We as spiritual beings or souls come to earth in order to experience the human condition. This includes the good and the bad scenarios of this world. Our world is a duality planet and no amount of love or grace will eliminate evil or nastiness. We will return again and again until we have pierced the illusions of this density. The purpose of human life is to awaken to universal truth. This also means that we must awaken to the lies and deceit mankind is subjected to. To pierce the third density illusion is a must in order to remove ourselves from the wheel of human existences. Love is important but knowledge is the key!

Confessions of a Reluctant Conspiracy Theorist

The Collective Unconscious seems to have fired an early warning shot across 
my bow. All summer long I had a growing interest in visiting Central Asia, 
something that I had been considering for over a year but which then 
mushroomed into a mild obsession. A month before the September 11 attacks, I 
had resolved to act on this, and arranged a meeting with a friend in the 
travel business to plan an itinerary through western China and the 'stans. 
Simultaneously, an interest in political conspiracies and secret elite 
societies which I had been pursuing in a sporadic manner for a couple years 
(after having previously been a disinterested skeptic toward such subjects) 
began to escalate rapidly into a full-fledged drive, even to the point of 
bringing on anxiety and depression. 

My housemates inquired with concern about my perturbed condition, as I 
grimly drilled through new stacks of obscure books I had acquired. I tried 
to fight off these intrusive feelings, especially because I was only a 
couple months away from moving away to start a new life overseas in a new 
country, and felt that I should have been enthusiastically happy about that. 
A hidden truth was, however, that about a year previously I had more or less 
just awakened one morning with the disturbing hunch, based partly on study 
and research but for the most part on what I was emotionally picking up on 
all around me, that America was heading down the road to a future rendezvous 
with some new kind of fascism. 

I had heard a few people say this before, and I would find later that many 
intelligent people have been arguing this for years, but this was the first 
time I really viscerally believed it myself. Although this was actually a 
major motivation in my decision to leave the country, I did not share it 
with anyone, not wanting to take on the emotional burden of defending and 
explaining a "wacko paranoia" that I was not yet completely able to explain 
to myself.

Many people described the 9/11 attack as a "wake up call" which changed 
everything. But since I had already come to the conclusion that the 
goings-on in the world are generally amiss and heading down the wrong road, 
it felt like less of a wake up call and more like a late-morning triple 
espresso.

Based on what I had been learning about the world, as well as the nagging 
inklings in my mind, there was nothing fundamentally surprising about the 
attack, except of course for the immediate shock and horror over the 
terrible suffering of the victims and the nation as a whole. Like many, I 
was offended and turned off by the mainstream media after being glued to the 
Tube for a couple of days; feeling myself quickly becoming addicted to the 
shallow, perpetual cycle of fear mongering and talking head "solutions" 
which they use to hook viewers, I decided to forego TV news and even many 
mainstream papers and magazines, instead choosing the internet as my main 
source of information.

>From the very start, I have smelled a rat, and so I have spent a great deal 
of time with alternative sources which have a track record of delving into 
government corruption and political conspiracies. I have been fortunate in 
that I am working only part time at the moment, so for the past months I 
have been spending as much as 40-60 hours per week doing nothing but 
scouring alternative and underground news to try and inform myself on what 
is really going on. What has emerged through the cracks is a pattern of 
information which strongly suggests that the terrorist attack on America and 
the alleged "massive failure of intelligence" which let it slip through may 
be of a very different nature than is being portrayed by the government and 
mainstream media. 

The pattern suggests strongly what many may find nearly unthinkable that 
high-placed insiders somewhere in America's government knew explicitly of 
the plot beforehand but saw fit to let it happen anyway, assumedly to gain a 
justification for certain pre-established geopolitical policy objectives, 
both domestic and foreign. It has been revealed that ongoing law enforcement 
investigations which might have averted the 9/11 attacks were deliberately 
obstructed and stalled by top government officials, including probably some 
within the Bush administration itself. 

Furthermore, there is clear evidence that America's military air defences 
were ordered to stay on the ground during the hijackings, and also clear 
evidence showing that preparations and plans had long been underway, since 
at least last spring, for a military intervention in Afghanistan at almost 
exactly the same point in time last fall. The disturbing questions and 
implications raised by this information have thus far been almost completely 
ignored by Congress and totally blacked out by the mainstream media, and 
despite being worthy of full-fledged scandal, have so far been dismissed and 
left marginalized for the most part in "conspiracy" circles.

I am apalled by this situation. An Alice in Wonderland standard of truth now 
seems to rule in America... Eighty percent of the American people (or so 
we're told) stood immediately behind a war which has taken at least as many 
innocent lives as 9/11 and seems to be causing a terrible refugee crisis, 
having accepted that it was "just" to wage such a war even in the absence of 
convincing proof of the accused perpetrators' guilt, as well as the lack of 
a convincing argument that such a war would be an effective way to capture 
those perpetrators (as we have seen so far, it ain't). 

Yet at the same time, those who have dared to ask probing questions about 
the glaring inconsistencies in the government's behavior and explanations 
are, so far, generally seen by most as raving lunatics, even if the theories 
they offer better fit the known facts. Is this just a result of paralyzing 
fear and mind-controlling propaganda?
Perhaps... but this is really the way it always has been with any subject 
that strays into the forbidden territory of the dreaded "conspiracy theory." 
And this is where the real problems start.

A lot of curious stuff goes on that seems simply to get lost under the 
obtuse, noisy racket of the American media sphere. Gerald Ford, in a recent 
interview, more or less admitted that he willingly helped concoct and 
advocate for the "magic bullet" theory that became pivotal in the findings 
of the Warren Commision which he headed (this scientifically fraudulent yarn 
allowed the commission to claim that JFK was shot at only by the officially 
designated "lone nut" Lee Harvey Oswald). Well, now that the political cabal 
which (indirectly?) benefitted from the death of JFK has been at the top of 
the American totem pole for nearly forty years, perhaps it is safe to begin 
making some casual admissions!

As it happened, this went over without much notice or general comment at 
all. As long as the huge body of research and writing that has been devoted 
to the 1963 coup d'etat continues to be categorically dismissed in top media 
and academic circles as a "popular fad" and "only speculation, no facts," 
the average self-respecting American will probably still mistakenly assume 
that there's no point in spending precious time delving into it to try and 
dig out the nuggets (as I used to think). This is no accident. When he was 
being questioned by an associate about whether the public would stomach the 
many obvious omissions and fabrications in the Warren Commission Report 
which was then being readied for relase, legendary CIA spook Allen Dulles is 
reported to have replied, dryly, "the American people don't read."

For years, I stubbornly believed that I was smarter than the average Joe for 
not allowing myself to get "suckered into" such kooky stuff as JFK 
assasination theories, but when I eventually got around to taking a more 
serious and earnest look at this and other conspiracy topics a few years 
ago, I very soon found myself feeling a bit ill... from having to eat so 
much humble pie, that is. There simply came a point where I had seen too 
many situations, one after the other, where the wacko nutcases actually 
seemed to be right, at least in a general sense, and I could no longer cling 
to my previous assumptions about how the world really worked. 

The fact is that almost always, the real truth winds up being somewhere 
inbetween the smug, straight-arrow skeptics and the bug-eyed paranoiacs. In 
my past attitudes, and in the current attitudes of many around me, I see a 
tendency to defend against unorthodox or alternative ideas by resorting to 
comforting pseudo-psychology, insisting that those who show an interest in 
things like "conspiracy theories" must be doing so out of some emotional 
need, or a "pathology of belief", rather than informed rationality. 

This implies snidely that everyone else is always grounded and logical... 
but the truth is, everybody has a pathology of belief especially in times 
like these. This is an operating assumption of mine that is deeply 
influencing the way I look at current events. In the new Internet age of 
quick and unfettered access to information, it has become a cliché for 
pundits to observe that it is easier than ever for people to become 
knee-jerk, uninformed "conspiracy theory" believers.

Like most clichés, it exists because it is generally true. However, I have 
very seldom heard anyone state the quite obvious corollary: that it is also 
every bit as easy now to be a knee-jerk, uninformed "conspiracy theory" 
disbeliever. All the intellectual armchair quarterback needs to say these 
days when facing a new controversial idea is "Oh, I think there's just a few 
too many X-files fans running around out there!"

Concerning the aftermath of 9/11, a number of people have made the apt 
comment that we are now all conspiracy theorists including the government! 
The only question is, whose conspiracy theory will turn out to be conspiracy 
fact? The "official story" of who perpetrated 9/11 the terrorist network, 
the circumstances that enabled them to pull off the attack, and why it 
happened is a classic conspiracy theory through and through, and frankly not 
a very good one, as it is still beset with unanswered questions and factual 
gaps. 

Worse than being simply unproven to a courtroom standard (which may by now 
be beside the point), it is on a number of significant points 
self-contradictory and incredible. I am stunned and shocked that most of the 
American people have seemed content from the very start to swallow this 
story whole, or at least find it acceptable by default.

Even on many "alternative" or "dissident" online political discussion 
forums, I have seen little pointed questioning of the 9/11 events 
themselves, which is a terrible mistake. As one example, I feel that many 
anti-war progressives actually did the war hawks quite a favor at the outset 
 while it is has been absolutely justified to bring focus and criticism on 
the policy questions and troubling ethical aspects of the war in 
Afghanistan, to do so without also bringing up serious challenges to the 
tacitly accepted "facts" of the 9/11 terrorist plot itself ironically serves 
quite effectively to validate, in a backhanded way, the very notion that 
pointing our guns at Afghanistan and supposedly all-powerful "über-lone-nut" 
Osama bin Laden made some sort of overall sense in the first place. 

I have observed, much to my dismay, self-appointed thought police using 
blustering ridicule to eradicate troubling questions about the possible 
evidence & motives for official malfeasance and/or complicity from otherwise 
free-ranging online discussions  even when some of the questions being 
raised are quite valid and worthy of keeping open (the "debunking" strategy: 1.
select the most obviously weak arguments and rip them apart; 2. ignore the 
really difficult "smoking gun" arguments and pretend they were never 
mentioned; 3. fire an overly condescending, derisive volley to intimidate 
open-minded onlookers and nip the topic in the bud. Or, simply begin with 
name calling and leave it at that). Oh no, we can't let those awful, creepy, 
insidious "conspiracy buffs" have a seat at the table!

What I am most afraid of now is not suitcase nukes, nor smallpox, nor 
terrorists of any sort; it is not the criminal, homicidal CIA / 
neo-colonialist cabal that orignally sowed the seeds of the current crisis, 
nor is it even the threat of world war that may break out as a result.
All of these things are alarming and truly dangerous, but what I am most 
afraid now of is the unthinking, knee-jerk reaction of far too many who, 
when confronted with a well-evidenced and well-argued alternative 
explanation of the origin and nature of this supposed "War on Terrorism", 
are likely to resort simply to self-righteous denial or aggrivated 
stonewalling. Granted, at this point in time it's fair for people to be wary 
of new "conspiracy theories", but as a thinking person I'm angered that the 
dialogue over such things has become absurdly polarized and reactionary.  

Even amongst well educated and intellectual circles people who might be in a 
position make a crucial contribution in these disturbing times one can 
always find those who consider it perenially fashionable and de rigeur to 
pompously distance onesself as far as possible from anything that one's own 
favored brand of groupthink might label a "conspiracy theory", and to attack 
proponents of any such ideas with ad-hominem put-downs, adhering to a lazy 
pseudo-skepticism which entails making minimal or zero active effort to 
absorb the tremendous body of information necessary to make a good 
judgement, instead choosing to recline into one's well-worn armchair, thump 
one's intellectual chest, and bellow defensive pronouncements about the 
"irrationality" of those "tinfoil-hat-wearing paranoid nutcases." 

This sort of attitude is far removed from the open-minded, responsive, and 
actively questioning type of skepticism that marks a true thinking person. 
I'll admit, I'm painting an extreme picture here, but I would hasten to add 
that denial and avoidance committed in the name of "rationality" can also 
take forms that are far more subtle and deceptively convincing.

This, I feel, is the real danger. Notwithstanding the fact that great 
numbers of attention-getting paranoid nutcases and their associated hairball 
ideas verifiably do exist out there, I nevertheless now count myself among 
the ranks of an ever-growing segment of reasonable, informed, and 
intelligent people who have patiently come to the conclusion that, hidden 
amongst all the obvious rubbish and rumor, there is indeed very credible and 
compelling evidence for the existence of a powerful and long-evolving 
international conspiracy, composed of a relatively small, private elite who 
have been aiming for global economic control, the surreptitious and gradual 
dissolution of national sovereignty, and ultimately world dictatorship. 

This conspiracy has been in development behind the scenes for decades (at 
least), establishing strong bases of power in America within the corporate 
elite, the National Security infrastructure, and the sprawling, privatized 
Military-Industrial complex, and now appears to have succesfully used its 
influence to frame-up the provocation for a bogus "War on Terrorism," 
setting the stage for a final duplicitous endgame. If this is true, then we 
are currently witnessing a crucially important transition period.

Despite the emotionally overwhelming implications of this scenario, I do not 
feel at all that it is too late to take action, and after some struggle I 
have made the commitment to myself to do whatever I can to help oppose it. 
Part of me would like to think that it would be alright just to "wait and 
see," enforcing yet more self-doubt before I speak out, but every nerve in 
my body tells me that this is just not going to cut it; there's a point when 
you feel you've learned enough and sensed enough, beyond which there is no 
possibility of turning your back. I would certainly be a lot happier if I 
could erase certain knowledge and convictions from my mind believe me, I 
don't get off on this stuff and I'm not in it for thrills.

Granted, I may be mistaken in my convictions, and in fact I truly hope that 
I am, because all I really want deep in my heart right now is just to 
continue on with healing after the recent horrors and return to enjoying 
what should be the good years of my life. But if I am indeed wrong, the 
wisest and most prudent way to settle the matter under the current 
circumstances is first to make every possible effort to prove that I am 
right. I consider myself sufficiently skeptical, but others may come to more 
limited conclusions than I have. In the very least, what can be asserted 
without caveats is that the government of the United States is now 
acquiring, via the new powers assigned to federal law enforcement and the 
Executive Branch, almost every ability needed to function as a police state. 

Whether or not this will happen is at this point not a question of fact, but 
of faith. I believe this is the right time to blow the discussion wide open 
while we still have the chance, not to narrow it down. So, in that spirit, I 
have decided to throw my two cents in by putting together this little 
website with the intention of sharing useful information with those I care 
about. No one can say yet with absolute certainty whether any of the 
"conspiracy theories" we've heard about 9/11 are correct, but I will state 
with no doubts whatsoever that given the facts that are already out there, 
to continue to deny these theories an open and unbiased hearing and thorough 
investigation is 100 percentwrong.

Furthermore, I wish to make it clear that I am not out to shock; I am not 
trying to provoke lurid fears, but instead striving to join the ranks of 
those who counter misdirected fear with reason. I am motivated by the 
deepest feelings of patriotism and a desire to defend the integrity of the 
Constitutional Republic of the United States of America, which I believe is 
in under unprecedented threat a situation that bodes ill for the entire world. 

If anyone suggested that those who speak out with the types of controversial 
views I am going to present are a cynical, unpatriotic types who do harm to 
America's unity, I would simply counter that anyone who has become blinded 
with proud denial of the possibile dangers from enemies within is no patriot 
at all. America has always had some troubling flaws, but even so I have 
recently shed a few tears thinking about the death and loss of an older and 
better version of America, one which used to be more peaceful, humble, which 
minded its own business and was in turn truly admired around the world 
without qualification. I hope I live to see that kind of America make a 
great return, better and wiser than ever before.

In this introduction, I have given free rein to my opinions and beliefs, but 
in the pages that follow it is my intention to present the facts and 
questions posed by variety of other individuals and web sources on their own 
terms and attempt to synthesize these into as unified as possible of an 
analysis, with a minimum of judgement (if I can help myself!). 

The last thing I want to do is present myself as some kind of expert; there 
are many people out there both more intelligent and more experienced than I 
who make my still limited knowledge of political conspiracies look downright 
childish by comparison. However, with so much new information and analysis 
coming out, I saw the need for it to be presented in a clear overview. I 
hope this site will be a useful initial guide through a bramble of 
underground information and speculation, helping you to form your own 
opinions and come to your own conclusions.

Brian Salter
29 December 2001