paranoid skepticism has accompanied these attacks and occasionally bubbled into public view: So-called Sandy Hook truthers believe the Newtown, Conn., massacre was staged as part of a government-media conspiracy to galvanize support for gun control.

Some theories, tinged with anti-Semitism, said actors made up their interviews about the killings. Newtown resident Gene Rosen, who helped six students after they escaped the massacre, said he had faced phone calls and emails accusing him of being a phony.

Wanna see an actual Aurora "truther" in action? Try here. As near as I can tell, this article from last September may have been the first to print the insane charge that the theater was filled with actors, and that the massacre may have been a hoax.

The best response: Treat the "truthers" as sub-humans. Do not engage them on an intellectual level; they have no intellects. Ridicule -- unrelenting, merciless ridicule -- is the best way to insure that the pathogen does not spread among the young.