Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 The chapter begins like all of Cooper's chapters with a title and then a bunch of sub-titles. The title of this chapter is "Lessons from Lithuania" and then it subtitles with the Second Amendment--surprisingly the whole thing. Cooper does not ignore that inconvenient first half that modern gun fetishists concentrate on. He then goes on to Patrick Henry's famous quote, but again he gives the full thing: " I know not what others may do. But as for me, give me liberty or give me death."  Cooper is unlikely to know this: it's very doubtful that Patrick Henry uttered these words. What we know is that he gave a speech in Virginia in 1775 which pushed the Virginia legislature toward desiring independence from England, but his speech was never recorded. The line comes from the recollection of people decades later. As much as I would like to attack Cooper for getting this wrong, I cannot do so, he would not have access to the scholarly research on the subject, a...

I knew that this was coming, but I was going to wait on the commentary until chapter 15 hit. Famously (infamously), Cooper is going to include, in this book, the entirety of the notorious anti-Semitic tract "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. I was going to discuss the history of this work then but at the bottom of page 178 (PDF) he says this:  " I managed to locate a reference to The Protocols of Sion dated in the 1700s (see chapter 15, page 269). This plan for subjugation of the world correctly outlined exactly what has happened since the Protocols were discovered, and that is all that is needed to confirm the authenticity of the information contained within the document. It is clear that the Illuminati has planned to rule the world for centuries ." This paragraph is all that there is, save one sentence in the beginning of the next paragraph, " They have followed the plan outlined in the The Protocols of Sion. "  I feel as though I have to address some ...

First, we begin with a correction. I made a mistake when we covered the first chapter "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars." I claimed that Cooper may have written it himself, but this is incorrect. Cooper did not write it, it was a document that had been floating around the UFOlogy and conspiracy circuit for a while that he just inserted in his book. I have to credit fellow "The Skeptic" writer Thiago Vahia Malliagros for the tip, which he cited from the excellent biography of Bill Cooper "Pale Horse Rider." This is a rather embarrassing mistake because I have read that book and even cited it in my dissertation.  This week we continue with population controls and Cooper's assertion that "they" are going to use plagues to do it. To recap the story that Cooper is telling us, WWII ended, and the models that "they" predicted were going to result in overpopulation. So, a way to stem the growth was needed. The first method was by normalizing b...

The titles for these chapters are quite something, I've never paid attention to them before, but they are quite revealing. Here is the beginning of chapter 9: " Anatomy of An Alliance The Logic for the New World Order The Glue that Binds That Alliance of Power  and The Consequences 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph  is for good men to do nothing.'    -Edmund Burke 1729-1797 As a quick aside: in my research, I discovered something very interesting, Irish Philosopher Edmund Burke never said this quote , even though it is widely mis-attributed to him.  Back to the task at hand: what the chapter title reveals is a lack of discipline in the writer. Writing instruction repeats a mantra so often it has become a cliche, show don't tell. If you are unfamiliar, it means that the writer should rely on the reader to understand what is going on. If "Bill" is angry, it's better writing to let the character's actions reflect his anger than to state ...

This chapter is a cheat. It's one page, and Cooper is purporting that this isn't even his writing...again. The title of this chapter is, " ARE THE SHEEP READY TO SHEAR? Oklahoma H.B. 1750 TEST CASE FOR THE POLICE STATE." Two things thwarted my attempts to research this subject: paywalls and time. Oddly enough, I had plenty of time to do the research but the documents in question are not online. The Oklahoma legislature's website only goes back to 1993 and I need 1988. The University of Oklahoma which also maintains an archive returned a 404 error. So I decided to just find what I can about the bill and move forward. The further problem is that Cooper's source, Gary North , a new name to add to our gallery of conspiracy theorist; maintained a website but his own archives do not go any earlier than 2004. The article that North wrote, is on a website called the " McAlvany Intelligence Advisory " but that article is locked behind a paywall. For people i...

Last week we introduced Cooper's poor understanding of the omnibus drub bill of 1986. This followed his poor understanding of a series of executive orders. That's not counting the Dr. Pabst contribution which also misunderstood the legal system. Cooper is going to finish his analysis of the drug bill this week, and as a spoiler--it will not get better.  The way to understand works like this is to become familiar with certain topics that conspiracy theorists are obsessed with. It helps put things into perspective. For example, the Cooper strain of conspiracy theorists obsess over the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. The reason is that they don't quite understand what it does (regulate the money supply through interest rates--I'm being very simplistic, but that little blurb is profoundly more informative than anything they can claim about it). They do so because it is something you can point to, we don't elect the board of governors, and a bank has probably ...

We have finally returned to Cooper's own writing...allegedly. My suspicion that Dr. Pabst was really Cooper cannot be confirmed, but let's give Cooper the benefit of the doubt and welcome him back for chapter 7: Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 H.R. 5210 P.L. 100-690 Preparation for the Police State An Analysis. Right off the bat, we should know that we are in for a treat. Cooper, has already tried to read laws and executive orders and failed to understand them. I suspect that this will continue here, but we might be in for a surprise. While Cooper wrote this book in the early 90s the majority of legal regulations that he's been referring to have been from the Nixon administration. My assumption here is that he had this stuff lying around for use when he was a big name in the UFOlogy circuit. He would have needed "evidence" of the FEMA camps for the eventual UFO takeover so he just had it lying around. When the UFO conspiracy ebbed away he switched it over to this New ...