Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

If you are keeping score, we are still in what Cooper is claiming is a document sent to him by a Dr. Pabst. Let me remind you that I am not sure if Pabst is real or if this is another attempt by Cooper to pass off his own work as someone else's. Unlike chapter 1, this has been more consistent in tone.  "Pabst" titles this section "The People vs. the Conspirators" which is going to be the follow-up to the lawsuit he claimed he filed a few weeks ago. To remind you, this is lawsuit number 76-h-667 filed in the Southern District of Texas in 1976. I tried to find it, but the online records do not go back that far, and every attempt to find it via Google either directed me to Cooper's book or forums discussing Cooper's book. What was the lawsuit about? Well, that was unclear. He tells us that it was filed on behalf of American patriots against the federal government for reasons related to things...I don't know. It's clearly an anti-New World Order laws

We're still on the good doctor's Pabst's blue ribbon "contribution" to Cooper's book, we have never learned what kind of doctor he was. The only thing we know about him is that his former address is now a veterinary clinic. I'm going to raise my suspicion once again that there is no Dr. Pabst, or if there was, this is not a contribution of his. As this section goes on the writing becomes more like Cooper's. This also happened in the "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars" chapter which was allegedly a government document welcoming new recruits. If Cooper is pretending to be other people, the most important question is: Why? Cooper doesn't need to go to this much trouble to push his view. He was a big enough name on the UFO circuit and he's got a good name in the 90s for the NWO conspiracy as well.  This section is titled "Mental Cooperation in Takeover Plans," which is a terrible name for a section but it's effective in that we

First off let's discuss fonts. Beginning on Page 132, if we remember from last week, Cooper is claiming that the next few dozen pages are actually the warnings of someone named Dr. Pabst, clearly a Blue Ribbon Doctor even though I could not find this specific person. My first question is why does this section exist? Did Cooper ask Pabst for a report on FEMA camps, or did Pabst send this in after hearing Cooper's radio show? Remember also, I'm skeptical that this Pabst person is real.  Cooper/Pabst does an interesting, if frustrating thing—both the size and style of the font change. We've been working with a Georgia font at 12pt but now we're on Times New Roman at 10. This is annoying because it reinforces that I am old and have to blow it up a bit to read it without confusion. It's also a little creative because it makes it look like someone else's writing. I wonder if this is the same in the print version of the book as well. Perhaps each page looks like he

A quick note on my page numbers: I skipped nothing, the last section ended at 130, then Cooper put up works cited, and then a blank page. I should have kept the page numbers going last week but I didn't so here we are.  This week, we have more FEMA nonsense. I know, I'm getting rather bored with it too, but it is important that we understand what these claims are because they continue to pop up from time to time. The entire controversy over the "Jade Helm" exercise was based on the FEMA conspiracy theory. Since there's a Democrat in the White House the right usually screams about it for a bit. We aren't seeing this too much with Biden because the former president is still pushing the stolen election conspiracy theory and they've also got AI and UFOs to worry about. Your average right-wing conspiracy theorist has too much on their plate right now to really try to ramp up some old-fashioned FEMA fears. In the 90s though - this was their jam so it's our j

Our chapter begins with the title HR 4079 & FEMA, and  I seriously thought that his post was going to be me explaining why we were skipping this chapter. I figure we had learned our lesson two posts ago when Cooper just reposted a law he didn't understand along with a treaty someone told him was bad. Why do this again to ourselves? Then I kept reading the title of the chapter (this is a long one):  H.R. 4079 & FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency Tool That Can Be Used to Establish the Police  State Patriots and Tax Protestors:  YOU MUST NEVER BE FOUND AT HOME ON                         ANY HOLIDAY Your life depends upon how well you can obey that rule. I was still skeptical. After all, sometimes Cooper provides introductions to things that he merely cuts and pastes into this book. To be honest, dear reader, I really wanted to skip this chapter, but I soldiered on and I'm glad I did. This chapter isn't just a reposting of HR 4079 (1990); it's something comple