The ‘other’ Titanic
Two incontrovertible Titanic facts: 1) With the exception of Winslet’s lovely baps, the film is shite. 2) The ship lost out big time to an iceberg in 1912. Or did it? Plasterer-turned-writer (!) Robert Gardiner says that the second bit of this is rubbish, claiming that it was her sister ship that sank as part of an insurance scam. Earlier that year, White Star liner Olympic had been hit accidentally by HMS Hawke, but no compensation was paid as the Royal Navy refused to admit liability. With Olympic out of action and the company facing lost revenue of £250,000 (about £10m today) White Star switched the ships’ names and send the patched-up - but unseaworthy – Olympic into the Atlantic to be ‘disposed of’ so they could claim on the Titanic’s insurance. Among his evidence, Gardiner points to photos showing the Titanic mysteriously ‘losing’ two sets of portholes between construction and launch. Allegedly, two ships were sent to help with what was intended to be an orderly evacuation, but in a huge cock up, the Olympic accidentally shunted one of the rescue ships, and sank like a spanner.
ET's Stones
In 1962, Chinese scientist Dr Tsum Um Nui decided to try to decode a freaky, hieroglyphic-covered granite disc, which had been found by archaeologists on the Tibetan border in 1938. This granite “LP” was estimated to be 12,000 years old – thereby predating even Cliff Richard. Amazingly, in 1965, another 716 discs (but, sadly, no greatest hits) were found at the same site. Claiming to have cracked the lingo, the doc was then forbidden to publish his results by the killjoys at the Peking Academy of Pre-History… so he self-published his paper, calling it: The Groove Script Concerning Spaceships Which, As Recorded on the Discs, Landed On Earth 12,000 Years Ago. In this ripping tome, Um Nui claims that the stones were a record of events written by a space-faring race called the Dropa who crashed on Earth and bred with indigenous human tribes. To this day, one local tribe calls itself the Dropa, and anthropologists have been unable to authoritatively link them to any other known race.
The Great Russian Cover Up
Most people assumed that a pilot cock-up was responsible for the downing of Korean airliner KAL007 over Russian airspace in 1983. Not French aviation expert Michel Brun, however – he claims that the airliner was deliberately used by the Yanks to provoke the Ruskies in order to evaluate their air response… which was to promptly shoot down 10 US warplanes shadowing the airliner. Oops. Brun belives that KAL007 – carrying 269 people – was then destroyed “by means and for reasons still to be established” over the Sea of Japan and insists there was a cover up at the inquiry. He gives evidence to show that both the Digital Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder are forgeries, and claims to have photographs in his possession of recovered wreckage – including a US military ejector seat and F1-11 fighter parts.
Oil: The Slippery Truth
A fair few people believe we’re going to run out of the black stuff sometime around 2020. Economists expect prices to triple to $180 a barrel before stocks dry up, resulting in worldwide economic meltdown. But conspiracy theorist Dave McGowan argues that this is part of a conspiracy by oil companies to keep prices inflated and – crucially – as an economic excuse for America to stomp all over Iraq. McGowan points to the work of Cornell University professor Dr Thomas Gold ,who backs the “abiotic” oil theory. Gold reckons oil isn’t just made from the millions-year-old remains of compressed pterodactyls, but is also constantly created through natural geological processes in the Earth’s crust – meaning there is effectively an unlimited supply. Abiotic adherents point to the Eugee 330 platform off Louisiana where reservoirs have bizarrely refilled with oil of a different type to that being pumped.
The Real Big Brother
It turns out there is a point to huge-bollocked Nadia and her fame-slurping former Channel 4 housemates – it’s all part of a big plot to get us used to the real Big Brother. Theorists have it that TV companies are deliberately bombarding us with mind-numbing 24-hour reality TV programmes to attune us to being permanently on camera. It’s all to do with western governments’ obsession with using CCTV for surveillance and crime reduction – already the average city dweller will be caught on CCTV anything up to 300 times a day (more, if they have big norks). Freelance writer and author Tony Lesce uses a 1999 New Scientist article to back his claims, ranting that, “A sophisticated visual security system that predicts when a crime is about to be committed” has been developed by scientists at the universities of Reading and – belligerent footballers beware – Leeds. If the system goes global, it’s only a short step to Minority Report (minus, perhaps, those little mechanical spider things).
Government Cow Killers
Excitable types have long claimed that cattle mutilation is an alien visitor perk, but a 2003 report by the National Institute for Discovery Science suggests the men behind cow killings are far less exciting: they’re dorky government boffins. In the Seventies, it’s claimed, bioweapons experts at Fort Detrick in Maryland had been examining the brains of Fore tribesmen from New Guinea, which contained “kuru” – a form of CJD. Some samples somehow migrated into the local fauna and eventually into the US food chain, potentially exposing millions of Yanks to brain rot. Boffins at NIDS say the scientists needed to keep tabs on what was happening, and the only way it could be done without causing fatty Yanks to panic was through covert random animal testing. And so bovine operations are stealthily carried out, with knife-wielders hopping from field to field using “black helicopters”. The report concludes that the phenomenon was, and is, “Simply a monitoring operation for an infectious agent that is spreading through the human food chain.” Yawn.
Chips With Everything
On May 10, 2002, the Jacobs family of Boca Raton, Florida volunteered to have “VeriChips” – implants which hold a person’s medical history and can be read with a special scanner – surgically implanted under their skin. Mexican and Brazilian governments have both shown interest in chipping programmes as a way to cut down on child kidnappings. Or so they say. Others see it differently: some cite the chips as the first step towards a police state, where anybody can be tracked anywhere through GPS. Gary Wohlscheid, President of the Last Day Ministries, is more forthright. He believes the chip is the “Mark of the Beast” as mentioned in the Book of Revelations, and froths: “Within three to four years, people will be required to use it. Those that reject it will be put to death.” Cuckoo!
The TWA Conundrum
Without warning, TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island, New York on July 17, 1996. After the biggest investigation in aviation history, the official cause given by National Transport Safety Board chief metallurgist Jim Wildey was, “Combustion of fuel vapour in the central fuel tank”. What Jim’s findings failed to address, however, is the fact that 34 eyewitnesses claim to have seen a streak rising up towards the plane shortly before it exploded. After the investigation, former US police officer James Sanders set himself the job of sniffing out the truth, and concluded that the plane had been accidentally shot down by USS Normandy, a cruiser that had been on exercise in the area. Indeed, there is a precedent: back in 1988, USS Vincennes had “mistakenly” shot down Iranair Flight 655. Furthermore, Pierre Salinger – JFK’s former press secretary, no less – claims to have seen secret military documentation that confirmed the missile conjecture. Adding yet more weight to the theory, local resident Linda Kabot produced a photograph seeming to show the actual missile in flight. Although dismissed by the FBI, the object has never been identified.
AIDS: The Truth!
Standing head and shoulders above other “gay plague” conspiracy theories is that of Dr Boyd E Graves. Graves believes that the AIDS virus was the culmination of US biowarfare research which was deliberately released into the masses, to wipe out “excess population”. Not very impressively, he bases all his evidence on a Virus Cancer “Flow Chart” – some sort of graph that chronicles the government’s attempts to make an AIDS bioweapon – which he got from the US government. Alarmingly, the quack also claims to have contracted AIDS himself, but says that he was cured by an injection of “colloidal silver”. He goes on to assert that this miracle cure, patented by an American firm in 1997 (US Patent no 5,676,977) is being withheld for reasons which remain unclear. The patent, according to Boy, claims 100% effectiveness in destroying AIDS.
The Death Train
Various American conspiracy and Christian fundamentalist groups believe that the country’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) mans over 600 death camps across the USA. For proof, they point to a letter written by Member of Congress Bill Hefner, dated March 24, 1997, regarding “Civilian prison camps on Army installations”. Phil Schneider, who was murdered in suspicious circumstances in 1996, believed that the Gunderson Rail Car Company had won a contract to build 107,200 rail cars, each containing up to 143 sets of shackles. He reckoned that these boxcars were to be used to ferry up to six million subversives (see: www.destailshere.com/redbluelists) to the camps for execution once martial law is instigated in the US by the New World Order. Any day now, then…