I immediately had the feeling in my gut that I was being suckered after being bombarded with online images of the so-called “Baby Yoda” from the new Disney+ streaming service anchor show, The Mandalorian. I am pretty sure I know why (because I had a dog).
The concept of ‘neoteny’ is related to evolutionary physiological adaptations which promote more juvenile features in mature animals. This is an oversimplification, but in a psychological sense, humans seem to like dogs and babies in large part because of this phenomenon. (It is also apparently related to human sexual selection.)
So not to entirely lump Disney in with the likes of Russia and Michael Avenatti for its practice of the dark arts of psychosocial influence – but in a way, I think I can make an argument that despite its cuteness, the Baby Yoda is clearly a marketing ‘active measure’ from the Dark Side to sell Disney+ subscriptions in line with Disney’s MO for character design.
I have to admit that my work on beloved skeptic James Randi is probably my most “cuckoo”. I don’t think the theory is entirely wrong, but I have some new information which changes my perspective somewhat and might tie him to more of a Chinese Communist agenda in information war than a specifically Russian one. That is not to say those groups are mutually exclusive, but there may be more evidence at least for his historical employ by China and in China’s interest.
To recap my findings on James Randi (born James Hamilton Zwinge in 1928 in Canada), he is a professional magician and pseudoscientific debunker of spiritual beliefs. His style of skepticism hearkens back to the legacy of Harry Houdini and Orson Welles who were both magicians (and who also at times apparently supported Russian secret police services). Randi frequently calls himself a “conjurer” which by Latin definition means “conspirator”.
James Randi, a wicked witch of the East and creepy tempter of youth
There seems to be good evidence that pro-Russian conspiracy theorists often utilize what I call “weaponized suicide”. As I think of it in ‘information warfare’, it is not like someone who walks into a crowded market with a bomb vest and detonates it. It is rather how actual suicides of controversial figures associated with sex crimes can be turned into populist conspiracy narratives which undermine the political establishment (in this case, the US government).
I think these kinds of conspiracies have interesting features to discuss because the ones I’ve observed affect both ‘left’ and ‘right’ political conspiracism. This is the kind of ‘divide and conquer’ or ‘schizowarfare‘ approach to conspiracy I often observe with Russia and their useful idiots.
Although I suppose this theoretical tactic of weaponized suicide would not be limited to an association with sex crimes (such as the case of Vince Foster, which would be more associated with financial conspiracy), perhaps in a Freudian sense in the modern day, the sex-linked conspiracies have better potential for mainstream virality and mass-appeal.
Here, I’ll touch on three examples, two of which I have previously written on. 1.) The case of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called DC Madame, 2.) the case of Anthony Bourdain, and 3.) the case of Jeffrey Epstein.
The Epstein and Bourdain conspiracies are bleeding together in the semiotic memespace
The Konami game company’s Metal Gear games are awesome. They’re kind of the reason I was thinking of impractical doomsday weapons the other day which Russia might create to terrorize earth. The name ‘Metal Gear’ is referential to a nuclear-powered walking battle tank which forms a core story element in the games. The games are notable for their visionary takes on the information age, weaponized genetics, and military technology; built on a foundation of great gameplay, visuals, and music. But they are also rife with crazy conspiracy theories.
By the time you complete playing a Metal Gear game, you probably: 1. feel like a badass, but 2. may be convinced that series creator Hideo Kojima is something of a mad genius. Maybe you might even go a little crazy.
Hideo Kojima: Super Genius Game Designer
After giving up on trying to integrate some Metal Gear music into the blog yesterday, this morning I coincidentally Googled ‘metal gear russia‘ and was surprised to see that the top results referenced June 2019 stories about Russian Deputy Defense Minister Andrei Kartapolov who told a Duma panel that [translation]:
“The American intelligence agencies are widely implementing projects on the Internet, such as Graphics, Metal Gear, Echo of the Runet, aimed at directly manipulating the public consciousness and above all young people… A number of programs are being implemented aimed at creating active protest activity and dissatisfaction among the authorities of the country among young people“.
This is a bit of a silly post, and I guess it would be foolish to underestimate the bounds of human poor judgement when applied to weapons system design. That being said, to me, all the Russian weapons like hypersonic nuclear cruise missiles, megabombs, pollution-causing tsunami torpedoes, and earthquake weapons seem like something a little boy in the 5th grade would dream up. So I do have it on good authority that the next major innovative weapons system chosen for development as the result of the national Russia Weapon Design Bureau Competition is the:
Great Patriotic Shark Atomic Bomb Cannon Entering Service 2028 Designed by Alexei, Age 11, Krasnoyarsk
It is a shark with tank treads and an atomic bomb and cannon strapped on. Enough said.
Runners up (which may still be considered for future development) were announced as:
Giant Robot Dinosaur (with Laser)
AIDS Gas Cloud Printer
Nuclear Bomb Teleporter
Asteroid Tractor Beam
On some level I have a hard time believing this stuff even exists; and even if it does you’re better off pretending it doesn’t.
I couldn’t use the first two graphics on this page in a recent paper I completed due to space limitations. However, I think they are useful for highlighting the correspondence between Nostradamus conspiracies and Papal issues and how they may be perceived in primarily Catholic countries. Each of these was made from a 5 day average of CSV files downloaded from Google Trends. (Although there tends to be quite a good amount of variability in the reported proportions of day to day samples, the ranks don’t change so much, so I just stuck with those. )
2005:
2013:
Compare with the first 9 months of 2019. There is no ‘aftershock’ in Nostradamus interest corresponding to a second event (the naming of a new Pope in the prior 2005 and 2013 examples). Also note specifically how North Macedonia corresponded to an apparent disinformation operation directed at the Pope which may coincide with Russian Orthodox Nationalist ideas (and how that attack may have been launched from Serbia).
Unlike in 2005 and 2013 when almost all of the interest was in Catholic countries, it is interesting to note Muslim and Orthodox Christian countries trending in the top 10 so far this year, but the primary spike being due to the Notre Dame fire which is arguably a “Catholic” occurrence symbolic of the West which Russia is at information warfare with. (Note the Iranian interest also seems unconnected to Notre Dame and may relate to fears of a war with the US – however it is notable that Ayatollah Khamenei did name a book about Nostradamus among his favorites this year.)
2019:
There may not be a connection but I think it is worth noting that the “shape” of the 2019 spike is more similar to the 2010 spike related to the Polish government crash at Smolensk than the 2005 or 2013 spikes related to the Papal issues. This may be significant to the Catholic theme in as much that Russian Nationalists may have hostile feelings towards Poland as the result of perceived historical trespasses and its status as a Catholic Slavic nation which is counter to ideas of ‘pan-Slavic’ Orthodoxy.
2010:
Note this image from a prior paper was not taken from a moving average like the other images on this page. I would recommend the use of a multi-day average when presenting Google Trends data although I have never seen a scenario where Poland was not returned as #1 Nostradamus interest for 2010. However, the #2 and #3 ranked regions may vary.
Steve Lazarides, my top suspect for the true identity of Banksy – who ironically has made a fortune through a capitalist commodification of a communist propaganda aesthetic (and populist political sentiment) – has been in the news again.
Lazarides recently quit his gallery business as well as released some new photos of his time with Banksy in a lead up to a new book being published called ‘Banksy Captured’. Personally, I still think this is a weak hoax which appeals to people’s (Marvel) superhero fantasies and has no other common sense explanation for the finances of the whole matter except that Lazarides is actually Banksy himself.
May be nothing – but it does seem that the most prominent skin defects on the claimed picture of Banksy and pictures of Steve Lazarides over the year are semi-consistent in terms of shape and location.
In the course of writing a conference paper, I accidentally found another surprising example of Nostradamus disinformation. In this case, I was reviewing 2019 Google Trends data (looking for Nostradamus interest related to the Notre Dame fire – or expecting to find that anyway) and found that North Macedonia was one of the highest areas for Nostradamus interest in 2019.
The biggest worldwide spike in Nostradamus interest since November 2016 (any guesses on Russian active measures centered on November 2016?) occurred following the Notre Dame fire on April 15, 2019. However, unlike most other regions which spiked in interest in mid-April, the North Macedonian spike occurred in early May. It seems to have been directly tied to Pope Francis’ visit to North Macedonia and Bulgaria and included an implicit assassination ‘threat’.
Once again, my self-imposed moratorium on Nostradamus conspiracy writing has failed, and on that note, I am back with another post touching on Nostradamus conspiracies as they relate to Russian active measures and Third Rome-style apocalypticism.
Today however, moving away from the Notre Dame fire, I am going to write a bit about the conspiracy theories which surrounded the April 26, 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, which also occur within the context of Third Rome. I was intrigued to see that in an article about the new HBO-Sky Atlantic show: Chernobyl, that one of the actors (a Brit)recalled a conspiracy theory about Nostradamus predicting the disaster that had circulated in 1986.
“There was a weird conspiracy theory about Nostradamus. Something to do with ‘Wormwood’. Apparently it translated into Russian somehow and [Nostradamus] predicted it. People come up with all sorts of crazy things when things like that happen.” – Jared Harris, Actor
Today, with the accumulation of quality investigative research about the crash, and the similar patterns which have emerged in internet-based conspiracy theory since 1996, it seems fairly easy to connect the TWA flight 800 conspiracy theories as emerging from similar strategic disinformation networks responsible for September 11 2001, Syrian Civil War/ISIS, and 2016 ‘election hacking’ conspiracy theories (among others).
From RT, to Veterans Today, to Infowars, to GlobalResearch, to UNZ, to the network of Mark Lane-connected L. Fletcher Prouty, and no doubt many lesser known outlets for conspiracism – there is a clear trend which emerges of information warfare around TWA Flight 800 that is connected to an Iranian and Russian/Soviet disinformation legacy. Despite their variations, in all cases, these narratives seem to be calculated to diminish faith and trust in the US government.
Perhaps the best place to start to explain this rationale is by demonstrating Russian proxy Iran’s semi-transparent motivations for creating a controversy around the TWA flight 800 disaster, which can be most plausibly found in reciprocation for the 1988 shootdown of Iran Air flight 655 on July 3, 1988 by the USS Vincennes cruiser. The US Navy ship mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian Airbus A300 airliner from within Iran’s territorial waters in a case of mistaken identity, resulting in the deaths of 290 passengers – a majority of them Iranian. In Iran, this action had significant propaganda value and it has been generally portrayed as an intentional act by Americans, although there is little rational evidence to support this perspective.
Iranian stamp commemorating Iran Air flight 655 as state propaganda
