The 2002 horror movie The Ring wove a tale about a horrific video that would predicate the death in seven days of anyone who watched it. The only way to avoid this fate was to further propagate the video, allowing others to suffer its fatal curse. Personally, I enjoyed the movie; but, then again, I'm a sucker for scary movies, although I can pretty much always do without gore-galore festivals (unless the victims were really, really bad actors). The Ring was satisfying for me to the extent that it presented a kind of terror too remote to make me worry about some real-world version of its central premise coming true.

Therein was my potentially grave error in assessing the story line of The Ring, and I have now decided that the only way I can dispense with what could otherwise be an unwanted curse upon my soul is to invite—indeed to encourage—readers to watch a 139-minute film by über-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Prison Planet. The movie is herewith embedded near the end of this article.

Long-time readers of my articles might recall that I have mentioned Mr. Jones in the past, specifically with respect to the fact that maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul appeared in a film of his. In my tradition of diplomatic understatement, I wrote of Alex Jones that, "[He is] believed by at least some rational people to be a few cheese cubes short of a snack tray..."

That aside, for readers who want a remarkable, although incomplete, rundown of a principal branch of conspiracy theory, allow me to recommend Alex Jones's 2007 movie, Endgame. It is sweeping, and it is compelling. It is also deeply flawed, primarily by the way it, like most conspiracy theories, constructs conspiracy by virtue of mere associations, some of them familial, others chronological, still others even less well-defined. For example, Jones connects the evolution theory of Charles Darwin to a cousin's twisted ideas on eugenics, and then he goes on to associate the early eugenics whackos—admittedly including a number of Charles Darwin's subsequent family members—to the later eugenics whackos like Adolf Hitler and the better-race promoters in the U.S., including the predecessor to Planned Parenthood. In all fairness to Jones, however, he does not directly attack the theory of evolution, nor does he condemn the idea of the right of women to choose abortion; but he does seem to have an intense interest in offering a less-than-dim view of the foundations of many modern-day organizations, including everything from the World Wildlife Federation to the Federal Reserve system. Along the way, as well as going after the predecessor to Planned Parenthood, he jumps on the usual list of conspiracy theory hot buttons like the United Nations, the European Union, and NAFTA. I roll my eyes every last time the conspiracy theorists trot out these worn-out whipping boys, although the matter of that trans-America highway corridor is a little less of an eye-roller than meets the eye, particularly since officialdom in Washington acts to this very day like the thing doesn't even exist.

I must admit that, within the sweep of his attack, Jones goes after some of my favorite rich-boy charlatans. One of them is Al Gore, a gentleman who in my own, personal opinion is a PowerPoint-wielding, sky-is-falling elitist-opportunist. My published writing and comments about him are harsh and unyielding, and I am not in the least impressed by his Nobel Peace Prize, awarded as it was to a quite comfortable, upper-class gentleman at the same time in history that genuine heroes the world over are rotting in prisons, being tortured, and getting executed for demanding such trivial things as freedom in unfree lands. Yes, the Presidency of the United States was stolen from Mr. Gore; but, no, sometimes it is not better for the Republic that its wronged meekly stand down, for their surrender is not theirs alone, but is also the sacrifice of the millions who will then suffer under the reign of the venal thieves wretchedly proclaimed victor.

Enough with grinding the personal axes; this post is about Endgame, which is, as noted above, incomplete. While it fabulously explains the Bilderberg Group—a favorite sore spot of any self-respecting conspiracy theorist—it completely avoids mentioning the Illuminati, Opus Dei, Freemasonry (although a stylized version of the All Seeing Eye is presented several times), the Jewish conspiracy, and anything whatsoever having to do with UFOs. (Those who know about these matters will, however, notice in the movie all kinds of visual hints of other conspiracy theory threads.) Strangely, avoiding a free-fall involvement of all these other branches of conspiracy theory keeps the movie from drifting into complete silliness.

Along the way, the movie gets a little slow in some places, but the tenor re-attains fever pitch at several places in the last half. Without giving away too many details, the mention that Hillary Rodham Clinton did a half-day appearance at the 2006 Bilderberg Group conference is worth noting. No, she's not a Bilderberger: a half-day visit would mean she was there to briefly present herself for the core group to consider. At that 2006 conference, by the way, Jones got photographs of none other than the disgraced Ahmed Chalabi of Iraq pre-invasion disinformation fame; Chalabi was slithering around at the hotel like some kind of creepy denizen from the depths, apparently a welcome participant in the confab of the rich and powerful.

Another fun part of the movie is the interview into which Jones suckered a young Rothschild heir, a fellow heavily into promoting save-the-planet concerts. Jones threw a rather ludicrous "fact" at the dear boy, who took the bait like an idiot and responded with one of the most self-defeatingly stupid answers I've ever heard from an ostensible heir to shadowy greatness. I actually had to get out of my chair and walk a few feet away during the Rothschild pup's blithering oral dance. Whether or not Jones knew his "fact" about other planets in the solar system exhibiting signs of warming was ridiculous, he certainly got a future Bilderberger to make an ass of himself.

I should also point out that Endgame touched a soft spot in my heart as it took on such historical icons as Bertrand Russell, a man whose bizarre statements about depopulation made him someone I have reviled both as a person and as an intellectual inspiration my whole adult life; Russell resides in the same level of my esteem with self-fawning sods like Ayn Rand and Henry David Thoreau. Another joy to my heart came in the mention that Vice President Dick Cheney, in making his triumphal return to the Council on Foreign Relations some years back, commented on the use of ethnic bio-weapons. (Gee, with stuff like that being talked about by White leaders of the Free World, it's no wonder people like Rev. Wright are considered total lunatics when they start their bizarre rants about AIDS being human-manufactured to kill Blacks.)

I tell you, if all that wasn't enough, I became downright giddy when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were trotted out for a brief flogging.

Yes, for me, Endgame was a veritable orgy of evil, sinful, wrongful delight, the kind of stuff I know very well is just plain mind-rotting in the same way a rare, fatty, 20-ounce steak cooked on an open fire and a nose-piercing, mucous-clearing cigar are bad for me. God! but it was sweet.

For me, the list of pleasure points in Endgame was rather long; but just because Jones and I have a common manifest of disliked creeps and just because we share a deep concern for the emergence of an authoritarian state, I simply cannot allow that I agree with the scope of his conspiracy theory. I do not, and the reason is quite simple: even though the Bilderbergers really do imagine themselves controlling the fate of the world, and even though their idiocy has caused actual harm, they are pathetically incompetent in their silly plans, schemes, and dreams. Unless their master plan really was to crater the world economy with a blithering combination of neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, communists, Right-wing thugs, religious nutcases, and assorted other thunderously ignorant operatives, where we are headed would be the very last place putative global controllers would have wanted to go: down this path we are plunging lies what will in all likelihood be a horrendous, destructive clash of classes over everything from food to shelter to freedom. As enfeebled of mind as Americans have been for a long time, and as weak and reckless as political opposition has been to the insanity of the Bush Administration, its military adventures abroad, and its ever-expanding, ever-more-intrusive law enforcement machinery at home, the dynamic will change, and the change will be dramatic.

It will also be ugly.

Shadowy, filthy rich cretins who meet once a year to plan the fate of the world would be awfully stupid to risk a global economic collapse that could just as easily lead to anarchy as it could to some pretext for a one-world, authoritarian government solution.

Certainly, those shadowy, filthy rich cretins are not that stupid. Such an idea is every bit as crazy as saying that the richest, most powerful nation on Earth would allow itself to be ruled, and thereby economically destroyed, for eight long years by a vicious, moronic, inarticulate, power-mad, secretive, incompetent fool.

The very idea is laughable.

Anyway, grab some popcorn, pour a drink, close the curtains, and spend a little more than two hours watching Endgame. If nothing else, it's certainly worth a laugh.




The Dark Wraith gives it two thumbs way up.

---

With thanks to Minstrel Boy of Harp and Sword for the inspiration, this graphic may be republished with attribute.

With respect to the verdicts exonerating three New York City police officers of all criminal charges for killing Sean Bell, an unarmed, innocent man, the mainstream news media have taken a largely muted, matter-of-fact tone in reporting the acquittals, although shades of support for the decisions by Queens State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman have come from surprising sources like The New York Times, which sought to characterize the incident in terms of "nuance" in a "...complicated case that unfolded in a city less racially divided than 10 years ago," thereby lending further weight to the reasoning advanced by the judge who presided over the bench trial of the three officers, Detectives Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora, who were charged with manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment, and Detective Marc Cooper, who was charged with reckless endangerment.

Justice Cooperman, in acquitting the officers, asserted from the bench that inconsistent testimony by, and prior criminal records of, prosecution witnesses, principally the victim's friends, "had the effect of eviscerating" their credibility.

Not only was Justice Cooperman's means of arriving at his verdicts wrong, it was broadly outrageous on its face, and it speaks to the distortion of justice by courts over which preside judges who use their position to promote their own classist views. The detached assertions of The New York Times notwithstanding, the use of courts to craft justice by class has the invariable effect of promoting racism, sexism, and all manner of other ills the elites would furiously disclaim as their intent, even as they repeatedly ensure the endurance of inequality in both their refined and brutish instrumentalities of maintaining the status quo.

The rule of law cannot exist when, in any way, justice is shaded to the victim's general righteousness, nor should the quality of that victim's grievance before the bar of justice be diminished by some diffuse notion held by a judge that testimonial evidence is "eviscerated" when those who have already been marginalized by the courts, the police, and the larger society are invited to speak to the matter at bar. The misunderstanding of such fundamental principles is one of the primary means by which defense attorneys have historically elicited not guilty verdicts from juries, and it is appalling that any judge, extensively trained and long in experience, would allow such tactics by defense counsel to have any impact whatsoever on trial outcome. To the extent that Justice Cooperman is certainly not alone in permitting his court to become a proving ground for the character and quality of victims and their witnesses, the courts of this land allow themselves to become yet one more formidable wall by which law enforcement authorities deter citizens from seeking redress within the justice system.

That a sitting judge would be so essentially, fundamentally flawed in reasoning that he would incorporate into adjudication his own biases, shaped as they are by his own socio-economic standing, is outrageous on its face. That he would actually speak in his opinion of how he found wanting and thereby suspect the words and demeanor of the prosecution witnesses speaks not only to his classist mentality, but also to a deeper elitism inconsistent both with proper judicial temperament and, indeed, with any claim to legitimacy as a representative of a society that poses to render equal justice for all.

A trial court finds facts; it then applies the law to those facts it has derived from material, circumstantial, and testimonial evidence.

The judge's finding of facts was wrong: it was wrong because he found facts based upon the divergence of his preconceived expectations of testimony from the reality of those providing that testimony whose degraded experience in the society and with the courts had already individually and historically marginalized them.

The verdicts in this case were not examples of the rule of law protecting society and its enduring principles; these acquittals of policemen who used 50 bullets to butcher an unarmed, innocent man were the pernicious rule of an elite advancing the interests of his own class.

Res ipsa loquitur: the thing speaks for itself.

---

Kevin Phillips was a conservative superstar back in 'the day'. He helped to create and bring into power the extreme right wing of the Republican party.

He is now one of their biggest foes. His newest book entitled: Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, lays out how America's manufacturing plants have died off and been replaced by an usual suitor to say the least.

The Mall. Yes, the Shopping Mall where we the people spend our money, and if we don't have any cold hard cash, we use our credit cards to buy things we usually don't need but we covet. Mr. Phillips isn't the only human being to see the writing on the wall. Danny Schecter has made a movie about it which he calls; In Debt We Trust. Mr. Schecter's take on our society's credit addiction:

Over the past 25 years, America has moved from a society based on production to a nation driven by consumption; from a country that once shared its resources with the world to one deeply in debt to foreign banks and countries-to the tune of trillions of dollars. As the growing number of bankruptcies and foreclosures testifies, our national debt is mirrored by a skyrocketing consumer debt, with an increasing number of individuals and families unable to cope.

Back to Kevin Phillips' book. The Financial Industry now makes up roughly 21% of the U.S. GDP(Gross Domestic Product) -- the largest sector of the private economy. Does this bother you? It should. Manufacturing has shrunk to only 12% of the GDP. Read that again, only twelve percent of our GDP is now Manufacturing. To put it very succinctly..that is a massive timebomb that is waiting to blow. Individuals that adore the American capitalist system will undoubtedly say Phillips is full of bat guano, but I am not one of those. From the book, via a New York Times book review:

By 2007 total indebtedness was three times the size of the gross domestic product, a ratio that surpassed the record set in the years of the Great Depression. From 2001 to 2007 alone, domestic financial debt grew to $14.5 trillion from $8.5 trillion, and home mortgage debt ballooned to almost $10 trillion from $4.9 trillion, an increase of 102 percent. A crisis in the mortgage market in August 2007 brought the party to an end. Since then we have been living in a twilight zone of what a security analyst quoted in the book calls “one of the slowest-moving train wrecks we’ve seen.”

Our financial meltdown is now affecting other countries. What if they 'cash in' their dollars for Euro's or the Yen? According to Paul Craig Roberts, former economist during the Reagan administration, “China alone has over one trillion U.S. dollars, and Japan holds slightly under one trillion”. If the US dollar suddenly lost it's luster, as the worlds currency, we could become a third-world country almost overnight.

It only took 25 years for America to move from a society based on production to a nation driven by consumption. It is unsustainable and when it falls like the proverbial house of cards, it will hurt every last American below the top one percent of the population. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 will look like child's play.

I might not have a clue about the world of high finance or the GDP, but I know that the price of everything we need to live in this world is rising while the income of American's has stagnated for years, if not a decade. It's not rocket science to be able to see that we pay more but are making less. The jobs leaving our nation are being replaced with jobs not even remotely comparable in earnings potential. If interest rates continue to fall, Senior Citizens will not be able to survive on the interest from their savings and investments as they have for the last seventy or so years. Our federal government continues to prop up banks and investment companies that played fast and loose, yet refuse to extend unemployment insurance for those hardest hit. People are now buying consumables such as groceries with their credit cards. From the website American Progress: Data released last week by the Federal Reserve shows that Americans' total credit card debt has reached $951.7 billion—up 8.2 percent from a year ago and the highest amount ever recorded.

Wait until the credit card industry takes it in the shorts like the mortgage industry, it will be a sight to behold. I wouldn't want to be an insider when that bat guano hits the fan.

Yet another "cult" has been crushed by a government policing authority, the group hammered this time being a semi-cloistered sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Am I the only person in this country who finds the whole government obsession with busting "cults" to be creepier than the groups they bust? And am I the only person in this country who wants to scream bloody murder as the mainstream media, after one of these raids, pumps out weeks and weeks of one law enforcement agency propaganda story after another? The coverage is so obviously, nauseatingly biased (and uncreative, considering the way the suffering-kids angle is being trotted out again for the umpteenth time), how could anyone get a fair hearing after the government-news media complex has done its number?

It was better in the old days when the jackboots-with-badges simply burned an undesirable group's compound to the ground; at the very least, then the government was not obligated to spend money on the façade of a fair trial.