Today saw the end of my sixth week of working from home. I have written about the challenges of working from home in a previous blog. What is harder about the current situation is leisure time. Lockdown means a social life is impossible, Travel is non-existent and travel planning feels more like travel dreaming! I can proudly say I have spent less time watching tv than normal. I listen to more music and have read more books than I normally would. This blog was inspired (influenced) by a book I have just finished.
We were supposed to be visiting Los Angeles in June (‘Rona put paid to that!!!). I had done my usual in depth research and found this on the Dearly departed tours website;
HELTER SKELTER TOUR
Manson Family Murders: Scott Michaels himself hosts this 4 hour tour which visits the sites of the Legendary Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by the Manson Family. In this multi-media tour we reconstruct the lives of both killers and victims in the hours leading up to these horrific crimes, details of which are told by the killers themselves through audio recordings. We’ll discuss the several motivations for this infamous case that brought an end to the Decade of LOVE. If you’ve seen Scott’s documentary The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter (Available in the DDT Shop), you know that Scott is widely acknowledged as an expert on the case. Quentin Tarantino personally called on Scott to work on Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, earning Scott a “Special Thanks” in the credits of the film. Anyone who followed the Manson Murders and ensuing repercussions knows that this subject continues to shock and fascinate over 50 years later.
I decided that this looked like an interesting tour. As it started to look increasingly likely we would need to postpone our trip until next year the publication of Chaos meant that I could at least learn more about the events of 1969.
In 1999 Tom O’Neil was commissioned by Premier magazine to a write an article about the Manson murders to be published in line with the 30th anniversary of the grisly events. Twenty years later his book Chaos was finally published marking the 50th anniversary of those infamous crimes. The original commission was for 3 months. The author started out by reading Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. Bugliosi was the Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial and he wrote Helter Skelter following the end of the trial. It has long been touted as the definitive story of the cold-blooded Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by Charles Manson and four of his followers. What motivated Manson in his seemingly mindless selection of victims, and what was his hold over the young women who obeyed his orders?
Looking for a new angle on the case for his article, O’Neil’s research led him to discover inconsistencies in Bugliosi’s book. Interviews with people involved with the case helped O’Neil to unearth cover-ups at the highest levels. Deadlines came and went but such was the faith that Premiere’s editor had in the tale that O’Neil was unfolding the magazine continued to fund him for many years. The further O’Neil dug around, the more and more sinister the story becomes. The FBI, The CIA and secret Government projects all become embroiled in this tawdry tale.
Premiere magazine eventually ran out of patience and dropped the story and funding (it no longer exists). Unable to stop, O’Neil carried on with a loan from his father. His father was a lawyer who believed his son was onto something. A book contract followed although that was subsequently pulled leaving the author half a million dollars in debt! Worse, the author was threatened by an increasingly sinister Bugliosi and was suddenly dropped by previously helpful people who were involved in the case.
If you are expecting a book about Manson and the family you will probably be disappointed. They obviously feature heavily in the book but more as bit part players. The real stories are cover-ups and the intervention of dark forces from various Intelligence agencies. The early part of the book manages to evoke Los Angeles at the end of the sixties as the hippy dream began to fade. 1969 also saw the horrific murder of Meredith Hunter at Altamont and the murder of Robert Kennedy in California.
Chaos is a long book (570 pages). I became increasingly frustrated the closer I got to the end as there are too many divergent threads to the story. I did quite enjoy the book and did learn more about the Manson murders than I had previously known but ultimately the book turns into something of a conspiracy fest…………….
The ‘C’ word…………Conspiracy!!! The world loves a good conspiracy it seems.
The best conspiracies seem to involve Government cover ups and fall into two distinct categories.
1. Events that bring about political change:
The first event to discuss is the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin. In 1933 an arsonist set fire to the home of the German parliament four weeks precisely four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Conspiracy theorists pointed to this as a ‘false flag’ event that allowed the Nazi party to dominate German politics and pursue its Fascist policies with impunity. Whether the story is true or not the Nazi party did become the de facto rulers of Germany and the rest is, as they say, history!
A false flag event is defined as ‘a covert operation designed to deceive; the deception creates the appearance of a particular party, group, or nation being responsible for some activity, disguising the actual source of responsibility’.
In 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. As a six year old boy I stared transfixed at pictures of this momentous event on the television. As young boys we stared at the full moon on summer nights convincing ourselves we could see the American flag that Armstrong planted on the Moon’s surface.
Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, and Moon rock samples. Stories continue to circulate that the moon landing and subsequent walks actually took place in a television studio.
Quite what the US government achieved by faking moon landings is almost secondary. As the cold war accelerated following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Russia could claim to be superior as they had successfully put a man into space. Yuri Gagarin was trumped by the moon landings and thus America’s technological superiority was established.
As the years have passed the claims of conspiracy theorists have been largely debunked. One thing to think about though……………no-one ever bothered going back there!!!
September 11 2001
That date is burnt in the memory of all of us. It is said that people of the generation before mine can tell you exactly what they were doing when John F Kennedy was assassinated. I can’t comment, that was the year I was born. September 11 2001 I do remember. Phil was in Barrow. Phil, Pat, our 17 months old daughter Caitlin and I went for a walk along the recently opened Channel side park. On the return journey we stopped for a beer (an ice cream for Caitlin) at the Owl and the Pussycat. When we got home I took a nap in the chair with Caitlin on my knee. Pat shook me awake to watch the unfolding events on tv. I saw one of the Twin Towers smoking with an aeroplane protruding. We watched in horror as a second plane flew into the other tower. American Airlines Flight 77, was crashed into the Pentagon (the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense) in Arlington County, Virginia, which led to a partial collapse of the building’s west side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was initially flown toward Washington, D.C., but crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, after passengers thwarted the hijackers. 9/11 is the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history.
It didn’t take long for the conspiracy theories to emerge. Most of you will have heard them so I don’t propose to detail them. There were two things that made me wonder…Firstly, it always amazed me how the passport of Mohamed Atta was found amongst the rubble of the twin towers. This fact still seems all the more amazing as neither of the aeroplanes black boxes were found! Secondly, the event that I still can’t get my head around was watching a BBC newscaster announce the collapse of Building 7 more than half an hour before it actually happened. Live footage from New York in the background clearly shows the building still standing. To compound this ‘error’, the BBC accidentally wiped the tapes.
Why would anyone think 9/11 is a false flag event? It’s too incredible isn’t it? Following 9/11 Western allies invaded Afghanistan and in 2003 invaded Iraq for a second time leading to deposing Saddam Hussain and subsequently him being executed. For the past 20 years there has been a rebirth of the war between Islam and Christianity first seen in the Crusades.
1st May 2020
Today the world is reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic. For the past few weeks speculation is rife that this is a man-made virus created in a laboratory in Wuhan province China. Despite many scientists across the world debunking this story it hasn’t stopped Donald Trump and the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison publicly blaming the Chinese Government. I am scared as to where this is going and how it may develop. America has led the free world throughout my lifetime. It is now challenged by the emergence of the powerhouse Chinese economy. China is also rapidly increasing its military capacity. As this danse macabre unfolds, Russia watches, smirking in the shadows. Scary times folks.
It’s easy to forget in the time of Covid-19 that conspiracies circulated about the AIDS virus. There were forums claiming that HIV was developed by Governments to attack black people, similarly that it was developed to wipe out homosexuality. Thankfully, HIV is curable now but suspicions of Government complicity continue to be rife on the internet.
2. ‘Convenient’ murders
Throughout history there are many murders or accidents that have changed the course of the world. Many of these attract conspiracy theories which claim that they were state sponsored killings.
John F Kennedy – November 1963
The daddy of murder conspiracies, the shooting of President Kennedy still fascinates the world. Lee Harvey Oswald was convicted of killing JFK. Almost from the get go speculation raged as to whether he could have been killed by the three shots from the 6th floor of the Texas school book depository. There also emerged hazy film that suggested a second gunman had fired from behind a fence on the nearby ‘Grassy knoll’. Speculation moved onto why Oswald wanted to kill Kennedy. The world never got an answer to that question because Oswald was shot dead two days later by Jack Ruby as he was being moved from the city jail to the nearby county jail. Ruby later said he had been distraught over Kennedy’s death and that his motive for killing Oswald was “saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial” Ruby himself died in 1967 before the conspiracy theories had really got into their stride.
I don’t know why anybody would have wanted Kennedy dead, after all, he died the year I was born. I have watched many documentaries, seen the film JFK and read many articles. Fifty seven years later the murder of JFK still fascinates. On the 50th anniversary of JFL’s death a Gallup poll found;
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination approaches, a clear majority of Americans (61%) still believe others besides Lee Harvey Oswald were involved. But this percentage is the lowest found in nearly 50 years.
The decade wasn’t finished with high profile assassinations. On April 4th 1968 Martin Luther King was shot dead as he stood on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee. On April 3, King addressed a rally in support of the black sanitary public works employees. In his speech King said;
‘And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’.
After his death commentators focussed on the line ‘And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you’. It was if King foresaw the events that would take place the following day.
Most people believed that King was murdered to halt the rise of the Civil Rights movement. James Earl Ray, an American white supremacist, fugitive, and felon was identified as the killer and arrested two months later at London Heathrow Airport attempting to leave the United Kingdom for Brussels on a false Canadian passport. Although he initially confessed to the murder Ray later tried to recant his story claiming he had been coerced and aided by an accomplice he called Raul. James Earl Ray died in 1998 but as recently as 2018, the 50th anniversary of MLK’s murder King’s family still declare they believe that James Earl Ray was innocent and that the assassination was part of a government conspiracy
Just two months after Martin Luther King was killed, Robert F Kennedy was shot dead as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy had been addressing his followers after resounding victories in the South Dakota and California primaries.
In 1968 President Johnson prepared to run for re-election. In January, faced with what was widely considered an unrealistic race against an incumbent president, Kennedy stated that he would not seek the presidency. After the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in early February 1968, he received a letter from writer Pete Hamill that said poor people kept pictures of President Kennedy on their walls and that Kennedy had an “obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls.”
Kennedy travelled to Delano, California, to meet with civil rights activist César Chávez, who was on a 25-day hunger strike showing his commitment to nonviolence. It was on this visit to California that Kennedy decided he would challenge Johnson for the presidency, telling his former Justice Department aides, Edwin Guthman and Peter Edelman, that his first step was to get lesser-known Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to drop out of the presidential race.
On April 4, 1968, Kennedy learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and gave a heartfelt impromptu speech in Indianapolis’s inner city, calling for reconciliation between the races. The address was the first time Kennedy spoke publicly about his brother’s killing. Riots broke out in 60 cities in the wake of King’s death, but not in Indianapolis, a fact many attribute to the effect of this speech. Kennedy addressed the City Club of Cleveland the next day, on April 5, 1968, delivering the famous On the Mindless Menace of Violence speech. He attended King’s funeral, accompanied by Jacqueline and Ted Kennedy. He was described as being the “only white politician to hear only cheers and applause.”
Despite Kennedy’s high profile and name recognition, McCarthy won most of the early primaries, including Kennedy’s native state of Massachusetts and some primaries in which he and Kennedy were in direct competition. Kennedy won the Indiana Democratic primary on May 7 with 42 percent of the vote, and the Nebraska primary on May 14 with 52 percent of the vote. on May 28, Kennedy lost the Oregon primary, the defeat marked the first time a Kennedy lost an election and it was assumed that McCarthy was the preferred choice among the young voters. If he could defeat McCarthy in the California primary, the leadership of the campaign thought, he would knock McCarthy out of the race and set up a one-on-one against Vice President Humphrey at the Chicago national convention in August.
RFK left the ballroom of the Ambassador hotel and walked through the kitchen as he was told it was a shortcut to the press room. His bodyguard advised him not to take this route but Kennedy ignored him. As he shook hands with a kitchen busboy he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan. Five other people were injured. Kennedy asked ‘Is everybody o.k’?
As with his brother before him it didn’t take long for the conspiracy stories to emerge.
Most of the conspiracies revolved around there being a second gunman.
The location of Kennedy’s wounds suggested that his assailant had stood behind him, but witnesses said that Sirhan stood facing west, about a yard away from Kennedy, as he moved through the pantry facing east. This has led to the suggestion that a second gunman actually fired the fatal shot, a possibility supported by Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles Thomas Noguchi, who stated that the fatal shot was behind Kennedy’s right ear and had been fired at a distance of approximately one inch.
Conspiracy theorists point to the fact that RFK was too close to the Civil rights movement for comfort. CIA involvement is darkly hinted at. A go to for conspiracy theorists.
The following Article appeared in the Washington Post in 2018, fifty years after RFK’s death
LOS ANGELES — Just before Christmas, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulled up to the massive Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, a California state prison complex in the desert outside San Diego that holds nearly 4,000 inmates. Kennedy was there to visit Sirhan B. Sirhan, the man convicted of killing his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, nearly 50 years ago.
While his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, waited in the car, Kennedy met with Sirhan for three hours, he revealed to The Washington Post last week. It was the culmination of months of research by Kennedy into the assassination, including speaking with witnesses and reading the autopsy and police reports.
“I got to a place where I had to see Sirhan,” Kennedy said. He would not discuss the specifics of their conversation. But when it was over, Kennedy had joined those who believe there was a second gunman, and that it was not Sirhan who killed his father.
“I went there because I was curious and disturbed by what I had seen in the evidence,” said Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and the third oldest of his father’s 11 children. “I was disturbed that the wrong person might have been convicted of killing my father. My father was the chief law enforcement officer in this country. I think it would have disturbed him if somebody was put in jail for a crime they didn’t commit.
We will never know if Robert F Kennedy would have become President of the United States of America. Everything I have read about him makes me think that he was the best President that never was. RIP RFK.
On 31 August 1997, Diana died in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris while the driver was fleeing the paparazzi, The crash also resulted in the deaths of her companion Dodi Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul, who was the acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris. Diana’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived the crash. The televised funeral, on 6 September, was watched by a British television audience that peaked at 32.10 million, which was one of the United Kingdom’s highest viewing figures ever. Millions more watched the event around the world.
The death of Princess Diana sparked a flood of conspiracy theories. The initial French judicial investigation concluded that the crash was caused by Paul’s intoxication, reckless driving, speeding (65 mph), and effects of prescription drugs. In February 1998, Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of the Paris Ritz where Paul had worked, publicly said the crash had been planned and accused MI6 and the Duke of Edinburgh. An inquest that started in London in 2004 and continued in 2007–08attributed the crash to grossly negligent driving by Paul and to the pursuing paparazzi, who forced Paul to speed into the tunnel.
In 1999, after the submission of a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Internet news service apbonline.com, it was revealed that Diana had been placed under surveillance by the National Security Agency until her death, and the organisation kept a top secret file on her containing more than 1,000 pages. The contents of Diana’s NSA file cannot be disclosed because of national security concerns.
There was speculation (officially denied) that Princess Diana was pregnant at the time of her death. Others speculated that Dodi Fayed had proposed to her and that the prospect of Diana marrying a Muslim horrified the Intelligence services and the Royal family.
Negative feelings from the public hinted that the end might be nigh for the royal family. It was many years before the British public trusted the Royal family again.
Well that was a quick canter through a few ‘popular’ conspiracy stories. It doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Even the most cursory of internet searches turns up thousands of such ‘scandals’.
I was inspired to write this blog after reading a book about a murder case from fifty years ago, a case so cut and dried that surely the only question is how did Manson persuade his followers to commit such foul deeds?
Human beings love a good conspiracy story. They make for great pub debates as nearly everyone has an opinion.
I wonder what would happen if we tuned into the Queen’s speech on Christmas day to hear her ‘fess up to arranging Diana’s death? How about if Donald Trump tweeted that his authority as President of the USA allowed him access to documents that proved that the FBI arranged the murder of Martin Luther King?
Imagine the chaos these two scenarios would cause??? Do you really want to know??? Would the world really benefit from hearing that Governments routinely dispose of troublesome individuals? I for one think not. As I said earlier, conspiracy theories are great for discussion over a few beers but are best forgotten the next morning. Tom O’Neil spent twenty years researching the Manson case. Surely such obsession is not good for one’s mental health?
Stick to Sports, music, art and politics. They are far better for you.
John 8:31-32 English Standard Version (ESV)
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
In my last blog there was an’ origin of band’ names quiz. One further question;
Where did Kasabian get there name from?
Answers on a postcard…..