Far from mere idle tales, rumors are a valuable window into our anxieties and fears. In The Global Grapevine, two leading authorities on rumor, folklore, and urban legend-Gary Alan Fine and Bill Ellis-shed light on what contemporary rumors can tell us about the fears and pressures of globalization. In particular, they examine four major themes that emerge over and over again: rumors about terrorism, about immigration, about international trade, and about tourism. The authors analyze how various rumors underscore American reactions to perceived global threats, show how we interpret our changing world, and highlight fears, fantasies, and cherished beliefs about our place in the world. These rumors, the authors argue, are the visible tip of a vast iceberg of hidden anxieties. Illuminating the most widely circulated rumors in America in recent years, The Global Grapevine offers an invaluable portrait of what these tales reveal about contemporary society.

London, November 1966. John Lennon can't speak, he can't take his eyes off a photo of a car in flames with the body of Paul McCartney inside. His friend is no longer there, and that means the Beatles are no longer there, either. But John wants to know the truth, and with George and Ringo, he starts to re-examine the final hours in Paul's life. Set in the magical atmosphere of Abbey Road Studios during the writing sessions for Sgt. Pepper, the definitive version of the legend of the Paul McCartney's death.

Through a series of specific questions that cut to the core of conspiracism as a global social and cultural phenomenon this book deconstructs the logic and rhetoric of conspiracy theories and analyses the broader social and psychological factors that contribute to their persistence in modern society.

This is a remarkable look into the intrigue surrounding the mysterious death of Rudolph Hess and why hundreds of millions of pounds a year were spent to keep him from having any communication with the outside world. This not only includes his association with the Vril flying saucers and Antarctica but other aspects of his legacy that have gone unnoticed. Told in the context of a historical novel, Peter Moon also fills in missing pieces of the Montauk saga by adding time travel to the mix and connecting dots that have previously been overlooked. This includes a look at three notable people who all lived in Egypt at the same time: Noble Drew Ali, Aleister Crowley, and Rudolph Hess. Directed by Tibetan elders, the Germans sought to harness the Vril, an energy so powerful that it can change the very nature of the elements themselves. To succeed, however, a major change was required in the evolutionary development of the human species. A dramatic scenario of events unfolded, however, which not only ensured that this endeavour was sabotaged but included an undertaking designed to prevent humanity from ever discovering its ancient heritage and the secrets of the Vril. It was against this backdrop that two of the most colourful characters of World War II, Rudolph Hess and George S. Patton, became immersed in an age old battle involving the legions of light and darkness. The end of World War II precipitated more intrigue and struggle for power than the war itself. Much of this centred around the secret projects sponsored by Rudolph Hess which included not only the Antarctic project but the construction of Vril flying saucers. Patton's job, as the war came to a close, was to recover the secret technology of the Germans and safeguard it for American use. After accomplishing his mission and compiling a German history of the war, General Patton was killed in a dubious accident, the mystery of which has never been solved and has been magnified by government refusal to declassify the file on the investigation of his death. Far more conspicuous and powerful than Patton was Rudolph Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer of Germany, who flew to England in 1941 as an envoy of peace and was imprisoned for life and suspiciously killed just before his imminent release. The current of intrigue and power which permeated these two individuals and led to their downfall was the same current which led to a repatriation of the U.S. Government and an undermining of a constitutional government that is run by and for the people. Besides technology, much of this intrigue centred around the banking files the Nazis confiscated from the Freemasons. The effort to keep this secret is still a factor in today's politics. It was thus that Patton and Hess wore different uniforms but shared common interests and held within their grasp a force so powerful that, if harnessed, it might raise the ancient civilisation of Atlantis itself. It was for this power that both were killed and so begins our mystery.

Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself-the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies-such as the infamous Northwoods plan-have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect.

Rockefellerocracy: Kennedy Assassinations, Watergate, and Monopoly of the "Philanthropic" Foundations is a portal to a universe of political and economic supremacy, revealing links to the crimes of the century. Kennedy had a dream for the nation, but Nelson Rockefeller, a ruthless megalomaniac, had his own selfish scheme to become president. After a ten-year-long course of wrongdoing to steal American democracy, his nomination to the vice presidency by President Gerald Ford was not the hand of fate. Congressman Ford had served as an integral part of the Warren Commission whitewash. The two men formed the first administration not elected by the people This release coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination, that infamous weekend in November of 1963 that author Richard James DeSocio remembers well. He even witnessed Jack Ruby execute Lee Harvey Oswald in front of a live TV audience. Originally searching for answers to satisfy his own curiosity, that led to twenty-five years of painstaking research, the author has unraveled the dark mystery that baffled a nation for half a century. The verdict is radically different from the official version.

Did Hitler (code name 'Grey Wolf') really die in 1945? The evidence says no. Here's the gripping story of what might have happened - When Truman asked Stalin in 1945 whether Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, "No". What really happened? Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams have compiled extensive evidence, some recently declassified, that Hitler actually fled Berlin and took refuge in a remote Nazi enclave in Argentina. Dunstan and Williams cite people, places and dates in over 500 detailed notes that identify the plan's escape route, vehicles, aircraft, U-boats and hideouts. Among the details: the CIA's possible involvement and Hitler's life in Patagonia, including his two daughters.

VectorsBackCover French philosopher Rene Guenon (1886-1951), who spent many years searching for a true esoteric Way, crossed paths with many false and subversive spiritualities before arriving at the threshold of Islamic Sufism. In his prophetic masterpiece The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times he classed the worst of these spiritualities as examples of the Counter-Initiation. Anti-Tradition-secularism and materialism-opposes religion; Counter-Tradition inverts it; and the esoteric essence of Counter-Tradition is the Counter-Initiation. The author expands on this concept, recognizing the action of the Counter-Initiation in such areas as the politicizing of the interfaith movement, the anti-human tendencies in the environmental movement, the growing interest in magic and sorcery, the involvement of the intelligence communities in the fields of UFO investigation and psychedelic research, the history of Templarism and Freemasonry, and the de-Islamicization of the famous Sufi poet, Jalaluddin Rumi. Vectors of the Counter-Initiation is conceived of as a sequel to The System of Antichrist: Truth and Falsehood in Postmodernism and the New Age Sophia Perennis, 2001]. The Counter-Initiation has six main features: syncretism; inverted hierarchy; deviated esoterism; the granting of the temporal transmission of spiritual lore precedence over the vertical descent of Revelation; the reduction of religion to utilitarianism (magic) and esoterism to a purely technical knowledge (Promethean spirituality); and the mis-application of the norms of the individual spiritual Path to the supposed spiritual evolution of the collective. The Counter-Initiation is the ego's idea of spirituality. It appears in the Old Testament as the Serpent in the garden, Cain's murder of Abel, the "sons of God who looked upon the daughters of men and found them fair," the Tower of Babel, the degeneration of Sodom, and the magicians of Pharaoh whom Moses defeated. In the New Testament it is personified by Judas, and in the Qur'an by the figure of as-Samiri, who forged the Golden Calf, and the angels Harut and Marut-testers of man by God's design-who taught magic to the human race in Babylon. For both traditions, it is destined to culminate in Antichrist. This book brings together two schools of thought: the Traditionalists or Perennialists (writers on comparative religion and traditional metaphysics) and the conspiracy theorists who are investigating the origin, nature, and plans of the New World Order. The NWO researchers can throw a penetrating light on the social and political dangers presently threatening the Perennialists, while the Perennialists can provide these researchers with a deeper and wider spiritual context for their vision of human evil. In Guenon's time the Counter-Initiation appeared in terms of this or that secret society operating in the shadowy underworld of European occultism; it has now come up into the open, and moved inexorably toward the centers of global power. In the words of American Eastern Orthodox priest Seraphim Rose, "in our time Satan has walked naked into human history."

In this title, best-selling, Oxford-educated investigative author Joseph P Farrell takes on the Kennedy assassination and the involvement of Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Texas 'machine' that he controlled. Farrell says that a coalescence of interests in the military industrial complex, the CIA, and Lyndon Baines Johnson's powerful and corrupt political machine in Texas led to the event culminating in the assassination. Without the help of the Dallas police chief and others of the Texas underworld, including Jack Ruby, the Kennedy assassination could not have taken place. Farrell analyses the data as only he can, and comes to some astonishing conclusions. Topics of this title include: Oswald, the FBI, and the CIA: Hoover's Concern of a Second Oswald; Oswald and the Anti-Castro Cubans; The Mafia; Hoover, Johnson, and the Mob; The FBI, the Secret Service, Hoover, and Johnson; The CIA and 'Murder Incorporated'; and, Ruby's Bizarre Behaviour. This title also covers: The French Connection and Permindex; Big Oil; The Military; Disturbing Datasets, Doppelgangers, Duplicates and Discrepancies; Two Caskets, Two (or was that Three?) Ambulances, One Body: The Case of David S Lifton; Two (or is that Three?) Faces of Oswald; Too Many (or Was That Too Few?) Bullets; Too Many Films, with Too Many, or Too Few, Frames; The Dead Witnesses: Jack Zangretti, Maurice Brooks Gatlin, John Garret 'Gary' Underhill, Guy F Bannister, Jr., Mary Pinchot Meyer, Rose Cheramie, Dorothy Mae Killgallen, Congressman Hale Boggs; The Alchemy of the Assassination: Ritual Magic and Murder, Masonic Symbolism, and the Darkest Players in the Death of JFK; LBJ and the Planning of the Texas Trip; LBJ: A Study in Character, Connections, and Cabals; LBJ and the Aftermath: Accessory After the Fact; The Requirements of Coups D'Etat; and, more.

In the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, the story of David Koresh, the FBI and the tragedy at Waco - a book for everyone fascinated by true crime, conspiracy theory, and American extremity. The assault by federal agents on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993, in which 86 people died, has become a founding myth of the extreme wing of American conservatism, invoked by militiamen, gun rights advocates and the alt-right. The leader of the evangelical sect at Waco, an extreme form of Seventh-Day Adventism, was Vernon Howell, a charismatic chancer and former victim of sexual abuse who called himself David Koresh. He himself became a sexual predator on a large scale, exploiting many of the women in his compound. He was also a compelling preacher and interpreter of the Bible, notably the Book of Revelation, and was obsessed with the coming of the Apocalypse. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms duly obliged, with tragic results. Koresh is Stephan Talty's extraordinary, meticulous narration of this event, in all its squalor, strangeness and delirium. Talty doesn't downplay the madness of the cult, but he is humanely sympathetic to Koresh and his followers and is also highly critical of the ATF and FBI, who were spoiling for a violent showdown, and explains why the siege has become so important to those who loathe the state.

In his 1907 book, lawyer Finis L. Bates reveals that his client John St. Helen disclosed to Bates his true identity - claiming to be Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. History tells us that 26-year-old Booth was killed by Federal authorities at the Garrett Farm in Virginia shortly after the 1865 crime. Based on conversations with St. Helen and evidence he himself gathered, Bates contends that Booth escaped, took on new identities, and died by his own hand (under the alias David E. George) in 1903 at the age of 64. This is a fascinating read filled with compelling details.

For the first time the inside story of Russia's marketing of their space program to the West is chronicled by one who was there. The colourful tales are told, warts and all. How the door to Russia's long hidden space pro-gram was opened during the era of Soviet perestroika, the political struggle on the signing of the first contract between the Russians and NASA, the push to change space station Freedom into a co-operative venture, the willingness of the Russians to use free markets against the wishes of NASA and how the Russian space station Mir became a commercial platform, are all told in a relaxed and engaging style by the author, who is the only American ever to work within the Russian space program. The book chronicles the author's 14 year journey to use Russian assets to strengthen the American space program. Included is the behind-the-scenes of signing Dennis Tito, working with entertainment icons like James Cameron and Mark Burnett and the electrifying ride that was MirCorp. The book discusses the boycott organised by NASA to prevent MirCorp's success and the drama behind the world's only commercial manned expedition that sent two men to the Mirspace station for over two months, with no government funding. It is a tale of strong characters. Readers are given a front-row seat on the decade-long clash between the Russian chief Yuri Semenov and NASA's Dan Goldin, a paradoxical battle that saw the Russians embracing American open markets and NASA clinging to the Cold War model for space exploration.

The official Air Technical Intelligence Center reports of their findings, many details from which are revealed for the first time, contain some completely baffling detailed accounts of UFO sightings by thoroughly reliable witnesses. these are the complete official accounts of the classic cases, as well as a wealth of less-publicized but equally amazing incidents. While others who have written books and articles on UFOs imply that they were conferring with officials in the inner sanctum, Mr. Ruppelt, as this fascinating book makes clear, was the inner sanctum.

The cattle mutilation phenomenon is an ongoing mystery that has endured for almost 50 years. What have we learned, if anything, from the countless reports filed? Who or what is behind the death and disfigurement of livestock reported as mutilated around the globe? Are black helicopters or UFOs related to the cattle mutilation phenomenon as many witnesses have claimed? This book addresses these questions in depth and, also, offers an objective look at the history of our venerated relationship with cattle, the first domesticated livestock.

"The Invisible Government" by Dan Smoot sold more than one million copies as a self-published title in 1962. Many people are unaware that Smoot's book serves as the basis for most modern conspiracies theories about "One World Order," the Council on Foreign Relations (a real organization), the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderburgers. Outlining Cold War-era international power-broking efforts, little-revealed government decisions and transactions, "The Invisible Government" provides food for thought -- at the least, a moment's pause for those who wonder if their votes make a difference on election day, or if their lives and futures are decided in advance for them by men whose allegiance is to their own international profit-making and power-broking, rather than the sovereignty and freedom of the United States of America.

This is the story of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories in British politics, an intrigue that still has resonance almost a century later: the Zinoviev Letter of 1924. Almost certainly a forgery, no original has ever been traced, and even if genuine it was probably Soviet 'fake news'. Despite this, the Letter still haunts British politics nearly a century after it was written; it was the subject of major Whitehall investigations in the 1960s and 1990s, and cropped up in the media as recently as during the Referendum campaign and the 2017 general election. The Letter, encouraging the British proletariat to greater revolutionary fervour, was apparently sent by Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Bolshevik propaganda organization, to the British Communist Party in September 1924. Sent to London through British Secret Intelligence Service channels, it arrived during the general election campaign and was leaked to the press. The Letter's publication by the Daily Mail on 25 October 1924 just before the General Election humiliated the first ever British Labour government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, when its political opponents used it to create a 'Red Scare' in the media. Labour blamed the Letter for its defeat, insisting there had been a right-wing Establishment conspiracy, and many in the Labour Party have never forgotten it. The Zinoviev Letter has long been a symbol of political dirty tricks and what we would now call 'fake news'. But it is also a gripping historical detective story of spies and secrets, fraud and forgery, international subversion and the nascent global conflict between communism and capitalism.

Cover-ups and mysteries, are they just a mix of wishful thinking and fantasy that grips the attention of millions of people: was JFK assassinated? Were the moon landings faked? Do secret societies such as the Illuminati control the world? Did Shakespeare write all of those incredible plays? Is global warming a hoax? Why did the all-powerful Mayans decline so rapidly? Is Area 51 really the site of an alien landing? All these and more are explored in this fascinating new book, a visual feast of mystery and imagination.

Since 1933, when a completely drugged and trial-conditioned human wreck confessed to having started the Reichstag fire in Berlin, Dr Joost A M Meerloo has studied the methods by which systematic mental pressure brings people to abject submission, and by which totalitarians imprint their subjective "truth" on their victims' minds. The first two and one-half years of World War II, Dr Meerloo spent under the pressure of Nazi-occupied Holland, witnessing at first-hand the Nazi methods of mental torture .on more than one occasion. During this time he was able to use his psychiatric and psychoanalytic knowledge to treat some of the victims. Then, after personal experiences with enforced interrogation, he escaped from a Nazi prison and certain death to England, where he was able, as Chief of the Psychological Department of the Netherlands Forces, to observe and study coercive methods officially. In this capacity he had to investigate not only traitors and collaborators, but also those members of the Resistance who had gone through the utmost of mental pressure. Later, as High Commissioner for Welfare, he came in closer contact with those who had gone through physical and mental torture. After the war, he came to the United States, where his war experiences would not permit him to concentrate solely on his psychiatric practice, but compelled him to go beyond purely medical aspects to the social aspects of the problem. As more and more cases of thought control, brainwashing, and mental coercion were disclosed -- Cardinal Mindszenty, Colonel Schwable, Robert Vogeler, and others -- his interest grew. It was Dr. Meerloo who coined the word menticide, the killing of the spirit, for this peculiar crime. His knowledge of these totalitarian procedures has been officially acknowledged; he served as an expert witness in the case of Colonel Schwable, the Marine Corps officer who, after months of subjection to physical and mental torture following his capture in Korea, was made to confess to having taken part in germ warfare. It is Dr Meerloo's position that through pressure on the weak points in men's makeup, totalitarian methods can turn anyone into a "traitor". And in this book he goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurising people's minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematised "rape of the mind". He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion. The book is written for the interested layman, not only for experts and scientists.