Lately, it seems like a conspiracy theorist is just someone who was right, but just a little ahead of everyone else. Shortly before the 2020 presidential election, a laptop formerly belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter came to light.Hunter, not the most reliable of individuals, had left it for repair in a Delaware computer store and never picked it up.After a while, the unpaid repair bills meant it became the property of the shop.The computer, as reported by The Post, contained reams of incriminating evidence of bribery, drug use, payoffs from shady foreigners and worse.This was a tremendous news story, with earthshaking ramifications for the election.
Naturally, therefore, it was important to ensure that nobody heard about it — or, if they did hear of it, that no one believed it.Dozens of former intelligence officials denounced the laptop story as “Russian disinformation.” Press outlets refused to report it. Anyone believing the laptop was a worthy story was called a Russian tool, a source of “disinformation,” and a conspiracy theorist. Twitter, now X, under its old management even blocked direct messages between users that contained a link to the story.
Except that now we know it was all true, and that the actual disinformation came from those retired “civil servants” and the pundit class, who were more interested in protecting Joe Biden and defeating Donald Trump than in the actual truth.
MKUltra: In the 1950s, the CIA’s Project MKUltra was originally intended to make sure the United States government kept up with presumed Soviet advances in mind-control technology. CIA documents suggest that they investigated “chemical, biological, and radiological” methods of mind control as part of MKUltra. Subjects were given these substances without their knowledge, which led to serious psychological harm. For a long time, MKUltra was just a rumor, but in the 1970s, investigations by Congress uncovered the truth. The program was shut down, and many details were made public, revealing the extent of the unethical practices. It showed how far the government was willing to go in the name of national security, even if it meant violating human rights. Much of Project MKUltra’s research was destroyed by the CIA when the truth came out, so the extent of how far their experiments went will never fully be known.
Prohibition Poisoning: During Prohibition (1920-1933), the U.S. Treasury Department poisoned industrial alcohol in an attempt to discourage bootleggers from using it to make alcoholic beverages. But apparently not all bootleggers were concerned with public health, and they produced and sold the beverages anyway, resulting in thousands of deaths. The government secretly continued the practice until the end of Prohibition, despite knowing its effects. Seymour M Lowman, assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition at the time, said in 1927, that drunks were “dying off fast from poison ‘hooch’” and “a good job will have been done” if America became sober because of it. Of course, people continued to drink – and around 700 people died through this poisoning until Prohibition ceased in 1933. However, the shocking story only truly re-emerged in recent years.
Tuskegee Syphillis Experiment: In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an experimental trial of a treatment for syphilis on several hundred African-American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, without securing their informed consent. Men with the disease were never given adequate treatment for it and were never fully informed of their role in the experiment. Even after penicillin use became widespread, the government continued the tests.
Big tobacco knew how bad smoking was: The 1964 Surgeon General’s report concluded that smoking cigarettes causes death and disease. However, in a 1971 television interview, the president of Philip Morris denied the health risks that pregnant women and their babies face, saying that “It’s true that babies born from women who smoke are smaller, but they are just as healthy as the babies born to women who do not smoke. Some women would prefer to have smaller babies.” In 1982, the National Institute of Drug Abuse confirmed that nicotine is addictive. A 1994 R.J. Reynolds document, called “Media Tips,” stated that “Regardless of how you define addiction, cigarettes are clearly not in the same class as addictive, mind-altering drugs like heroin and cocaine.” In a 1997 issue of Time magazine, the president and CEO of Philip Morris was quoted as saying “If [cigarettes] are behaviorally addictive or habit forming, they are much more like … GummiBears, and I eat Gummi Bears, and I don’t like it when I don’t eat my Gummi Bears, but I’m certainly not addicted to them.”
Gulf of Tonkin: In August 1964, the American destroyer USS Maddox was stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. That month, this ship was involved in two events collectively referred to as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which changed the course of modern history in ways that reverberate to this day. On August 2, it was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. And then, two days later, on August 4, the Johnson administration claimed that it had been attacked again. After the second attack, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution almost unanimously, allowing the federal government to “take all necessary measures” to protect U.S. forces in Vietnam. It was tantamount to a declaration of war, but it was based on a lie. Documents declassified in the early 2000s showed that there was no attack on August 4. U.S. officials had distorted the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident for their own gains — and perhaps for Johnson’s own political prospects. This lie jumpstarted a war that would claim 58,220 American and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives.
Canadian “Gaydar” or the Fruit Machine: The “fruit machine” was not a machine, per se, but a battery of psychological tests developed in Canada by Dr. Frank Robert Wake, a psychology professor with Carleton University in the 1960s. It was hoped that Dr. Wake’s research program would be able to help the Government of Canada identify gay men working in the Public Service or to prevent gays from obtaining government jobs. The subjects were made to view erotic imagery; “homosexual words,” as well as an early form of lie detector to measure perspiration and pulse. The so-called machine was supposed to measure the subject’s pupil dilation in response to the erotic images and words.
North Korea was secretly kidnapping Japanese citizens: A long-held conspiracy theory in Japan had it that citizens were being kidnapped by agents of the North Korean government. Indeed, between 1977 and 1983, hundreds of people went missing from coastal towns in the East Asian country – and the nearby Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea was blamed. However, the story seemed too implausible to be true, and with the consistent denial by North Korea itself and by Chongryon (the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan) and the Japan Socialist Party, it became considered the stuff of myth. Yet, it wasn’t. In 2002, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted the country had abducted 13 Japanese citizens. A total of 17 are now officially recognised by the Japanese government as having been abducted – although the number could run into the hundreds. Five of these abductees have been returned to Japan, but the country is, to this day, demanding answers
Operation Paperclip: The United States secretly employed more than 1,600 Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians who were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945–59. Some were former members and leaders of the Nazi Party. President Truman is said to have excluded anyone who was found “to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism” from the project. In reality, many made in through, including Dr Hubertus Strughold, who was accused of conducting experiments on Dachau inmates and epileptic children, and Dr Kurt Blome, the man in charge of the Nazi’s plan to ‘weaponise’ the plague. According to American journalist Annie Jacobsen, who wrote the book Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, the US employed the services of these scientists to develop techniques for the investigation of Soviet prisoners, including the use of “truth serum” and mind controlling methods.
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