Conspiracy Theories

Carrying on the "strange but true" theme, this week we're going to look at some of the world's best conspiracy theories...

Actually, "strange but true" might be the wrong term to use, as, well, you know, they wouldn't be considered conspiracies if they'd ever been proved to be true. But I digress...

These aren't necessarily the 5 most popular conspiracy theories, because well, you'll already know a lot of them. And, well, some of them aren't that funny. Here's the ones that I thought might make the best blog, walking a thin line between the ridiculous, the informative and the plausible, my five favourite conspiracy theories.






5 - Denver International Airport

Denver, Colorado in the good ol' US of A is home to Tim Allen, Dog the Bounty Hunter, pop-rock band the Fray and the secret headquarters of the New World Order. Well, according to some conspiracy theorists anyway.

The New World Order (or NWO) is described as a "powerful and secretive elite with a globalist agenda, conspiring to end the world through a totaliarian world government which would replace sovereign nation-states and put an end to international power struggles." Wikipedia's words. not mine.

It was also the name of a popular wrestling stable in the 1990s and early 2000s. True story.


Anyhow, many believe that the NWO - made up of high-ranking government officials, religious leaders, entrepreuneurs, nazis and em, aliens - controls all of the world's major decisions, and could have been responsible for, amongst other things, 9/11 and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.


Some also believe that the organisation's headquarters are in Denver International Airport. They point to the fact that the airport is situated abnormally far from the centre of Denver itself (approximately 25 miles away), and several other interesting facts. The main building is comprised of a white tent structure, which supposedly reminds people flying in to the town of the nearby Rocky Mountains, however theorists believe that this is, in fact, to appease dead Indians buried at the site, as the airport does, admittedly, kind of look like a giant teepee. To add a bit of weight to this theory however, the airport has genuinely been proven to have been built on an ancient burial ground.

Weirder though, are murals in the main terminal, which designers claim were required to use symbols such as a Nazi Black Sun, the Freemasonry logo, and a scene depicting the destruction of a city and a forest with a little girl holding a Mayan tablet prohesying the end of the world. Which is all a bit creepy. And probably the last thing I'd want to see while waiting to check-in for a flight.

Oh yeah, and the terminal itself is called the Great Hall, which any conspiracy theorist knows is a nod to freemasonry. Apparently.

Still, a bit weird though eh?


4 - The Rendlesham Forest Incident

There are few conspiracy theories with as much documented evidence as this, so why have very few people ever heard of "England's Roswell"?

On December 26. 1980 a downed UFO was reported by a security patrol in woodland, near RAF Woodbridge. Servicemen originally thought it was a downed aircraft, but upon further investigation they saw numerous lights eminating from the site. Local police were called to the scene shortly afterwards, but they claimed in an official report that the only lights they saw were from a nearby lighthouse.

However, airmen at the base claim to this day that they saw brightly coloured lights in the woodland area, and a metallic cone-shaped object hovering over a clearing in the area. The object then moved away from them as they approached, and it moved into a nearby field. Some reports of the incident claim that this left farm animals in a state of udder, sorry, utter panic, although records have proved that there were no animals on the farm, so I wouldn't read too much into that.

However, the airmen claim they were then debriefed. In that they were told not to talk about the incident. Not that they had their pants taken off them or anything. One airman claims that he was forced to sign a document stating that the lights he had seen came from the nearby lighthouse, and another claimed that he was warned that "bullets were cheap" when he initially refused to comply. Indents in the grass found at the scene were found to be in an equilateral triangle, thought by many to be dents made by a UFO. Naturally.

Mind you, that theory is probably more plausible than the official line that they were "made by rabbits."

Most conspiracy theorists believe that the aliens were leaving after a "routine meeting" between themselves and UK and US military (the US also had an airbase nearby), where, amongst other things, they talked about what to do with the earth's nuclear stockpiles.


3 - The Alien Base Under Antartica

This theory is so awesome that they even based an entire X-Files movie around it.

In short, it claims that there either are, or were, aliens living underneath the Antartic ice. The aliens then artificially created the ice to cover their base, and, if they are still there, they are "currently working on various experiments studying embryonic alien gestation in the host-bodies of humans." That means they're trying to make aliens that look like humans to you and me.

The strangest part of this theory, is that there's actually a pretty huge piece of evidence that might support it.

And that it involves a pirate.

Piri Reis was an Arabic swashbuckler (how awesome is that?) who charted most of the South Atlantic Ocean in a manner so accomplished that most believe that he didn't actually do it himself. In fact, Piri Reis' map was drawn in 1513, over 300 years before Antartica was actually "discovered" by a Russian expedition. Reis' map precisely matches x-ray, false colour and satellite photos taken by NASA since the invention of this technology, and his map matches these photos almost identically.

So, the popular theory is that it was given to him by aliens, who charted the actual coastline of Antartica, which can no longer be seen, as it's under about a mile of ice. NASA thoroughly disputes this claim, and they reckon that Reis' map is a forgery from the late 1800s. But even under those circumstances, it's highly unlikely that he'd have been able to accurately chart Antartica using technology from that era. In fact it's pretty much impossible.

And there's some that think he just guessed.

But that would ruin the theory that NASA, to this day hides an Antartic alien base that it's in cahoots with in exchange for alien technology. And that wouldn't be much fun.



2 - Paul is Dead

Conspiracy theorists claim that Paul McCartney of the Beatles died in 1966 and was replaced by someone who not only looks just like him, but sounded like him as well. And there are plenty of clues that suggest this is the case. Apparently.

The legend goes that Paul stormed out of a recording session after arguing with his bandmates, then crashed his car and died on the way home. The story is then pieced together by his grief-ridden former bandmates via various Beatles songs:

"He didn't notice that the lights had changed" ("A Day in the Life"), he crashed into a lamp-post (a car crash sound is heard in "Revolution 9") and was pronounced dead on a "Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock as the day begins" ("She's Leaving Home"). News of the tragedy was withheld: "Wednesday morning papers didn't come" ("Lady Madonna") etc etc.

Oh yeah, and they even had a funeral for him. On the cover of the Abbey Road album nonetheless. John Lennon is dressed all in white like a clergyman on it, Ringo Starr is all in black like an undertaker and George Harrison is in jeans. Like a gravedigger. Obv.

And as if that wasn't evidence enough McCartney is dressed in a blue suit without shoes on the cover, and is walking out of step with the other three. Like you would if you were dead.

And those are the fairly logical explanations. Others include that John Lennon supposedly says "I buried Paul" in the final section of Strawberry Fields Forever and that if you play Revolution 9 backwards you head Paul say "Turn me on, dead man".

And the fact that he formed Wings and married Heather Mills. The real Paul McCartney would never have done that.

1 - AIDS is Manmade

This one claims that the AIDS virus was created by scientists in a laboratory by a secretive agency such as the CIA as an experiment in biological and/or psychological warfare. Or, to either "destroy the black race", "cripple the development of the African continent" or to "get rid of the gays," depending on who you believe.

Some claim that the disease found its way into the population after harmful research materials designed for use in warfare accidentally found their way into the mainstream, although there are a variety of ideologies relating to how this happened, the most popular involves the virus accidentally finding it's way into a polio vaccine.

However, that's not nearly sinister enough for proper conspiracy theorist. Some black militant groups claim that the disease was administered to blacks and homosexuals via deliberately tainted hepatitis vaccinations in the 1970s. They point to the Tuskegee syphillis experiments that took place between the 1930s and 70s, in which African-Americans were legitimitelly INFECTED WITH SYPHILLIS for research purposes when asked for evidence that the government was capable of such a thing (in the experiment, doctors DID NOT give the patients penicillin, which was found to be an effective cure for syphillis in the 1940s, even after they had been infected with the virus for years at a time. Many blacks died and whole black families were infected with syphilils in what has been called "the most infamous biomedical study in US history").

Another theory is that the virus was administered to Africans in a similar "tainted vaccination" form by US mercenaries in the 1970s to cripple the development of the continent and to allow the western world to continue as Earth's dominant civilisation.

Others claim that syringes distributed to drug users by various governments during the 1970s had been infected with the HIV virus in an effort to "scare people away" from injecting drugs.

Either way, it's pretty scary stuff.

What do you all think?

Let me know because it'll be lame if I don't get comments.

The truth is out and about there.
Austin.