My last post, discussing popular misconceptions, mass formations and intellectual autonomy, won me few friends. Some even went so far as to insinuate that I’m a conspiracist. Just because demented globalist politicians are exploiting the issue of climate change to consolidate power and manipulate markets, they said, doesn't mean it’s not real.
Language is important. Of course climate change is real, because the fundamental paradox of the Universe we inhabit is that its only constant is change. Everything changes, all of the time. Just not in the way we are being lead to believe, so far as the weather is concerned.
I am one of the 11% of people whom The Policy Institute at King's College London, in a report it prepared on behalf of the BBC in June 2023, Conspiracy belief among the UK public and the role of alternative media, found to consider the statement, 'human-caused climate change is real and a threat to people and the planet', to be almost definitely false. I'm not one of the 7% who are absolutely certain it’s wrong, although there’s not much room for doubt.
That said, I am one of the 10% who most vehemently disagree with the statement, 'Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective'. On these two questions - AGW & mRNA vaXXes - this official report commissioned by the State broadcaster confidently pronounced that, despite a third of the public saying some conspiracy theories are probably or definitely true, 'majorities of the public do nonetheless recognise important realities about climate change and the pandemic'.
Intended to be reassuring, this comment reflects not, ‘important realities’, but the way in which relentless propaganda - of which this report is a component - can fool most of the people most of the time. It has been suggested that my allegations re: Climategate have been rejected by no fewer than four separate Official Inquiries. That is true, but however many coats of whitewash may have been applied, the truth still grins through.
The penultimate question in the King's College survey was, 'have you received any coronavirus vaccines?', to which 84% replied in the affirmative. Of those, 80% said they weren’t unhappy about it, enabling The Policy Institute to claim, 'the vast majority of the public are glad to have received a Covid vaccine - although one in nine say they regret it'. No data is offered about the 16% who declined the vaXX; how many of them regretted their choice? I would estimate our number at zero.
As is often the case, the message this spurious academic report conveys reminds me of something Bill Hicks said. To paraphrase the prophet: go back to sleep, Little Britons, your governbent has got everything under control!
Far more than a deceased comedian, Bill Hicks is a legendary stand-up shaman. Like Lenny Bruce, with whom he stands comparison, Hicks was a uniquely American phenomenon: a personification of the First Amendment. His dramatisation of Operation Desert Storm as a Hollywood Western starring Jack Palance as Uncle Satan became more widely appreciated during the second assault on Saddam a dozen years later, after YouTube had caught on. By then, Hicks had completed his earthly mission and died of a genetically-programmed cancer, just shy of his 33rd birthday.
More than a hero, Bill Hicks is a prophet in my personal pantheon, not just because he foretold a predictable future, but because his closing statement in Revelations, recorded at the Dominion Theatre, London, in November 1992, concisely summarises a worldview I have come to share: It's Just A Ride.
Toward the end, Bill Hicks became fascinated by the Kennedy assassination and the impossibility of the official story of a lone gunman, as shown by the Zapruder film. Revelations includes the bit - "Back and to the left!" - where he goes into it. Bill Hicks knew more than thirty years ago that the Kennedy Assassination was a corporate coup. Ever since then the world's sole superpower has been run by an increasingly overt criminal cartel.
After Kennedy was killed, it quickly became apparent that there must have been more than one gunman and conspiracy theories began to proliferate. There is a theory that the phrase, 'conspiracy theory', was adopted by the CIA and used successfully to disparage wild hypotheses and cast aspersions upon the credibility of amateur sleuths. Personally, I reject the appellation. Like Gore Vidal said, I’m not a conspiracy theorist; I’m a conspiracy analyst.
Now it's 2025 and Donald Trump is back in the Oval Orifice. Last time around, a conspiracy theory that was almost certainly fed by the CIA, if not wholly cooked up by Capitalism's Invisible Army, contended that The Donald was really a secret agent who had been put in place by a faction within the Deep State in order to clean house. The daft tale told by QAnon contributed in no small way to the events of January 6th, 2021. Now, Agent Orange has returned and this time he's recruited a posse of Special Agents to clean house!
During Trump's last watch, in 2017, a statute matured that required all the official documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination to be made public. Trump withheld 20% on the advice of Mike Pompeo, his Deep State handler, telling his friend and occasional advisor, Judge Andrew Napolitano, that the information those documents contained was too inflammatory. Now, however, Trump has decreed that all must be revealed, any day now...
Now it's 2025 and there is a conspiracy theory that Bill Hicks did not die thirty years ago, but lives on in the person of Alex Jones,the conspiraloon. Both are from Tuscon and have Texan accents, plus their appearance was, until recently, not dissimilar. Bill Hicks was known to launch into insane ranting when confronted with stupidity. Alex Jones is notorious for letting his mouth run away with him and saying stupid stuff. Hicks is remembered for having his final appearance on Letterman canned for no good reason. Jones was castigated and pauperized for casting aspersions upon the victims of an all-American atrocity.
A lesser loony might have crumbled under the heavy legal pressure, but Alex Jones, like Donald Trump, has made it through the wilderness and found a new home on Elon Musk’s platform, X, alongside his more respectable friend, Tucker Carlson. Mighty happy to be back, Alex has been on a health kick. He now looks less like Bill Hicks and more like a pro. wrestler-cum-preacher, convinced that the MAGA crowd he runs with shall fulfill Biblical prophesy. One might say that Alex Jones drank the Kool Aid.
The reference is to the title of a book by Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, which describes the antics of seminal counter-cultural figures, The Merry Pranksters, as they drove around in a gaily painted bus holding impromptu 'Acid Tests' at which LSD was dispensed in the cooling beverage. (Bill Hicks, it should be noted, formulated his psychedelic worldview, not so much under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide as psilocybin.)
Acid usually wears off, but there have been casualties who took a permanent vacation from consensus reality. Conspiracy theory, too, may addle one's brain and there may be no coming back. Deep divers - as hippie psychonauts were known - may lose the ability to differentiate what's real and what's make believe. Take the red pill and you may never again be able to accept that coincidences do occur and sometimes things are as they appear to be.
Conspiracy casualties are quite common: Flat Earthers and QAnon wonks, for example. Both those particular theories, so far as I can ascertain, originated on geeky message boards that typically attract bored tech-savvy teenagers with a warped sense of humour, as well as CIA operatives with a cynical mindset, intent upon subversion and damage limitation. Whichever faction decided to see if they could revive the objectively crazy notion that the earth is flat, I salute them.
Tom Wolfe, who died in 2018, was a very natty dresser and an acute commentator upon the mores of his time. Among his works are, The Right Stuff, about the Apollo space programme that put men on the moon. Or did it? Many sneer at the suggestion that men walked on the moon, but I believe those astronauts who claim to have moonwalked, because having the right stuff involves integrity as well as courage.
It also involves standing up for oneself. My favourite video in the whole world wide web is the one of Buzz Aldrin punching a conspiracy theorist who ambushed him outside a Beverly Hills hotel in 2002, calling him "a coward and a liar and a..." At that point, Buzz, who was 72 at the time, interrupted his abuser with a straight right to the jaw as he spat out the word, "thief". Attaboy.
For the conspiracy guy - I won't name the wanker - having the pilot who landed the Eagle Lunar Module land a punch in his fat physiognomy is his crowning achievement. Whereas Buzz Aldrin had flown jet fighters and made three spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission before he followed Neil Armstrong down the Eagle's steps to make like Sting and take giant steps on the moon.
I know that happened because I witnessed it. I saw it, live and direct from the moon, on the tele! I was 7 years old on 21st. July 1969, too young to stay up late, so I was put to bed in the front room at Harry & Mabel’s, the Liverpudlian rellies we were visiting. My dad woke me up in the middle of the night and I joined the throng in the parlour to watch blurry black and white images and hear Neil Armstrong speak those immortal words.
There are people who will tell you that what I was shown was faked on a closed Hollyweird lot by Stanley Kubrick. Indeed, I was momentarily fooled in 2015 when a viral ad campaign for a movie called, Shooting Kubrick, distributed around social media clips purporting to be the auteur's deathbed confession. Friends then reminded me, acerbically, that the evidence that men walked on the moon is abundant.
Those who argue that the Apollo missions to the moon were impossible because we lacked the computational ability should read or watch the film of, Hidden Figures, about three female African-American mathematicians who did the sums but did not get as much credit as they might have done had they been white men. Or clock the famous photo of Margaret Hamilton - also not a man - the software engineer who programmed the Apollo Guidance Computer standing next to a stack of paper as tall as herself: 5' 4".
Strange as it seems that they were able to relay images from the moon to terrestrial television in 1969, but not record them - a question for Quora - I've never heard an argument that the moon landings were faked which cannot be debunked. Never mind the Van Allen Belts!
Still, the main reasons that I believe the moon landing in 1969 really happened are because I saw it with my own eyes and because I believe in the honesty of the astronauts. Call me naive, but I trust them and I trust myself. I might have been easily fooled at age 7 - although I had rumbled Santa by then - but I could depend upon my dad, who woke me up to witness that epic moment.
Much conspiracy theory arises from vain attempts to rationalise events, but a lot is mere fantasy. Shooting Kubrick is not conspiracy theory. Its makers know it's not true because they made it up. It is conspiritainment; conjecture which, however amusing, is ultimately idle.
The argument is that the Yanks faked the moon landings because they couldn't win the Space Race legitimately, but those Soviets with whom they were in competition would not have been fooled and you can't persuade me that their ideological enemies would have colluded in the conspiracy. The conclusive proof that men walked on the moon lies not only in the rocks they brought back but also the stuff they left behind.
A more interesting question than, 'did men really walk on the moon', is, 'why haven't they been back for half a century'?
The prosaic answer is because the space programme was very expensive for not much practical return, Teflon-coated pans notwithstanding. Once the propaganda value of the Space Race win was exhausted, President Nixon preferred to spend the taxpayers money in prosecuting the war in Vietnam. Ever since, the military-industrial complex that seized power in the U.S. when JFK was assassinated has dictated spending priorities.
Alternatively, could it be that the pioneering Apollo astronauts were warned off the moon by Nazis who had escaped Hitler's demise and established a lunar colony?
Now, Elon Musk is talking about building a moon base and reaching for Mars. And what did Elon do at Trump's inauguration? He threw up a Nazi salute while pointing to the Moon! Evidence, if not unequivocal proof that that plot of Iron Sky is real and that Musk emanates not from South Afrika, but is actually a Moon Nazi fifth columnist who seeks our subjugation!
Even more interesting a question than why man has not yet gone back to the moon is, WTF is the moon anyway? It is an anomalous object that's too big and too close; somehow exactly the same size as the Sun from our perspective on Earth, enabling eclipses; and it's orbit is geo-stationary, meaning that we only ever see one side of it.
As a teenager in the 1970s, Pink Floyd ensured that I am aware there is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the Sun. (This, for the information of conspiracy theorists pointing at shadows in moon photos, is not strictly true. The moon sits in front of a large blue mirror, the Earth, which reflects sunlight.)
Irwin Shapiro, a former director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, famously remarked, "looking at all the anomalies and unanswered questions about the Moon, the best explanation for the Moon is observational error: it doesn’t exist." But the existence of the moon is crucial for life as we know it on Earth as its gravitational pull holds our planet in place, tilted at a slight angle relative to the plane we orbit the Sun, giving us four seasons. Without the moon, the tides would be lesser, the weather would be wilder and the wildlife would be perplexed. If the moon didn't exist, we'd have to make it up.
The prevailing theory of how the moon came to exist is Planeteismal Impact: four and a half billion years ago, a barely-formed planet the size of Mars - 'Theia' - crashed into the Gaian prototype and the resulting debris eventually formed itself into the Earth and its moon, which is a quarter of Earth’s size and not much smaller than Mercury, so could be seen as a sister planet, rather than a satellite.
Since it was proposed in 1976, this 'Big Whack' theory has overtaken the Fission hypothesis, that the moon spun off from Earth; Accretion, that space dust coagulated to make the moon; and the Capture theory, that the moon was a wandering asteroid that got caught by Earth's gravitational pull. Over the intervening half century, improved geophysical studies of the earth and moon and isotopic evidence have added convincing evidence in support of the impact hypothesis. Speak to the average astrophysicist and they'll tell you that modern computer modelling has made it almost certain. So, that's settled, then.
Of course it isn't. Even Wikipedia admits that, of 'several formation mechanisms (that) have been proposed, none satisfactorily explains the features of the Earth–Moon system'. One theory that does explain all the lunar anomalies is that it is an alien artifact, constructed and anchored in the sky above our heads in order to terraform the planet and influence sentient life on Earth. Preposterous as that may sound, it is as valid as any other theory.
This was the hypothesis presented by two distinguished members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Alexander Shcherbakov and Mikhail Vasin. Say what you like about the Soviet Union, but freedom from commercial constraints licensed its intellectuals to think outside the box. In an article published in the popular Soviet magazine, Sputnik, in 1970, Vasin&Shcerbakov posed the provocative question, Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?
The Vasin-Shcerbakov hypothesis was reported to Westerners in 1976 by Don Wilson in a paperback, Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon, which is available from several online libraries. Basically, they said that the moon is a big hollow ball with a toughened outer shell strewn with reflective metals, such as titanium and uranium. They speculate that the moon's skin has a self-repair mechanism, which is why its craters are shallow. Fifty years later, it's known that they are filled with moon dust - regolith - which is also thought to be the primary cause of the Moon's retro-reflectivity.
Recent research into the Composition, Structure and Origin of the Moon suggests a 'genetic connection' between the Earth and its Moon; the two bodies separated by just 384,400 km. However, ‘the low mean density of the Moon, though similar to the Earth’s upper mantle, already attests to its peculiar constitution…
'…From a chemical and isotopic perspective, there is no unambiguous evidence for the contribution of an impactor to the Moon. This implies that either i) the material that made the Earth and Moon mixed perfectly during an impact event, before the Moon preferentially sampled a silicate-rich part of the disk or ii) there was no impact at all. Whether these options remain plausible depends upon our ability to resolve the bulk composition of the Moon from its geophysical response and geochemical record.
'Should the Moon have exactly the same composition as the Earth’s mantle with respect to major element abundances, then its origin could be reconciled with a ‘devolatilised’ fragment of the Earth’s mantle, after core-formation, but before the accretion of the late veneer. In the absence of a more plausible physical scenario, the giant impact is currently the worst model we have for the origin of the Moon, aside from all the others that have been tried from time to time.'
Anton Petrov, who runs one of the most popular science-related YouTube channels, says this, Study Suggests Giant Impact Did Not Form the Moon...So What Then? "The issue", Anton says, “is that the moon seems to be way too similar to planet Earth to actually be the result of a collision with a different object... maybe both objects were actually formed from the same cloud, from the same material, approximately four and one half billion years ago, but exactly what created this cloud and why did the cloud produce two objects and not just a single planet, that's something we cannot answer. And so, even though this cloud could have been created by some kind of a powerful collision, it could also have been just formed without anything major or anything catastrophic happening.
"Maybe both objects were actually formed from some kind of a well mixed donut (torus) or the more likely explanation is that maybe the moon was actually formed in a very different way, but what way we have no idea." Unless, Anton, you want to think outside the box and consider that the moon might be artificial. Suppose an alien civilization built the moon using materials scooped out of the Pacific, and parked it in the sky to exert its influence upon our planet?
That is one of the hypotheses explored by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler in their book, Who Built The Moon? (2005). Chris Knight's career as an author began with an investigation into the roots of freemasonry in, The Hiram Key, which led him to the Megalithic Yard, a theoretical unit of measurement proposed by Alexander Thom, a professor of engineering science at Oxford, who retired in 1961 in order to devote the rest of his life to measuring megaliths and developing this idea, which caught Chris Knight's imagination.
Teaming up with Alan Butler, the pair produced a book called, Civilisation One which posited the existence of an unknown culture that pre-dated the Sumerians and the Egyptians. This first civilization was highly developed in terms of its understanding of astronomy and geometry and employed an extraordinary integrated measuring system based on the mass, dimensions and movements of the Earth. Knight and Butler then extended their investigation of ancient metrology to the Moon.
They considered the possibility that God was responsible for building the Moon, but ultimately concluded that it was invented by our future selves. Interviewed at the time of publication, Knight stated that the moon is an artificial construction probably built by humans with a message in "base ten arithmetic so it looks as though it is directed to a ten digit species that is living on Earth right now - which seems to mean humans." He further believes that the moon was made to make life on Earth possible and its most likely builders were humans of the future using time travel.
Phew! The idea that a race of super advanced humans came back from the future in order to create the conditions on Earth conducive to their own evolution is pretty mind blowing. But a similar thought has occurred to Randall Carlson. The burly alt.archaeologist and returning guest of Joe Rogan didn't want to say anything about it decades ago because, when he "started looking into the mysteries, fifty years ago - 50 years ago, I don't exaggerate - I soon realized that there are some things that are best left unsaid until the time is right". Maybe that time is now?
In a podcast clip, The Moon is the External Hard Drive of Earth, Carlson talked about cycles of global catastrophe and how humanity came close to extinction during the Younger Dryas, along with half the prehistoric megafauna. We now realise that events which are sufficiently catastrophic to cause a complete reset of civilization occur far more frequently than was known a couple of generations ago. This growing awareness of our cosmic vulnerability has lead to speculation about the possibility of evacuating to the moon.
Randall discussed a proposal made in 2007 by Jim Burke of the International Space University in France, where he led a study on surviving a collision with a near Earth object. Burke called for the creation of a space age Noah's Ark, spelled ARC, the acronym standing for Alliance to Rescue Civilization, that would preserve humanity's learning, culture and technology in the event that the Earth is hit by a doomsday asteroid.
ARC also advocated creating a moon-based repository of life on Earth to, 'preserve back-ups of scientific and cultural achievements and of the species important to our civilization'. Which leads Carlson to make an outrageous suggestion: suppose we've already done that? Not recently, but once upon a time, Earth was backed up on the Moon? It is, Carlson admits, an idea so ridiculous that we don't even need to think about it. But it has been thought about.
Whether the moon is artificial, Randall Carlson prefers not to speculate because, "we get into some really strange territory there. If we say it's artificial, what does that even mean? That somebody constructed it, or something? I mean, who or what would have some capacity even to undertake such a project?"
While he may not yet be prepared to go as far as Christopher Knight, experience has taught Carlson that, "once you begin to put the pieces together, the whole story is laid out and it's so big and so profound that it's virtually unbelievable. And yet, the more you learn, the more you realise that it's the outrageous story that's really the one that's most real."
There are some people with whom I associate and would not presume to contradict who believe the moon to be our gaoler, exerting its baleful influence upon our psyche and making the females of our species into brood mares, condemned to ovulate on a monthly basis.
Personally, I think that, despite the rough similarity of their duration, the suggestion that the moon dictates women's menstrual cycles is an old wives' tale. The lunar cycle is precisely 29.5 days; I have never known a woman to be so regular. What's more, if it was down to the moon, surely all women on Earth - or at least one hemisphere - would have their periods simultaneously? Just imagine!
Similarly, the rational explanation for the surge in reported crimes that occurs when the moon is full may be attributed to moonlight revealing more criminal opportunities. I am, however, more inclined to believe that the moon exerts a powerful effect upon the psyche of susceptible Earthlings - we call 'em, 'loonies' - because I am one. Increasingly, over the past decade or so, I have been more affected by the moon's phases. Or, at least, I have become more aware of the phases of the moon and disposed to ascribe certain behaviours to lunar influence.
Does that mean that I believe in astrology? Well, kinda, but then there is that word, belief. With my moon in Leo, I am wary of belief, because it’s irrational. I do not think of astrology as a pseudo-scientfic predictor of future events; that would be daft. Rather, I see astrology as providing a vocabulary for telling stories. The tales astrologers tell may resonate, or not. I enjoy astrology at a similar level to conspiritainment: conjecture that may provide insight.
Suppose for a moment that my friends are not wrong and the scenario of The Matrix is broadly true. Suppose we are avatars in a simulation. Only, rather than batteries generating loosh, we are being played by tourists from other galaxies and dimensions, visiting this theme park. On the side of the moon we can't see, our Higher Selves are engaged in gameplay, plugged into the Earth's Matrix, enjoying or enduring a human experience. Is that what I believe? No, it's a story I just made up. On the other hand, like Bill Hicks said, it’s just a ride, this life.