2014 in conspiracy theories

Ebola is a bio-weapon designed by the US government. Rosetta was an attempt to make contact with aliens. The leader of Isil is secretly Jewish. We guide you through the headlines They don't want you to know

Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain. 

There is a saying in computer science: 'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity'.

But in the world of global politics, that's just an easy way for the secret masters of our world to pull the wool over the eyes of sheeple.

Here, laid bare before the world, is the secret truth behind nine seemingly simple news events from this year. What you are about to read may change your life forever.

Actually, we cannot emphasise strongly enough that these conspiracy theories are almost certainly nonsense. None of the things below are true. You should not take them seriously.

Or should you?

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1. The US government blanketed the South with fake plastic snow

Way back at the start of the year, the United States was swamped by a “polar vortex”, flinging snow across even warm areas like Atlanta, Georgia. But not everybody takes snow at face value. A number of Youtube users came to believe that the federal government was using “geo-engineering” techniques to blanket the South with fake snow. In some videos, bloggers take lighters to the snow only to find it does not melt – and also turns black.
But, as many meteorologists explained, this is normal. Snow often turns straight to gas when heated, and butane – the fuel for most ordinary cigarette lighters – leaves black marks on whatever it burns. Some Youtubers had reported smelling a toxic smell – but that, too, was probably the butane itself.

2. David Cameron covered up a gigantic Scottish oil find, then rigged the referendum


On July 22, David Cameron and the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, made a flying visit to the Shetlands. No advance warning was given for the trip, and only a handful of journalists were with him. Just days earlier, prospectors at the enormous Clair oilfield, 75km west of the islands, had discovered reserves larger and richer than anyone had predicted. The workers were immediately sent home on full pay and told not to return until after the independence referendum. But you won’t hear a word about it on the biased BBC.
Of course, that might be because there’s very little evidence for it all. But the meme that unionists were covering up a mammoth oil find which would skew the economic argument towards Yes, stoked by dubious Facebook posts and spoof press releases, spread through Nationalist cyberspace like a coal seam fire. A YouGov poll of 1,084 Scots found 42 per cent thought it was “probably true”.
That wasn’t all. After the referendum, many people – including the American feminist author Naomi Wolf – claimed the vote had in fact been rigged. On her Facebook page, Wolf claimed she had a list of 500 people who had not received proper ballot papers.
A pro-independence legal group called Lawyers For Yes went through the various claims, describing them as “an impressive collection of misunderstandings, conspiracy theories, and legal howlers…usefully collected by Naomi Wolf.”

3. The Virgin Galactic spaceship was sabotaged by NASA

First it was NASA’s unmanned Antares rocket, exploding just after launch. Then it was Richard Branson’s sub-orbital rocket plane, killing one pilot and injuring the other. Coincidence? Not on your life.
Luckily, internet people were on the case. Russia, explained Agent Smith 2014, “probably managed to insert a space weapon into orbit disguised as a spy satellite.” Both ships, he noted, “were destroyed whilst in the rocket powered phase, which is when they are the most vulnerable to laser attack.”
Others had a different theory. “NASA has been stripped of funding by liberal-backed administrations,” said one anonymous user, “and liberal-backed companies led by tech giants are now entering the space race. I think it was probably sabotage.”

4. The comet targeted by the Rosetta mission was actually an alien spacecraft

For three days in November the world held its breath as the Rosetta space probe reached the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasminko – and promptly lost track of its lander. The poor Philae craft had bounced on landing and ended up in the shadow of a crater wall where its solar panels could not catch the light. But did Philae have a hidden purpose?
According to an email supposedly sent by a whistleblower inside the European Space Agency, 67P is not a comet at all. Instead it is an alien object – possibly a spaceship – with “machine like parts” and “unnatural terrain”. The object had been emitting communications for years, and million-dollar mission to explore it was actually a secret attempt to make contact, said Scott Waring, the UFO activist who published the email. The ESA accidentally fuelled the speculation when it said the comet was “singing” with dolphin-like clicking noises which scientists still hope to explain.

5. Ebola is a bio-weapon which Obama will use as excuse for martial law

Not long after the Ebola outbreak began, an article in the Liberian Daily Observer claimed that the virus was a weapon designed by the United States military to depopulate the planet. Soon, the usual suspects were claiming that the US Centre for Disease Control had patented the virus – and was ready to make a fortune from a new, exclusive vaccine.
Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, said the virus had been engineered to kill black people specifically. “If you are black or brown, you are being selected for destruction.” Meanwhile, Professor Francis Boyle, a scholar of biowarfare and international law at the University of Illinois, said: “This isn’t normal Ebola at all. I believe it’s been genetically modified…I think the people at the top know. Probably Obama too.”
What was unusual about this conspiracy theory was the extent to which its themes were taken up by the Republican party. Steve Stockman, a congressman from Texas, speculated that Obama was deliberately making America vulnerable to the outbreak so that he could later use “emergency powers to take over control of the economy”. A radio broadcaster, Rick Wiles, feared the President would use Ebola to “round up patriots” and set up “re-education camps”.
This was not so far away from the claims of fringe writer Morgan Britanny, who, pointing to a false rumour about Obama “quietly stockpiling” $1 billion worth of disposable plastic coffins, said: “My fear is that this has all been orchestrated from the very beginning. Maybe the current administration needs this to happen so martial law can be declared, guns can be seized, and the populace can be controlled. Once that happens – game over!”
The idea of using an artificial disease to induce a crisis is hardly new. This was the central plotline of the classic conspiracy thriller videogame Deus Ex, in which a global cabal genetically engineers a deadly disease so they can make politicians compliant by controlling their supply of the vaccine.

6. MH-17 and MH-370 were the same plane

The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 produced an embarrassing wealth of conspiracy theories. While widely blamed on Russia, the circumstances of the crash in territory held by Ukrainian separatists were initially murky enough for a million theories to emerge as to the actual culprit.
Immediately, many claimed the crash was a “false flag” – that is, a brutal act performed by one side but blamed on the other in an attempt to smear them. Chief suspect was the USA itself. Others focused on a resemblance between MH370 and the official presidential plane of Vladimir Putin (both are white with red and blue stripes), and a supposed confluence in their flight paths. The theory was that the USA or the Ukrainian government had tried to assassinate Putin himself and then blamed the fallout on their enemy.
But the most creative theory was the ‘same plane’ plot. Multiple people wondered if the plane from Ukraine could in fact be MH-370, another Malaysia Airlines flight lost over the Indian Ocean in March. MH-370 was hijacked, some said, and flown to Diego Garcia, a British Island in the Indian Ocean hosting US military bases.
The plane was then used to set up the false flag in Ukraine, with a smattering of false passports over the corpses; theorists zeroed in on photos appearing to show “pristine” passports, and claims by Ukrainian rebels that some of the bodies were old. One particularly astute tweeted noted that “Illuminati might have been involved” because both planes were Boeing 777s – one of the workhorse airliners of the world.


7. Isil is a joint creation of Israel and the CIA, and its leader is secretly Jewish

Yes, you read that correctly: Isil's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is not even a Muslim, but a Jewish actor named Elliot Shimon trained by Mossad and the CIA to fabricate a convenient enemy.
That’s the theory, anyway. Non-existent documents supposedly released by Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower, say that British, American and Israeli intelligence worked together to create “a terrorist organization capable of centralizing all extremist actions across the world.”
This, obviously, is in service of the Israeli nation, because “the only solution for the protection of the Jewish state is to create an enemy near its borders.” The plan is to lure all the world’s Islamic terrorists into congregating under one umbrella, and then, presumably, drone the tar out of them.
There are even (fake) photos of al-Baghdadi meeting with US senator John McCain, who was beaten by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. And all those beheading videos? Fakes, using actors and movie-style special effects. Mark Crispin Miller, a media professor at New York University, explains: “The ‘James Foley’ (seemingly) beheaded in the video is simply not James Foley…neither of these two beheadings is convincing.”
Of course, instead of this nonsense, you could read Martin Chulov’s incredible story about how Isil was born inside a US prison in Iraq.

8. Rihanna, Jay Z, Kanye West and Beyoncé are all members of the Illuminati

The actual, real-world Illuminati were a secret society founded in 1776 by a university administrator frustrated with the Church’s control over learning. The idea was to ape the Freemasons but without the expense, pushing a secular Enlightenment agenda in all areas of public life, but the society was routed in the 1780s by a government crackdown. Or was it?
The symbol of the Illuminati is the eye in the pyramid. Shawn Carter, alias Jay-Z, has taken the pyramid as a logo for his Roc-A-Fella Records label. His wife, Beyoncé, has frequently flashed a ‘pyramid’ hand gesture, as has Rihanna and Kanye West. And do I have to mention the baby, Blue Ivy? I.V.Y.? Illuminati’s Very Youngest? Come ON, people!
Full disclosure: this theory was communicated to The Telegraph via some very excitable teenagers convinced they have found the answer to all pop culture.

Source:The Telegragh

The free gift of a child suicide bomber in Northern Nigeria

Nigerian girl says parents volunteered her as suicide bomber

Police said the girl's story made it clear who was to blame for the attacks in Kano

A 13-year-old Nigerian girl has told how her parents gave her to Boko Haram militants to be used as a suicide bomber.

The girl, speaking at a news conference organised by police, said she was taken to the city of Kano where two other girls detonated their bombs.
At least four people died in the 10 December attack. The girl was arrested, still wearing explosives, police said.
About 2,000 people have died in attacks blamed on the Islamists this year.
The girl told journalists that her parents had taken her to militants hiding in a forest near the town of Gidan Zana in northern Kano state.
She said one of the leaders asked her if she knew what a suicide bombing was.
"They said, 'Can you do it?' I said 'no'," she said.
"They said, 'You will go to heaven if you do it.' I said 'No I can't.' They said they would shoot me or throw me into a dungeon."
The girl said she finally agreed to take part in the attack but "never had any intention of doing it".

  The attacks on 10 December left at least four people dead and others wounded

She said she had been injured when one of the other girls detonated her bomb and ended up at a hospital where her explosives were discovered.
It was not possible to independently verify the girl's story. Correspondents said she had no lawyer present.
Kano police said they wanted the girl to tell her story to make the public aware of who was behind the attack.
Kano State Police Commissioner Adenrele Shinaba, quoted by Nigerian media, said police wanted to dispel rumours that the attack had been linked to inter-tribal conflict.
Boko Haram, a Sunni Islamist group, has been waging an insurgency in Nigeria since 2009.
In recent months the group has taken control of a series of towns and villages in north-east Nigeria and has vowed to create an Islamic state in those areas.

Nigerian authorities have struggled to defeat them.

Source:BBC

World’s Largest Bottle Tree By Nigerian Breweries

Nigeria’s first indigenous beer brand, Star Lager has completed the building of the world’s largest bottle tree at the venue of the Lagos Countdown in Victoria Island.

The record-breaking tree is made with a total of 8,000 star bottles as against 3,000 announced during the commencement of the project.

This development was as a result of the excitement the project elicited in the minds of consumers.
Attention grabbing and beautifully made, the Star Bottle Tree sits proudly at the Star Beer Village, Eko Atlantic City.

The bottle tree is a first of its kind in the country, symbolizing greatness and the enterprising Nigerian spirit.

Source:ThisDay

Strange normality

Diana Darke returned from London to Syria recently to reclaim her house from profiteers. She found her neighbours and friends in Damascus coping surprisingly well and even laughing.

Nothing in Damascus was as expected. Convinced there would be food shortages, I had vowed to eat very little during my stay. Yet while the besieged suburbs are starving, the central food markets are overflowing.
The fruit stalls of Sharia al-Amin boast bananas from Somalia, the Bzouriye spice markets are buoyant with top-quality saffron from Iran and walnuts from Afghanistan. Lebanese wine and beer are freely available. Prices are higher than before, but still largely affordable for most people.
Sandwiched between the heavily-armed checkpoints, street stands selling thick hot Aleppan sakhlab, a sweet white drink, are everywhere.
Cafes and pastry shops are bursting with sticky delicacies, the famous Bakdash ice-cream parlour is buzzing with people as ever.

To judge from the carpets of cigarette butts on the pavements, smoking rates, always high, are higher than ever. In the main thoroughfare of Souq al-Hamidiya all the usual clothes and flamboyant underwear outlets are still thronging with customers - not a single boarded shopfront - quite a contrast to the average British high street.
Sporadically, in the days as well as the nights, shelling is disturbingly loud.
President Bashar al-Assad's artillery is fired from Mount Qassioun, directly above the city, towards the eastern Ghouta region - the scene of last year's chemical attack, whose pockets of resistance are still a thorn in the side of the government. Villages there have suffered a food blockade for the last 18 months.
But by all accounts there is much less noise than there was a year ago.

Mount Qassioun, seen across the rooftops of Damascus

From that point of view, very gradually, life in central Damascus is getting better. Yet from other points of view, just as gradually, it is getting worse.
Beyond the 3.5 million who have fled the country as refugees, a further 7.5 million have been internally displaced - added together that's about half of Syria's entire population. Homes which are left empty, if they have not been flattened, are vulnerable to immediate seizure by others - usually the owners have no idea who has moved in and it is too dangerous to go back and find out.
Almost as often, but rarely reported, Syrian homes are taken by profiteers, exploiting the weak or the absent.
My own house in the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Damascus, bought and restored in 2005, fell victim a few months ago.
It had been lived in for more than two years, from the summer of 2012 to the summer of 2014, with my consent by displaced friends whose homes had been destroyed in the suburbs. Now they had been evicted by my ex-lawyer and the previous owner conniving together to take it for themselves and split it 50:50.
Determined to get it back I recently returned to Damascus to throw them out and after 15 roller-coaster days, I succeeded. Things can happen surprisingly fast in Syria. You go to meet the judge one day, and he comes to inspect the house the next - without payment.

A blacksmith made a new metal door to cover the smashed antique one

Among the many moments of high drama were two break-ins, six changes of lock, the installation of two metal doors and the exposure of the bogus security reports which had led to my friends being evicted in the first place.
Bit parts were played by a fake general on a forged 25-year lease, and a single Baathist mother in the house with her newborn baby.
But in some ways life goes on almost as normal: dining with one friend in her 50s, whose car was lost in a random mortar attack, she explains how she now accompanies her 16-year-old nephew by taxi to play in the orchestra at the Opera House to make sure he is not picked up and enlisted into the army. At the checkpoints she clutches his cello between her legs so that the soldiers will not take it.

Checkpoints and road blocks, such as this one in Yusuf al-Azma Square, are a common sight

Another friend works for the national electricity grid: his job is to repair electric cables damaged in the clashes. Over lunch at his home with his family, he tells me how one of his team stepped on a mine and was blasted to pieces in front of him - the man next to him had his eyes blown out.
He himself was lucky, escaping only with shrapnel in his intestine. He spent two weeks in hospital, two weeks at home recuperating, then went straight back to work. His attitude is simple: anyone who damages Syrian infrastructure is hurting the Syrian people.
The alleys of the Old City are full of children playing football. Many go to the school round the corner from my house.
Such is the overcrowding - some say Damascus's population has risen from four to seven million because of internally displaced refugees - that their school-day is from 11:00 to 15:00, with one shift before them and another shift after them. They have 50 to 60 in their class but their enthusiasm to learn and to do their homework is undiminished.
The only other foreigners I saw on the streets were Iraqi Shia, men and women led round in groups to visit the shrines by a man wielding an orange lollipop sign.
When I met an old friend at the tourism ministry who still works at his office every day, he explained how this kind of religious tourism is now all they have left, some 200,000 pilgrims a year, after 8.2 million foreign visitors in 2010. He expresses no political views - he is just someone who has chosen to stay and do his job as best he can, like millions of others.

A skincare and healthcare exhibition was held in Damascus in early December

All over the country, even in IS-held Raqqa, I was reliably informed, government employees now draw their salaries direct from cash points on specific days, causing long queues outside the banks.
For the last two nights when I was finally able to sleep in my house in Old Damascus I experienced what everyone else has to suffer on a daily basis - scarcely four hours of electricity a day, no gas, no hot water, limited cold water.
It was tough, yet strangely invigorating, crossing the chilly courtyard to wash in a dribble of icy water, warmed by the knowledge I was surrounded by loyal neighbours who were looking out for me. Without them I could never have retaken my house: they protected me, helped me at every turn.
A crisis brings out the worst and the best in people. What I found in Damascus was that a genuine kindness, a shared humanity and an extraordinary sense of humour are well and truly alive. Decent Syrian citizens are together doing their best to fight against immorality and corruption. Morale, in spite of everything, is high. Laughter keeps them sane.
Not once did anyone mention sectarianism. "Da'ish" - a pejorative term for IS based on an acronym formed from the letters of its name in Arabic - was universally condemned as beyond the pale.

How much longer, as the war approaches its fifth year and the number of greedy opportunists in society increases, such neighbourhood camaraderie can survive is an unanswerable question. But after this fortnight in Damascus I am much more optimistic than before.