The Conspiracy History Research Manual

[c0mmando]

This document was posted to /r/conspiracy on Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 11:40:05 PM GMT by /u/CrackaShiet (now banned). The document was created or uploaded on 5/14/2022, 11:33:59 PM according to docdroid file metadata. Beyond those details, I’m not sure where else this document came from as I have not found the original but I converted the uploaded PDF to markdown with a touch of AI post processing… enjoy!

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Cuneiform 3000 BC

Many biblical texts were thought to be original until cuneiform was deciphered. The Fall of Man and the Great Flood were understood as literal events in human history dictated by God to the author (or authors) of Genesis but were now recognized as Mesopotamian myths which Hebrew scribes had embellished on in The Myth of Etana and the Atrahasis. The biblical story of the Garden of Eden could now be understood as a myth derived from The Enuma Elish and other Mesopotamian works. The Book of Job, far from being an actual historical account of an individual’s unjust suffering, could now be recognized as a literary piece belonging to a Mesopotamian tradition following the discovery of the earlier Ludlul-Bel-Nimeqi text which relates a similar story.

Tutmosis IV 1400 BC

In 2012, a surgeon at Imperial College London analyzed the early death of Thutmose IV and the premature deaths of other Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs (including Tutankhamun and Akhenaten). He concludes that their early deaths were likely as a result of familial temporal epilepsy. This would account for both the untimely death of Thutmose IV and also his religious vision described on the Dream Stele, due to this type of epilepsy’s association with intense spiritual visions and religiosity.

Zarathustra 1000 BC

Zarathustra founded Zoroastrianism, which drew on the old but established significant differences. It was based on five principles:

• There is only one God who reigns supreme: Ahura Mazda
• Ahura Mazda is all-good
• His eternal opponent, Angra Mainyu, is all-evil
• Goodness is made apparent through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds
• Each individual has free will to choose between good and evil

If one chose the path of Ahura Mazda, one expressed that choice through the central precepts of Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds and practiced these through:

• Telling the truth at all times – especially keeping promises
• Practicing charity to all – especially the less fortunate
• Showing love for others – even if they did not return that love
• Practicing moderation in all things – especially in one’s diet

If one were truly an adherent of the path of Ahura Mazda, one would show this choice clearly in the three core values of personal behavior:

• To make friends of enemies
• To make the wicked righteous
• To make the ignorant learned

Carthage 814 BC

According to legend, Carthage was founded by the Phoenician Queen Elissa (better known as Dido) c. 814 BCE. Carthage, which seems to initially have been a minor port on the coast where Phoenician traders stopped to resupply or repair their ships, was clearly a major center of trade by the 4th century BCE.

Siege of Jerusalem 587 BC

The siege of Jerusalem between 589–587 BC was the decisive event of the Jewish–Babylonian War, in which the second Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, besieged Jerusalem, the capital city of the Kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem fell after an 18-month siege, following which the Babylonians pillaged the city and destroyed the First Temple. After the fall of the city, many Judeans were exiled to Babylon, beginning the exilic period. Judah was subsequently annexed as a Babylonian province.

Edict of Cyrus 539 BC

Not long after the conquest of Babylon, Cyrus commissioned a building inscription to be written in his name. This building inscription, better known as the Cyrus Cylinder, served to explain and justify Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon to a Babylonian audience. The document appeals heavily to the Babylonian ideals of kingship. Nabonidus is described as an incompetent, godless king, while Cyrus is described as a divinely appointed savior. Cyrus then introduces himself first as a king of Babylon, a king of Anshan, a descendant of Teispes, and a favorite of Marduk. Cyrus claims that he has not pillaged the city, that he has not frightened anyone, that he had worshipped Marduk daily, and that he had freed the people of Babylon from the heavy labor that Nabonidus had imposed on them. Cyrus also claims to have returned the idols that Nabonidus had brought to Babylon from temples all across Mesopotamia, back to their temples, along with their temple personnel. Cyrus finishes his speech with a prayer to Marduk.

Pythagoras 495 BC

It is more than likely that Pythagoras’ thought was actually Egyptian spirituality transplanted to Greece. Pythagoras’ famous secrecy may have been intended to keep this fact from circulating too widely and discrediting him as an original thinker. He is said to have been quite charismatic and a powerful public speaker, and it would have undermined his authority if his philosophy was revealed as simply re-packaged Egyptian belief.

Plato 348 BC

Pythagorean thought significantly influenced Plato’s philosophy, which included the concept of an ultimate truth not subject to opinion, of an ethical way of living in line with that truth, the soul’s immortality, the necessity of salvation through philosophy, and of learning-as-recollection. Pythagorean concepts are apparent throughout Plato’s work but most notably in the dialogues of the Meno and Phaedo.

Alexander The Great 332 BC

He would study with Aristotle until the age of 16, and the two are said to have remained in correspondence throughout Alexander’s later campaigns. While it is clear that his father had a great impact on him, Alexander himself chose to see his success as ordained by divine forces. He called himself the son of Zeus, and so claimed the status of a demigod, linking his bloodline to his two favorite heroes of antiquity, Achilles and Hercules, and modeling his behavior after theirs. This belief in his divinity was instilled in him by Olympias, who also told him that his was a virgin birth as she had been miraculously impregnated by Zeus himself.

Punic Wars 264 BC

Rome won all three of these wars, allowing the Romans to dominate the Mediterranean region, which had previously been controlled by Carthage. Prior to the conflict, Carthage had grown from a small port-of-call to the richest and most powerful city in the Mediterranean region before 260 BCE. She had a powerful navy, a mercenary army, and, through tribute, tariffs, and trade, enough wealth to do as she pleased.

The Maccabean Revolt 167 BC

The Maccabean Revolt of 167-160 BCE was a Jewish uprising in Judea against the repression of the Seleucid Empire. The revolt was led by a country priest called Mattathias, and his military followers became known as Maccabees. Successful, Jerusalem was captured and the Temple of Jerusalem reconsecrated, an act still commemorated today in the Jewish Hanukkah festival.

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar 100 BC

Cleopatra traveled through Egypt with Caesar in great style and was hailed by her subjects as Pharaoh. She gave birth to a son, Ptolemy Caesar (known as Caesarion), in June of 47 BCE and proclaimed him her heir. Caesar himself was content with Cleopatra ruling Egypt as the two of them found in each other the same kind of strategy and intelligence, bonding them together with mutual respect.

Library of Alexandria 48 BC

No one knows how many books were held in the library at Alexandria, but estimates have been made of 500,000. Historians and connoisseurs claim it was one of the grandest monuments of Pagan civilization, second only to the temple of Jupiter in Rome, and the inimitable Parthenon in Athens. Some critics have advanced the idea that the builders intended to make it a composite structure, combining the diverse elements of Egyptian and Greek art into a harmonious whole. The Serapeum was regarded by the ancients as marking the reconciliation between the architects of the pyramids and the creators of the Athenian Acropolis. It represented to their minds the blending of the massive in Egyptian art with the grace of the Hellenic.

Herod The Great 40 BC

Herod I, or Herod the Great, was the king of Judea who ruled as a client of Rome. He has gained lasting infamy as the ‘slaughterer of the innocents’ as recounted in the New Testament’s book of Matthew. Herod was, though, a gifted administrator, and in his 33-year reign, he was responsible for many major building works which included the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem, several aqueducts, and the massive fortress known as the Herodium. Herod lived as a Jew and generally respected Jewish religious law and that, although there were undoubtedly some negative aspects to his reign, his connections also allowed him to be useful to the Jews on several occasions, and on the whole, his reign was beneficial to the Jewish people and religion.

Caligula 37

After a short but troubled reign which saw him alienate both the Roman army and the Roman Senate, ruthlessly dispatching rivals and critics, the emperor was butchered in January 41 by his own bodyguard, the Praetorian Guard. After coming close to death (possible epilepsy), Caligula became a different person. Caligula regarded the Jews with the most especial suspicion as if they were the only persons who cherished wishes opposed to him and believed there was but one God, their Father and the creator of the world.

Saint Peter 68

The Acts of Peter is the text that detailed what happened to Peter during the persecution by Roman emperor Nero. When Nero had the Christians arrested, the community urged Peter to flee. On his way out of Rome on the Appian Way, he saw a vision of Jesus coming toward him and asked him, “Quo vadis, Domine?” (“Where are you going, Lord?”) Jesus said he had to go to Rome to die again. Feeling guilty, Peter returned to Rome, was arrested, and then asked to be crucified upside down, as he was not worthy to die the same way as Jesus. Thus, the favorite depiction of Peter upside down on a cross in Renaissance art.

Jewish Wars 70

Due to religious tumult under the last Julio-Claudian Emperor Nero, there was open discontent between the people of Judea and the Roman government. The preexisting tensions prompted uprisings to spread across all of Judea, beginning the First Jewish-Roman War. It is estimated by ancient historians that there were about 600,000 to 1,100,000 people killed in the siege. Males aged 17 and older were either put in hard labor camps or made to be gladiators. Women and children were sold into slavery.

Zealots 100

The Zealots were a group of Jews who began to emerge as a religious/political movement around the beginning of the 1st century CE. They strongly opposed Roman rule and turned on everyone, including other Jews, who cooperated with Rome. A subgroup of them, known as the Sicarii, frequently attacked Romans and those considered to work for them. The movement began with Judas of Galilee who founded it. The Zealots left no literature, but the theological basis for their beliefs and activities most likely derives from the story of Phinehas and the experiences of the Maccabee martyrs. During the wilderness years after the Jews left Egypt, Phinehas was a priest. Camping near Peor, the Israelites were interacting with the enemy Midianites and Moabites (who worshipped Baal). God had punished them with a plague.

The Zealots turned back to the stories of the Maccabees as the Maccabee martyrs were inspirational for their willingness to die for the sins of the nation. Their deaths were understood as an atonement; a sacrifice that God would reward with being instantly translated into his presence after their deaths. For the Zealots, only the God of Israel should rule over them as king. Just as God had helped the Maccabees, he would be on their side against Rome.

The Babylonian Talmud 200

An all-encompassing work, the Talmud discusses not only law and ethics but also such practical matters as investment strategy. Its eclectic topics range from the equitable distribution of profits in a partnership to the state of the world in the Messianic Era. To this day, Jews spend countless hours engrossed in its study, with many scholars devoting their lives to immersion in the sea of Talmud.

There is a quoted Talmudic passage, for example, where Jesus of Nazareth is sent to Hell to be boiled in excrement for eternity. There’s also an injunction of the Talmud that permits Jews to kill non-Jews. This led to the Disputation of Paris, which took place in 1240 at the court of Louis IX of France, where four rabbis, including Yechiel of Paris and Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, defended the Talmud against these accusations by Nicholas Donin.

Edict of Milan 313

The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious and attributed their success as a world power to their collective piety in maintaining good relations with the gods, known for the great number of deities that they honored. The presence of Greeks on the Italian peninsula introduced some religious practices such as the cult of Apollo. The Romans looked for common ground between their major gods and those of the Greeks, adopting Greek myths and iconography for Latin literature and Roman art. According to legends, most of Rome’s religious institutions could be traced to its founders; this archaic religion was the foundation of the mos maiorum, “the way of the ancestors” or simply “tradition,” viewed as central to Roman identity.

The Judeo-Christian insistence on Yahweh being the only God, believing all other gods were false gods, could not be fitted into the system. Their scruples prevented them from swearing loyalty oaths directed at the emperor’s divinity. Although the Edict of Milan is commonly presented as Constantine’s first great act as a Christian emperor, it is disputed whether the Edict of Milan was an act of genuine faith. Constantine did favor the Christians throughout the rest of his reign.

Council of Nicaea 325

The First Council of Nicaea, the first general council in the history of the Church, was convened by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great upon the recommendations of a synod led by the bishop Hosius of Corduba in the Eastertide of 325. It was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all Christendom.

The feast of Easter, created by the Council, is linked to the Jewish Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread, as Christians believe that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus occurred at the time of those observances.

Khazars 630

They were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th century AD established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia, southern Ukraine, Crimea, and Kazakhstan. Also a major artery of commerce between Eastern Europe and Southwestern Asia, the Khazars became one of the foremost trading empires of the early medieval world, commanding the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China and the Middle East.

Jews from both the Islamic world and Byzantium are known to have migrated to Khazaria during periods of persecution under Heraclius, Justinian II, Leo III, and Romanus Lakapenos. The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century. The late 19th century saw the emergence of the theory that the core of today’s Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a Khazarian Jewish diaspora that migrated westward from modern-day Russia and Ukraine into modern-day France and Germany.

Islam 632

After the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, the leadership of the Muslim community was taken by Abu Bakr, who assumed the title of caliph (successor of the Prophet). In his brief reign of two years (632-634 CE), he united all of the Arabian Peninsula under the banner of Islam and then sent armies to expand his dominion over other Arabian tribes who lived under Byzantine and Sassanian rule. These campaigns turned out to be so swift and successful that by the time of the third caliph, Uthman, the whole of Egypt, Syria, Levant, and what was once the major part of the Sassanian Persian Empire now rested in Muslim hands, and all attempts to regain lost territory were beaten back with the help of the locals who had mostly accepted Muslim rule.

Bulan and Obadiah 740

Bulan was a Khazar king who led the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. The name Sabrial is given in the Schechter Letter for the Khazar king who led the conversion to Judaism. The Schechter Letter also gives Sabrial at least a partial Jewish/Israelite ancestry. Sabrial is described as having waged successful campaigns in the Caucasus and Iranian Azerbaijan, possibly as part of the Khazar-Arab wars. Khazar scholars refer to the king who led the Khazar conversion to Judaism as “Bulan Sabrial.”

Obadiah was the name of a Khazar ruler of the late eighth or early ninth century. He is described as coming from among “the sons of the sons” of Bulan.

Second Council of Nicaea (787)

It met in AD 787 in Nicaea (site of the First Council of Nicaea; present-day İznik in Turkey) to restore the use and veneration of icons (or holy images), which had been suppressed by imperial edict inside the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Leo III (717–741).

Saint Cyril (860)

Saint Cyril (Kyrillos) and Constantine the Philosopher was a Byzantine linguist, teacher, scholar, and missionary who famously preached Christianity to the Slavs in Moravia with his brother Methodius during the 9th century CE. Cyril was next sent on two diplomatic missions, the first to the Muslim court at Samarra and the second to the Khazars, a Turkic tribe in the Caucasus.

East-West Schism (1054)

The East–West Schism (also known as the Great Schism or Schism of 1054) was the break of communion that occurred in the 11th century between the Western and Eastern churches. Immediately following the schism, it is estimated that Eastern Christianity comprised a slim part of Christians worldwide, with the majority of remaining Christians being Western. The schism was the culmination of theological and political differences that had developed during the preceding centuries between Eastern and Western Christianity.

Knights Hospitaller (1085)

The Knights Hospitaller was a medieval Catholic military order with the full name of ‘Knights of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem’. It became a military order that acquired extensive territories in Europe and whose knights made significant contributions to the Crusades in Iberia and the Middle East. The Knights Hospitaller, identified by their distinctive white eight-pointed cross on a black background, participated in many other campaigns besides, notably those involving the Byzantine Empire.

Knights Templar (1119)

The Knights Templar was a Catholic medieval military order whose members combined martial prowess with a monastic life to defend Christian holy sites and pilgrims in the Middle East and elsewhere. The Templars, with headquarters at Jerusalem and then Acre, were an important and elite element of Crusader armies. The majority of former Templar knights were pensioned off and banned from joining any other military order. Many of the assets of the Templars were passed onto the Knights Hospitaller by order of the Pope on 2 May 1312. However, a lot of land and money ended up in the pockets of nobles, especially in Castile.

Translated Kabbalah (1230)

It deals with subjects such as the creation of the world, the nature of God, the ecstatic mystical experience, the coming messianic era, and the nature of the afterlife. Ultimately, the Kabbalah represents the Jewish form of what all mystical traditions strive for; a direct and intimate knowledge of the divine on a level beyond that of the intellect. Though essentially a tradition of esoteric knowledge, Kabbalah was popular and widely practiced until the dawn of the modern era, though there were restrictions placed on the age and relative piety of initiates. It comprised ancient Talmudic explorations of biblical subjects, tales of ecstatic descents to the throne of God, vast myths of the creation of the world, intense messianic fervor, and forms of pietistic ritual and practice that gave birth to movements that still influence Judaism today.

Edict of Expulsion (1290)

The Edict of Expulsion was a royal decree issued by King Edward I of England on 18 July 1290, expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England. Economically, Jews played a key role in the country. The Church then strictly forbade the lending of money for profit, creating a vacuum in the economy of Europe that Jews filled. The reputation of Jews as extortionate money-lenders rose, which made them extremely unpopular with both the Church and the general public. While an anti-Jewish attitude was widespread in Europe, medieval England was particularly anti-Jewish. An image of the Jew as a diabolical figure started to become widespread in Scotland and Wales. In frequent cases of blood libel, Jews were said to hunt for children to murder before Passover so that they could use their blood for ritualistic purposes.

Federal Charter (1291)

The Federal Charter or Letter of Alliance is one of the earliest constitutional documents of Switzerland. A treaty of alliance from 1291 between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, the Charter is one of a series of alliances from which the Old Swiss Confederacy emerged. In the 19th and 20th centuries, after the establishment of the Swiss Federal State, the Charter became the founding document of Switzerland.

Unam Sanctam (1302)

Unam Sanctam is a papal bull that was issued by Pope Boniface VIII on 18 November 1302. It laid down dogmatic propositions on the unity of the Catholic Church, the necessity of belonging to it for eternal salvation, the position of the Pope as supreme head of the Church, and the duty arising from this of submission to the Pope to belong to the Church and thus to attain salvation. Most significantly, the bull proclaimed the doctrine extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside of the Church, there is no salvation”). Boniface interpreted it as a form of the concept of plenitudo potestatis (plenitude of power), that those who resist the Roman Pontiff resist God’s ordination.

Valais Witch Trials (1428)

The persecutions started in French-speaking Lower Valais (House of Savoy and prince-bishopric of Sion) and spread to German-speaking Upper Valais and to nearby valleys in the Western Alps. They subsided after six to eight years, but the phenomenon spread further afield from here, to Vaud, Fribourg, Neuchâtel, and beyond. On 7 August, the authorities in Leuk issued a formal proclamation of the necessary procedures for a witch trial. According to this document, the “public talk or slander of three or four neighbors” was enough for arrest and imprisonment, even if the accused was a member of the nobility. The use of torture was reserved for victims slandered by five, six, or seven or more persons, up to the number of ten, who were qualified to do so and not under suspicion themselves. The number of victims is unknown but ranges in the hundreds. Fründ speaks of a conspiracy of “700” witches of which “more than 200” had been burned two years into the trials. Contrary to the later phase of the European witch trials, when the majority of those accused were women, the victims in the Valais witch trials are estimated to have been two-thirds male and one-third female.

House of Habsburg (1438)

The House of Habsburg is an Austrian dynasty which was once one of the most prominent royal houses of Europe in the 2nd millennium. The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs from 1440 until their extinction in the male line in 1740. The Habsburgs sought to consolidate their power by frequent consanguineous marriages, resulting in a cumulatively deleterious effect on their gene pool. Health impairments due to inbreeding included epilepsy, insanity, and early death. Numerous members of the family showed specific facial deformities: an enlarged lower jaw with an extended chin known as mandibular prognathism or “Habsburg jaw,” a large nose with a hump and hanging tip (“Habsburg nose”), and an everted lower lip (“Habsburg lip”). The latter two are signs of maxillary deficiency.

Vlad the Impaler (1476)

The name Dracula, which is now primarily known as the name of a vampire, was for centuries known as the sobriquet of Vlad III. Diplomatic reports and popular stories referred to him as Dracula, Dracugli, or Drakul already in the 15th century. He himself signed his two letters as “Drăguly” or “Drăkuly” in the late 1470s. His name had its origin in the sobriquet of his father, Vlad Dracul (“Vlad the Dragon” in medieval Romanian), who received it after he became a member of the Order of the Dragon. Dracul is the Slavic genitive form of Dracul, meaning “[the son] of Dracul (or the Dragon).” In modern Romanian, drac means “the devil,” which contributed to Vlad’s reputation. Vlad III is known as Vlad Țepeș (or Vlad the Impaler) in Romanian historiography. This sobriquet is connected to the implement that was his favorite method of execution.

Formicarius (1485)

The title is Latin for “the ant colony,” an allusion to Proverbs 6:6. Nider used the ant colony as a metaphor for a harmonious society. The Formicarius would have functioned as a kind of preacher’s manual, with stories tailored for use in sermons. It is primarily meant to be used as a means for encouraging reform at all levels of Christian society. Nider used his teacher-pupil storytelling device as a means of convincing the ecclesiastical class of the validity of his points, supplying priests with stories they could spread among the laypeople, and aiding those priests in tackling common questions and misconceptions they would likely encounter.

The Formicarius was written while Nider was part of the theological faculty at the University of Vienna. The stories and examples that he presents throughout the book are taken from his own experiences and from his interactions with clerical and lay authorities. Most of these accounts are representative of the late medieval religious atmosphere of what is now Switzerland, southern Germany, Austria, and the southern Rhineland. This region is also where the book was most widely read.

Malleus Maleficarum (1486)

It has been described as the compendium of literature in demonology of the 15th century. The top theologians of the Inquisition at the Faculty of Cologne condemned the book as recommending unethical and illegal procedures, as well as being inconsistent with Catholic doctrines of demonology. The Malleus elevates sorcery to the criminal status of heresy and recommends that secular courts prosecute it as such. The Malleus suggests torture to effectively obtain confessions and the death penalty as the only certain remedy against the evils of witchcraft. At the time of its publication, heretics were frequently punished to be burned alive at the stake, and the Malleus encouraged the same treatment of witches. The book had a strong influence on culture for several centuries.

Order of Malta (1530)

The Order of Malta, Malta Order, or Knights of Malta, is a Catholic lay religious order, traditionally of a military, chivalric, and noble nature. Though it possesses no territory, the order is a sovereign entity of international law and maintains diplomatic relations with many countries. The Order claims continuity with the Knights Hospitaller, a chivalric order that was founded by the Blessed Gerard in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Its annual budget is on the order of 1.5 billion euros, largely funded by European governments, the United Nations, and the European Union, foundations, and public donors.

Francis Borgia (1534)

Saint Francis Borgia was a great-grandson of Pope Alexander VI, a Grandee of Spain, a Spanish Jesuit, and the third Superior General of the Society of Jesus. His successes during the period 1565–1572 made historians describe Francis as the greatest General after Saint Ignatius. He founded the Collegium Romanum, which was to become the Gregorian University, advised kings and popes, and closely supervised all the affairs of the mushrooming order.

Kindlifresserbrunnen (1545)

The Kindlifresserbrunnen (Swiss German for Child Eater Fountain) is a painted stone fountain at the Kornhausplatz (Grainery Place) in Bern, Switzerland. The fountain sculpture depicts a seated ogre devouring a naked child. Placed at his side is a bag containing more children. Because the ogre is wearing a pointed hat resembling a Jewish one, it has been speculated about the possibility of the ogre being a depiction of a Jew as an expression of blood libel against Jews.

Nostradamus (1556)

Nostradamus was a French astrologer, physician, and reputed seer, who is best known for his book Les Prophéties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains allegedly predicting future events. Nostradamus’s father’s family had originally been Jewish but had converted to Catholic Christianity a generation before Nostradamus was born. Research suggests that much of his prophetic work paraphrases collections of ancient end-of-the-world prophecies (mainly Bible-based), supplemented with references to historical events and anthologies of omen reports, and then projects those into the future in part with the aid of comparative horoscopy.

Celestial Phenomenon over Nuremberg (1561)

According to the broadsheet, around dawn on 14 April 1561, “many men and women” of Nuremberg saw what the broadsheet describes as “an aerial battle out of the sun,” followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and exhausted combatant spheres falling to earth in clouds of smoke. The broadsheet claims that witnesses observed hundreds of spheres, cylinders, and other odd-shaped objects that moved erratically overhead.

Claudio Acquaviva (1581)

Elected in 1581 as the fifth Superior General of the Society of Jesus, he has been referred to as the second founder of the Jesuit order. He had heard of the Society of Jesus through his friendship with Francis Borgia and Juan de Polanco. He was particularly impressed by the works of the Early Companions during the Plague in 1566 and decided to join the Order in 1567. During his period as General, the already worldwide Jesuit Missions grew in India and Japan and were established in China, under Alessandro Valignano. Acquaviva saw missions established in Paraguay and Canada, and he promoted them throughout Protestant Europe, in particular to English Recusants during the Elizabethan Age.

Conversos (1581)

A converso was a Jew who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, or one of his or her descendants. Conversos played a pivotal role in keeping Jewish traditions alive by observing many Jewish holidays like Shabbat. Conversos cooked and baked traditional Jewish dishes in honor of the Sabbath (starting on Friday sundown), Yom Kippur, and other religious holidays. During festivals like Sukkot and Passover, conversos participated by giving clothing articles and ornaments to Jewish women, attending a seder, or obtaining and baking matzah. Conversos ensured that their households maintained similar dietary regulations as their Jewish counterparts, by eating only kosher birds and other animals. Conversos also financially contributed to the growth of the Jewish/Converso community and synagogue.

Dutch East India Company (1602)

It was a multinational corporation founded by a government-directed consolidation of several rival Dutch trading companies in the early 17th century. It is believed to be the largest company to ever have existed in recorded history. It was established on March 20, 1602, as a chartered company to trade with Mughal India in the early modern period, from which 50% of textiles and 80% of silks were imported, chiefly from its most developed region known as Bengal Subah.

The VOC is generally considered to be the world’s first truly transnational corporation, and it was also the first multinational enterprise to issue shares of stock to the public. The VOC was the first multinational corporation to operate officially on different continents such as Europe, Asia, and Africa. The commercial interests of the VOC (and more generally the Netherlands) were reflected in military objectives and the settlements agreed by treaty.

A pioneering early model of the multinational corporation in its modern sense, the company is also considered to be the world’s first true transnational corporation. During its golden age, the company played crucial roles in business, financial, socio-political-economic, military-political, diplomatic, ethnic, and exploratory maritime history of the world. In the early modern period, the VOC was also the driving force behind the rise of corporate-led globalization, corporate power, corporate identity, corporate culture, corporate social responsibility, corporate ethics, corporate governance, corporate finance, corporate capitalism, and finance capitalism. With its pioneering institutional innovations and powerful roles in world history, the company is considered by many to be the first major, first modern, first global, most valuable, and most influential corporation ever seen. The VOC was also arguably the first historical model of the megacorporation.

The company has been criticized for its quasi-absolute commercial monopoly, colonialism, exploitation (including the use of slave labor), slave trade, use of violence, environmental destruction (including deforestation), and for its overly bureaucratic organizational structure. Many employees of the VOC died due to extraordinarily high mortality. Between 1602 and 1795, about one million seamen and craftsmen departed from Holland, but only 340,000 returned. J.L. van Zanden writes that the VOC “consumed” approximately 4,000 people per year.

Nine Years’ War 1688

The Nine Years’ War (1688–1697), often called the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the League of Augsburg, was a conflict between France and a European coalition which mainly included the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburg monarchy), the Dutch Republic, England, Spain, Savoy, and Portugal. It was fought in Europe and the surrounding seas, in North America, and in India. It is sometimes considered the first global war. The conflict encompassed the Williamite war in Ireland and Jacobite risings in Scotland, where William III and James II struggled for control of England and Ireland, and a campaign in colonial North America between French and English settlers and their respective Native American allies.

Glorious Revolution 1688

James II and VII, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland was deposed and replaced by his daughter Mary II and her husband, stadtholder William III of Orange, the de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic. It can be seen as both the last successful invasion of England and also an internal coup.

With Louis XIV of France preparing to attack the Dutch, William viewed this as an opportunity to secure English resources for the Nine Years’ War, which began in September 1688. While the Revolution itself was quick and relatively bloodless, pro-Stuart (Jacobites) revolts in Scotland and Ireland caused significant casualties. Jacobitism’s main ideological tenets drew on a political theology shared by High church Anglicans and Scots Episcopalians. They were, firstly, the divine right of kings, their accountability to God, not man or Parliament; secondly that monarchy was a divine institution; thirdly, the crown’s descent by indefeasible hereditary right, which could not be overturned or annulled; and lastly the scriptural injunction of passive obedience and non-resistance, even towards monarchs of which the subject might disapprove.

With the passage of the Bill of Rights, the Glorious Revolution stamped out once and for all any possibility of a Catholic monarchy and ended moves towards absolute monarchy in the British kingdoms by circumscribing the monarch’s powers.

Bank of England 1694

The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. The Bank is one of eight banks authorized to issue banknotes in the United Kingdom, has a monopoly on the issue of banknotes in England and Wales and regulates the issue of banknotes by commercial banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee has a devolved responsibility for managing monetary policy. The Bank’s Financial Policy Committee serves as a macroprudential regulator to oversee regulation of the UK’s financial sector. England’s crushing defeat by France, the dominant naval power, in naval engagements culminating in the 1690 Battle of Beachy Head, became the catalyst for England to rebuild itself as a global power.

Anglo-American Freemasonry 1713

Anglo-American Freemasonry (also self-described as Regular Freemasonry) is a loose network of overlapping chains of mutually recognized Grand Lodges, forming a Regular Masonic jurisdiction. For the most part, these trace their descent from one of “original” British Grand Lodges, with mutual recognition based on adherence to certain core values, rules and membership requirements (known as Landmarks). The majority of Masonic jurisdictions around the world follow the Anglo-American style. The Anglo-American style is especially dominant in the United States, and the countries that once formed the British Empire. It has a presence in France and most Latin American countries. The Anglo-American branch has several noteworthy sub-branches, most notably Prince Hall Freemasonry and the Swedish Rite (which is exclusively open for confessors of the Christian faith, and has a significant presence in Scandinavia).

United Grand Lodge of England 1717

The United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) is the governing Masonic lodge for the majority of freemasons in England, Wales and the Commonwealth of Nations. It is considered to be the oldest Masonic Grand Lodge in the world. They’re alleged to have “covered-up” or whitewashed the Jack the Ripper case (claims are that the killings were Masonic ritual murder), the inquiry into the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and Bloody Sunday.

Wegelin & Co 1741

Wegelin & Co. is a now-defunct bank that was located in St. Gallen in the Canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland, and specialized in private banking and asset management. Between 2002 and 2010, Wegelin & Co. assisted citizens of the United States in evading taxes on assets totaling over $1.2 billion. In early 2012, Wegelin & Co. transferred all its non-US activities, clients, and assets, and almost its entire staff, to its subsidiary Notenstein Privatbank. Notenstein Privatbank was subsequently sold to the Raiffeisen banking group. Big banks have always been deemed off-limits for criminal prosecution. [The Wegelin case] sends the wrong message to big banks. That they can hide money, be caught, pay a fine and go back to business as usual.

Scottish Rite 1758

It is one of several Rites of Freemasonry. A Rite is a progressive series of degrees conferred by various Masonic organizations or bodies, each of which operates under the control of its own central authority. In the Scottish Rite, the central authority is called a Supreme Council. It was stated that King Charles II (older brother and predecessor to James II) was made a Freemason in the Netherlands during the years of his exile (1649–60). Albert Pike is asserted within the Southern Jurisdiction as the man most responsible for the growth and success of the Scottish Rite from an obscure Masonic Rite in the mid-19th century to the international fraternity that it became. In March 1858, Pike was elected a member of the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, and in January 1859 he became its Grand Commander. The American Civil War interrupted his work on the Scottish Rite rituals. About 1870 he, and the Supreme Council, moved to Washington, DC.

Suppression of the Society of Jesus 1773

The suppression of the Jesuits was the removal of all members of the Society of Jesus from most of the countries of Western Europe and their colonies beginning in 1759, and with the approval of the Holy See in 1773. The Jesuits were severely expelled from the Portuguese Empire, France, the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire, Austria and Hungary. By the mid-18th century, the Society had acquired a reputation in Europe for political maneuvering and economic success. Monarchs in many European states grew increasingly wary of what they saw as undue interference from a foreign entity. The expulsion of Jesuits from their states had the added benefit of allowing governments to impound the Society’s accumulated wealth and possessions.

United States Declaration of Independence 1776

The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. Enacted during the American Revolution, the Declaration explains why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step in forming the United States of America. The most immediate source was George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Ideas and phrases from this document appear in the Declaration of Independence. Mason was, in turn, directly influenced by the 1689 English Declaration of Rights, which formally ended the reign of King James II. Many Americans celebrate the founding fathers and all they did to help create the country. What few of them know is that many of the founding fathers were also Freemasons. Some of the more notable founding fathers to also be Masons are: George Washington, Ben Franklin led the Pennsylvania chapter, Paul Revere led a Massachusetts chapter, John Hancock, and Chief Justice John Marshall who greatly influenced the shaping of the Supreme Court.

Bavarian Illuminati 1776

The Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on 1 May 1776 in Bavaria, today part of Germany. “The order of the day,” they wrote in their general statutes, “is to put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them without dominating them.” Often, they’ve been accused of conspiring to control world affairs, by masterminding events and planting agents in government and corporations, in order to gain political power and influence and to establish a New World Order. Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) became professor of Canon Law and practical philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt in 1773. He was the only non-clerical professor at an institution run by Jesuits, whose order Pope Clement XIV had dissolved in 1773. The Jesuits of Ingolstadt, however, still retained the purse strings and some power at the university. They made constant attempts to frustrate and discredit non-clerical staff, especially when course material contained anything they regarded as liberal or Protestant. He founded his own society which was to have a system of ranks or grades based on those in Freemasonry, but with his own agenda. A variety of historical events were orchestrated by the Illuminati, from the French Revolution, the Battle of Waterloo and the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, to a communist plot to hasten the “New World Order” by infiltrating the Hollywood film industry.

Great Seal of the United States 1782

First used in 1782, the seal is used to authenticate certain documents issued by the federal government of the United States. Since 1935, both sides of the Great Seal have appeared on the reverse of the one-dollar bill. The coat of arms is used on official documents—including United States passports—military insignia, embassy placards, and various flags. The Seal of the President of the United States is directly based on the Great Seal, and its elements are used in numerous government agency and state seals. The Great Seal shows a sinister influence by Freemasonry in the founding of the United States. The Eye of Providence (found, in the Seal, above the pyramid) is a common Masonic emblem. The Great Seal was created by Freemasons. The Eye of Providence was also a fairly common Christian motif throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and was commonly used as such in Europe as well as America throughout the 18th century. It is still found in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches, and it symbolizes the Holy Trinity (the triangle) and God’s omniscience (the eye) surrounded by rays of glory, denoting God’s divinity.

The French Revolution 1789

It was a period of radical political and societal change in France. Many of its ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, while phrases like liberté, égalité, fraternité reappeared in other revolts, such as the 1917 Russian Revolution. The ultimate political vehicle for the Jacobin movement was the Reign of Terror overseen by the Committee of Public Safety, who were given executive powers to purify and unify the Republic. The Committee instituted requisitioning, rationing, and conscription to consolidate new citizen armies. Initially founded in 1789 by anti-royalist deputies from Brittany (Jacobin exiles), the club grew into a nationwide republican movement, with a membership estimated at a half million or more. They instituted the Terror as a means of combating those they perceived as enemies within. Well over 10,000 people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes. Modern historians argue the concept of the nation state was a direct consequence of the Revolution. The Jacobin cause was picked up by Marxists in the mid-19th century and became an element of communist thought around the world.

Freemasonry and Washington DC’s Layout 1791

In Europe, occult leaders were told as early as the 1740s that the new American continent was to be established as the new “Atlantis,” and its destiny was to assume the global leadership of the drive to the New World Order. In 1791, Pierre Charles L’Enfant (the designer, who was a Freemason), laid out the Governmental Center of Washington, D.C. He planned more than just streets, roads, and buildings. He hid certain occultic magical symbols in the layout of U.S. Governmental Center.

First Bank of the United States 1791

Establishment of the Bank of the United States was part of a three-part expansion of federal fiscal and monetary power, along with a federal mint and excise taxes, championed by Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton believed a national bank was necessary to stabilize and improve the nation’s credit, and to improve handling of the financial business of the United States government under the newly enacted Constitution. On February 25, 1791, convinced that the constitution authorized the measure, Washington signed the “bank bill” into law.

George Washington Correspondence 1798

“It was some time since that a book fell into my hands entitled “Proofs of Conspiracy” by John Robison, which gives a full account of a society of Freemasons, that distinguishes itself by the name “of Illuminati,” whose plan is to overturn all government and all religion, even natural; and who endeavor to eradicate every idea of a Supreme Being, and distinguish man from beast by his shape only. A thought suggested itself to me, that some of the lodges in the United States might have caught the infection, and might cooperate with the Illuminati or the Jacobin Club in France. Fauchet is mentioned by Robison as a zealous (zealot) member. I did not believe that the lodges of Free Masons in this country had, as societies, endeavored to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or the pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of separation). That individuals of them may have done it, and that the founder, or instrument employed to found, the Democratic Societies in the United States, may have had these objects—and actually had a separation of the people from their government in view, is too evident to be questioned.”

Napoleonic Wars 1803

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of French domination over most of continental Europe. The Congress of Vienna redrew the borders of Europe and brought a period of relative peace. The wars had profound consequences on global history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, the rise of Britain as the world’s foremost naval and economic power, the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, and the introduction of radically new methods of conducting warfare, as well as civil law. The Rothschilds already possessed a significant fortune before the start of the Napoleonic Wars. The family developed a network of agents, shippers and couriers to transport gold across war-torn Europe. The family network was also to provide Nathan Rothschild timely and again with political and financial information ahead of his peers, giving him an advantage in the markets and rendering the house of Rothschild still more invaluable to the British government. In one instance, the family network enabled Nathan to receive in London the news of Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Waterloo a full day ahead of the government’s official messengers. Rothschild’s first concern on this occasion was to the potential financial advantage on the market which the knowledge would give him.

Jesuit Restoration 1814

As the Napoleonic Wars were approaching their end in 1814, the old political order of Europe was to a considerable extent restored at the Congress of Vienna after years of fighting and revolution, during which the Church had been persecuted as an agent of the old order and abused under the rule of Napoleon. With the political climate of Europe changed, and with the powerful monarchs who had called for the suppression of the Society no longer in power, Pope Pius VII issued an order restoring the Society of Jesus in the Catholic countries of Europe. The suppression of the order was the result of a series of political and economic conflicts rather than a theological controversy, and the assertion of nation-state independence against the Catholic Church. The expulsion of the Society of Jesus from the Catholic nations of Europe and their colonial empires is also seen as one of the early manifestations of the new secularist zeitgeist of the Enlightenment. It peaked with the anti-clericalism of the French Revolution. The suppression was also seen as being an attempt by monarchs to gain control of revenues and trade that were previously dominated by the Society of Jesus.

Unification of Italy 1815

The Habsburg rule in Italy came to an end with the campaigns of the French Revolutionaries in 1792–97 when a series of client republics were set up. In 1806, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by the last emperor, Francis II, after its defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. After Napoleon fell (1814), the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) restored the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of independent governments. Italy was again controlled largely by the Austrian Empire and the Habsburgs, as they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part of Italy.

Battle of Waterloo 1815

Rothschild financed Waterloo, costing Wellington around 15,000 dead or wounded and Blücher some 7,000. Napoleon’s losses were 24,000 to 26,000 killed or wounded and included 6,000 to 7,000 captured. Teeth of tens of thousands of dead soldiers were removed by surviving troops, locals or even scavengers who had traveled there from Britain, then used for making denture replacements in Britain and elsewhere. The so-called “Waterloo teeth” were in demand because they came from relatively healthy young men. Despite the efforts of scavengers both human and otherwise, human remains could still be seen at Waterloo a year after the battle.

Second Bank of the United States 1816

A private corporation with public duties, the Bank handled all fiscal transactions for the U.S. Government, and was accountable to Congress and the U.S. Treasury. Twenty percent of its capital was owned by the federal government, the Bank’s single largest stockholder. Four thousand private investors held 80% of the Bank’s capital, including three thousand Europeans. The bulk of the stocks were held by a few hundred wealthy Americans. In its time, the institution was the largest monied corporation in the world. The essential function of the Bank was to regulate the public credit issued by private banking institutions through the fiscal duties it performed for the U.S. Treasury, and to establish a sound and stable national currency.

Holy Alliance 1822

The Holy Alliance was a coalition linking the monarchist great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. It was created after the final defeat of Napoleon at the behest of Emperor (Tsar) Alexander I of Russia and signed in Paris on 26 September 1815. The alliance aimed to restrain liberalism and secularism in Europe in the wake of the devastating French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, and it nominally succeeded in this until the Crimean War. Otto von Bismarck managed to reunite the Holy Alliance following the unification of Germany in 1871. Jesuits allied with European monarchies in the Congress of Verona.

Rothschild Dynasty 1822

The Rothschild family is "wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish family originally from Frankfurt that rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Frankfurt, Holy Roman Empire, who established his banking business in the 1760s. Unlike most previous court factors, Rothschild managed to bequeath his wealth and established an international banking family through his five sons, who established businesses in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Naples. The family was elevated to noble rank in the Holy Roman Empire and the United Kingdom. Many Rothschilds were supporters of Zionism. In 1917 Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild was the addressee of the Balfour Declaration to the Zionist Federation, which committed the British government to the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. After the death of James Jacob de Rothschild in 1868, his eldest son Alphonse Rothschild took over the management of the family bank and was the most active in support for Eretz Israel. The Rothschild family archives show that during the 1870s the family contributed nearly 500,000 francs per year on behalf of Eastern Jewry to the Alliance Israélite Universelle.

By the middle of the 19th century, the Rothschilds had evolved from traders into fund managers, carefully tending to their own vast portfolio of government bonds. The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars by putting their financial weight behind it.

Anti-Masonic Party 1828

The Anti-Masonic Party, also known as the Anti-Masonic Movement, was the earliest third party in the United States. Formally a single-issue party, it strongly opposed Freemasonry, but it later aspired to become a major party by expanding its platform to take positions on other issues. The party was founded in the aftermath of the disappearance of William Morgan, a former Mason who had ultimately become a prominent critic of the Masonic organization. Many believed that the Masons had murdered Morgan for speaking out against Masonry and subsequently many churches and other groups condemned Masonry. As many Masons were prominent businessmen and politicians, the backlash against the Masons was also a form of anti-elitism.

Andrew Jackson 1829

Jackson was a Freemason, initiated at Harmony Lodge No. 1 in Tennessee. He was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Tennessee in 1822 and 1823. During the 1832 presidential election, Jackson faced opposition from the Anti-Masonic Party. He was the only U.S. president to have served as Grand Master of a state’s Grand Lodge until Harry S. Truman in 1945. His Masonic apron is on display in the Tennessee State Museum. An obelisk and bronze Masonic plaque decorate his tomb at the Hermitage.

Rothschild Loans to the Holy See 1832

Rothschild loans to the Holy See refers to a series of major financial loans arranged between the Rothschild family and the Holy See of the Catholic Church. The first loan, which occurred in 1832, took place in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars during the Pontificate of Pope Gregory XVI (involving James Mayer de Rothschild and Carl Mayer von Rothschild). This loan agreed on was for a sum of £400,000 (equivalent to £3.8 billion in 2020). A second loan occurred during the Pontificate of Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono) in the early 1850s.

Opium Wars 1839

The Opium Wars were two wars waged between the Qing dynasty and Western powers in the mid-19th century. The First Opium War, fought in 1839–1842 between Qing China and the United Kingdom, was triggered by the dynasty’s campaign against the British merchants who sold opium in China. The Second Opium War was fought between the Qing and the United Kingdom and France, 1856–1860. In each war, the European forces’ modern military technology led to easy victory over the Qing forces, with the consequence that the government was compelled to grant favorable tariffs, trade concessions, reparations, and territory to the Europeans. The wars and the subsequently imposed treaties weakened the Qing dynasty and the Chinese imperial government, and forced China to open specified treaty ports (especially Shanghai) that handled all trade with imperial powers. In addition, China gave the sovereignty over Hong Kong to the United Kingdom. Around this time, China’s economy also contracted slightly, but the huge Taiping Rebellion and later Dungan Revolt had a much larger effect.

John D. Rockefeller 1839

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was an American business magnate. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. He became an assistant bookkeeper at age 16 and went into several business partnerships beginning at age 20, concentrating his business on oil refining. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. He ran it until 1897 and remained its largest shareholder.

He was a devout Northern Baptist and supported many church-based institutions. Religion was a guiding force throughout his life and he believed it to be the source of his success. Rockefeller was also considered a supporter of capitalism based on a perspective of social Darwinism, and he was quoted often as saying, “The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest.”

Rockefeller became one of the first great benefactors of medical science. In 1901, he founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. It changed its name to Rockefeller University in 1965, after expanding its mission to include graduate education. It claims a connection to 23 Nobel laureates.

Rockefeller created the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913. He gave nearly $250 million to the foundation, which focused on public health, medical training, and the arts. It endowed Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the first of its kind. It also built the Peking Union Medical College in China into a notable institution. The foundation helped in World War I.

Order of the Eastern Star 1850

The Order of the Eastern Star (Ishtar) is a Masonic appendant body open to both men and women. It was established in 1850 by lawyer and educator Rob Morris, a noted Freemason, but was only adopted and approved as an appendant body of the Masonic Fraternity in 1873. The order is based on some teachings from the Bible, but is open to people of all religious beliefs. It has approximately 10,000 chapters in twenty countries and approximately 500,000 members under its General Grand Chapter.

American Civil War 1861

The American Civil War was among the earliest to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons saw wide use. In total, the war left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties. The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming World Wars.

IRS 1862

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax law. It is part of the Department of the Treasury and led by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The IRS originates from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a federal office created in 1862 to assess the nation’s first income tax to fund the American Civil War. In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified authorizing Congress to impose a tax on income, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue was established. Since its establishment, the IRS has been responsible for collecting most of the revenue needed to fund the federal government, albeit while facing periodic controversy and opposition over its methods, constitutionality, and the principle of taxation generally.

National Bank Act 1863

The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 were two United States federal banking acts that established a system of national banks and created the United States National Banking System. They encouraged the development of a national currency backed by bank holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and established the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as part of the United States Department of the Treasury and a system of nationally chartered banks. The Act shaped today’s national banking system and its support of a uniform U.S. banking policy. Without a national mechanism for issuing currency, the Lincoln administration could not exploit the powers and loopholes that, for example, Britain could with its central bank, in order to finance the high expenses involved. Previously, the damage that would be done to state banks by national competition was sufficient to prevent significant national bank chartering. But using the war crisis, Lincoln was able to expand this effort.

Lincoln Assassination 1865

On April 14, 1865, hours before he was assassinated, Lincoln signed legislation establishing the United States Secret Service, and, at 10:15 in the evening, Booth entered the back of Lincoln’s theater box, crept up from behind, and fired at the back of Lincoln’s head, mortally wounding him. Lincoln told his cabinet that he had dreamed of being on a “singular and indescribable vessel that was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore,” and that he had had the same dream before nearly every great and important event of the War such as the Union victories at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg.

Shriners 1870

Shriners International, also commonly known as the Shriners and formerly known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (AAONMS), is a Masonic society established in 1870 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. The organization is best known for the Shriners Hospitals for Children that it administers, and the red fezzes hats that members wear. The group adopted a Middle Eastern theme and soon established Temples (though the term Temple has now generally been replaced by Shrine Auditorium or Shrine Center). The first Temple established was Mecca Temple (now known as Mecca Shriners), established at the New York City Masonic Hall on September 26, 1872.

District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871

The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 is an Act of Congress that repealed the individual charters of the cities of Washington and Georgetown and established a new territorial government for the whole District of Columbia. Though Congress repealed the territorial government in 1874, the legislation was the first to create a single municipal government for the federal district. The Act made the District, and consequently the whole United States, into a business corporation.

Morals and Dogma of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry 1871

Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, or simply Morals and Dogma, is a book of esoteric philosophy published by the Supreme Council, Thirty Third Degree, of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. It was compiled by Albert Pike, was first published in 1871 and was regularly reprinted thereafter until 1969. An upgraded official reprint was released in 2011, with the benefit of annotations by Arturo de Hoyos, the Scottish Rite’s Grand Archivist and Grand Historian. It is stated that nothing in the book is meant to unveil any of the secrets of Freemasonry but to simply hint or shed light. It emphasizes that the root of all religions is the same (according to the Priscillian Theology doctrine). These common traits and symbols in all religions are explained in detail, beginning with the Orphic Egg or Cosmic Egg, and then moving towards ancient Egyptian, Phoenician, Buddhist, and Hindu texts, and the Abrahamic religions.

Albert Pike 1872

Albert Pike was an American author, poet, orator, editor, lawyer, jurist, and Confederate general who served as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in exile from 1864 to 1865. He had previously served as a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, commanding the District of Indian Territory in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A prominent member of the Freemasons, Pike served as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction, USA) from 1859 to 1889.

Pike first joined the fraternal Independent Order of Odd Fellows in 1840. He next joined a Masonic Lodge, where he became extremely active in the affairs of the organization. In 1859 he was elected Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite’s Southern Jurisdiction. He remained Sovereign Grand Commander for the rest of his life, devoting a large amount of his time to developing the rituals of the order.

He published a book called Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1871, the first of several editions. This helped the Order grow during the nineteenth century. He also researched and wrote the seminal treatise Indo-Aryan Deities and Worship as Contained in the Rig-Veda. In the United States, Pike is still considered an eminent and influential Freemason, primarily in the Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction.

Aleister Crowley 1875

He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life. Some biographers allege that he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, further suggesting that he remained a spy throughout his life.

In 1898, he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. In 1904 he married Rose Edith Kelly and they honeymooned in Cairo, Egypt, where Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass (possible Ayahuasca experience), who provided him with The Book of the Law, a sacred text that served as the basis for Thelema. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should “Do what thou wilt” and seek to align themselves with their True Will through the practice of magic.

After spending time in Algeria, in 1912 he was initiated into another esoteric order, the German-based Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), rising to become the leader of its British branch, which he reformulated in accordance with his Thelemite beliefs. Through the O.T.O., Thelemite groups were established in Britain, Australia, and North America. Crowley spent the First World War in the United States, where he took up painting and campaigned for the German war effort against Britain, later revealing that he had infiltrated the pro-German movement to assist the British intelligence services. He divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death.

Crowley has remained an influential figure, both amongst occultists and in popular culture, particularly that of Britain, but also in other parts of the world.

Bohemian Grove 1878

The Bohemian Club’s all-male membership includes artists and musicians, as well as many prominent business leaders, government officials, U.S. presidents, senior media executives, and people of power. Since the founding of the club, the Bohemian Grove’s mascot has been an owl, symbolizing wisdom. A 30-foot (9 m) hollow owl statue made of concrete over steel supports stands at the head of the lake in the Grove. This statue was designed by sculptor and two-time club president Haig Patigian. It was constructed in the late 1920s. Since 1929, the Owl Shrine (Minerva) has served as the backdrop of the yearly Cremation of Care ceremony. The ceremony served as a catharsis for pent-up high spirits, and to present symbolically the salvation of the trees by the club.

Office of Naval Intelligence 1882

It is the oldest member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and serves as the nation’s premier source of maritime intelligence. Since the First World War, ONI’s mission has broadened to include real-time reporting on the developments and activities of foreign navies; protecting maritime resources and interests; monitoring and countering transnational maritime threats; providing technical, operational, and tactical support to the U.S. Navy and its partners; and surveying the global maritime environment.

Fabian Society 1884

As one of the world’s oldest and most prominent think tanks, the Fabians have sometimes fallen under attack. The Fabian Society advocated renewal of Western European Renaissance ideas and their promulgation throughout the world. Immediately upon its inception, the Fabian Society began attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its socialist cause, including Charles Manson. The Fabians also favored the nationalization of land rent, believing that rents collected by landowners in respect of their land’s value were unearned, an idea which drew heavily from the work of American economist Henry George. The Middle East adoption of Fabian socialism led the state to control big industry, transport, banks, internal and external trade. The state would direct the course of economic development.

Statue of Liberty 1886

The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the United States. The copper statue, a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal framework was built by Gustave Eiffel. Bartholdi was busy with other possible projects; in the late 1860s, he approached Isma’il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build Progress or Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said. There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: an ancient bronze statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios. This statue is believed to have been over 100 feet (30 m) high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships. The Roman goddess Libertás and Sol Invictus (The Unconquered Sun, God’s Sun/Son) both influenced the Statue of Liberty.

Washington Monument 1888

The Washington Monument is an obelisk within the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate George Washington, once commander-in-chief of the Continental Army (1775–1784) in the American Revolutionary War and the first President of the United States (1789–1797). An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally they were called tekhenu by their builders, the Ancient Egyptians. In Egyptian mythology, the obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra, and during the religious reformation of Akhenaten it was said to have been a petrified ray of the Aten, the sundisk. The pyramid and obelisk’s significance have been previously overlooked, especially the astronomical phenomena connected with sunrise and sunset: Zodiacal light and sun pillars respectively.

Taxil Hoax 1890

The Taxil hoax was an 1890s hoax of exposure by Léo Taxil intended to mock not only Freemasonry but also the Catholic Church’s opposition to it. The first book produced by Taxil after his conversion was a four-volume history of Freemasonry, which contained alleged eyewitness verifications of their participation in Satanism. In the Taxil hoax, Palladists were members of an alleged Theistic Satanist cult within Freemasonry. According to Taxil, Palladism was a religion practiced within the highest orders of Freemasonry. Adherents worshipped Lucifer and interacted with demons.

First Zionist Congress 1897

It was the inaugural congress of the Zionist Organization (ZO) held in Basel, Switzerland. It was convened and chaired by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionism movement. The Congress formulated a Zionist platform, known as the Basel program, and founded the Zionist Organization. The first Zionist Congress was convened by Theodor Herzl as a symbolic parliament for the small minority of Jewry in agreement with the implementation of Zionist goals. The program, which came to be known as the Basel Program, set out the goals of the Zionist movement. It was adopted on the following terms: Zionism aims at establishing for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine. For the attainment of this purpose, the Congress considers the following means serviceable:

1. The promotion of the settlement of Jewish agriculturists, artisans, and tradesmen in Palestine.
2. The federation of all Jews into local or general groups, according to the laws of the various countries.
3. The strengthening of the Jewish feeling and consciousness.
4. Preparatory steps for the attainment of those governmental grants which are necessary to the achievement of the Zionist purpose.

The 8 Family Federal Reserve Cartel 1899

They are the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans, and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome. The control that these banking families exert over the global economy cannot be overstated and is quite intentionally shrouded in secrecy. Their corporate media arm is quick to discredit any information exposing this private central banking cartel as “conspiracy theory.” Yet the facts remain.

BIS is the most powerful bank in the world, a global central bank for the Eight Families who control the private central banks of almost all Western and developing nations. The first President of BIS was Rockefeller banker Gates McGarrah—an official at Chase Manhattan and the Federal Reserve. McGarrah was the grandfather of former CIA director Richard Helms.

BIS is owned by the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Italy, Bank of Canada, Swiss National Bank, Nederlandsche Bank, Bundesbank, and Bank of France. It is no coincidence that BIS is headquartered in Switzerland, a favorite hiding place for the wealth of the global aristocracy.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion 1903

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion is a text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.

The Protocols purports to document the minutes of a late-19th-century meeting attended by world Jewish leaders, the “Elders of Zion,” who are conspiring to take over the world. It places in the mouths of the Jewish leaders a variety of plans. For example, the Protocols includes plans to subvert the morals of the non-Jewish world, plans for Jewish bankers to control the world’s economies, plans for Jewish control of the press, and – ultimately – plans for the destruction of civilization.

1. The Basic Doctrine: “Right Lies in Might”
2. Economic War and Disorganization Lead to International Government
3. Methods of Conquest
4. The Destruction of Religion by Materialism
5. Despotism and Modern Progress
6. The Acquisition of Land, The Encouragement of Speculation
7. A Prophecy of Worldwide War
8. The Transitional Government
9. The All-Embracing Propaganda
10. Rise of the Autocracy
11. The Constitution of Autocracy and Universal Rule
12. The Kingdom of the Press and Control
13. Turning Public Thought from Essentials to Non-essentials
14. The Destruction of Religion as a Prelude to the Rise of the Jewish God
15. Utilization of Masonry: Heartless Suppression of Enemies
16. The Nullification of Education
17. The Fate of Lawyers and the Clergy
18. The Organization of Disorder
19. Mutual Understanding Between Ruler and People
20. The Financial Program and Construction
21. Domestic Loans and Government Credit
22. The Beneficence of Jewish Rule
23. The Inculcation of Obedience
24. The Jewish Ruler

Henry Ford 1908

A compendium of short biographies of famous Freemasons, published by a Freemason lodge, lists Ford as a member. The Grand Lodge of New York confirms that Ford was a Freemason and was raised in Palestine Lodge No. 357, Detroit, in 1894. When he received the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite in 1940, he said, “Masonry is the best balance wheel the United States has.” In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), society is organized on “Fordist” lines, the years are dated A.F. or Anno Ford (“In the Year of our Ford”), and the expression “My Ford” is used instead of “My Lord.” The Christian cross is replaced with a capital “T” for Model-T.

Federal Bureau of Investigation 1908

The Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. Despite its domestic focus, the FBI also maintains a significant international footprint, operating 60 Legal Attaché (LEGAT) offices and 15 sub-offices in U.S. embassies and consulates across the globe. The FBI can and does at times carry out secret activities overseas; these activities generally require coordination across government agencies.

COINTELPRO tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare, smearing individuals and/or groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media, harassment, wrongful imprisonment, and illegal violence, including assassination. The FBI’s stated motivation was “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.”

Kybalion 1908

The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece is a book originally published in 1908 by “Three Initiates” that purports to convey the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. A central concept in the book is that there are seven Hermetic principles, upon which the entire Hermetic philosophy is based. These are, as literally quoted from the book:

“The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”

“As above, so below; as below, so above.” This principle embodies the truth that there is always a correspondence between the laws and phenomena of the various planes of being and life.

“Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”

“Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”

“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.”

“Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to law; chance is but a name for law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the law.”

“Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes.”

MI6 1909

The Secret Intelligence Service ( SIS ), commonly known as MI6, is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence in support of the UK’s national security.

MI6 assisted the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, with “the exchange of information about communism” as late as October 1937, well into the Nazi era; the head of the British agency’s Berlin station, Frank Foley, was still able to describe his relationship with the Gestapo’s communism expert as “cordial.”

Titanic 1912

In 1898 a man named Morgan Robertson penned a book titled “Wreck of the Titan” about a luxury liner deemed unsinkable that was going too fast in the North Atlantic in April and hit an iceberg, killing most everyone on board due to lack of lifeboats.

JP Morgan, a Jesuit, funded and built the Titanic. JP Morgan was booked on the voyage but canceled at the last second. Some of the wealthiest men in the world were on that ship and some were opposed to the Federal Reserve and central banks.

Since the early 1830s, America did not have a central bank. The Jesuits desperately wanted another central bank in America so that they would have a bottomless reservoir from which to draw money for their many wars and other hideous schemes around the world.

In 1910, seven men met on Jekyll Island just off the coast of Georgia to plan the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve did have some opposition. Three of the richest and most important of the opponents were Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Straus, the head of Macy’s Department Stores, and John Jacob Astor, probably the wealthiest man in the world.

Their total wealth, at that time, using dollar values of their day was more than 500 million dollars. Today that amount of money would be worth nearly eleven billion dollars.

These three men were coaxed and encouraged to board the floating palace. They had to be destroyed because the Jesuits knew these men would use their wealth and influence to oppose a Federal Reserve Bank as well as the various wars that were being planned.

Federal Reserve 1913

The Federal Reserve System (also known as the Federal Reserve or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of financial panics led to the desire for central control of the monetary system in order to alleviate financial crises. Over the years, events such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and the Great Recession during the 2000s have led to the expansion of the roles and responsibilities of the Federal Reserve System. Other purposes are stated in the Federal Reserve Act, such as “to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes.”

Anti-Defamation League 1913

The Anti-Defamation League ( ADL ), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, is an international Jewish organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. ADL headquarters are located in New York City. The ADL has 25 regional offices in the United States including a Government Relations Office in Washington, DC, as well as an office in Israel and staff in Europe. Its total operating revenue is reported at $80.9 million.

During the 1930s, ADL, along with the American Jewish Committee, coordinated American Jewish groups across the country in monitoring the activities of the German-American Bund and its pro-Nazi, nativist allies in the United States. In many instances, these community-based defense organizations paid informants to infiltrate these groups and report on what they discovered. The longest-lived and most effective of these American Jewish resistance organizations was the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee (LAJCC), which was backed financially by the Jewish leaders of the motion picture industry.

World War 1 1914

One of the deadliest conflicts in history, an estimated 9 million people were killed in combat, while over 5 million civilians died from military occupation, bombardment, hunger, and disease. Millions of additional deaths resulted from genocides within the Ottoman Empire and the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.

For years afterwards, people mourned the dead, the missing, and the many disabled. Many soldiers returned with severe trauma, suffering from shell shock (also called neurasthenia, a condition related to post-traumatic stress disorder).

October Revolution 1917

The October Revolution marks the inception of the first communist government in Russia, and thus the first large-scale and constitutionally ordained socialist state in world history. After this, the Russian Republic became the Russian SFSR, which later became part of the Soviet Union.

The October Revolution also made the ideology of communism influential on a global scale in the 20th century. Communist parties would start to form in many countries after 1917.

• All private property was nationalized by the government.
• All Russian banks were nationalized.
• Private bank accounts were expropriated.
• The properties of the Russian Orthodox Church (including bank accounts) were expropriated.
• All foreign debts were repudiated.
• Control of the factories was given to the soviets.
• Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.

Spanish Flu 1918

The 1918 influenza pandemic, also known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it the second deadliest pandemic in human history after the Black Death bubonic plague of 1346–1353.

The virus helped tip the balance of power in the latter days of the war towards the Allied cause. Data suggests that the viral waves hit the Central Powers before the Allied powers and that both morbidity and mortality in Germany and Austria were considerably higher than in Britain and France.

Many researchers have suggested that the conditions of the war significantly aided the spread of the disease. Others have argued that the course of the war (and subsequent peace treaty) was influenced by the pandemic.

Treaty of Versailles 1919

The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919. The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was a compromise that left no one satisfied. In particular, Germany was neither pacified nor reconciled, nor was it permanently weakened. The problems that arose from the treaty would lead to the Locarno Treaties, which improved relations between Germany and the other European powers. The treaty has sometimes been cited as a cause of World War II; although its actual impact was not as severe as feared, its terms led to great resentment in Germany which powered the rise of the Nazi Party.

The Treaty created much resentment in Germany, which was exploited by Adolf Hitler in his rise to power at the helm of Nazi Germany. Central to this was belief in the stab-in-the-back myth, which held that the German army had not lost the war and had been betrayed by the Weimar Republic, who negotiated an unnecessary surrender.

Anti-Jewish sentiment was intensified by the Bavarian Soviet Republic (6 April - 3 May 1919), a communist government which ruled the city of Munich before being crushed by the Freikorps. Many of the Bavarian Soviet Republic’s leaders were Jewish.

League of Nations 1920

The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organization. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organization ceased operations on 20 April 1946, but many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations.

The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of the Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. In 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.

The origins of the League as an organization created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a “League of Victors.”

Council on Foreign Relations 1921

The Council on Foreign Relations ( CFR ) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Its membership, which numbers 5,103, has included senior politicians, numerous secretaries of state, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, and senior media figures.

CFR meetings convene government officials, global business leaders, and prominent members of the intelligence and foreign-policy community to discuss international issues. In the 1930s, the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation began contributing large amounts of money to the Council.

Benito Mussolini 1922

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 1943, and “Duce” of Italian Fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919 until his execution in 1945 by Italian partisans. As dictator of Italy and principal founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired and supported the international spread of fascist movements during the inter-war period. Mussolini was originally a socialist politician and a journalist at the Avanti! newspaper. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but he was expelled from the PSI for advocating military intervention in World War I, in opposition to the party’s stance on neutrality. Within five years, Mussolini had established dictatorial authority by both legal and illegal means and aspired to create a totalitarian state. In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty with the Holy See to establish Vatican City. He valued Nietzsche’s concept of the superman, “The supreme egoist who defied both God and the masses, who despised egalitarianism and democracy, who believed in the weakest going to the wall and pushing them if they did not go fast enough.” On several occasions, Mussolini spoke positively about Jews and the Zionist movement. In 1934, Mussolini supported the establishment of the Betar Naval Academy in Civitavecchia to train Zionist cadets under the direction of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, arguing that a Jewish state would be in Italy’s interest.

Walt Disney 1923

A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. Disney moved to Hollywood in July 1923 at 21 years old. Disney has been accused of anti-Semitism for having given Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl a tour of his studio a month after Kristallnacht. Disney has also been accused of other forms of racism because some of his productions released between the 1930s and 1950s contain racially insensitive material. The feature film Song of the South was criticized by contemporary film critics for its perpetuation of black stereotypes. Watts argues that many of Disney’s post-World War II films legislated a kind of cultural Marshall Plan. They nourished a genial cultural imperialism that magically overran the rest of the globe.

Manly P. Hall 1928

Manly Palmer Hall was a Canadian author, lecturer, astrologer and mystic. Over his 70 year career, he gave thousands of lectures, including two at Carnegie Hall, and published over 150 volumes, of which the best known is The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928). In 1942, Hall spoke to a record-setting audience at Carnegie Hall, on “The Secret Destiny of America,” which later became a book of the same title. Through a series of stories, his book alleged that a secret order of philosophers created the idea of America as a country based on religious freedom and self-governance. In one of the stories that Hall cites as evidence of America’s exceptionalism, he claims that an angel was present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, inspiring them with God’s words. Hall returned in 1945 for another well-attended lecture at Carnegie Hall, titled: “Plato’s Prophecy of Worldwide Democracy.” Hall was a Knight Patron of the Masonic Research Group of San Francisco, with which he was associated for a number of years prior to his Masonic affiliations. On 28 June 1954, Hall initiated as a Freemason into Jewel Lodge No. 374, San Francisco (now the United Lodge); passed 20 September 1954; and raised 22 November 1954. He took the Scottish Rite Degrees a year later. He later received his 32° in the Valley of San Francisco AASR (SJ). On 8 December 1973 (47 years after writing The Secret Teachings of All Ages), Hall was recognized as a 33° Mason (the highest honor conferred by the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite) at a ceremony held at the Philosophical Research Society (PRS).

Wall Street Crash of 1929

It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. There is consensus that the Federal Reserve System should have cut short the process of monetary deflation and banking collapse. If the Fed had done that, the economic downturn would have been far less severe and much shorter. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 until 2014, who, in a speech honoring Friedman and Schwartz, said: “Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. (…) We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”

Lateran Treaty 1929

A political treaty recognizing the full sovereignty of the Holy See in the State of Vatican City, which was thereby established, accompanied by four annexes:

1. A map of the territory of Vatican City State
2. Maps of buildings with extraterritorial privilege and exemption from expropriation and taxes (owned by the Holy See but located in Italy and not forming part of Vatican City)
3. Maps of buildings with exemption from expropriation and taxes (but without extraterritorial privilege)
4. A financial convention agreed on as a definitive settlement of the claims of the Holy See following the loss in 1870 of its territories and property.

Negotiations for the settlement of the Roman Question began in 1926 between the government of Italy and the Holy See, and culminated in the agreements of the Lateran Pacts, signed for King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and for Pope Pius XI by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri, on 11 February 1929.

Bank for International Settlements 1930

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an international financial institution owned by central banks that fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks. The BIS carries out its work through its meetings, programmes and through the Basel Process. The BIS was originally intended to facilitate reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, and to act as the trustee for the German Government International Loan. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the BIS Board of Directors – on which the main European central banks were represented – decided that the Bank should remain open, but that, for the duration of hostilities, no meetings of the Board of Directors were to take place and that the Bank should maintain a neutral stance in the conduct of its business. However, as the war dragged on evidence mounted that the BIS conducted operations that were helpful to the Germans. Operations conducted by the BIS were viewed with increasing suspicion from London and Washington. The fact that top-level German industrialists and advisors sat on the BIS board seemed to provide ample evidence of how the BIS might be used by Hitler throughout the war, with the help of American, British and French banks. In the 1990s–2000s, the BIS successfully globalized, breaking out of its traditional European core.

Irgun 1931

Irgun was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. The organization is also referred to as Etzel, an acronym of the Hebrew initials, or by the abbreviation IZL. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. Irgun members were absorbed into the Israel Defense Forces at the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. The Irgun policy was based on what was then called Revisionist Zionism founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky. According to Howard Sachar, “The policy of the new organization was based squarely on Jabotinsky’s teachings: every Jew had the right to enter Palestine; only active retaliation would deter the Arabs; only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state.” Haaretz columnist and Israeli historian Tom Segev wrote of the Irgun: “In the second half of 1940, a few members of the Irgun Zv’i Leumi (National Military Organization) – the anti-British terrorist group sponsored by the Revisionists and known by its acronym Etzel, and to the British simply as the Irgun – made contact with representatives of Fascist Italy, offering to cooperate against the British.” By controlling the police, a small, unscrupulous group of determined people can impose its will on a peaceful and inarticulate majority; it is done by threats, intimidation, by violence and if need be bloodshed.

Holodomor 1932

It was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor famine was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country. Some historians conclude that the famine was planned and exacerbated by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. Others suggest that the famine arose because of rapid Soviet industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was “not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you.” The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow men died. Parents who resisted cannibalism died before their children did.

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Prescott Bush 1933

In 1913, he enrolled at Yale College. Three subsequent generations of the Bush family have been Yale alumni. Prescott Bush was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity and Skull and Bones secret society. George H. W. Bush was also a member of the society, as is his son, George W. Bush. George H. W. Bush and George Bush were, however, not members of Zeta Psi, and were members, instead, of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Bush was a founder and one of seven directors of the Union Banking Corporation, an investment bank that operated as a clearing house for many assets and enterprises held by German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen, an early supporter and financier of the Nazi Party. In July 1942, the bank was suspected of holding gold on behalf of Nazi leaders. Journalist Duncan Campbell pointed out documents showing that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen. Bush was the director of the Union Banking Corporation that “represented Thyssen’s US interests,” continuing to work for the bank after America’s entry into World War II. Prescott Bush was politically active on social issues. He was involved with the American Birth Control League as early as 1942, and served as the treasurer of the first nationwide campaign of Planned Parenthood in 1947. According to Theodore H. White’s book about the 1964 presidential election, Bush and Rockefeller were longtime friends. Bush favored a Nixon-Rockefeller ticket for 1960, and was presumed to support Rockefeller’s 1964 presidential candidacy until the latter’s remarriage in 1963.

Judeo-declarations of War on Germany 1933

“The appearance of the Swastika symbol of a new Germany has called forth the Lion of Judah, the old battle symbol of Jewish defiance. Fourteen million Jews, dispersed throughout the world, have banded together as one man to declare war on the German persecutors of their co-religionists. Sectional differences and antagonisms have been submerged in one common aim—to stand by the 600,000 Jews of Germany who are terrorized by Hitlerite anti-Semitism and to compel Fascist Germany to end its campaign of violence and suppression directed against its Jewish minority. The Jewish merchant prince is leaving his counting-house, the banker his board-room, the shopkeeper his store, and the peddler his humble barrow, to join together in what has become a holy war to combat the Hitlerite enemies of the Jew. Plans for concerted Jewish action are being matured in Europe and America to strike back in reprisal at Hitlerite Germany. In London, New York, Paris, and Warsaw Jewish merchants are uniting for a commercial crusade. Resolutions are being taken throughout the Jewish business world to sever trade relations with Germany. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, representing the entire Jewish community of Great Britain, are meeting in special session on Sunday to discuss the German situation, and to decide on what action should be taken to counteract the attacks on their German fellow-Jews. Worldwide preparations are being made to organize demonstrations of protest. A petition was handed in at the British Consulate-General requesting that Palestine should receive Jewish refugees from Germany without restriction. Members of the American House of Representatives are introducing resolutions protesting against the anti-Jewish excesses in Germany. The American trade unions, representing 3,000,000 workers, have also decided to join in the protests. A rabbinical decree in New York has made next Monday a day of fasting and prayer over the Hitler campaign. Fasting will begin on Sunday at sunset and finish at sunset on Monday. All Jewish shops in New York will be closed on Monday during a parade. Apart from a monster meeting in Madison Square Garden, meetings are to be held in 300 American cities. Madison Square Garden will see the remarkable sight of Bishop Manning speaking from a Jewish platform appealing for an end of the Hitler terror. The old and reunited people of Israel are rising with new and modern weapons to fight their age-old battle with their persecutors.”

Federal Act on Banks and Savings Banks 1934

Switzerland has had a long, kindred history with banking, more specifically with banking secrecy, since the early 1700s. While banking secrecy has been deeply ingrained in Swiss society and civil law, the Federal Act formally designated a federal criminal offense codifying banking secrecy into law. Despite significant and controversial global events straining the country’s banking secrecy, its laws have been revised minimally and to little meaningful effect. The Federal Act, alongside more generally Swiss culture and the banking industry, has been accused of facilitating systemic tax evasion, money laundering, and the underground economy.

Dollar Bill 1935

An image of the first U.S. president (1789–1797), George Washington, based on the Athenæum Portrait, a 1796 painting by Gilbert Stuart (Jacobite), is currently featured on the obverse, and the Great Seal of the United States is featured on the reverse. The inclusion of the motto, “In God We Trust,” on all currency was required by law in 1955, and first appeared on paper money in 1957. The reverse of the one-dollar bill has an ornate design that incorporates both sides of the Great Seal of the United States to the left and right of the word ONE. The reverse of the seal on the left features a barren landscape dominated by an unfinished pyramid of 13 steps, topped by the Eye of Providence within a triangle. At the base of the pyramid are engraved the Roman numerals MDCCLXXVI (1776), the date of American independence from Britain. At the top of the seal stands a Latin phrase, “ANNUIT COEPTIS,” meaning “He favors our undertaking.” At the bottom of the seal is a semicircular banner proclaiming “NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM,” meaning “New Order of the Ages.”

Hoover Dam 1936

Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True’s design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist. With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals—lizards, serpents, birds—and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. Surrounding the base of the monument is a terrazzo floor embedded with a star map. The map depicts the Northern Hemisphere sky at the moment of President Roosevelt’s dedication of the dam. This is intended to help future astronomers, if necessary, calculate the exact date of dedication. The 30-foot-high (9.1 m) bronze figures, dubbed “Winged Figures of the Republic,” were both formed in a continuous pour. To put such large bronzes into place without marring the highly polished bronze surface, they were placed on ice and guided into position as the ice melted.

World War II 1939

World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the globe. The United Nations (UN) was established to foster international cooperation with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—becoming the permanent members of its Security Council. Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sphere, which led to the establishment of Communist-led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Albania became Soviet satellite states. The post-war division of the world was formalized by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan and administered Japan’s former islands in the Western Pacific. Korea, formerly under Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the Soviet Union in the North and the United States in the South between 1945 and 1948. In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war in June 1946. Communist forces were victorious and established the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949. In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the escalation of the Arab–Israeli conflict. At the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, the Allied nations drew up an economic framework for the post-war world. The agreement created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians. Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation.

The Pentagon 1941

The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense. It was built by contractor John McShain, aka “The Man Who Built Washington.” A devout Roman Catholic, John McShain was a major benefactor to Wheeling Jesuit University. He’s buried in Philadelphia and commemorated with medallions at the Cathedral-Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul.

OSS 1942

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning. The OSS was dissolved a month after the end of the war. Intelligence tasks were shortly later resumed and carried over by its successors the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), and the independent Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). For the duration of World War II, the Office of Strategic Services was conducting multiple activities and missions, including collecting intelligence by spying, performing acts of sabotage, waging propaganda war, organizing and coordinating anti-Nazi resistance groups in Europe, and providing military training for anti-Japanese guerrilla movements in Asia, among other things. The OSS was responsible for training German and Austrian individuals for missions inside Germany. Some of these agents included exiled communists and Socialist party members, labor activists, anti-Nazi prisoners-of-war, and German and Jewish refugees.

Bretton Woods Conference 1944

The conference was held from July 1 to 22, 1944. Agreements were signed that, after legislative ratification by member governments, established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, later part of the World Bank group) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This led to what was called the Bretton Woods system for international commercial and financial relations. The Versailles treaty left Germany on its own to pay for the reparations of World War I. Paying for the reparations of World War I left the German economy in ruins. Germany’s economic turmoil led to their financial collapse and eventually to the rise of Nazism and World War II, aligning with John Maynard Keynes’s concerns in The Economic Consequences of the Peace published in 1919. Thus, to prevent a new crisis in the post-war world, the world economies deemed it imperative to establish a system that fostered international economic cooperation. The Bretton Woods Conference had three main results: (1) Articles of Agreement to create the IMF, whose purpose was to promote stability of exchange rates and financial flows. (2) Articles of Agreement to create the IBRD, whose purpose was to speed reconstruction after the Second World War and to foster economic development, especially through lending to build infrastructure. (3) Other recommendations for international economic cooperation. The Final Act of the conference incorporated these agreements and recommendations.

United Nations 1945

The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization. It is the world’s largest and most familiar international organization. The UN was established after World War II, succeeding the rather ineffective League of Nations. The new international organization was formulated and negotiated among the delegations from the Allied Big Four at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference from 21 September to 7 October 1944. They agreed on proposals for the aims, structure and functioning of the new international organization.

IMF 1945

It came into formal existence in 1945 with 29 member countries and the goal of reconstructing the international monetary system. Countries contribute funds to a pool through a quota system from which countries experiencing balance of payments problems can borrow money. As of 2016, the fund had XDR 477 billion (about US$667 billion). Through the fund and other activities such as the gathering of statistics and analysis, surveillance of its members’ economies, and the demand for particular policies, the IMF works with the economies of its member countries. Globalization encompasses three institutions: global financial markets and transnational companies, national governments linked to each other in economic and military alliances led by the United States, and rising global governments such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), IMF, and World Bank. These interacting institutions create a new global power system where sovereignty is globalized, taking power and constitutional authority away from nations and giving it to global markets and international bodies. The development of the World Bank, the IMF, regional development banks such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and multilateral trade institutions such as the WTO signals a move away from the dominance of the state as the primary actor analyzed in international affairs. Globalization has thus been transformative in terms of limiting state sovereignty over the economy.

Maria Orsic 1945

Maria was an active participant in the German nationalist movement in Austria, which was active at that time and aimed at uniting Austria with the German Reich. In Munich, Maria came into contact with the Thule group, and soon she, together with another girl, Trute A. from Munich and several of her friends, created their inner circle “Alldeutsche Gesellschaft für Metaphysik” (the official name of the “Vril Society”). According to the disseminated information, Mary and her group managed to come into contact with representatives of extraterrestrial intelligence from the Taurus constellation of the star Aldebaran, which is 68 light-years away from us. According to the transcripts of the messages received through the girls – mediums, it was the Aldebarans who founded the Sumerian civilization. The language in which the messages were recorded strikingly resembles the Sumerian tablets, as well as the runic letters of the Germans and ancient Slavs. One of the leading doctrines of the Vril was the concept of the “Black Sun” – the divine light of infinite power, invisible to the human eye; this theory is closest to the modern understanding of antimatter. The 4th SS technical department (Entwicklungsstelle 4) under the leadership of Reichsführer Himmler, who himself was an adherent of the occult, was engaged in the creation of a man-made generator of Black Sun energy. In 1919, Maria became a member of the mystical organization Thule, to which Adolf Hitler, Himmler and other leaders of the Third Reich belonged. Maria Orsic disappeared with her fiancé and her entire group in 1945. On March 11, 1945, a letter was sent to all members of the Thule society, which was written by Maria Orsic and ended with the words “niemand bleibt hier” (“no one stayed here”). This was the last testimony about her group and since then no one has heard of Maria or the rest of her circle.

Tavistock Institute 1946

The Tavistock Institute engages in educational, research, consultancy, project evaluation and professional development work in the social sciences and applied psychology. The Rockefeller Foundation awarded a significant grant that facilitated the creation of the Institute. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Institute carried out a number of signature projects in collaboration with major manufacturing companies including Unilever, the Ahmedabad Manufacturing and Calico Printing Co., Shell, Bayer, and Glacier Metals. They also conducted work for the National Coal Board. Many of the members of the Tavistock Institute went on to play major roles in psychology. John Rawlings Rees became first president of the World Federation for Mental Health. Jock Sutherland became director of the new post-war Tavistock Clinic, when it was incorporated into the newly established British National Health Service in 1946. Ronald Hargreaves became deputy director of the World Health Organization. One of the most influential figures to emerge from the Institute was the psychoanalyst Isabel Menzies Lyth. Her seminal paper ‘A case study in the functioning of social systems as a defence against anxiety’ (1959) inspired a whole branch of organizational theory emphasizing unconscious forces that shape organizational life. In the UK, the Group Relations Conferences run by Tavistock at the University of Leicester since 1957, are still running to this day and “organizations can send their managers to learn more effectively to manage the unconsciouses of their workers and to make themselves more effective leaders.”

Majestic 12 1947

Majestic 12, also known as MJ-12 for short, is an organization that is claimed to be the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft. The concept originated in a series of supposedly leaked secret government documents. On May 31, 1987, it was widely reported that British author Timothy Good claimed to be in possession of 1950s-era UFO documents. The documents purported to reveal a secret committee of 12, authorized by United States President Harry S. Truman in 1952, and explain how the crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell in July 1947 had been concealed, how the recovered alien technology could be exploited, and how the United States should engage with extraterrestrial life in the future.

Roswell Incident 1947

The Roswell incident is the 1947 recovery of debris from a ranch near Corona, New Mexico by United States Army Air Forces officers from Roswell Army Air Field, the debris involved a flying saucer. “The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County. The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.”

Cold War 1947

The Cold War emerged in Europe a few years after the successful US–USSR–UK coalition won World War II in Europe, and extended to 1989–91. Historians emphasize the decisive break between the US–UK and the USSR came in 1947–48 over such issues as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Blockade, followed by the formation of NATO in 1949. The United States joined Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands in 1949 to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United States’ first “entangling” European alliance in 170 years. West Germany, Spain, Greece, and Turkey would later join this alliance. The Eastern leaders retaliated against these steps by integrating the economies of their nations in Comecon, their version of the Marshall Plan; exploding the first Soviet atomic device in 1949; signing an alliance with the People’s Republic of China in February 1950; and forming the Warsaw Pact, Eastern Europe’s counterpart to NATO, in 1955. The Soviet Union, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland founded this military alliance.

Operation Highjump 1947

Operation HIGHJUMP, officially titled The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program, 1946–1947 (also called Task Force 68), was a United States Navy operation to establish the Antarctic research base Little America IV. The operation was organized by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd. HIGHJUMP’s objectives, according to the U.S. Navy report of the operation, were:

• Training personnel and testing equipment in frigid conditions;
• Consolidating and extending the United States’ sovereignty over the largest practicable area of the Antarctic continent;
• Determining the feasibility of establishing, maintaining, and utilizing bases in the Antarctic and investigating possible base sites;
• Developing techniques for establishing, maintaining, and utilizing air bases on ice, with particular attention to later applicability of such techniques to operations in interior Greenland, where conditions are comparable to those in the Antarctic;
• Amplifying existing stores of knowledge of electromagnetic, geological, geographic, hydrographic, and meteorological propagation conditions in the area;

The task force came back with their data which then became classified “top secret.” Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal retired and started to “talk.” He was put in Bethesda Naval Hospital psychiatric ward where he was prevented from seeing or talking to anyone, including his wife. He was telling people about the underground Aryan base.

CIA 1947

It is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. The agency has been the subject of many controversies, including human rights violations, domestic wiretapping and propaganda, and allegations of drug trafficking.

In 1969, at the height of the antiwar movement in the US, CIA Director Helms received a message from Henry Kissinger ordering him to spy on the leaders of the groups requesting a moratorium on Vietnam. “Since 1962, three successive presidents had ordered the director of central intelligence to spy on Americans.”

The CIA has been called into question for, at times, using torture, funding and training of groups and organizations that would later participate in the killing of civilians and other non-combatants and would try or succeed in overthrowing democratically elected governments, human experimentation, and targeted killings and assassinations.

In the decades after World War II, the CIA and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America. The CIA’s central concern [in recruiting former Nazi collaborators] was not so much the extent of the criminal’s guilt as the likelihood that the agent’s criminal past could remain a secret.

In March 2017, WikiLeaks published more than 8,000 documents on the CIA. The confidential documents, codenamed Vault 7, dated from 2013–2016, included details on the CIA’s software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs, and web browsers, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Opera, as well as the operating systems of most smartphones including Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, and other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.

World Health Organization 1948

When the League of Nations was formed in 1920, they established the Health Organization of the League of Nations. After World War II, the United Nations absorbed all the other health organizations to form the WHO. The WHO is financed by contributions from member states and outside donors. As of 2020, the biggest contributor is the United States, which gives over $400 million annually. U.S. contributions to the WHO are funded through the U.S. State Department’s account for Contributions to International Organizations (CIO). In 2018, the largest contributors ($150+ each) were the United States, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, United Kingdom, Germany, and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance. Partners include the Rockefeller Foundation.

RAND Corporation 1948

The RAND Corporation (“research and development”) is a global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed by the U.S. government and private corporations, universities, and private individuals. The company has grown to assist other governments, international organizations, private companies, and foundations with a host of defense and non-defense issues.

The achievements of RAND stem from its development of systems analysis. Important contributions are claimed in space systems and the United States’ space program, in computing and in artificial intelligence. RAND researchers developed many of the principles that were used to build the Internet. RAND also contributed to the development and use of wargaming.

Arab Israeli War 1948

The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had been issued earlier that day, and a military coalition of Arab states entered the territory of British Palestine in the morning of 15 May. There had been tension and conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, and between each of them and the British forces since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine.

As a result of the war, the State of Israel controlled the area that the UN had proposed for the Jewish state, as well as almost 60% of the area proposed for the Arab state, including the Jaffa, Lydda, and Ramle areas, Galilee, some parts of the Negev, a wide strip along the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road, and some territories in the West Bank. Israel also took control of West Jerusalem, which was meant to be part of an international zone for Jerusalem and its environs. Around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes in the area that became Israel, and they became Palestinian refugees in what they refer to as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”). In the three years following the war, about 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel. Around 260,000 Jews moved to Israel from the Arab world during and immediately after the war.

NATO 1949

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European states, the United States, and Canada. Established in the aftermath of World War II on the insistence of the Truman administration in the United States, the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed on 4 April 1949.

On 4 March 1947, the Treaty of Dunkirk was signed by France and the United Kingdom as a Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance in the event of a possible attack by Germany or the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II. In 1948, this alliance was expanded to include the Benelux countries, in the form of the Western Union, also referred to as the Brussels Treaty Organization (BTO), established by the Treaty of Brussels. Talks for a new military alliance, which could also include North America, largely on the insistence of the United States pursuant to the Truman Doctrine, resulted in the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949 by the member states of the Western Union plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.

George Orwell 1949

His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was an Anglican clergyman, and Orwell’s father was Richard Walmersley Blair, who worked as a Sub-Deputy Opium Agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service, overseeing the production and storage of opium for sale to China. He had two Anglican marriages and left instructions for an Anglican funeral. Orwell was also extremely well-read in Biblical literature and could quote lengthy passages from the Book of Common Prayer from memory. His work Nineteen Eighty-Four expands upon the subjects summarised in Orwell’s essay “Notes on Nationalism” about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognised phenomenon behind certain political forces. One of the most notable themes in Nineteen Eighty-Four is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs and public archives are manipulated to rid them of “unpersons” (people who have been erased from history by the Party). In Oceania, the upper and middle classes have very little true privacy. All of their houses and apartments are equipped with telescreens so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones. Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies.

Television 1950

Television became available in crude experimental forms in the late 1920s, but it would still be several years before the new technology would be marketed to consumers. After World War II, an improved form of black-and-white television broadcasting became popular in the United Kingdom and United States, and television sets became commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions. During the 1950s, television was the primary medium for influencing public opinion. In 2013, 79% of the world’s households owned a television set. Around the world, broadcast television is financed by government, advertising, licensing, subscription, or any combination of these. Television’s broad reach makes it a powerful and attractive medium for advertisers. Many television networks and stations sell blocks of broadcast time to advertisers (“sponsors”) to fund their programming. In many countries, including the United States, television campaign advertisements are considered indispensable for a political campaign. Television commercials have become one of the most effective, persuasive, and popular methods of selling products of many sorts, especially consumer goods. Some drug companies and other businesses have even created “news” items for broadcast paying program directors to use them. Current research is discovering that individuals suffering from social isolation employ television to create what is termed a parasocial or flux relationship with characters from their favorite television shows and movies as a way of deflecting feelings of loneliness and social deprivation. A 2017 study in The Journal of Human Resources found that exposure to cable television reduced cognitive ability and high school graduation rates for boys. This effect was stronger for boys from more educated families. The article suggests a mechanism where television entertainment crowds out more cognitively stimulating activities.

Project Blue Book 1952

Project Blue Book was the code name for the systematic study of unidentified flying objects by the United States Air Force from March 1952 to its termination on December 17, 1969. By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports. 701 reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted.

Washington UFO Incident 1952

The 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, also known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C. The sightings of July 26–27 also made front-page headlines, and led President Harry Truman to have his air force aide call Ruppelt and ask for an explanation of the sightings and unknown radar returns. The CIA would react to the 1952 wave of UFO reports by forming a special study group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) to review the situation. The CIA’s concern with the issue would lead to the creation, in January 1953, of the Robertson Panel.

Allen Dulles 1952

He was the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), and its longest-serving director to date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program, the Project MKUltra mind control program, and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was fired by John F. Kennedy over the latter fiasco. Dulles was one of the members of the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Dulles was born on April 7, 1893, in Watertown, New York, one of five children of Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles. Dulles was uncle to Catholic convert Avery Dulles, a Jesuit priest and cardinal of the Catholic Church, who taught theology at Fordham University from 1988 to 2008.

NSA 1952

The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The NSA currently conducts worldwide mass data collection and has been known to physically bug electronic systems as one method to this end. Collection tactics allegedly encompass close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, and breaking and entering. The NSA’s actions have been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on anti–Vietnam War leaders and the agency’s participation in economic espionage. In 2013, the NSA had many of its secret surveillance programs revealed to the public by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed the NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people’s movements using cellphones’ metadata.

The heraldic insignia of the NSA consists of an eagle inside a circle, grasping a key in its talons. The eagle is taken from the Great Seal of the United States and represents Congress. The key is taken from the emblem of Saint Peter and represents security.

Jack Parsons 1952

John Whiteside Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons) was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. Following some brief involvement with Marxism in 1939, Parsons converted to Thelema, the new religious movement founded by the English occultist Aleister Crowley. Together with his first wife, Helen Northrup, Parsons joined the Agape Lodge, the Californian branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). Parsons conducted the Babylon Working, a series of rituals intended to invoke the Thelemic goddess Babylon on Earth. He and Hubbard continued the working with Marjorie Cameron. He held various jobs while acting as a consultant for Israel’s rocket program.

Historians have come to recognize Parsons’s contributions to rocket engineering. For these innovations, his advocacy of space exploration and human spaceflight, and his role in founding JPL and Aerojet, Parsons is regarded as among the most important figures in the history of the U.S. space program. Parsons adhered to the occult philosophy of Thelema, which had been founded in 1904 by the English occultist Aleister Crowley following a spiritual revelation that he had in Cairo, Egypt, when—according to Crowley’s accounts—a spirit being known as Aiwass dictated to him a prophetic text known as The Book of the Law. During rocket tests, Parsons often recited Crowley’s poem “Hymn to Pan” as a good luck charm. He took to addressing Crowley as his “Most Beloved Father” and signed off to him as “thy son, John.”

From early on in his career, Parsons took an interest in socialism and communism, views that he shared with his friend Frank Malina. Under the influence of another friend, Sidney Weinbaum, the two joined a communist group in the late 1930s, with Parsons reading Marxist literature, but he remained unconvinced and refused to join the American Communist Party. To bring about a freer future, Parsons believed in liberalizing attitudes to sexual morality, stating that, in his belief, the publication of the Kinsey report and development of the psychonautical sciences had as significant an influence on Western society as the creation of the atomic bomb and the development of nuclear physics. He believed that in the future the restrictions on sexual morality within society should be abolished in order to bring about greater freedom and individuality. Parsons was also supportive of the creation of the State of Israel. He made plans to emigrate there when his military security clearance was revoked.

Iranian Coup d’État 1953

The 1953 Iranian coup d’état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d’état, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in favor of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953. It was orchestrated by the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project or Operation Ajax) and the United Kingdom (under the name Operation Boot). The clergy also played a considerable role. According to the CIA’s declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots on 19 August. Other men paid by the CIA were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks, and took over the streets of the city. Between 200 and 300 people were killed because of the conflict. In August 2013, the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out “under CIA direction” and “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.”

Bilderberg Meeting 1954

The Bilderberg meeting (also known as the Bilderberg Group) is an annual conference established in 1954 to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. The group’s agenda is now defined as bolstering a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe. Participants include political leaders, experts from industry, finance, academia, and the media. The first conference was held at the Bilderberg Hotel (Hotel de Bilderberg) in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, from 29 to 31 May 1954. The success of the meeting led the organizers to arrange an annual conference. A permanent steering committee was established with Retinger appointed as permanent secretary. As well as organizing the conference, the steering committee also maintained a register of attendee names and contact details with the aim of creating an informal network of individuals who could call upon one another in a private capacity. Concerns about lobbying have arisen. Ian Richardson sees Bilderberg as the transnational power elite, “an integral, and to some extent critical, part of the existing system of global governance,” that is “not acting in the interests of the whole.”

Ron Hubbard 1954

He was an American author of science fiction and fantasy stories, music producer, and composer who founded the Church of Scientology. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hubbard spent much of his time at sea on his personal fleet of ships as “Commodore” of the Sea Organization, an elite quasi-paramilitary group of Scientologists. In August 1945, Hubbard moved into the Pasadena mansion of John “Jack” Whiteside Parsons. A leading rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology and a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Parsons led a double life as an avid occultist and Thelemite, follower of the English ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley and leader of a lodge of Crowley’s magical order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). He let rooms in the house only to tenants who he specified should be “theists and those of a Bohemian disposition.” Hubbard, whom Parsons referred to in writing as “Frater H,” became an enthusiastic collaborator in the Pasadena OTO. The two men collaborated on the “Babylon Working,” a sex magic ritual intended to summon an incarnation of Babylon, the supreme Thelemite Goddess. It was undertaken over several nights in February and March 1946 in order to summon an “elemental” who would participate in further sex magic.

Operation Gladio 1956

Operation Gladio is the codename for clandestine stay-behind operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies. The operation was designed for a potential Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest of Europe. The U.S. State Department published a communiqué in January 2006 that stated claims the United States ordered, supported, or authorized terrorism by stay-behind units, and U.S.-sponsored false flag events.

COINTELPRO 1956

It is a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. In 1971 in San Diego, the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former members of the Minutemen anti-communist paramilitary organization, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts. Many of the tactics used in COINTELPRO are alleged to have seen continued use including: discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; illegal violence; and assassination. According to a Senate report, the FBI’s motivation was “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.” The intended effect of the FBI’s COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize” groups that the FBI officials believed were “subversive.”

Siri Thesis 1958

Its exponents claim that a prolonged emission of white smoke on the first day of balloting at the conclave indicated the election of Siri, but that threats applied from outside the conclave caused his election to be reversed, allowing Pope John XXIII to be elected two days later. The source of the threats has been identified variously as Freemasons and agents of the Soviet Union. Adherents of the Siri thesis say that the election of John XXIII was invalid. They regard him and his successors as imposters and antipopes. During this conclave, it was alleged that the threats of terrible retribution if Siri were elected were passed into the conclave by the B’nai B’rith, working on behalf of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. Siri’s refusal, he says, followed a conversation on the subject of Siri’s candidacy between a member of the conclave and somebody outside it, who was “an emissary of an internationally based organization.”

NASA 1958

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research. Since its establishment, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA. When it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA absorbed the 43-year-old NACA intact; its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of US$100 million, three major research laboratories, and two small test facilities. A significant contributor to NASA’s entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun. In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a contractor facility operated by the California Institute of Technology, founded by Jack Parsons.

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a member of the Nazi Party and SS, as well as the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States.

JASON Group 1960

JASON is an independent group of elite scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. Although most of its research is military-focused, JASON also produced early work on the science of global warming and acid rain. Current unclassified research interests include health informatics, cyberwarfare, and renewable energy. It is a reference to Jason, a character from Greek mythology. He was the great-grandson of the messenger god Hermes, through his mother’s side.

Weather Warfare Research 1960

Weather warfare is the use of weather modification techniques such as cloud seeding for military purposes. The United States used weather warfare in the Vietnam War. Operation Popeye saw the use of cloud seeding over the Ho Chi Minh trail, increasing rainfall by an estimated thirty percent during 1967 and 1968. A research paper produced for the United States Air Force written in 1996 speculates about the future use of nanotechnology to produce “artificial weather,” clouds of microscopic computer particles all communicating with each other to form an “intelligent fog” that could be used for various purposes.

Operation Popeye 1960

The former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, was aware that there might be objections raised by the international scientific community but said in a memo to the president that such objections had not in the past been a basis for prevention of military activities considered to be in the interests of U.S. national security. It was sponsored by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA. Operation Popeye’s goal was to increase rainfall in carefully selected areas to deny the Vietnamese enemy, namely military supply trucks, the use of roads by:

1. Softening road surfaces
2. Causing landslides along roadways
3. Washing out river crossings
4. Maintaining saturated soil conditions beyond the normal time span.

National Reconnaissance Office 1961

It is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. federal government, and provides satellite intelligence to several government agencies. A Washington Post article in September 1995 reported that the NRO had quietly hoarded between $1 billion and $1.7 billion in unspent funds without informing the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, or Congress.

Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961

It was a failed landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, covertly financed and directed by the U.S. government. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower allocated $13.1 million to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in March 1960, for use against Castro. With the aid of Cuban counter-revolutionaries, the CIA proceeded to organize an invasion operation. The invasion was a U.S. foreign policy failure. The final toll for Cuban armed forces during the conflict was 176 killed in action. This figure includes only the Cuban Army and it is estimated that about 2,000 militiamen were killed or wounded during the fighting.

Alberto River 1961

Alberto Migno River Romero (September 19, 1935 – June 20, 1997) was an anti-Catholic religious activist who was the source of many of the conspiracy theories about the Vatican. River claimed to have been a Jesuit before becoming a Fundamentalist Protestant. River said that the Jesuit order was responsible for the creation of communism, Islam and Nazism, and causing the World Wars, recession, the Jonestown Massacre, and the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. He further said, as have Protestant polemicists since Martin Luther’s On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, that the Popes are antichrists, and that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon. He has also said that the Jesuits were the masterminds behind the Medieval Inquisition in the 13th century. He alleges that Muhammad was manipulated by the Catholic Church to create Islam and destroy the Jews and other groups of Christians, and that Muhammad’s first wife was actually a Catholic nun in an Arabian monastery, who was told by a bishop to marry Muhammad and create Islam.

Dwight Eisenhower 1961

He was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, and achieved the five-star rank of General of the Army. He planned and supervised the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy from the Western Front in 1944–1945. After the war, he served as Army Chief of Staff (1945–1948), as president of Columbia University (1948–1953) and as the first Supreme Commander of NATO (1951–1952). In his farewell address to the nation, he expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers, which he dubbed “the military–industrial complex”. His mother, previously a member of the River Brethren sect of the Mennonites, joined the International Bible Students Association, later known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Eisenhower home served as the local meeting hall from 1896 to 1915. He was baptized in the Presbyterian Church in 1953.

Project Greek Island 1963

Project Greek Island was a United States government continuity program located at the Greenbrier hotel in West Virginia. The underground facility contained a dormitory, kitchen, hospital, and a broadcast center for members of Congress. The broadcast center had changeable seasonal backdrops to allow it to appear as if members of Congress were broadcasting from Washington, D.C. AT&T provided phone service for both The Greenbrier Hotel and the bunker. All calls placed from the bunker were routed through the hotel’s switchboard to make it appear as if they originated from the hotel. The communications center in the bunker today contains representatives of three generations of telephone technology that were used.

John F Kennedy 1963

On April 27th, 1961, JFK delivered a speech about “Secret Societies.” The speech was delivered at the American Newspaper Publishers Association in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and is the source of several JFK conspiracy theories. John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. At 11:21 a.m. November 24, 1963, as live television cameras were covering his transfer from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters (then in the Dallas Municipal Building) by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that up to 80 percent of Americans suspected that there was a plot or cover-up. Many conspiracy theories posit that the assassination involved people or organizations in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald. Most current theories put forth a criminal conspiracy involving parties as varied as the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Mafia, the KGB, or some combination of those entities.

Anton Lavey 1966

Anton Szandor Lavey (born Howard Stanton Levey; April 11, 1930 – October 29, 1997) was an American author, musician, and Satanist. He was the founder of the Church of Satan and the religion of Satanism. Lavey included references to other esoteric and religious groups throughout his writings, claiming for instance that the Yezidis and Knights Templar were carriers of a Satanic tradition that had been passed down to the twentieth century. He supported eugenics and believed that it would be a necessity in the future. Lavey was a friend of James Madole, leader of the National Renaissance Party. Due to Madole’s opposition to Christianity, he sought new religious ideas, and was attracted to an infusion of fascism and Satanism.

Freedom of Information Act 1967

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a federal freedom of information law that requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government upon request. The act was intended to make U.S. government agencies’ functions more transparent so that the American public could more easily identify problems in government functioning and put pressure on Congress, agency officials, and the president to address them. The FOIA has been changed repeatedly by both the legislative and executive branches. A major issue in released documentation is government redaction of certain passages deemed applicable to the Exemption section of the FOIA. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers in charge of responding to FOIA requests also heavily redacted the released records as to preclude needed research. This has also brought into question just how one can verify that they have been given complete records in response to a request.

Club of Rome 1968

The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy. It consists of one hundred full members selected from current and former heads of state and government, UN administrators, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe. It stimulated considerable public attention in 1972 with the first report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth. Since July 1, 2008, the organization has been based in Winterthur, Switzerland. According to its website, the Club of Rome is composed of scientists, economists, businessmen, international high civil servants, heads of state and former heads of state from all five continents.

Martin Luther King 1968

He was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Several times King would be jailed. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of the FBI’s COINTELPRO from 1963 forward. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. The FBI in 1964 mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and King. In 1979, their final report concluded that “After examining Ray’s behavior (alleged killer), his character and his racial attitudes… The committee found it could not concur with any of the accepted explanations for Ray as a lone assassin,” the “predominant motive lay in an expectation of monetary gain” and that “The committee concluded that there was a likelihood of conspiracy in the assassination of Dr. King.”

2001 A Space Odyssey 1968

The film is noted for its scientifically accurate depiction of space flight, pioneering special effects, and ambiguous imagery. The film received diverse critical responses, ranging from those who saw it as darkly apocalyptic to those who saw it as an optimistic reprisal of the hopes of humanity. Critics noted its exploration of themes such as existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The novel explicitly identifies the monolith as a tool created by an alien race that has been through many stages of evolution, moving from organic form to biomechanical, and finally achieving a state of pure energy. These aliens travel the cosmos assisting lesser species to take evolutionary steps. The symbolism of life and death can be seen through the final moments of the film, which are defined by the image of the “Star Child,” an in utero fetus that draws on the work of Lennart Nilsson. The Star Child signifies a “great new beginning,” and is depicted naked and ungirded but with its eyes wide open.

ARPANET 1969

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control. It became the technical foundation of the Internet. The ARPANET was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense. Internetworking research in the early 1970s led by Bob Kahn at DARPA and Vint Cerf at Stanford University and later DARPA formulated the Transmission Control Program, which incorporated concepts from the French CYCLADES project. As this work progressed, a protocol was developed by which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks. The traditional model of the circuit-switched telecommunication network was challenged in the early 1960s by Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation, who had been researching systems that could sustain operation during partial destruction.

Richard Nixon 1969

His five years in the White House saw the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the first manned Moon landings, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon was born into a poor family of Quakers in a small town in Southern California. Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Some profess a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. Nixon was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in the 1952 election, and served for eight years as the vice president. His visit to China in 1972 eventually led to diplomatic relations between the two nations. His administration pushed for the Controlled Substances Act and began the War on Drugs. He also presided over the Apollo 11 Moon landing, which signaled the end of the Space Race.

Charles Manson 1969

Charles Milles Manson was an American criminal and musician who led the Manson Family, a cult based in California, in the late 1960s. Some of the members committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971, Manson was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, including the film actress Sharon Tate. Manson felt guided by his interpretation of the Beatles’ lyrics and adopted the term “Helter Skelter” to describe an impending apocalyptic race war. Manson’s notoriety as an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre influenced pop culture. The Manson Family developed into a doomsday cult when Manson became fixated on the idea of an imminent apocalyptic race war between America’s Black population and the larger White population. Manson told some of the Manson Family that Black people in America would rise up and kill all White people except for Manson and his “Family,” but that they were not intelligent enough to survive on their own; they would need a White man to lead them, and so they would serve Manson as their “master.” Manson began studying Scientology while incarcerated with the help of fellow inmate Lanier Rayner, and in July 1961, Manson listed his religion as Scientology.

Nixon Shock 1971

In 1944, representatives from 44 nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to develop a new international monetary system that came to be known as the Bretton Woods system. Conference attendees had hoped that this new system would “ensure exchange rate stability, prevent competitive devaluations, and promote economic growth.” It was not until 1958 that the Bretton Woods system became fully operational. The Nixon shock was a series of economic measures undertaken by United States President Richard Nixon in 1971, in response to increasing inflation, the most significant of which were wage and price freezes, surcharges on imports, and the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold.

Biological Weapons Convention 1971

Having entered into force on March 26, 1975, the BWC was the first multilateral disarmament treaty to ban the production of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. The convention is of unlimited duration. The BWC sought to supplement the Geneva Protocol and was negotiated in the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva from 1969 to 1972, following the conclusion of the negotiation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Crucial contemporary debates about new developments for the BWC Review Conferences included gain-of-function experiments, potential pandemic pathogens, CRISPR and other genome editing technologies, gene drives, and synthetic biology.

World Economic Forum 1971

It is an international lobbying organization based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on January 24, 1971, by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The formation of a detached elite, which is often co-labeled through the neologism “Davos Man,” refers to a global group whose members view themselves as completely “international.” The term refers to people who have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations. The World Economic Forum’s main purpose is to function as a socializing institution for the emerging global elite, globalization’s “Mafiocracy” of bankers, industrialists, oligarchs, technocrats, and politicians. They promote common ideas and serve common interests: their own. The World Economic Forum’s “Global Redesign” report suggests creating a “public-private” United Nations (UN) in which selected agencies operate and steer global agendas under shared governance systems. It says that a globalized world is probably best managed by a coalition of multinational corporations, governments, and civil society organizations (CSOs), which it expresses through initiatives like the “Great Reset” and the “Global Redesign.” In a 2017 interview, Schwab said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been recognized as a Young Global Leader, and also mentioned Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Such elites would see crises as an opportunity to push through their agendas. The control such people would exercise on people and their embracement of ideas such as transhumanism is often criticized. The German Central Council of Jews condemned this criticism, which is also linked to Jewish financial investors, as anti-Semitic.

Edgar Hoover 1972

He was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States for nearly 48 years. He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI’s predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover built the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and instituted a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Hoover also established and expanded a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List, renamed in 2001 as the Terrorist Screening Database, which the FBI still compiles and manages. He was found to have routinely violated the very laws the FBI was charged with enforcing, to have used the FBI to harass political dissidents, to amass secret files for blackmailing high-level politicians, and to collect evidence using vigilantism and many other illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, including multiple sitting presidents of the United States.

Petrodollar Recycling 1973

Petrodollar recycling is the international spending or investment of a country’s revenues from petroleum exports (“petrodollars”). The resulting global interdependencies and financial flows, from oil producers back to oil consumers, can reach a scale of hundreds of billions of US dollars per year. These flows are heavily influenced by government-level decisions regarding international investment and aid, with important consequences for both global finance and petroleum politics. The phenomenon is most pronounced during periods when the price of oil is historically high.

American Legislative Exchange Council 1973

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft and share model legislation for distribution among state governments in the United States. Approximately 200 model bills become law each year. ALEC also serves as a networking tool among certain state legislators. ALEC legislative members generally deny being overly influenced by the organization or its model legislation, and argue that corporate input in the drafting process helps to promote business growth. ALEC is unique in the sense that it puts legislators and companies together and they create policy collectively.

Chilean Coup d’État 1973

The 1973 Chilean coup d’état was a military coup in Chile that deposed the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende. The Nixon administration, which had worked to create the conditions for the coup, promptly recognized the junta military government and supported it in consolidating power. While fatalities in the battle during the coup might have been relatively small, the Chilean security forces sustained 162 dead in the three following months as a result of continued resistance, and tens of thousands of people were arrested during the coup and held in the National Stadium. This was because the plans for the coup called for the arrest of every man, woman, and child on the streets the morning of September 11. Of these approximately 40,000 to 50,000 perfunctory arrests, several hundred individuals would later be detained, questioned, tortured, and in some cases murdered.

Trilateral Commission 1973

The Trilateral Commission is “an international organization aimed at fostering closer cooperation between Japan, Western Europe and North America.” It was founded in July 1973 principally by American banker David Rockefeller, an internationalist who sought to address the challenges posed by the growing economic and political interdependence between the U.S. and its allies in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Membership in the Trilateral Commission is highly selective and by invitation only; as of 2021, there were roughly 400 members, including leading figures in politics, business, media, and academia. The organization represents influential commercial and political interests that share a commitment to private enterprise and trade, multilateralism, and global governance; this has subjected it to criticism for elitism. Critics accuse the Commission of promoting a global consensus among the international ruling classes in order to manage international affairs in the interest of the financial and industrial elites under the Trilateral umbrella. The organization and a few others are accused of having orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.

National Security Study Memorandum 200 1974

Also known as the Kissinger Report, it was a national security directive completed on December 10, 1974 by the United States National Security Council under the direction of Henry Kissinger following initial orders from President of the United States Richard Nixon. It was initially classified for over a decade but was obtained by researchers in the early 1990s. The memorandum and subsequent policies developed from the report were observed as a way the United States could use human population control to limit the political power of undeveloped nations, ensure the easy extraction of foreign natural resources, prevent young anti-establishment individuals from being born and to protect American businesses abroad from interference from nations seeking to support their growing populations.

Raelism 1974

Claude Vorilhon was born in Ambert, France on 30 September 1946. He was the illegitimate son of a 15-year-old mother; his father had been a Sephardi Jew. He attended a Roman Catholic boarding school. In early 1974, Vorilhon announced that in December 1973 he had been contacted by the Elohim while walking along the Puy Lassolas mountain. In December 1974 an organization based on his ideas, the Mouvement pour l’accueil des Elohims créateurs de l’humanité (MADECH; “Movement for the Welcoming of the Elohim, Creators of Humanity”), was launched. Vorilhon began referring to himself as “Rael.” Critics repeatedly drew comparisons between Raelism and Nazism, for instance for its promotion of a governance system where people are graded by their intelligence, its emphasis on genetic engineering, and its use of the swastika. Following statements that the Order of Rael’s Angels would do anything for Rael, there was also press speculation that the group would engage in mass suicide akin to that of the Order of the Solar Temple. Raelism claims that throughout history the Elohim have created forty Elohim/human hybrids who have served as prophets preparing humanity for news about their origins. Among those considered prophets are The Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, with Rael himself being the fortieth and final prophet. Raelists believe that since the Hiroshima bomb of 1945, humanity has entered an Age of Apocalypse in which it threatens itself with nuclear annihilation. Raelism argues that humanity must find a way of harnessing new scientific and technological development for peaceful purposes, and that once this has been achieved the Elohim shall return to Earth to share their technology with humanity and establish a utopia. To this end, the Raelians have sought to build an embassy for the Elohim that incorporates a landing pad for their spaceship. Raelians engage in daily meditation, hope for physical immortality through human cloning, and promote a liberal ethical system with a strong emphasis on sexual experimentation.

Church Committee 1975

It was a U.S. Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control; COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations; Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders; Operation Mockingbird as a systematic propaganda campaign with domestic and foreign journalists operating as CIA assets and dozens of US news organizations providing cover for CIA activity. It also unearthed Project SHAMROCK in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA (while officially confirming the existence of this signals intelligence agency to the public for the first time).

Temple of Set 1975

The Temple of Set is an occult initiatory order founded in 1975. A new religious movement and form of Western esotericism, the Temple espouses a religion known as Setianism, whose practitioners are called Setians. This is sometimes identified as a form of Satanism. The Temple was established in the United States in 1975 by Michael Aquino, an American political scientist, military officer, and a high-ranking member of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. According to Aquino, Satan revealed to him his true name to be that of Set, which had been the name used by his followers in ancient Egypt.

Setians believe that Set is the one real god and that he has aided humanity by giving them a questioning intellect, the “Black Flame,” which distinguishes them from other animal species. The Temple promotes the idea that practitioners should seek self-deification and thus attain an immortality of consciousness. Setians believe in the existence of magic as a force which can be manipulated through ritual; however, the nature of these rituals is not prescribed by the Temple. Specifically, Aquino described Setian practices as “black magic.”

Born in 1946, Michael Aquino was a military intelligence officer specializing in psychological warfare. Aquino’s Book of Coming Forth by Night makes reference to The Book of the Law, a similarly ‘revealed’ text produced by the occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904 which provided the basis for Crowley’s religion of Thelema. In Aquino’s book, The Book of the Law was presented as a genuine spiritual text given to Crowley by preternatural sources, but it was also declared that Crowley had misunderstood both its origin and message.

The structure of the Temple was based largely on those of the ceremonial magical orders of the late nineteenth century, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis. Aquino argued that the idea of the Gift of Set was inadvertently promoted to a wider audience in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. According to Aquino, the black monolith which imparts human-level intelligence onto prehistoric apes in the film was a symbol of Set.

George H W Bush 1976

President Gerald Ford appointed him as the Chief of the Liaison Office to the People’s Republic of China, and in 1976 Bush became the Director of Central Intelligence. In the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, there has been no president, nor any president’s term, who, when confronted with profound international change and challenges, responded with such a thoughtful and well-managed foreign policy…[the Bush administration was] a bridge over one of the great lines of history [that] ushered in the ‘new world order’ it described with great skill and professionalism. Bush was a lifelong Episcopalian and a member of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston. As President, Bush regularly attended services at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington D.C.

Illuminates of Thanateros 1978

The Illuminates of Thanateros is an international magical organization that focuses on practical group work in chaos magic. The idea was first announced in 1978, while the order proper was formed in 1987. This fraternal magical society has been an important influence on some forms of modern occultism. The name “Thanateros” is a combination of the names “Thanatos” and “Eros”—the Greek gods of death and sex, respectively. The idea is that sex and death represent the positive and negative methods of attaining magical consciousness. The word “Illuminates” is used in accordance with the claimed tradition of calling such societies—in which those who have mastered the secrets of magic help bring others to mastership—“the Illuminati.” Chaos magicians have frequently reacted to more traditional, religious or occult approaches to magic with scorn or derision. This applies in particular to the IOT, which has been described by Phil Hine as “the Order for ‘serious’ Chaos Magicians in the same way that the OTO exists for ‘serious’ Thelemites.”

Jonestown 1978

The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name Jonestown, was a remote settlement in Guyana, established by the Peoples Temple, a San Francisco–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationally known when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 909 people died at the settlement, at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaitum, and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital city. Many contemporary media accounts after the events called the deaths a mass suicide. In contrast, most sources today refer to the deaths with terms such as mass murder–suicide, a massacre, or simply mass murder.

Though its roots and teachings shared more with Christian revival movements than with Marxism, it purported to practice what it called “apostolic socialism.” In doing so, the Temple preached that “those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenment—socialism.” Jim Jones had an interest in Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler from a young age. He was also upset with persecution against the Communist Party USA and was fascinated with the influence of religion. Jones also frequently praised Lenin and Stalin as heroes.

In 1979, Joseph Hollinger, a former aide to Congressman Leo Ryan, claimed that Jonestown was a “mass mind control experiment” conducted by the CIA. A 1980 newspaper column by Jack Anderson also claimed that the CIA was involved in the Jonestown Massacre, and speculated that Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy to Guyana Richard Dwyer had ties to the CIA.

Senior Executive Service 1979

It was created in 1979 when the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 went into effect under President Jimmy Carter. According to the Office of Personnel Management, the SES was designed to be a corps of executives selected for their leadership qualifications, serving in key positions just below the top presidential appointees as a link between them and the rest of the federal (civil service) workforce.

Philip Schneider 1979

Phil Schneider was working as an explosives expert, helping build secret underground bases for the U.S. government in Dulce, N.M., in 1979. In 1995, he told the astonishing story of his encounter with alien beings living underground. Schneider said he was one of three survivors in a battle with aliens in August 1979 and that he was the only person with a high-level security clearance speaking out in such detail about the government’s knowledge of alien beings. He was very critical of the government for keeping citizens in the dark, and gave many talks on his experiences in the two years preceding his death in 1997.

Schneider was suspicious about the underground base he was helping to build when he saw so many Special Forces Green Berets around camp. The work team drilled four large holes, the standard way to start construction. But what emerged from the holes was not at all part of standard procedure. “All the black sooty air came up when we drilled holes there,” Schneider said in a lecture at the 1995 Preparedness Expo. He had gone underground to make an assessment when he found himself just feet away from a “big grey”—a 7-foot-tall alien.

He spoke of 1,477 underground bases around the world, 129 of which were located in the United States. Each cost $17 billion or more. He said the Black Budget, hidden from other U.S. government agencies and from the public, garners 25 percent of the gross national product. Military forces from multiple countries have been engaged in such warfare with aliens, he said.

Georgia Guidestones 1980

The Georgia Guidestones are a granite monument erected in 1980 in Elbert County, Georgia, in the United States. A set of ten guidelines is inscribed on the structure in eight modern languages and a shorter message is inscribed at the top of the structure in four ancient language scripts. The anonymity of the guidestones’ authors and their advocacy of population control, eugenics, and internationalism have made them an object of controversy.

In June 1979, a man using the pseudonym R. C. Christian approached the Elberton Granite Finishing Company on behalf of “a small group of loyal Americans,” and commissioned the structure. Christian explained that the stones would function as a compass, calendar, and clock, and should be capable of “withstanding catastrophic events.”

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

At the unveiling of the monument, a local minister proclaimed that he believed the monument was “for sun worshipers, for cult worship.” Jay Weidner has said that the pseudonym of the man who commissioned the stones – “R. C. Christian” – resembles Rose Cross Christian, or Christian Rosenkreuz, the founder of the Rosicrucian Order (Hermeticism).

Ronald Reagan 1981

In his first term, he spurred the War on Drugs, invaded Grenada, and fought public-sector labor unions. Foreign affairs dominated his second term, including the bombing of Libya, the Iran–Iraq War, the Iran–Contra affair, and the ongoing Cold War.

Reagan campaigned vigorously to restore organized prayer to the schools, first as a moment of prayer and later as a moment of silence. In 1981, Reagan became the first president to propose a constitutional amendment on school prayer.

Reagan’s economic policies resulted in rising budget deficits, a wider gap in wealth, and an increase in homelessness, and the Iran–Contra affair lowered American credibility. Ronald became a Protestant Christian rather than a Roman Catholic like his Irish father.

During his years at Hollywood, Reagan became a member of the Hollywood-Beverly Christian Church and attended its services infrequently. Subsequently, from 1964 onwards, Reagan began to attend church services at Bel Air Presbyterian Church.

AN/URC-117 Ground Wave Emergency Network 1982

It was a command and control communications system intended for use by the United States government to facilitate military communications before, during, and after a nuclear war. Specifically, the GWEN network was intended to survive the effects of an electromagnetic pulse from a high-altitude nuclear explosion.

When doubts arose regarding the threat of electromagnetic pulse to permanently shut down communications, only 58 of the originally planned 240 GWEN towers were built. Command and control messages originating at various military installations were transmitted on the 225 to 400 MHz band and received by a network of unmanned relay stations, called “Relay Nodes,” dispersed throughout the contiguous 48 states. The Relay Nodes would re-transmit these command and control messages to each other, and to Strategic Air Command operating locations and launch control centers using low frequencies in the 150-175 kHz range in order to take advantage of ground-hugging radio propagation similar to commercial AM radio stations.

The Ra Material 1982

The Law of One, also known as The Ra Material, is a series of five philosophical monographs published between 1982 and 1998 by Schiffer. The introduction to this first book explains that the questioner is Don Elkins and that Ra is a higher density being. A sixth density lifeform of pure energy (spirit), speaking through the body of channeler Carla L. Rueckert.

The material in the books conveys an elaborate and grand reality. Ultimately described as being called The Law of One or the basic principle that “all is One,” that all “things” that exist are ultimately the same “essence” within many forms and configurations. The material describes that Ra is a highly advanced race of “extraterrestrials” who once visited ancient Egypt and assisted with the construction of the pyramids.

Within The Law of One, “The Creator” is not described as an external entity, as earthly religious texts present in order for men to understand. Instead, “The Creator” is rather an all-pervasive intelligent energy, that is both within everything that exists and without, thus the indivisible oneness that the philosophy describes.

The first distortion created by the Creator is called Free Will. The second is Love. And the third is Light. As Ra uses the word, the distortion of “Light” can be taken to mean: energy/matter and knowledge/wisdom.

Holy See United States relations 1984

The United States and the Holy See announced the establishment of diplomatic relations on January 10, 1984. In sharp contrast to the long record of strong domestic opposition, this time there was very little opposition from Congress, the courts, and Protestant groups. Following the September 11 attacks and the beginning of the US war on terrorism from 2001, the Vatican has been critical of the war on terrorism in general, and particularly critical of the US policies in Iraq. In June 2015, the United States and the Holy See concluded their first intergovernmental agreement which aims at curtailing offshore tax evasion through automatic exchange of tax information.

Star Wars 1984

The Star Wars franchise depicts the adventures of characters “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, in which humans and many species of aliens (often humanoid) co-exist with robots (typically referred to in the films as ‘droids’), who may assist them in their daily routines; space travel between planets is common due to lightspeed hyperspace technology. Spacecraft range from small starfighters, to huge capital ships such as the Star Destroyers, to space stations such as the moon-sized Death Stars. Telecommunications includes two-way audio and audiovisual screens, and holographic projections. A mystical power known as the Force is described in the original film as “an energy field created by all living things … [that] binds the galaxy together”. Through training and meditation, those whom “the Force is strong with” are able to perform various superpowers (such as telekinesis, precognition, telepathy, and manipulation of physical energy). On the inspiration for the First Order formed “from the ashes of the Empire”, The Force Awakens director J. J. Abrams spoke of conversations the writers had about how the Nazis could have escaped to Argentina after WWII and started working together again.

Iran Contra Affair 1985

Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. The official justification for the arms shipments was that they were part of an operation to free seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The idea to exchange arms for hostages was proposed by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an expatriate Iranian arms dealer. After the weapon sales were revealed in November 1986, Reagan appeared on national television and stated that the weapons transfers had indeed occurred, but that the United States did not trade arms for hostages.

Chernobyl Disaster 1986

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history both in cost and casualties. The accident occurred during a safety test on the steam turbine of an RBMK-type nuclear reactor. During a planned decrease of reactor power in preparation for the test, the power output unexpectedly dropped to near-zero. The operators were unable to restore the power level specified by the test program, which put the reactor in an unstable condition. This risk was not made evident in the operating instructions, so the operators proceeded with the test. Upon test completion, the operators triggered a reactor shutdown. Instead of shutting down, an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction began, releasing enormous amounts of energy.

Al Qaeda 1988

Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on non-military and military targets in various countries, including the 1998 United States embassy bombings, the September 11 attacks, and the 2002 Bali bombings. Experts debate the notion that Al-Qaeda attacks were an indirect result of the American CIA’s Operation Cyclone program to help the Afghan mujahideen. Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, has written that Al-Qaeda and bin Laden were “a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies”, and that “Al-Qaeda”, literally ‘the database’, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain’s MI6, who conducted separate covert actions. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were beneficiaries of CIA assistance. Some of the CIA’s greatest Afghan beneficiaries were Arabist commanders such as Haqqani and Hekmatyar who were key allies of bin Laden over many years. Haqqani—one of bin Laden’s closest associates in the 1980s—received direct cash payments from CIA agents, without the mediation of the ISI. This independent source of funding gave Haqqani disproportionate influence over the mujahideen. Haqqani and his network played an important role in the formation and growth of Al-Qaeda, with Haqqani allowing bin Laden to train mujahideen volunteers in Haqqani territory and build extensive infrastructure there.

Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989

It was a pivotal event in world history which marked the falling of the Iron Curtain and one of the series of events that started the fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterwards. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit three weeks later and the German reunification took place in October the following year. During the summit, Bush and Gorbachev declared an end to the Cold War, although whether it was truly such is a matter of debate. News reports of the time referred to the Malta Summit as one of the most important since World War II. Malta is a neutral state actively adhering to a policy of non-alignment and refusing to participate in any military alliance.

Ruby Ridge 1992

Ruby Ridge was the site of an eleven-day siege in 1992 in Boundary County, Idaho, near Naples. It began on August 21, when deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) initiated action to apprehend and arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant after his failure to appear on firearms charges. The Federal Bureau of Investigation became involved as the siege developed. During the USMS reconnoiter of the Weaver property, six U.S. Marshals encountered Harris and Weaver’s 14-year-old son, Sammy, in woods near the family cabin. A shootout took place. Deputy U.S. Marshal William Francis Degan, Sammy Weaver, and the Weavers’ dog, Striker, all died as a result. In the subsequent siege of the Weaver residence, led by the FBI, Weaver’s wife Vicki was killed by FBI sniper fire.

During the federal criminal trial of Weaver and Harris, Weaver’s attorney, Gerry Spence, made accusations of criminal wrongdoing against the agencies involved in the incident, in particular the FBI, the USMS, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for Idaho. At the trial’s end, the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility formed the Ruby Ridge Task Force (RRTF) to investigate Spence’s charges. A redacted HTML version of the RRTF report, publicly released by Lexis Counsel Connect, raised questions about all the participating agencies’ conduct and policies.

Both the Weaver family and Harris brought civil suits against the federal government over the firefight and siege. The Weavers won a combined out-of-court settlement in August 1995 of $3.1 million. After numerous appeals, Harris was awarded a $380,000 settlement in September 2000. In 1997, the Boundary County prosecutor indicted FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi for manslaughter before the statute of limitations for the charge could expire.

OJ Simpson 1993

Once a popular figure with the U.S. public, he is now best known for being tried for the murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. Simpson was initially acquitted of the murders in criminal court but was later found responsible for both deaths in a civil trial. His father was a well-known drag queen in the San Francisco Bay Area. Later in life, Jimmy Simpson announced that he was gay and died of AIDS in 1986. In his early teenage years, he joined a street gang called the Persian Warriors and was briefly incarcerated at the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center.

World Trade Center Bombing 1993

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, carried out on February 26, 1993, when a truck bomb detonated below the North Tower of the complex. The 1,336 lb (606 kg) urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device was intended to send the North Tower crashing into the South Tower, bringing both towers down and killing tens of thousands of people. Ramzi Yousef spent time at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, before beginning in 1991 to plan a bombing attack within the United States. Yousef’s uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who later was considered the principal architect of the September 11 attacks, gave him advice and tips over the phone, and funded his co-conspirator Mohammed Salameh with a US$660M wire transfer. In the course of the trial, it was revealed that the FBI had an informant, a former Egyptian army officer named Emad Salem. Salem claims to have informed the FBI of the plot to build a bomb that would eventually be used in the World Trade Center towers as early as February 6, 1992.

Bill Clinton 1993

He called for the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe and many former Warsaw Pact members joined NATO during his presidency. Clinton’s foreign policy in the Middle East saw him sign the Iraq Liberation Act which gave aid to groups against Saddam Hussein. He also participated in the Oslo I Accord and Camp David Summit to advance the Israeli–Palestinian process. His personal conduct and allegations of sexual assault against him have made him the subject of substantial scrutiny. He created the Clinton Foundation to address international causes such as the prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas and attended Georgetown University. He received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at University College, Oxford, and he later graduated from Yale Law School. At the age of 10, he was baptized at Park Place Baptist Church in Hot Springs, Arkansas and remained a member of a Baptist church. In 2007, with Jimmy Carter, he founded the New Baptist Covenant Baptist organization.

High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program 1993

The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) was initiated as an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its original purpose was to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance. Various individuals have speculated about hidden motivations and capabilities of the project. For example, Rosalie Bertell warned in 1996 about the deployment of HAARP as a military weapon. Michel Chossudovsky stated in a book published by the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform that “recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the capability of triggering floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes.” Over time, HAARP has been blamed for generating such catastrophes, as well as thunderstorms, in Iran, Pakistan, Haiti, Turkey, Greece and the Philippines, and even major power outages, the downing of TWA Flight 800, Gulf War syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Waco Siege 1993

The Waco siege, also known as the Waco massacre, was the law enforcement siege of the compound that belonged to the religious sect Branch Davidians. It was carried out by the U.S. federal government, Texas state law enforcement, and the U.S. military, between February 28 and April 19, 1993. A siege lasting 51 days was initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Eventually, the FBI launched an assault and initiated a tear gas attack in an attempt to force the Branch Davidians out of the ranch. Shortly thereafter, the Mount Carmel Center became engulfed in flames. The fire resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh.

The Branch Davidians (also known as “The Branch”) are a religious group that originated in 1955 from a schism in the Shepherd’s Rod (Davidian) movement following the death of the Shepherd’s Rod founder Victor Houteff. Houteff founded the Davidians based on his prophecy of an imminent apocalypse involving the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the defeat of the evil armies of Babylon. As the original Davidian group gained members, its leadership moved the church to a hilltop several miles east of Waco, Texas, which they named Mount Carmel, after a mountain in Israel mentioned in Joshua 19:26 in the Bible’s Old Testament. In 1959, Victor’s widow, Florence Houteff, announced that the expected Armageddon was about to take place, and members were told to gather at the center to await this event.

North American Free Trade Agreement 1994

It was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that created a trilateral trade bloc in North America. Passage of NAFTA resulted in the elimination or reduction of barriers to trade and investment between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It’s pretty simple: If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, have no health care, have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.

Illuminati Card Game 1994

It was inspired by the 1975 book, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. The game has ominous secret societies competing with each other to control the world through various means, including legal, illegal, and even mystical.

Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, and self-described gnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews.

Discordianism is a religion or philosophy/paradigm centered on Eris, a.k.a. Discordia, the Goddess of chaos. Discordianism is centered on the idea that both order and disorder are illusions imposed on the universe by the human nervous system, and that neither of these illusions of apparent order and disorder is any more accurate or objectively true than the other. Episkoposes are the overseers of sects of Discordianism, who have presumably created their own sect of Discordianism. They speak to Eris through the use of their pineal gland.

Luxor Las Vegas 1994

Luxor Las Vegas is a 30-story hotel and casino situated on the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. The hotel’s rooms line the interior walls of the main tower, which has a pyramid shape, and the 22-story twin ziggurat towers. The hotel is named for the city of Luxor (ancient Thebes) in Egypt. The hotel’s pyramid is similar in size to the Red Pyramid and Bent Pyramid of Egypt.

At its opening, the resort featured the Nile River Tour, a river ride that carried guests to different parts of the pyramid and passed by pieces of ancient artwork on a river that encircled the casino. The hotel also featured King Tut’s Tomb and Museum, a replica of King Tutankhamun’s tomb as found in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.

At 42.3 billion candelas, the Luxor Sky Beam is the strongest beam of light in the world, using curved mirrors to collect the light from 39 xenon lamps and focus them into one intense, narrow beam. On a clear night, it is visible up to 275 miles (443 km) away by aircraft at cruising altitude, such as over Los Angeles. It is located at the top of the pyramid or Pyramidion.

Lockheed Martin 1995

Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. Lockheed Martin is one of the largest companies in the aerospace, military support, security, and technologies industry. Lockheed Martin is also a contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Lockheed Martin has “a political network that is already the envy of its competitors,” and its contracts enjoy wide bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress.

Oklahoma City Bombing 1995

The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, on April 19, 1995. Some theories allege that individuals in the government, including President Bill Clinton, knew of the impending bombing and intentionally failed to act. Other theories focus on initial reports by local news stations of multiple other unexploded bombs within the building itself as evidence of remnants of a controlled demolition; following the attack, search and rescue operations at the site were delayed until the area had been declared safe by the Oklahoma City bomb squad and federal authorities. Additional theories claim the bombing was carried out by the government in order to frame the militia movement or to provide the impetus for new anti-terrorism legislation while using McVeigh as a scapegoat.

Denver International Airport 1995

Since the construction of Denver International Airport (airport code: Denver, nickname: DIA) was finished in 1995, the newest airport in the United States since the 1970s, there have been innumerable conspiracy theories surrounding it. There are known to be as many as 6 underground levels below the ground floor of DIA and possibly more that are not even known about. Beyond that, there are theories that tunnels exist all the way from the Colorado Springs Air Force Base to DIA and from the Air Force Base to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in the Rocky Mountains outside of Colorado Springs.

For instance, besides Blucifer, the demon-eyed horse sculpture that killed artist Luis Jimenez during construction, there are 2 other massive murals by Leo Tanguma, which have been theorized to foretell the actual purpose of the airport through messages hidden within the work. Just taking an initial look at the Tanguma works titled Children of the World Dream of Peace, and In Peace and Harmony with Nature, they show the darker sides of what DIA has been theorized to be. Themes of death, genocide, and an apocalyptic single government world are seen clearly in the murals despite the uplifting meanings that Tanguma says are the true message.

PFN Trc 1996

U.S. Patent No. 6,965,816. “PFN” means Protected Primary Focal Node. “TRAC” means Trusted Remote Activity Controller. “PFN/TRAC System FAA Upgrades For Accountable Remote and Robotics Control To Stop The Unauthorized Use of Aircraft and to Improve Equipment Management and Public Safety in Transportation.” Crash any aircraft, any vehicle, anytime, remotely. While this patent focuses on aircraft, it is written so broadly as to encompass all kinds of equipment and devices, including people, defined as “wetware.” While the patent was issued on Nov. 15, 2005, it incorporates filings going all the way back to Dec. 2, 1996.

Phoenix Lights 1997

The Phoenix Lights (sometimes called the Lights Over Phoenix) were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed in the skies over the southwestern states of Arizona and Nevada, and the Mexican state of Sonora on March 13, 1997. Witnesses claim to have observed a huge carpenter’s square-shaped UFO, containing five spherical lights or possibly light-emitting engines. Fife Symington, the governor of Arizona at the time, years later said he witnessed this incident, describing the object as being “otherworldly.”

Getty Center 1997

The Getty Center, in Los Angeles, California, is a campus of the Getty Museum and other programs of the Getty Trust. The $1.3 billion Center opened to the public on December 16, 1997 and is well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles. Designed by architect Richard Meier, the campus also houses the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the J. Paul Getty Trust. Meier was born to a Jewish family, the oldest of three sons of Carolyn (Kaltenbacher) and Jerome Meier, a wholesale wine and liquor salesman, in Newark, New Jersey. Major works by Meier include the High Museum in Atlanta, the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Meier on Rothschild in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Getty Center has a 7-story underground parking garage. Its museum contains the portrait of Louis XIV of France (circa 1700). The Center’s buildings are thought to be able to survive an earthquake of 7.5 magnitude on the Richter scale.

Wi-Fi 1998

The antennas emit radiofrequency (RF) radiation; the parts of the head or body nearest to the antenna can absorb this energy and convert it to heat. Since at least the 1990s, scientists have researched whether the now-ubiquitous radiation associated with mobile phone antennas or cell phone towers is affecting human health. Mobile phone networks use various bands of RF radiation, some of which overlap with the microwave range. Other digital wireless systems, such as data communication networks, produce similar radiation. In 2011, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the WHO, classified wireless radiation as Group 2B – possibly carcinogenic. A 2012 review concluded that together, the results of these studies have shown that RF-EMR decreases sperm count and motility and increases oxidative stress.

Columbine 1999

The FBI concluded that the killers were victims of mental illness, that Harris was a clinical psychopath, and Klebold was depressive. Dwyane Fuselier, the supervisor in charge of the Columbine investigation, would later remark: “I believe Eric went to the school to kill and didn’t care if he died, while Dylan wanted to die and didn’t care if others died as well.” Opponents of contemporary psychiatry like Peter Breggin claim that the psychiatric medications prescribed to Harris may have exacerbated his aggressiveness. Harris had complained of depression, anger, and suicidal thoughts, for which he was prescribed antidepressants. Toxicology reports confirmed that Harris had Luvox in his bloodstream at the time of the shootings, whereas Klebold had no medications in his system. Following the Columbine shooting, schools across the United States instituted new security measures such as see-through backpacks, metal detectors, school uniforms, and security guards. Some schools implemented the numbering of school doors in order to improve public safety response. Several schools throughout the country resorted to requiring students to wear computer-generated IDs.

Eyes Wide Shut 1999

The maker of the film, Stanley Kubrick, died only days after the first viewing of it. The official cause of death was from an alleged heart attack. The main conspiracy as to why some people believe Kubrick was murdered revolves around a “damage limitation” mission ordered by elite financial backers in Hollywood. It is the belief of some that upon seeing Kubrick’s film at the first viewing, they decided much of the content had to be cut away. Not confident that Kubrick would agree (he was known very much for his determination in such matters) and consequently fearing a surge of publicity from any fallout, a decision was taken to remove Kubrick from the picture permanently.

One of the main parts of the film revolves around a secret party at a lavish mansion. And it looks almost exactly like the mansion owned by Baron Guy and Baroness Marie-Helene de Rothschild, the Château de Ferrières. What’s more, the mansion was subject to a mysterious masked party hosted by the owners in 1972, photographs of which have since been leaked online.

It is claimed by some conspiracy researchers that rainbows are a reference to the MKUltra mind control techniques used by high-ranking elite members. And this is particularly the case when this is done to create sex slaves. Rainbows often appear throughout the film.

At the beginning of the film, for example, when we see Alice (played by Nicole Kidman) undressing ready for bed, she does so while standing in between two large pillars. It is claimed that these represent the Masonic pillars, Boaz and Jachin. There are also discreet appearances of the Star of Ishtar in the film, another strong Masonic symbol.

The reason the film is called Eyes Wide Shut, at least according to some researchers, is a blatant reference to Hollywood and the number of people who know this kind of activity is taking place yet do not say anything about it. And, like the Illuminati, such talk has been rife in Hollywood for years.

With what we know now of Epstein Island – and there is surely more to come to light – should we take some of the claims of the “real” messages of Eyes Wide Shut a little more seriously?

Larry Silverstein 2001

Silverstein was interested in acquiring the original World Trade Center complex, and put in a bid when the Port Authority put it up for lease in 2000. Silverstein won the bid when a deal between the initial winner and the Port Authority fell through, and he signed the lease on July 24, 2001. Soon after the September 11 attacks, in 2001, Silverstein declared his intent to rebuild, though he and his insurers became embroiled in a multi-year dispute over whether the attacks had constituted one event or two under the terms of the insurance policy, which provided for a maximum of $3.55 billion coverage per event. A settlement was reached in 2007, with insurers agreeing to pay out $4.55 billion, which was not as much as Silverstein had sought. Silverstein was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in 1931 into a Jewish family.

Milton William Cooper 2001

He claimed to have served in the United States Navy, the United States Air Force, and Naval Intelligence until his discharge in 1975. In 1991, Cooper produced and published Behold a Pale Horse. Cooper claimed an elaborate conspiracy theory that encompasses the Kennedy assassination, the doings of the secret world government, the coming ice age, and a variety of other covert activities associated with the Illuminati’s declaration of war upon the people of America. He became convinced that he was being personally targeted by President Bill Clinton and the Internal Revenue Service. In July 1998, he was charged with tax evasion; an arrest warrant was issued, but Cooper eluded repeated attempts to serve it. In 2000, he was named a “major fugitive” by the United States Marshals Service. After gunfire during which Cooper allegedly shot one of the deputies in the head, Cooper was fatally shot.

Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami 2004

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occurred at 07:58:53 local time on 26 December, with an epicenter off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It was an undersea megathrust earthquake. The earthquake was caused by a rupture along the fault between the Burma Plate and the Indian Plate. Communities along the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean were devastated, and the tsunamis killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries.

London Bombings 2005

The 7 July 2005 London bombings, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists in London that targeted commuters traveling on the city’s public transport system during the morning rush hour. Some newspaper editorials in Iran blamed the bombing on British or American authorities seeking to further justify the War on Terror, and claimed that the plan that included the bombings also involved increasing harassment of Muslims in Europe. On the day of the bombings, Peter Power of Visor Consultants gave interviews on BBC Radio 5 Live and ITV saying that he was working on a crisis management simulation drill, in the City of London, based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened that morning, when he heard that an attack was going on in real life. He described this as a coincidence.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, also called the FAA and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, is an Act of Congress that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It has been used as the legal basis for surveillance programs disclosed by Edward Snowden in 2013, including PRISM. The provisions of the Act granting immunity to the complicit telecom companies create a roadblock for a number of lawsuits intended to expose and thwart the alleged abuses of power and illegal activities of the federal government since and before the September 11 attacks. It allows the government to conduct surveillance of a U.S. person located outside of the U.S. with probable cause they are an agent of a foreign power for up to one week (168 hours) without a warrant, increased from the previous 48 hours.

CERN 2009

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, the organization is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border and has 23 member states. Israel is the only non-European country granted full membership. CERN is an official United Nations Observer. It had its bizarre opening ceremony in 2009.

CERN’s main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research – as a result, numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN through international collaborations. CERN is the site of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and highest-energy particle collider. The LHC’s goal is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics, including measuring the properties of the Higgs boson, searching for the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetric theories, and other unresolved questions in particle physics. Researchers need remote access to these facilities, so the lab has historically been a major wide area network hub. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill 2010

It was an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8 to 31 percent larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill, also in the Gulf of Mexico. The company pleaded guilty to 11 counts of felony manslaughter, two misdemeanors, one felony count of lying to the U.S. Congress and agreed to pay more than $4.5 billion in fines and penalties, the largest criminal resolution in U.S. history.

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster 2011

The Fukushima nuclear disaster was a 2011 nuclear event at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that occurred on 11 March 2011. On 5 July 2012, the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) found that the causes of the accident had been foreseeable, and that the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), had failed to meet basic safety requirements such as risk assessment, preparing for continuing collateral damage, and developing evacuation plans. At a meeting in Vienna three months after the disaster, the International Atomic Energy Agency faulted lax oversight by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, saying the ministry faced an inherent conflict of interest as the government agency in charge of both regulating and promoting the nuclear power industry.

Three investigations into the Fukushima disaster showed the man-made nature of the catastrophe and its roots in regulatory capture associated with a network of corruption, collusion, and nepotism. A New York Times report found that the Japanese nuclear regulatory system consistently sided with, and promoted, the nuclear industry based on the concept of amakudari (‘descent from heaven’), in which senior regulators accepted high-paying jobs at companies they once oversaw.

Aurora, Colorado Shooting 2012

On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, United States, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. Dressed in tactical clothing, James Holmes set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms. Twelve people were killed and 70 others were injured, 58 of them from gunfire. It was the deadliest shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

Holmes confessed to the shooting but pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He attended Peñasquitos Lutheran Church with his family, according to the Lutheran church’s pastor. According to Holmes’ lawyer, Daniel King, Holmes began to suffer from mental health issues in middle school and attempted suicide at age 11.

Holmes attended the University of California, Riverside (UCR). In 2010, he received his undergraduate B.S. degree in neuroscience with highest honors. He was a member of several honor societies, including Phi Beta Kappa and Golden Key.

Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting 2012

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, United States, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, he shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals to make the background-check system universal, and for new federal and state gun legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines which can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition.

A report issued by the Office of the Child Advocate in November 2014 said that Lanza had Asperger syndrome and as a teenager had depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The report went on to say, “his severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems … combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence … proved a recipe for mass murder.”

On June 5, both houses (Senate and House of Representatives) of the Connecticut state legislature passed a bill modifying the state’s Freedom of Information Act in order to prevent the release of crime-scene photos and video evidence from the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and other Connecticut homicides, concerned such records would be spread on the Internet.

Boston Marathon 2013

In the days following the attacks, some conspiracy theories arose on the internet claiming they were false flag attacks committed by the United States government. As more information about the backgrounds of the Tsarnaev Brothers came to light, further conspiracy theories were disseminated. One claim, made by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense attorney as well as some journalists, was that the FBI had tried to recruit Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an FBI informant in 2011. The FBI is not required to release information on informants, and classified information on sources of intelligence constitutes an exception to the 25-year declassification window established by Executive Order 13526.

Edward Snowden 2013

Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunications companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.

In 2013, Snowden was hired by an NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, after previous employment with Dell and the CIA. Snowden says he gradually became disillusioned with the programs with which he was involved, and that he tried to raise his ethical concerns through internal channels but was ignored.

On June 21, 2013, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, following which the Department of State revoked his passport. U.S. officials condemned his actions as having done “grave damage” to the U.S. intelligence capabilities. Snowden has defended his leaks as an effort “to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” His disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy.

Pope Francis 2013

Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 2013. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus. During his papacy, a number of abuse survivors have expressed disappointment in Francis’s response to sex abuse in the Church. In 2015, Francis was criticized for supporting Chilean bishop Juan Barros, who was accused of covering up sex crimes committed against minors. In 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published an open letter denouncing Francis’s handling of sexual abuse allegations against Theodore McCarrick, accusing him of knowing about allegations that McCarrick had committed sexual abuse and failing to take action.

In May 2014, his visit to the State of Israel, where he delivered 13 speeches, was heavily publicized. Protests against his visit resulted in an alleged arson attempt at the Dormition Abbey. The cave under the Church of the Nativity caught fire the night after his visit. On 6 June 2015, Francis visited Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He urged peace during his time in the religiously diverse city, known as the “Jerusalem of Europe.”

On 25 September 2015, Francis addressed the United Nations in New York City. In January 2017, Francis demanded the resignation of Matthew Festing, the 79th Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. On 24 May 2017, Francis met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Vatican City, where they discussed the contributions of Catholics to the United States and to the world. Francis made the plight of refugees and migrants a core component of his pastoral work, and has defended their rights in dialogue both with Europe and with the United States. He went on to place a statue in St. Peter’s Square to bring attention to the Christian imperative involved in their situation (Hebrews 13:2).

On 1 September 2021, Francis publicly defended the dialogue with China on the appointment of new bishops. Francis stated that uneasy dialogue was better than no dialogue at all, and emphasized improving strained ties with the Chinese government.

Revolution of Dignity 2014

The Revolution of Dignity, also known as the Maidan Revolution, took place in Ukraine in February 2014. It culminated in the ousting of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. In November 2013, a wave of large-scale protests (known as Euromaidan) erupted in response to President Yanukovych’s sudden decision not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union (EU), instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. Russia considered the overthrow of Yanukovych to be an illegal coup, and did not recognize the interim government.

The interim government, led by Arseniy Yatsenyuk, signed the EU association agreement and disbanded the Berkut. According to Yatsenyuk, he comes from a family of ethnic Ukrainians, and is a member of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. He is of partly Romanian ancestry; one of his ancestors was a citizen of Romania from the region around Chernivtsi. Some sources state he was born to a family of ethnic Romanian-Jewish-Ukrainians. In addition to holding a law degree and a master’s degree in accounting and auditing, Yatsenyuk also earned a Ph.D. in economics from the Ukrainian Academy of Banking of the National Bank of Ukraine.

Trans-Pacific Partnership 2015

The Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP ), or Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, was a proposed trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States signed on 4 February 2016. Negotiations for the TPP were conducted with significant secrecy. Drafts of the agreement were kept classified during negotiations, and access to the working text was significantly restricted even for government officials and business representatives involved in the talks. Despite this, some sections of TPP drafts were leaked to the public by WikiLeaks, which published an intellectual property chapter draft in 2013, an environmental chapter draft in 2014, and the final intellectual property chapter in 2014.

Tianjin Explosion 2015

On 12 August 2015, a series of explosions at the Port of Tianjin in Tianjin, northern China killed 173 people, according to official reports, and injured hundreds of others. Professional and social media reports were censored by Chinese authorities. The censorship rate increased tenfold on the social media site Weibo, with users reporting the deletion of their posts regarding the blasts, with “Tianjin” and “explosion” being the most censored words. An article by Caijing, which carried an interview with a firefighter who said that no one on the front line had been informed of the dangerous chemicals on site that would react exothermically when mixed with water, was deleted after it had been reposted 10,000 times.

The Cyberspace Administration of China banned all journalists from posting to social media, and insisted on strict adherence to Xinhua copy. On 15 August, it announced that it had shut down 18 websites and suspended 32 more for spreading false information. More than 360 Weibo and public WeChat accounts which had allegedly been spreading such false rumors have been punished according to laws. Of these accounts, over 160 were shut down permanently.

Arch of Baal Tour 2016

A replica of an archway of an ancient temple of Baal has been erected in public spaces in major cities around the world since April of 2016. Trafalgar Square in London for the three days leading up to the Jewish Passover, in Florence Italy for the political G7 summit, in Dubai for the World Government Summit, at City Hall in New York, and on the Capitol Mall in Washington DC. The Centre for Global Heritage and Development claims that it is merely showing a bit of history to the public.

The original arch of Palmyra was built by the Romans in the second century as an entrance to a major temple of Baal that had already existed for 3000 years in Syria. This temple had a powerful furnace below a bronze statue with a bull’s head, which represented the god Baal. Temple priests would place children and babies into its outstretched arms who would then roll into the blazing fire as human sacrifices. Loud drumbeats would drown out the screams. Temple prostitutes were used so that men or women who sought help from Baal would perform lewd acts with the prostitutes as a form of “worship.” It was a place of the most heinous atrocities committed against innocent children, against all that is good and just, and against God Himself.

Baal or Bʽal, was a title and honorific meaning “owner,” “lord” in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Baal was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations. The title bʿl was a synonym in some contexts of the Hebrew adon (“Lord”) and adonai (“My Lord”) still used as titles of the Lord of Israel Yahweh. According to some scholars, the early Hebrews did use the names Baal (“Lord”) and Baali (“My Lord”) in reference to the Lord of Israel. Brad E. Kelle has suggested that references to cultic sexual practices in the worship of Baal, in Hosea 2, are evidence of a historical situation in which Israelites were either giving up Yahweh worship for Baal, or blending the two.

Atlantic Hurricane Season 2017

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was an extremely active Atlantic hurricane season and the costliest on record, with a damage total of at least $294.92 billion (USD). The season featured 17 named storms, 10 hurricanes, and 6 major hurricanes. Most of the season’s damage was due to hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

Las Vegas Shooting 2017

On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man from Mesquite, Nevada, opened fire on the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. From his 32nd-floor suite in the Mandalay Bay hotel, he fired more than 1,000 bullets, killing 60 people and wounding 411, with the ensuing panic bringing the number of injured to 867. About an hour later, Paddock was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive is undetermined.

The incident is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in United States history. It focused attention on firearms laws in the U.S., particularly with regard to bump stocks, which Paddock used to fire shots in rapid succession, at a rate similar to that of automatic firearms. Bump stocks were banned by the U.S. Justice Department in December 2018.

Event Horizon Telescope 2019

The Event Horizon Telescope ( EHT ) is a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes. The first image of a black hole, at the center of galaxy Messier 87, was published by the EHT Collaboration on April 10, 2019, in a series of six scientific publications. In March 2021, the Collaboration presented, for the first time, a polarized-based image of the black hole which may help better reveal the forces giving rise to quasars.

Jeffrey Epstein 2019

Jeffrey Edward Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender. Epstein developed an elite social circle and procured many women and children; he and some of his associates then sexually abused them. Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He died in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide. Epstein’s lawyers have disputed the ruling, and there has been significant public skepticism about the true cause of his death.

Epstein had a decades-long association with the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, leading to her 2021 conviction on U.S. federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure girls, including a 14-year-old, for child sexual abuse and prostitution. Epstein also maintained long-term relationships with various high-profile individuals, including Donald Trump, Leslie Wexner, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew, Duke of York among others.

According to various sources, beginning in the early 2000s Epstein developed a strong interest in improving the human race through genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, including using his own sperm. He addressed the scientific community at various events and occasions and communicated his fascination with eugenics. It was reported in August 2019 that Epstein had planned to “seed the human race with his DNA” by impregnating up to 20 women at a time using his New Mexico compound as a “baby ranch,” where mothers would give birth to his offspring. He was an advocate of cryonics and his own idiosyncratic version of transhumanism, and had said that he intended to have his penis and head frozen.

COVID-19 The Great Reset 2020

“The COVID-19 coronavirus crisis has wrought economic disruption on a monumental scale, contributing to a dangerous and volatile global upheaval – politically, socially and geopolitically – while raising deep concerns about the environment and the extending reach of technology into our lives.” World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, Co-Founder of Monthly Barometer, explore these themes in their new book, COVID-19: The Great Reset.

It has three main chapters, offering a panoramic overview of the future landscape. The first assesses what the impact of the pandemic will be on five key micro categories: the economic, societal, geopolitical, environmental and technological factors. The second considers the effects in micro terms, on specific industries and companies. The third hypothesizes about the nature of the possible consequences at the individual level.

Klaus Martin Schwab is a German engineer and economist. In 1971 he founded what became the World Economic Forum, of which he is the executive chairman. His parents had moved to Germany during the Third Reich in order for his father to assume the role of director at Escher Wyss AG. He is a former member of the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is one of his pet ideas, and he sees human enhancement/transhumanism as a driver for this revolution.

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