Conspiracy Con 9 - The Not-So-Live Blog: Decent Into the Maelstrom

Dateline: Santa Clara, CA

June 6, 2009 7:53:39 P.M

"It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow." – Edgar Allen Poe, Descent Into the Maelstrom

The last speaker on the Conspiracy Con 9 agenda is Anthony Hilder, cinematic auteur of conspiracism whose oeuvre includes the shock-u-mentaries "Reichstag '95: An American Holocaust," "IllumiNazi 911," and "Alien 51 Amerika'ss ssecret," a comprehensive survey of "Alien Implants, Human Cloning, Missing Children, Anti-Gravity Spacecraft, Reverse Engineering, Operation Paperclip, Biological Weapons, Extraterrestrials, IllumiNazi Agenda, New World Order."

Despite my two-day immersion in all things conspiranoid, nothing prepares me for Hilder.

In an interesting example of how sensitive we homo sapiens are to the power of suggestion and "groupthink," I observe that: First, Hilder's initials are 'A.H.' Second, by switching the position of the 'd' in Hilder's name, and replacing 'd' with 't,' you come up with:

Hilder

Hidler

Hitler

My thought process now matches that of everyone else in the room. And no one even had to implant an RF transmitter in my brain. Given Hilder's affection for Nazi imagery, it's not a big leap to entertain the idea of Anthony Hilder as a reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. The only differences are that Hitler liked military uniforms and did not, as far as I know, believe in extraterrestrial Lizard People – he probably would have, had he thought of it.

Hilder's Free World Film Works website tells visitors that, "Anthony J. Hilder's ever-present goal is to insight [sic] a Revelation to avoid a Revolution & form an Alliance of Independent Tribal, Linguistic, Religious, Political, Ethnic and Racial Nation States in opposition to the United Nations. Hilder is fully cognizant that the world must have an option to the U.N. and the chaos & killing that is being deliberately directed by this Brotherhood of Death to bring about our control."

In the next hour Hilder elaborates on his idée fixe: evil reptiles……the reptilian attack that's going on Mars. The god of Christianity is the God of the evil Reptilians.

This is just a lead-in, however, to Hilder's second leitmotif, the big lizard himself, the Templars' apocryphal idol Baphomet, a.k.a. Lucifer.

There are tens of thousands of Luciferian sacrifices going on in the world today…. Uncle Sam is the satanic goat of bathema [sic], when you fold a $20 bill you'll see the north tower on one side and the south tower on the second side. And on the bottom you'll see s-t-n. Satan… I realized communism, from its inception, has been financed in the U.S. Marx was a Satanist.

And who are these "luciferian" reptiles' terrestrial agents? "Bankers" of course.

These banking bastards are bloodsuckers. Who the hell wants to save General Motors. Let them crash. We must reach out with a giant stake and stick it in their heart, and show no mercy. Hilder emphasizes those last three words.

Franken-Fed – the monster among us. In this picture we see pictures of the Georgia Guidestone, America's Stonehenge. And their suggestion is the reduction of the world's population to one and a half billion. What happens to the other five and a half billion of us? Hilder pauses for effect here, before continuing: That's why they have plastic coffins in Georgia.

If you haven't guessed already, Hilder is on course for that irresistible geography of the dangerous and deranged: Anti-Semitism:

Zionism runs the U.S. congress…One family, the Rothschilds, that owns all the money and calls all the shots, and that family has Reptilian roots. Israel is just a Rothschild front organization.

Hilder turns up the volume, stoking his own adrenalin-fueled rage.

We can end the problem. There is no problem except for those who believe a problem exists. There is no problem. The eye. Is this thing a Luciferian conspiracy. And Uncle Sam is bringing over the mother of Pat Tillman. Whose eyes had just opened…and somebody said, Kill that guy.

I don't want to see public education. I want to see public education destroyed. Why would you give your money to them for the second plank of the Communist Manifesto? Margaret Sanger, she was a close advisor of Adolph Hitler. They created a generically created disease. AIDS. That's why babies are starving in the first place, because they modified the weather. I've lived in Africa and I've seen what liberation theology has brought….men castrated and their wives forced to eat their testicles...

Take a look at your church. The National Council of Churches. When you put your money into their plates and they take and buy guns for the terrorists. I'm talking about the guys who go into the towns and kill the children and rape the women…"

I am reminded of Richard Hofstadter's observation about the sexual preoccupations of conspiracists: "…the sexual freedom often attributed to the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and express un-acknowledgeable aspects of their own psychological concerns…Very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments."

Hilder winds up to the climax of his rhetorical masturbation with a call for action:

We are united. And I say yes, get your guns, and yes, get your food, and I say get out of…the dollar…The birth certificates your children have say on the bottom: Department of Commerce. That's because they own them.

But don't be in hurry to get out of Dodge just yet. Before we put on our traveling shoes, Hilder will help us unload that worthless, Federal Reserve 'fiat' money: We've got to get "$10 a Barrel"[Hilder's latest cinematic project] finished. Maybe some of you will help us help you.

Indeed.

A Case For Book-Banning

Maybe Florida and Texas are actually advancing education in the U.S. in spite of their Know-Nothing education policies. It may be a canny plot to advance literacy the Alice in Wonderland way — by walking backwards.

For my entire there have always been people agitating to remove allegedly pernicious literature from the library shelves, or preventing it from getting there in the first place. When I was a child, Nancy Drew books were not to be found in the library because they weren’t ‘literature’ according to the eminences of the Brooklyn Public Library. Neither were comic books on the list of acceptable literature.

 

Another less high-minded reason was that money and space are constrained resources, and these books were widely available at low prices — Nancy Drew books were a dollar and comics were 12 cents — so it wasn’t as if they weren’t easy to get. They’re like bodice rippers and airport thrillers today; which, in my opinion; aren't the public library’s responsibility to stock. (But don’t get me started. I also don’t think 3-D printers, cosplay conventions and craft vodka tastings — I am not making this up — are within the mission of a public library, either.)

 

The fact that the library didn’t stock Nancy Drew didn’t stop me — nor anyone else — from reading The Mystery of Larkspur Lane. As soon as a new Nancy Drew came out, I could be found combing the neighborhood dime stores and candy stores.* If the books couldn’t be found within my childhood radius of operations, I would torment my parents for field trips further abroad. My brother had a similar devotion to comic books.

 

My parents view of it was that everyone had the right to read whatever they wanted, and reading was our principal family activity. We discussed books over dinner. Every night. We always read, or were read to, before going to sleep.

 

My parents were iconoclasts who dismissed the keepers of public virtue and social pieties as non-considerations in one’s reading choices. It runs in the family. My grandfather was once informed that a book my father was reading was on the Catholic Church’s banned book Index. His response was, “so what?”

 

My father smuggled a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses — then banned in the U.S. — into the country on his return from WWII in 1946. Along with the works of Henry Miller.

 

Where was I?

 

Nancy Drew wasn’t in the school library, either, because P.S. 107 didn’t have a library. The branch public library was five blocks away, and the main Brooklyn library was about a mile away. We walked it regularly on Sunday afternoons. And it wasn’t because my parents were educated that this was a regular part of our lives.

 

Generations of immigrants and their children have found their way to the public library, and in the process became literate and educated. That was the fundamental goal of Andrew Carnegie's national library-building program. While today’s suburban sprawl and car-centricity changes things, perhaps that’s an argument for more public libraries and better transportation, instead of fights over school library shelves.

 

Now, you might say that we’re not talking about Nancy Drew today; although, given that Nancy had a tomboy “chum” named ‘George,’ I’m not sure our various Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda** would allow it.

 

One member of today’s regarded-to-be-pernicious literature Index that was in the library is Huckleberry Finn. I’ve read it several times, starting when I was six, when my father read it to me. It also used to be required reading in high school along with The Scarlet Letter.

 

Since the 1970s, partisans have been agitating to keep anyone from reading it, or to at least to bowdlerize it if they can’t eject Mark Twain from the world’s canon of great literature.

 

It used to be the Left agitating for Twain’s masterpiece to be canceled. Their reason was, first, its prolific use of a Word That Cannot Be Said. Second, it wasn’t an overtly anti-slavery novel like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Third, that young readers might prefer Huckleberry Finn to improving works like Click Clack Moo where Farmer Brown’s cows get a printing press and go on strike (I am not making this up).

 

Unlike left-wing critics of Huckleberry Finn, today’s right-wing critics want to ban Huckleberry Finn for its truly subversive message.

 

Language isn’t their problem. They like the prolific use of the Word That Cannot Be Said. Ron DeSantis would likely say that it’s an important English noun, describing people whose great success in life began in the slave cabins of Alabama, and that was cancelled by vaccinated woke transgender drag queen abortionists who want to drink our children’s blood.

 

What they object to is, first, a hero who embodies a direct attack on “good” society and its pieties. Second, this anti-hero evidences far more moral behavior than the pillars of good society. 

 

Third, Huck treats Jim as a human being; thereby attacking an economic system built on treating people as agricultural property, like plows. Reading this could lead impressionable youngsters to think that the wretched of today's earth that reach the U.S. border are also human beings deserving of compassion and humane treatment. And the next thing you know, they might start thinking that gay people should have the same rights as straight people.

 

They’re right that Huckleberry Finn is a dangerous book. It may cause young readers to question the accepted pieties and immoralities of their own times, and “light out for the territories,” both intellectual and geographic.

 

They might decide to blow off the SATs and not give rat's ass about going to a "good" college. They might regard immigration as a complex problem not amenable to walls, slogans or easy solutions, or question the wisdom of needle exchanges.

 

Getting back to the main point: How does this advance literacy?

Quite simply, there is nothing more attractive to children and adolescents than something adults forbid them to do. My mother strenuously objected to my eating candy as a child. Hence, a part of my allowance was always devoted to penny candy. Artificially colored and flavored candy. The kind with red dye #40. Candy that incarnated all my mother’s objections to junk food. If I had enough for a coke to go with it, so much the better.

 

A surefire way to get young people to read may be to forbid them to do it. They will put all their juvenile ingenuity into acquiring the Forbidden Book, thereby learning useful research methods and improving their critical thinking. There are important lessons here beyond reading the book.

 

In any case, they’ll be well-prepared for battle when leftists try to ban Pride and Prejudice for portraying the lives of England’s landowning gentry instead of the horrors of emerging industrialism, and rightists want to ban it because one of its characters elopes with a soldier without getting married first.

 

I predict that would cause an explosion of interest in Pride and Prejudice, and every teenager would have a copy on their smartphone.

 

* “Candy” stores in New York used to be newsstands under a roof that additionally sold penny candy, cold soda, cigarettes, cigars, and, sometimes series books like Nancy Drew and The Bobsey Twins.

**Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

Social Munchausen at University of California

It seems like there’s an epidemic Social Munchausen* on University of California campuses. The latest case is that UC Berkeley professor Elizabeth Hoover, who after about 20 years of passing herself off as an indigenous American, and teaching ethnic studies under that guise, let on to the fact that she really wasn't.

 

She claimed she had Mohawk and Mi’kmaq ancestry; in introducing herself, researching her dissertation, and getting jobs grants Ford Foundation fellowships designated for people from underrepresented groups. She published books and papers and became a “mover and shaker,” according to the San José Mercury News, in the “food sovereignty” movement.

 

In May, she admitted she wasn't descended from either tribe and apologized, apologized for the harm she had caused. She had assumed it, apparently, because of “family lore” she heard growing up in upstate New York. Hoover explains her fraud by saying, “I'm human.” Has this woman never heard of Ancestry.com?

 

I, too, am human. And I, too, lived for many years in upstate New York, and in close proximity to the Onondaga Nation, without getting confused about my ethnic background (Polish, ethnic Albanian from Italy, and Scots Irish).

 

In fact, were you to mistake your identity based on the ethnic environment of upstate NY, you would be way more likely to mistakenly believe that you were Polish — or Russian, Irish, Slovak or Italian — than you would mistakenly believe that you were Native American.

 

Hoover offered the lame apology, “I didn't set out to hurt or exploit anyone.”

 

Actions, as they say, speak louder than words. And despite Hoover’s “apology,” she did, in fact, hurt and exploit other people.

 

Let's look at what Hoover’s little fantasy about herself cost other people. First of all, she turned people’s generosity into gullibility, and people resent being played. Likely, she’s made it harder for every Native American scholar that comes after her.

 

Then there are all of these grants that she got, grants that were meant for people who genuinely suffered from being cut out of the establishment.

 

They did not have the opportunities.

Hoover got those opportunities.

 

They did not get grants.

Hoover got the grants.

 

They did not publish their books. They did not get those jobs. They did not get those fellowships.

 

Her ‘pretendian’ Native American identity damaged many people. How many people who should have gotten those jobs and those grants would have been true inspirations to other young Native Americans? These young people would have seen that these opportunities were open to them, that their talents could be recognized. Hoover’s story will, instead, reinforce cynicism.

 

Then there’s woke racism evidenced by the universities who employ these people. Outed pretendian and ethnic studies professor Andrea Smith from UC Riverside was allowed to keep her job for another year, retire with an emerita title, benefits, a pension and being spared a formal investigation.

 

UC Berkeley is taking no action at this point, and doesn’t plan to remove Hoover, according to the Mercury’s report. “Speaking generally, I can tell you if and when any allegations of policy violations are brought into our attention,” college spokeswoman Janet Gilmore told the Mercury. “We review that concern and take appropriate action.”

 

Let’s consider what would happen if UC Berkeley discovered that a professor of physics had fraudulently claimed a PhD from MIT? How long do you think they’d still be working there? Not long I suspect; because after all, academic integrity is important in physics.

 

But the fact that when the academic integrity involved concerns ethnic studies, a little fraud seems to be OK. Which just illustrates that UC Berkeley’s perspective on ethnic studies is in a class with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ on African American history — namely, it's not a serious academic discipline.

 

*Social Munchausen is a psychiatric disorder/hoax in which people pretend to belong to persecuted and disadvantaged groups. The notorious fabulist Congressman George Santos is a preeminent example.

Mayor Demands Recount of 2020 Election, Citing Outer Space Interference

Trigger warning: Satire ahead.

Santa Clara's Mayor is demanding the County Registrar of Voters bring in Cyber Ninjas to investigate the 2020 election.

The Mayor says that she recently received evidence from the City's pre-eminent fossil fuel advocate, a middle school blogger and a pizza oven, showing that reptile space aliens teleported thousands of ballots to their home planet Remulac and replaced them with new ballots made from Levi's Stadium turf.

 

The Mayor's candidate, the fossil fuel advocate, lost the election to a candidate who is alleged to have received the most votes. 

 

"This is what happens when you, quote, 'count votes,'" the Mayor said in an interview with Alex Jones at InfoWars. "I don't care when it happened. There had to be something going on. [The winning candidate] wasn't even in Santa Clara in 1975 and then he wins an election?

 

"That's not the Santa Clara Way," she continued. "It's clear his family are reptile space aliens. I'm pretty sure when we look at those ballots we'll see the turf fibers in them and I'm confident that by Halloween the fossil fuel industry will have a strong representative on Council leading our greenhouse gas expansion program."

 

"We're not opposed to reptile aliens," the City Attorney said. "Our City has many communities of outer space origin. But even space aliens have to play by the rules, and those rules say you can't just win elections by getting the most votes. We will be bringing forward an ordinance to keep that from happening again."

 

When asked for comment, the victorious Council Member replied, "My family comes from Korea, not outer space. I suggest that the Mayor stop eating the mushrooms she finds around town on her pizza."

 

The City Manager cautioned that Cyber Ninjas might not be available for the recount until 2025. "However," the Manager said, "I'm sure we can find equally qualified vendors on 4Chan."

 

The Diversion and Confusion Commission plans a listening tour of the City's space alien neighborhoods — sometimes called "apartment complexes" — and will report back to the Council on its findings in July 2027.

Santa Clara's $5.8 Million CVRA Lawsuit and the Delusions Behind It

 With Santa Clara's voting rights lawsuit finally settled, I looked back at more than 10 years of reporting on this issue from the first warning letter the city got from civil rights attorney Robert Rubin in 2011.   

In that jaunt down memory lane, I looked at some notes from the trial in 2018 that never found their way completely into any of my reporting — for space reasons, largely, but also because it might give critics pretext for dismissing our reporting as character assassination.

It's an exchange between Doyle and Judge Kuhnle about whether or not the California Voting Rights Act applies to charter cities. (An appeals court in the Palmdale case ruled that the answer is 'yes, it does.' ) 

In retrospect, it seems like the character — Santa Clara City Attorney Brian Doyle — did all the assassinating himself. 

I regret not publishing the transcript, because this few minutes of conversation captures the delusional thinking that led the City to the worst of all possible decisions every step of the way in the ten year slog to paying out $5.8 million.

Doyle seemed to try to re-litigate the case at the end of an award hearing, which is peculiar — I'm no lawyer but I know better than to argue with a judge about a ruling in a hearing about an entirely different matter.

Here's the annotated transcript:

Doyle: I'd like to remind the court of the city's situation. This case began with the 2011 letter [from Rubin]. I've tried to explain my dilemma. Santa Clara is a charter city. I have to act in accordance with the charter. [for the city council to change the city's election system] they had to adopt a resolution that some members of the city council had been elected with racially polarized voting…asking me to move outside the charter was impossible. 

 

Therefore, we instituted the charter review committee. [the plaintiffs] instead of joining us in an effort to satisfy [plaintiff's] concerns, they opposed this charter amendment [the failed Measure A for multi-member dustructs]. At what point was the City of Santa Clara to violate its charter to satisfy his [Rubin's] demands…At every single stage I have tried to respect the charter. I think the state made a mistake [in Palmdale].

 

Kuhnle: Wasn't that issue resolved 100 percent long ago…You don't think it's correct? Are you saying this court should ignore binding authority [appellate court decisions]? I'm assuming you did not advise [your client to do so]. You did regard it as your job [to advise your client of the law]? 

 

Doyle:  We don't agree with your position

 

Kuhnle: It's not my position…It's my job to uphold the laws of California including appellate court decisions.

 

Doyle: I don't necessarily agree

 

Kuhnle: When a state court of appeal rules, that's binding on all courts…I'm not arguing with you. I'm stating the facts. Your position is that Palmdale is not binding…You, too, have to uphold the laws of California. You feel that you're not bound by appellate court decisions. I find that an unusual view. 

 

[City's outside counsel] Steve Churchwell: He's not [dismissing] Palmdale… he's saying that he can't tell the city council to do this by resolution. We [charter cities] can't do anything in 30 days, we need at least six months…[back on the subject of the award] There's no damages. What they're calling a settlement is selling the city down the river. Was there any real attempt to settle? No.

Kuhnle: Reasonableness of settlements are not among the Serrano factors [for deciding awards]…I do recall there being a discussion about whether the parties [here] might find a settlement...The back and forth is very interesting but I'm not sure it bears on what's before us today. What I had to do was apply Palmdale.

Doyle: I was trying to explain my position.

 

Kuhnle: I don't want to get lost in matters not before the court.

 

Rubin: The  2011 letter was [written] without any expectation of attorney's fees. [A remedy] did not happen in 2012. It did not happen in 2015 or 2016. There was plenty of time. They [the city] controlled the trajectory of litigation at every stage. 

 

Kuhnle: Attorney fees raises the issue that litigation is very costly. Mr. Doyle disagrees on how the city responds to it …the CVRA applies to charter cities according to the appellate court. 

 

This wasn't the case that was argued at trial, however.  Churchwell focused on whether or not 85 percent confidence level in statistics was enough to prove Santa Clara's election system discriminated against minorities. The appeal was even more picayune — the definition of "usually."  (Neither of these specious argument successfully distracted from the plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face fact that no minority was ever elected to the City Council.)

It seems that these were small-bore questions compared to the one Doyle really and truly wanted to argue, which appeared to be the inviolable right of charter cities to contravene state law. The City's first briefs also included arguments about the CVRA violating the 14th amendment — a question the federal Supreme Court has twice refused to consider.

It calls to mind Walter Mitty arguing a landmark court case just before he gets run over in the middle of the street by a bus.

Doyle's salary is about $350,000 and Churchwell banked nearly $1.5 million. That's some costly delusional thinking.

Space Laser Shocker — NFL Team, Not European Banking Family, Behind Wildfires

 Trigger warning: Satire ahead. 

Editor's note: It recently came to Observeris' attention that the local Self-Appointed Pundit (SAP) is planning a massive exposé of the San Francisco 49ers. This presumably is intended to deflect public attention from  SAP's upcoming engagement with the criminal justice system. 

 

When SAP's bombshell was leaked to Observeris, we realized that we had, in fact, already scooped SAP on Feb. 2.

Yesterday Santa Clara's mayor revealed that the 49ers are behind the space lasers that caused the 2018 Camp fire in Northern California, citing research by the Santa Clara City Clerk showing that in all years when there are wildfires, within six months there are 49er games.

 

The Clerk reported that he had gathered data from "many sources" including QAnon message boards, the Drudge Report and Infowars.

 

The clerk says that he has also found evidence of Martian lizard people living under 4949 DeBartolo Way in the most recent QAnon code drop, 1234567890qwerty. JFK Junior and Elvis are also likely living there, he said.

 

"It's a smoking gun — you could see the lasers going up from Levi's Stadium," he said. "But they didn't report these expenditures on their Form 460s. We are taking this abuse of our dark money prohibition to the Fair Political Practices Commission."

 

"I'd really like to thank our city clerk for bringing this to my attention," said the Santa Clara mayor. "Without his hard work, we would never have known about this. It's just another example of how the 49ers are keeping us in the dark."

 

"These space lizards are overcrowding our schools," said the council member from District 3.14. "They are shining those laser lights into people's windows and keeping our children from getting a good night's sleep."

 

The mayor brushed aside questions about why the City Clerk was reading QAnon message boards on city time.

 

"Our officials are very dedicated to staying informed," she said. "Some of our council members even read newspaperish thingeys like the New York Times, which has nothing to do with Santa Clara."

 

The Santa Clara city attorney also weighed in. "There is clear precedent for legal action here," he said, citing the 1955 class action lawsuit Doe v Martians. 

 

"The 9^th amendment gives us the absolute right to prohibit the 49ers' use of space lasers," he said. "But the 49er lizards on the city council are blocking legal action on the orders of their Martian overlords."

The city manager proposed hiring a consultant to investigate the stadium lasers and the space lizards, saying that the city is hoping to hire Rudy Guiliani. "He has a lot of experience investigating lizard people and is currently available," the manager said. 

 

This was quashed by the Council's Reality Party majority. The city attorney objected, saying that refusing to talk about space lizards nesting under the 50 yard-line at Levi's Stadium was abridging his First Amendment rights"

Mayor Steps Up to Help Homeless Family

 

Trigger warning: Satire ahead

Mayor Lisa Gillmor has offered to buy Mar-a-Lago from Donald Trump and include a year’s free apartment in one of Gillmor Real Estate’s properties for the Trumps. This week Palm Beach Fla. filed suit against Trump for breaking his promise not to live there.

 

“Mr. Trump lost his job and he’s being evicted like so many during this pandemic,” said Gillmor.

 

“We feel the need to step up and help. Here’s a man with an extended family that depends on him and now they could all be out in the cold in January.”

 

Gillmor also noted that the City offers many job-training programs.

 

“Mission College offers excellent career programs where the Trumps could learn new skills that would make them employable,” she said, "that don’t involve managing money or governing. I can see the Trumps being self-sufficient within two years.”

 

If her offer is accepted, Gillmor says she plans to turn Mar-a-Lago into a soccer park. She assured Palm Beach residents that she would not be inviting Rudy Giuliani to the property.

 

Trump’s wife Melania said that she would welcome the offer if Gillmor would include a second apartment. Trump hasn’t indicated if he’s favorable to the sale, only asking if California has an extradition treaty with New York.