The two wildest conspiracy theories going around today

Hypocrisy, thy name is Cannon: Right after publishing a post which decries the conspiracy theorist subculture, I've decided to talk about two ultra-bizarre theories that have suddenly popped up. Why? In part, because I have always been fascinated by the outlandish. And in part because -- well, ya never knows.

I'm not asking you to believe these theories -- in fact, you ought not. But cautious and skeptical investigation may do some good. If you pull on a string, who knows what will unravel?

1. Putting the Enterprise in harm's way. I'm not talking about Captain Kirk's Enterprise; I'm talking about the nuclear powered aircraft carrier, CVN-65. From Wikipedia:

She was originally scheduled for decommissioning in 2014 or 2015, depending on the life of her reactors and completion of her replacement, USS Gerald R. Ford.[10] But the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 slated the ship's retirement for 2013, when she will have served for 51 consecutive years, longer than any other U.S. aircraft carrier.

The rumor circulating around at least one port town is this: Not long before the presidential election, the Enterprise will be given one last mission -- in the Persian Gulf, just within range of Iran's Sunfire missiles.

You can fill in the rest for yourself, can't you?

I honestly don't know whether it is possible to fake up a Sunfire attack. One shudders to think of what would happen if the ship's eight nuclear reactors were destroyed in open water.

At any rate, there are sailors and merchant-marine-types on the East coast who swear that this plot is in the works. I'm not saying they're right. The fact that seamen are circulating this scenario is, in and of itself, noteworthy.

2. The Secret Service and the plot against Obama. Gordon Duff is a writer for Veterans Today, which the ADL condemns as an anti-Semitic publication. I'm not really familiar with his work. On superficial examination, I'd say that Duff defies the usual categorizations, in that he seems to be quite liberal in many of his views, which makes him despised by the anti-Semitic right and by the Israel-ueber-alles crowd.

(Of course, the case of Anders Breivik -- a pro-Israel mass-murdering Nazi -- taught us that the usual categories are breaking down. It's getting really weird out there, folks. Too weird for an old dog like me.)

In the past, Duff has said some seriously off-the-wall things -- for example, he thinks that Wikileaks is an Israeli front. (My response: Nah.) His take on the Zimmerman/Martin affair is interesting -- somewhat unconventional, but not really irrational.

Right now, Duff is gaining a lot of attention for his theory that the Secret Service prostitution scandal is actually a cover for something far more ominous.

The story, one a child wouldn’t believe, is that our Secret Service and Army advance teams, those that arrange for presidential security, were arrested for failing to pay one or more whores for “services rendered.”

The real deal is very probably this:

At least one of the members of the presidential detail is suspected of working with foreign nationals to arrange the assassination of President Obama.

Call me a child, but I can believe that Secret Service agents would use hookers. I will admit, though, that not paying the hookers would be unfathomably foolish. At any rate, let's stop being coy about one point: When Duff says "foreign nationals," he means the Israelis.

Duff goes on to make some intriguing points:

SOFA. We call it the Separation of Forces Agreement that requires local cops to call someone before arresting an American. Generally, unless there is a busload of burning kindergartners and grieving parents, someone, such as a whore, is going to be led away.

As for the issue of “pay or not to pay,” Columbia is a Catholic country and prostitution is illegal. A prostitute or whore who goes to the police to enforce her pricing code is arrested, especially if the foreign national involved is part of a group that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on the Colombian police and military.

Prostitutes that want to be paid hire pimps with guns and pay off police, same as here in the United States. Generally hotel clerks, or the “concierge” at better hotels arrange the deal.

We could go a step further. Imagine yourself an American citizen in Columbia at a 4 star hotel such as the Caribe.

Picture the hotel staff calling the police to have you arrested because a prostitute that they let into the hotel was demanding money from a patron.

This isn’t a cheap hotel. They really want the entire world to know they are filled with cheap whores and that their staff works with the police to shake down the residents?

I have to admit: These are worthwhile points. But so far, I've seen nothing about an assassination plot.

(It is true, however, that the hookers had access to a room where Obama's schedule was out in the open.)

Veteran's Today, in another article (which may or may not be related to Duff's piece), draws our attention to one of the most astounding editorials I've ever read.

In case you missed it – The Atlanta Jewish Times publisher Andrew Adler, in an editorial on Jan. 13, committed treason when he suggested that Israel’s Mossad should consider assassinating President Barack Obama.

Have Adler's words been yanked out of context? Nope. We have the editorial in pdf. (I present a JPG of the damning paragraph to your left.) The author is clearly not indulging in mere blue-sky conjecture; he writes as though he has been made privy to high-level scuttlebutt.

I've long said that Israeli's secret services will be undone by their arrogance; they have become so cocky that they no longer attempt to be secretive. If anything does happen to Obama or Romney, Adler has given us our chief suspect -- and for that, I suppose, he deserves our thanks. (In the future, Mr. Adler, please continue to be chatty. It's very helpful.)

Alas, the afore-linked Veteran's Today article goes on to reference Michael Collin Piper. I've read his book Final Judgment and consider it deceptive. But Piper's rotten JFK assassination book should not blind us to Adler's treasonous editorial.

(Here's a thought experiment. Let's lock Piper, Adler and Breivik in the House on Haunted Hill overnight. Give them three loaded guns, just like in the movie. Who would walk out alive? Can anyone come up with a "three corpse" scenario, or is that just a happy daydream?)

Back to Duff's conspiracy theory. Bottom line: I still haven't seen any evidence that anyone (Israeli or otherwise) was planning to assassinate Obama in Colombia.

True, Colombia and Israel have, historically, been very friendly. Colombia is buying Israeli drones. Israeli special forces have trained both Colombian "counter-insurgency" forces and the mercenary armies employed by the drug cartels. Colombia reliably votes with the U.S. to block any United Nations efforts on the Palestinian issue. And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is in Bogota right now. (Oh, and there's this.)

Yeah, that's all very intriguing. But we still have nothing that connects the prostitution scandal to an assassination plot.

Duff's theory, as it stands, is nonsense -- in fact, it's not even a full-fledged theory. We do not yet have a comprehensible linear narrative. All Duff has given us is the same thing conspiracy buffs usually give us: A mass of highly emotive language spewing out in all directions, as though someone placed a Capsaicin spray bottle in the hands of an easily spooked epileptic.

And yet Duff has gotten this much right: The official story of what happened in Colombia is questionable.

So what the hell went on down there?