But of course, it’s relatively rare that someone’s superstitious beliefs actually put their life in danger. What’s much more common is the reliance on psychic information to guide decisions in business or personal relationships. By all accounts, María Gómez Cámara was among the most influential people in Bélmez. People brought her questions every day, seeking what they believed was guidance divinely inspired by Santa María. The city council’s determination that her painted faces were fraudulent apparently had no effect on the public’s perception of her abilities. From what we know, it appears that nearly every day in Bélmez during Cámara’s lifetime, some significant decision was made based on information of totally unknown value. I found no record indicating whether the advice she dispensed turned out to be right or wrong, so there’s no foundation to assert that her advice was not divinely inspired or was not of faultless quality. We have only the one data point: The faces she and her family painted on the floor, and then fraudulently presented as evidence of her divinely inspired psychic abilities. Is it possible that her abilities were otherwise truly psychic? Certainly. Is it likely? Judge for yourself.
I argue that the promotion of bogus phenomena like the Faces of Bélmez instills a harmful lesson into people that damages their ability to be successful in many facets of life. A more valuable lesson would be the critical thinking skills that allow them to properly analyze such claims, and discriminate true information from false. I often hear the question put forward, is it important to “debunk” stories like this, even if people draw comfort and hope from them? Based on the point I just made, yes, without question; but mere “debunking” is of no practical value if left there. What you need to do is teach people the critical thinking skills that will help them avoid such pitfalls in the future. That’s what’s important.
So, the Faces of Bélmez: A harmless little folk tale? Perhaps, but only if taken out of context and considered by itself. But within the context of the lives of the believers who come to see it, it is unambiguously a harmful influence, contributing to the erosion of their ability to make sound decisions governing their lives.
REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Baker, P. “History Mystery: The Bélmez Faces.” Helium. Helium, Inc., 1 Mar. 2010. Web. 27 Nov. 2010.
Forte, R. “Faces of the Dead Mysteriously Appear on Woman’s Cement Floor.” Weekly World News. 10 Oct. 1995, Volume 17, Number 2: 40-41.
Nickell, J. Looking for a Miracle; Weeping icons, relics, stigmata, visions & healing cures. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1993.
Schweimler, D. “An unexplained mystery.” News.bbc.co.uk. BBC Online Network, 19 Oct. 1999. Web. 7 Oct. 2010.
Tort, C. “Bélmez Faces Turned Out to Be Suspiciously ‘Picturelike’ Images.” Skeptical Inquirer. 1 Mar. 1995, Volume 19, Number 2: 4.
Wynn, C., Wiggins, A. Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where real science ends...and Pseudoscience Begins. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2001.
15. THE DENVEr AIRPORT CONSPIRACY
Is the Denver International Airport really a headquarters for the New World Order?
On the surface, Denver International Airport seems like any other modern airport. It’s new, it’s clean, it’s big, and it’s modern. But some investigators have found more to it than meets the eye. Much more. Claims abound that Denver International was designed and built by the Illuminati as the headquarters for the global genocide that will trigger the New World Order.
An Internet search for “Denver airport conspiracy” reveals that there is a lot of talk about this, and that the specific claims and observations are numerous. Here’s an overview of the basics. According to the conspiracy theorists, Denver already had a fine airport, Stapleton International. But despite widespread protests, Denver International was built and opened in 1995, with fewer runways, thus reducing Denver’s capacity. Its construction began with five mysterious buildings that were completed and then buried intact, with the cover story that they were “built wrong”. Up to 8 levels of underground facilities are said to exist, and workers who go there refuse to answer questions about what they do. The entire airport is surrounded by a barbed wire guard fence, with the barbed wire angled inward, to keep people in, like a giant prison, not out like at other airports. And if viewed from the air, the runways are revealed to be laid out in the shape of a Nazi swastika. Questions about what the government might be doing in this underground base may have been answered in 2007, when fourteen commercial aircraft reported spontaneously shattered windshields as the presumed result of electromagnetic pulses.
Some of the “alien language”
Indoors, the airport gets even stranger. The Illuminati appear to have detailed their plans for global genocide and a New World Order in two large murals. The first depicts a huge Nazi soldier with dead women and children scattered around him, and the second shows Third World populations dying, a few elite species protected from the apocalypse in sealed containers, and the Mayan symbol for 2012 presiding over all. In the floor near the murals is written “Au Ag”, the abbreviation for the deadly toxin Australia Antigen, evidently the Illuminati’s weapon of choice to accomplish the genocide. On other places, strange words in an unknown (possibly alien) language are written on the floors DZIT DIT GAII” and others). Most telling of all is the granite monument that the airport claims is a time capsule. It’s emblazoned with the symbol of the Freemasons, well known among conspiracy theorists to be a major arm of the Illuminati, and engraved with the words “New World Airport Commission”. And finally, the Queen of England, another alleged Illuminatus, has been secretly and anonymously buying up the property surrounding the airport.
There’s a common red flag shared by this particular conspiracy and many others, and that’s the presumption that the conspirators chose to publicly announce their evil plans by putting all of this out there for everyone to see. That would be like Nixon, before Watergate, ordering a public mural to be placed in the hotel lobby showing GOP spies breaking into a room. Or Oliver North announcing his intentions by placing a sculpture in the National Mall showing himself handing a shoulderfired missile launcher to an Iranian with one hand, and giving the proceeds to a Nicaraguan with the other. If these analogies sound absurd, they are; but they do accurately portray the conspiracy theorists’ belief of why Denver International has certain features: it was to publicly announce plans for a future crime against humanity. If you don’t think Nixon or North were fool enough to make such announcements, you might want to reconsider whether that’s actually what was done at Denver International.
Was the old Stapleton International Airport truly adequate, and did it really have more capacity? Not even close. It was 65 years old, was a major noise nuisance being in the middle of the city, and had only three 10,000-foot runways, the minimum needed for large jets at such a high elevation, and barely adequate for fully loaded international jumbos. Denver International has six runways all over 12,000 feet, and one at 16,000 feet, that can accommodate any jet in the world. Its location clear of Denver alleviates the noise concerns.
The underground constructions, as anyone who has traveled through Denver knows, are for the underground train system that connects all the terminals, including additional tunneling built to accommodate future expansion. Other underground systems were built for Denver’s state of the art automated baggage handling system. Unfortunately the system never worked well, and by 2005 it was retired completely, and now the underground tunnels are used for conventional baggage handling. Hundreds of workers go in and out of there every day, and none of them have ever reported seeing anything unusual. No reptoids, no aliens, no Illuminati. Yet. I was not able to find any well-reported cases of a worker being interviewed and refusing to discuss his job, so as far as I can tell, this was simply made up.
What of the large barbed wire prison area? Like those at all commercial airports
in developed nations, Denver International’s runways are fenced off with barbed wire. This is required by law for obvious safety reasons. Stories that the barbed wire is angled inward are simply untrue: People who have actually been there report that the barbed wire sticks straight up and is not angled either way. There appears to be no significant difference between the fencing at Denver International and that at any other commercial airport.
As for those broken windshields, it really did happen. It took the newspapers a little while to get the cause from the National Transportation Safety Board, and that period of uncertainty is when the rumors about electromagnetic weapons germinated. The NTSB confirmed what the mechanics who replaced the windshields were able to tell at a glance: The breaks were caused by flying debris during high winds.
Whether the runways are laid out like a swastika seems to be a matter of opinion. It’s easy to see on Google Earth, and to me it certainly does give the general impression of a swastika. If you select certain taxiways and runways, you can overlay a nearperfect swastika, but to do so you have to ignore very significant runways including the biggest one. I’d say the eastern half does look like half a swastika, but the western half is too much of a stretch. Even if it was perfect, I don’t see what that would prove. Runways are laid out with prevailing winds and have to be approved by safety agencies and pilot groups. If a swastika is what works, a swastika is what they’ll use.
The swastika theory was bolstered by the Nazi-like figure in those artistic murals depicting, supposedly, the Illuminati’s plans to reduce the Earth’s population. In fact those two creepy murals were each half of a diptych, a two-part mural, each depicting a hopeful message of man’s journey from brutality to peace. They were made by Chicano artist Leo Tanguma, one of several artists commissioned to paint similar murals throughout Denver International. The Children of the World Dream of Peace shows a menacing Nazi-style soldier wreaking havoc and fear, and includes a poem written by an actual child who died at Auschwitz. In the second half of this diptych, the soldier is dead, and the children of all nations come together over his corpse and beat the world’s swords into plowshares, inspired by the Bible verses Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3.
Tanguma’s other mural, In Peace and Harmony with Nature, shows the Earth suffering from exploitation, and some species extinct and now found only behind museum glass, mistaken by the conspiracy theorists for elite species being protected from the Apocalypse. The alleged Mayan reference to 2012 is simply a small piece of carved stone with Mayan-style decorations held by one figure in the mural and representing the decline of indigenous populations. (Tanguma himself is a Mayan.) The second half of this diptych shows children from all nations gathering at the flowering tree of peace on a rejuvenated Earth.
But the conspiracy theorists have been told all this; they simply choose to regard it as untrue; in part because of that warning etched into the floor near Tanguma’s murals that Australia Antigen will be used to kill us all. Colorado is well known for its history of gold and silver mines, and so a mine car full of Au and Ag is a most appropriate symbol for the state. Is it also an appropriate symbol for a planned genocide by the Illuminati? Well, a mine car doesn’t seem to have any particular significance to genocide; if the mine car was put there to confuse us and throw us off the trail, and the idea was for the clue to be obfuscated, why give the clue at all? Australia Antigen is indeed sometimes abbreviated as Au Ag, but its true common abbreviation is HBsAg, for Hepatitis B antigen. By itself it would not be much of a biological weapon. If you exposed everyone to Australia Antigen, you’d essentially just inoculate them against Hepatitis B. An antigen is not the disease germ itself, it is simply any substance that provokes an immune response. Australia Antigen is merely the protein found on the surface of the Hepatitis B virus. By itself, it’s harmless. A vaccine has existed for some time against Hepatitis B, and many people have received it. Even if you haven’t, Hepatitis B is treatable and is rarely fatal; and so, again, a pretty poor choice for a mechanism of global genocide.
The other words in the floor (the “alien language”) are Navajo names for sacred mountains in Colorado, once again, a significant part of the state’s history.
And then there’s that granite 100-year time capsule bearing the symbol of the Freemasons on its capstone. Could there be any explanation other than Denver International being the headquarters of the Illuminati? Another explanation might be that the local Masonic lodge constructed and placed the time capsule. The Masons are a civic organization that often performs such services, and this has been a tradition at public buildings in the United States for a long time. Both the White House and the US Capitol have cornerstones placed and marked by local Masonic lodges. Although you might choose to interpret this to mean that Denver International is some kind of government headquarters, you could also observe that these are just three examples of hundreds, if not thousands, of public buildings in the country that followed this tradition.
The “New World Airport Commission” mentioned on the capstone did exist, contrary to conspiracy claims that there is no record of any such organization. The commission was a group of Denver business and civic leaders who sponsored and organized some events at the airport’s opening, ushering in Denver as a new “world-class” city. You can say this is false, but all you’ve got to back that up is your own imagination.
Perhaps the most entertaining of the conspiracy claims about Denver International Airport concerns the brass plaque at the end of an artistic curved pedestal above the time capsule. The plaque repeats the Mason symbol and has the rest of the text from the time capsule written in Braille. However, many conspiracy web sites refer to this paragraph of Braille as a “keypad”. I even found a lengthy discussion on AboveTopSecret.com, the notorious conspiracy theory web site, speculating about what the code might be. In all seriousness, some seem to believe that a code can be typed on this solid plaque which will either open the time capsule, permit admittance to the secret underground base, or perhaps even trigger the global genocide.
Queen Elizabeth II is indeed a pretty substantial property investor, although it’s really the Royal Crown in general and not her personally. Her own fortune is a few hundred million dollars, but the majority of the Crown’s wealth is held in trust for the nation. This portion is somewhere north of $17 billion and includes property investments all around the world. Although neither I nor a friend in the real estate department at a Denver law firm could find any specific record of the Crown purchasing land near Denver Airport, real estate near a new international airport is usually a sound investment for anyone, and such a purchase would be consistent with the Crown’s other investments.
Of course, if we don’t uncritically accept all this, we’re “sheeple” who have had the wool pulled over our eyes by the Illuminati overlords, and I’m merely a shill paid to spread misinformation (but you knew that about me already). The truth is that the Apocalypse is coming, and the New World Order has chosen to publicly announce their plans in an airport; but only the specially gifted “Patriots” are enlightened enough to see it.
REFERENCES & FURTHER READING
Bingham, J., Singh, A. “Queen 12th in Forbes list of richest royals.” Daily Telegraph. 21 Aug. 2008, 2598399: 8.
DIA. “Art at DIA.” Denver International Airport. City & County of Denver Department of Aviation, 5 Feb. 2003. Web. 23 Feb. 2010.
Editors. “DIA Cracked Plane Windshields Mystery Solved.” TheDenverChannel.com. KMGH-TV, 28 Feb. 2007. Web. 23 Feb. 2010.
Glass, R. Software Runaways. New York: Prentice Hall, 1998.
Google. “Denver International Airport.” Google Maps. Google.com, 9 Jun. 2007. Web. 23 Feb. 2010.
Li, A., Williamson, R., et al. “New Denver Airport: Impact of the Delayed Baggage System — GAO/RCED-95-35BR.” Research and Innovative Technology Administration. US Department of Transportation, 14 Oct. 1994. We
b. 23 Feb. 2010.
16. ZEITGEIST: THE MOVIE, MYTHS, aND MOTIVATIONS
The Internet movie Zeitgeist uses flagrant dishonesty to make an ideological point that could have easily been made ethically.
In this chapter, we’re going to point the skeptical eye at one of the most popular Internet phenomena from the last couple of years: Zeitgeist, a freely downloadable documentary movie. It purports to critically examine Christianity, the cause of 9/11, and the world economy. Instead, it paints them all with a single wide stroke of the conspiracy paintbrush. “Zeitgeist” is a German word meaning the spirit of the times, thus Zeitgeist the movie purports to pull aside the curtain and reveal the true nature of the world in which we live. The problem with the film, as has been roundly pointed out by academics worldwide, is that many of the conspiratorial claims and historical references are outright fictional inventions. Zeitgeist does have a message that’s not necessarily invalid, but it’s lost underneath the unequivocal dishonesty.
For a long time, people have been asking me to turn Skeptoid’s skeptical eye on Zeitgeist. I’ve resisted, mainly because it’s so poorly researched that I didn’t feel it deserved any response from legitimate science journalism. But people have kept asking. And, obviously, a lot of viewers have been swayed by it. I’ve even had people who innocently bought into it write me and quote Zeitgeist as an authority, suggesting I do some episode promoting one of its claims. Zeitgeist, and the 9/11 conspiracy movie Loose Change, are largely what motivated me to produce Here Be Dragons, my free 40-minute video giving a general introduction to applied critical thinking, which I felt was a more appropriate response than publicly acknowledging either film. But I spent some time learning more about Zeitgeist, its sequels and related events, and its creator, and concluded that the mainstream criticism of the film doesn’t tell the whole story, and its worldwide impact does make it deserving of a more critical examination.
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