I’m still bummed-out over the passing of Anthony Bourdain. There are some Tony-was-murdered-conspiracy-theories floating around, and even though I love conspiracy theories, I haven’t been able to even look into those because I’m still wrapping my head around his suicide. CNN has been airing the last episodes of Parts Unknown Bourdain completed before his death, and last night’s visit to Indonesia was a great episode for October even if it was pretty spooky to listen to Bourdain joking about being dead.

See, Indonesian culture is very mystical and nearly everyone regardless of religious background believes in the existence of an afterlife. Because of this the culture has a much more open and accepting relationship to death and the dead than we do in the West. In fact, we’d probably find it kind of scary.

Getting into some upcoming scary posts for October, here’s a great video about the a tradition among the Toraja — an ethnic minority living in southern Indonesia:

These people in Indonesia dig up their dead every year or so and redress them, bathe them and groom them and then on top of that they walk the dead through town back to the caskets to be reburied. Some say the bodies actually walk and stand due to black magic being preformed.

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The CIA just put a spotlight on a conspiracy theory classic that was found on the bookshelf of Osama bin Laden.

Let me explain: After the death of Osama bin Laden was announced the news was followed by revelations including dispatches about the volumes the world’s most wanted man kept on his bookshelf. Here’s the New York Times from 2015…

But it was the list of books found in Bin Laden’s compound that garnered the most interest Wednesday. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which managed the release, seized on Bin Laden’s reading list to promote it, titling the web page listing all the now-public material “Bin Laden’s Bookshelf.”

Some of the books would be familiar to anyone interested in global affairs, such as “Obama’s Wars,” by Bob Woodward; “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” by Paul Kennedy; and “Imperial Hubris,” by Michael Scheuer, the former official who once ran the Central Intelligence Agency’s Bin Laden desk.

Other titles hinted at a paranoid worldview fostered by conspiracy theory classics such as “Bloodlines of the Illuminati,” by Fritz Springmeier, and “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve,” by Eustace Mullins, a Holocaust denier.

On July 30 the fringiest fringes of my alt news network started to buzz with the news that the CIA had actually uploaded Springmeier’s book which claims that the cultural elites in every powerful position in the world are blood relations, and that the age of monarchy never ended. We can’t ask OBL for a book review, but the conspirosphere is counting the upload as confirmation of the bloodlines theory by the agency.

Read Springmeier’s book or download it at the CIA site. Check out the rest of that NYT article here.

Stories like this fascinate me for a lot of reasons. Conspiracy theories are often proven true, and all expression that doesn’t harm or threaten anyone else should always be championed in a democracy. Conspiracy theories are also part of our cultural mythology and they often say a lot more about who we actually are than the commercially weaponized images reflected to us in the mainstream media.

Springmeier is as earnest as he is scattered and self righteous in this video from the Global Science Conference in Tampa, FL back in 1997. Springmeier’s lecture is entitled The Biggest Story – Undetectable Mind Control. Enjoy…

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Back in the day, if you were a conspiracy theory believer or if you were fascinated by the various countercultures that believe in UFOs or Bigfoot or a vast global cabal of any kind, you were in a fringe community. I’m all ears any time the subject of the JFK assassination comes up, but nowadays that’s small potatoes when the POTUS is buddies with shit-flingers like Alex Jones. For better or worse conspiracy theories are definitely mainstream as both wacko belief systems as well as pop cultural phenomena with their own podcasts, radio broadcasts and cable television shows.

Here’s a fascinating conspiracy I came across yesterday evening when I saw this video on YouTube. Before you watch this know that I don’t think that Donald Trump is a time traveler or the fulfillment of a 100-plus-year-old prophecy. That said, the coincidences between today’s upside down world and two books written in the 19th century are uncanny to say the least…

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In the midst of all the recent Back To The Future hoopla I had an opportunity to publish a review about the franchise, and to have my old friend Ron “The Chron” point out one of the most fascinating conspiracy theories I’ve discovered in some time. First, here’s a review that originally appeared in The Contributor…

“The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” This is how Dr. Emmett Brown explains his decision to use a stainless steel DeLorean with its iconic gull-wing doors in the construction of the world’s first time machine. The same thing might be said of the Back to the Future franchise: from Marty McFly’s red down vest to Doc Brown’s shock of white hair, to that silver car with its “OUTATIME” license plate, the Future films exist in a universe – a dimension? – of their own making. And it’s one that audiences have been happy to return to for three decades.

In the original, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a high school student and wannabe guitar hero living in Hill Valley, California circa 1985. His dad, George (Crispin Glover), is a clerk who’s bullied by his supervisor, Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson). Marty’s mom, Lorraine (Lea Thompson), is an overweight alcoholic. Marty has a brother and a sister. He’s also friends with Doc Brown – a local eccentric who actually manages to build a time machine out of a DeLorean. In a tragic-seeming turn of events, Marty’s transported back to 1955 where he encounters his parents and Biff as high school students. George is a hapless geek and Lorraine is smitten by Marty whom she doesn’t realize is her future son. Will Marty be able to get his parents to fall in love and ensure his existence now that his presence in the past has disrupted the chain of events that lead to his birth? Will Doc be able to use a fateful lightning strike at a downtown clock tower to power the DeLorean back to 1985? Will this film be successful enough to ensure two sequels?

Thinking about time travel movies, I’m immediately reminded of George Pal’s classic 1960 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. That film’s Oscar-winning visual effects scared the hell out of me when I saw it on television in the 1970′s, but Pal’s film misses at the title of first cinematic time machine by a long shot. In fact, the first three time machine movies ignored Wells’ book, adapting Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in a 1921 silent film, a 1931 talkie, and even a musical version in 1949. Wells’ tale attempts to underline its time-jumping with science, but Twain’s Yankee comes-to in Camelot after getting bonked on the head with a wrench. Twain cared more about what would happen to a time traveler upon their arrival in a different dimension, but wasn’t very interested in how they’d get there. That makes these earliest time travel sagas the real antecedents of the Back to the Future franchise. While the DeLorean wins Doc Brown some style points, he sums-up the science of time travel with only two words: Flux Capacitor. These movies are about people and families – related by blood or friendship – and how they struggle together to affect fate and chance, and realize better lives for themselves and one another.

In a movie about people and relationships, casting is crucial, and the cast is great here. For a second Eric Stoltz played Marty McFly, but when the role was recast with Fox he made the character iconic with his red vest, his trusty skateboard, his knack for physical comedy, his ability to actually shred an electric guitar, and exactly the right underdog charm for a slacker-trying-to-make-good like Marty McFly. Of course, Lloyd’s Doc Brown is one of cinema’s great mad scientists, but even the supporting cast shines here: Thompson’s randy take on the teenage Lorraine is liberated and hilarious, and Wilson’s Biff is a beautiful brute. The really inspired choice here is the casting of Crispin Glover as George McFly. Glover’s cranked-up intensity finds George ranging from measly milquetoast to conquering hero in a scene-stealing arc that he plays over-the-top while also remaining riveting and believable. The contradiction is summed-up in George’s unforgettable declaration to Lorraine: “You are my density. I mean, my destiny.”

OK, now here’s that conspiracy…

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One of the most interesting — and tragic — conspiracy theories of recent times has been the Satanic Panic of the 80′s and 90′s. During this time faulty research, hearsay and the fears projected by Christian conservatives resulted in a very real panic that saw a number of innocent people’s lives ruined over what amounted to an urban legend. Here’s a long quote from Wiki as the panic was a very complex and nuanced phenomenon and their summing-up is too thorough not to include here…

Satanic ritual abuse (SRA, sometimes known as ritual abuse, ritualistic abuse, organised abuse, sadistic ritual abuse and other variants) was a moral panic that originated in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout the country and eventually to many parts of the world, before mostly diminishing in the late 1990s. Allegations of SRA involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, SRA involved a supposed worldwide conspiracy involving the wealthy and powerful of the world elite in which children were abducted or bred for sacrifices, pornography and prostitution.

Nearly every aspect of SRA was controversial, including its definition, the source of the allegations and proof thereof, testimonials of alleged victims, and court cases involving the allegations and criminal investigations. The panic affected lawyers’, therapists’, and social workers’ handling of allegations of child sexual abuse. Allegations initially brought together widely dissimilar groups, including religious fundamentalists, police investigators, child advocates, therapists and clients in psychotherapy. The movement gradually secularized, dropping or deprecating the “satanic” aspects of the allegations in favor of names that were less overtly religious such as “sadistic” or simply “ritual abuse” and becoming more associated with dissociative identity disorder and government conspiracy theories.

The panic was influenced to a large extent by testimony of children and adults that were obtained using therapeutic and interrogation techniques now considered discredited. Initial publicity generated was by the now-discredited autobiography Michelle Remembers (1980), and sustained and popularized throughout the decade by the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular and religious conferences, as well as through the attention of talk shows, sustaining and spreading the moral panic further throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, with little or no validity beyond paranoia.

Official investigations produced no evidence of widespread conspiracies or of the slaughter of thousands; only a small number of verified crimes have even remote similarities to tales of SRA. In the latter half of the 1990s interest in SRA declined and skepticism became the default position, with very few researchers giving any credence to the existence of SRA.

Here’s a Satanic Panic propaganda classic preserved on shiny black VHS tape. Here’s Escaping Satan’s Web…

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There’s a fine line between the truth and a good story when it comes to celebrities. And when it comes to the death of a celebrity like Kurt Cobain, there is a fine line between the findings of the police investigation that ruled his demise a suicide and the conspiracy theories that insist the singer was the victim of a murder.

This week that line got even thinner as stories about police in Seattle re-opening their investigation into Cobain’s death began to appear and new, never-before-seen photographs of the scene where the singer’s body was discovered hit the internet. Here’s the story via COS…

Now, 20 years later, Seattle police have found new evidence, prompting them to re-open the case. Reportedly, four rolls of 35 mm film had been sitting for years in the department’s evidence vault. Last month, the film was processed by King County Sheriff’s Office photo lab “under high security”. Police told KIRO that the film more clearly shows Cobain’s death scene than earlier photos taken by investigators. Why the photographs are only being developed now is unclear.

KIRO has reportedly obtained one of these photographs, which it will show during its broadcast tonight. Additional details regarding the investigation are also expected to be shared during the telecast.

Police plan to release the photographs and will answer questions on the anniversary of Cobain’s death next month.

Technically speaking, the new photos constitute a re-examining of the case, but not an official re-opening. Here are two of the newly-discovered photos…

Kurt Cobain’s heroin kit

Cobain’s belongings at the scene of his death

It’s unlikely that questions about Cobain’s death will really ever abate, after all, folks are still claiming that Elvis is alive and well. For me, the circumstances of the singer’s death aren’t as interesting as the culture surrounding those who continue to question the findings of police and coroners. Conspiracy theories aren’t necessarily as interesting in and of themselves as they are as part of a storytelling, myth-making culture that insists that things simply aren’t as they may so plainly seem.

When it comes to Cobain’s death, the queen mother conspiracy theory is supplied by Nick Broomfield’s documentary Kurt and Courtney. Watch it for yourself and see what all the fuss is about.

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Hollywood usually blows it when it comes to conspiracy theory movies, but in 1978 they got it right. Here is Wiki’s take on The Boys from Brazil:

Young, well-intentioned Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) stumbles upon a secret organization of Third Reich war criminals holding clandestine meetings in Paraguay and realizes that Dr Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), the infamous Auschwitz doctor, is among their number. He phones Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), an aging Nazi hunter living in Austria, with this information. A highly skeptical Lieberman tries to brush Kohler’s claims aside…

Featuring a great cast and a zany story line with a now-campy-seeming style, Boys has it all: evil Nazis, vengeful Jews, South American locales, aging civil servants, genetic manipulation, Steve Guttenberg, and all those blue-eyed boys. Most importantly, Boys understands that first rule in making a good conspiracy theory film: The theory must be true.

Brought to you by the Sleepless Film Festival, in it’s entirety, The Boys from Brazil, 1978

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