by James Corbett corbettreport.com July 14, 2018 Long-time listeners/readers/viewers of mine will be very familiar with the old "conspiracy theorist" smear and how it is used to stop any would-be truth seekers from questioning the official explanation of contentious events. They will also know how the term can be turned on its head and thrust back in the accusers' face ("shut up, burglary theorist!"). But here's another effective tool to add to your conspiracy conversation toolbox: actual, historical examples of conspiracy "theories" that were proven to be conspiracy facts. So here are some examples of things that were once derided as zany conspiracy paranoia that are now accepted as mundane historical fact. Can you think of any other examples? Leave them in the comments below. Governments stage false flag terror events

The very idea of false flag terrorism was incomprehensible to many people when I first started The Corbett Report in 2007. Back then the inevitable response to "9/11 was an inside job" was "But why would the government attack itself?" I'm happy to say that has changed, largely due to the efforts of the independent media and their audience educating the public about the logic behind this conspiracy "~~theory~~" fact. For me, the arrow-through-the-brain moment that led me to realize that the false flag idea had finally gained general acceptance was the article that The Atlantic Wire was compelled to publish in the wake of the Boston marathon incident (and was even picked up by Yahoo): "What is a 'False Flag' Attack — and Was Boston One?" The article itself and its arguments is beside the point; the fact that they had to address the false flag theories at all shows the precise moment when the mainstream dinosaur media started to realize they were going extinct. So when exactly did the "theory" of false flag terrorism become established fact? It's difficult to say if only because false flag attacks have been an established part of the historical record for hundreds of years with many examples from every era and every corner of the globe. . . it's just that you never learned this history in high school (for some reason or other). Of the many, many, many examples throughout history of governments staging attacks to blame on their enemies, perhaps the simplest and most straightforward one to present to the skeptics and naysayers would be Operation Gladio. Gladio, as my listeners are no doubt aware, was the codename for the secret NATO/CIA stay-behind armies that were ostensibly placed throughout Europe just in case the dastardly Russkies invaded. In reality, they conducted activities to undermine their political enemies in European countries, activities that included false flag terrorism. There's no speculation needed here. There have been parliamentary inquiries on the nature of these secret armies and their actions. The European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the US and NATO for their role in manipulating European politics. Scholarly treatises have been written on the Gladio program and the information about it in the public record. Heck, even the Big Brother Corporation and the Old Grey Presstitute herself have done feature reporting and exposés on the program (although, unsurprisingly, not a lot of follow up). The CIA ran mind control experiments on unwitting Americans

It's one of the oldest "conspiracy theorist" tropes out there: Some tinfoil hat wearing crazy is convinced that the government is trying to use mind control on him to turn him into a deranged killer. What a kook, right? That would never happen in real life, would it? You bet it would. What we don't know about MK-ULTRA and its affiliated programs could probably fill several warehouses full of books, but what we do know is voluminous (and scary) enough. The formerly top secret program was as crazy as any dystopian fantasy ever devised . . . and now openly acknowledged and documented. But don't believe me, believe that bastion of truthiness, Wikipedia! Even the Wiki article on the subject was completely illegal, employed unwitting test subjects, and attempted to "manipulate people's mental states and alter brain functions" through the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse (including the sexual abuse of children), and other forms of torture." The powers-that-shouldn't-be and their lapdog press generally try to play down MK-ULTRA by assuring us that it was scrapped in 1973 ("Would the CIA ever lie to us?"), but even simply pointing to the documented horrors that took place during the officially-acknowledged period of the officially-acknowledged program's officially-acknowledged existence is enough to make even the government's bootlickiest bootlickers squirm in their seats. The government is spraying us from the skies

It is incumbent on everyone wishing to join respectable, polite society that they deride all chemtrail theorists as kooky fringe-nut wingbats (or whatever the ad hominem du jour is). I mean, who could actually believe that the government would ever coordinate a program to spray chemicals on unwitting citizens? Except, of course, for the pesky little fact that the US government did do precisely that. In the San Francisco Bay Area in 1950, to be precise. The covert US Navy experiment was codenamed "Sea-Spray," and for once you don't need to be a mind-reader to figure out what the program actually did. They sprayed people. From the sea. Pretty straightforward, hey? But wait, what were they spraying people with exactly? Oh, just Serratia marcescens. You know, the "rod-shaped gram-negative bacteria in the family Enterobacteriaceae" that just happens to be a human pathogen? And what exactly did the Navy hope to accomplish with this experiment? Why, to "determine the susceptibility of a big city like San Francisco to a bioweapon attack by terrorists," of course. And what did they actually accomplish? The death of at least one person and the hospitalization of many others. Which, I suppose, answers the experimenters' question, doesn't it? Are San Franciscans susceptible to a bioweapon attack by terrorists? Well, yes, evidently . . . assuming by the word "terrorist" you mean the US Navy. So surely this type of thing was just a one-off. They never tried something like this before or since, right? . . . Right? . . . Oh, of course they did. But don't worry, guys. I'm sure the government wouldn't be doing anything like this to the unwitting masses today. That's just crazy talk. Chemicals are turning the frogs . . . female

As I've pointed out before, one particularly well-known conspiracy theorist's assertion that "chemicals are turning the frogs gay!" has become a meme unto itself. This is unfortunate, because as I've also pointed out, this whacked-out nonsensical conspiracy zaniness is almost true. Consider this LiveScience article from 2010: "Pesticide Turns Male Frogs into Females."

A commonly used pesticide known as atrazine can turn male frogs into females that are successfully able to reproduce, a new study finds. While previous work has shown atrazine can cause sexual abnormalities in frogs, such as hermaphroditism (having both male and female sex organs), this study is the first to find that atrazine’s effects are long-lasting and can influence reproduction in amphibians. The results suggest that atrazine, which is a weed killer used primarily on corn crops, could have potentially harmful effects on populations of amphibians, animals that are already experiencing a global decline , said study author Tyrone B. Hayes of the University of California, Berkeley. Atrazine is banned in Europe. And since atrazine interferes with the production of the sex hormone estrogen, present in people and frogs, the findings could have implications for humans as well. "If you have problems in amphibians, you can anticipate problems in other animals," Hayes said.

I mean, there's nothing here about the frogs' sexual preferences, but pesticides are admittedly bending the genders of amphibians. And to top it all off this phenomenon "could have implications for humans as well." That's actually a pretty big deal. But I guess if you want to make trendy hipsters laugh, just tell them these completely admitted scientific facts about the pesticides that are wreaking untold havoc on our environment and then do your best impression of a loud Texan ranting about gay frogs. You'll have your friends in stitches. Meanwhile, for those who are actually concerned about the effects these chemicals are having on the population, you might want to check out some of my previous work on the subject. The government lies us into war

Alright, OK, in the post-Iraq War world the conspiracy "theory" that governments lie their populations into war seems to be a pretty universally-acknowledged conspiracy fact. But still, the left was all on board with Obama's humanitarian love bombing of Libya and the push to arm and equip the jihadis in Syria in the name of saving Syria, and the right is once again jumping on board with the "Bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran" neocon nonsense (to save the poor Iranians, of course!), so everyone could do with a refresher on this count. Once again, the only problem is choosing which example of war lies to highlight. So how about this one: the lies that led to the Iraq War. No, not that Iraq War. The other one. The First Gulf War, aka "Desert Shield," in 1990-1991. There are many lies that were used to whip the public into a war frenzy that time around, but one sticks out for many of those who lived through the era: the throwing-babies-from-incubators story. The story was presented in headline-grabbing, tear-jerking testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Congress in October, 1990. It came from Nayirah, a "young Kuwaiti girl" who told the world in an emotional speech how she, as a young volunteer at the al-Addan hospital in Kuwait, had watched as armed Iraqi troops “took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor.” The only problem? “Nayirah” was not some anonymous Kuwaiti girl, but, as a subsequent CBC investigation discovered, Nayirah Al-Sabah, daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States. Her testimony had been written for her by Hill & Knowlton, a PR company hired by the Kuwaiti government itself to help sell the Gulf War. Yes, a PR company literally dreamed up one of the most effective pieces of propaganda used to sell the Gulf War to the public. And you thought Wag the Dog was just a movie.