Left Brain Right Brain

Two new conspiracy theories this week. The first one is an eye-roller. The second is an eye-popper.

The first one is the alleged hacking of Ray Gallup’s Vaccine Autoimmunity Project. I came across this email from JABS regular John Stone:

Unincidentally, I was appalled to hear today that VAP website has been hacked into and is likely to be down for an extended period.

If this is how people like Offit, not to mention Berners-Lee [more on this later – Kev] and Ghosh (see my previous post) think the future should be, our politicians ought to consider what is tolerable in an alleged free society.

As the poet Heinrich Heine noted in 1823: “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people”.

“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”

These people already have the advantage of media domination, but they will not allow a word of dissent. If their science is so perfect, why cannot they discuss it?

So, following Stone’s train of thought, he seems to be stating that Paul Offit thinks that its OK that websites are hacked? I really doubt that.

But the really pointed allusion is in his last paragraph. He seems to be suggesting that ‘they’ (Offit et al) ‘will not allow’ oppositional views.

Did Paul Offit put out a contract on VAP? Somehow I really, really doubt it.

Ray Gallup’s reply was even more paranoid.

John,

Thank you very much.

I suspect that certain people had a hired gun to do this virus thing to VAP like I’m sure you have the same suspicions. Lots of PharmaMafia people out there that want to silence VAP by screwing up the VAP website with a virus including their surogates at such sites as Neurodiversity.com, etc.

Ray Gallup

My, my. Ray thinks someone from Neurodiversity.com (i.e. Kathleen or Dave) trojaned the VAP website.

I’m going to go out on a limb and go for user error. The server error (Directory Listing Denied) does not speak of a hack to me. Hacks are usually defacements of the original page which are non-destructive. This looks more to me like ahem, ‘someone’ has accidentally deleted the root file. If that is the case, simply asking the host (ixwebhosting.com) to restore the page from a backup (assuming they take them) would sort the problem out immediately. You can thank me later Ray.

So, thats the eye-roller. The eye-popper is way better.

On Monday, inventor of the web Tim Berners-Lee said:

Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.

……..

The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth particularly concerned him, he said. In a similar vein was the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful. Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.

Ooooh, you can imagine how well _that_ went down in certain quarters, right? A few hours later, the following was posted to EoH:

Group With Big Pharma Ties Wants to Shut Down Vaccine “Conspiracy Theories”

So, first inaccuracy: Sir Tim didn’t mention ‘shutting down’. He mentioned providing a label for trustworthiness.

But anyway, I was intrigued as to who this ‘group with Big Pharma ties’ were. So I read on:

Kingpins of Military-Industrial complex say they will “brand” websites they consider “trustworthy and reliable sources of information” A foundation populated by the giants of business, banking, government and military wants to “vet” websites and limit the spread of information that it says creates “conspiracy theories”. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), fronted by Internet creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says it is worried about the way the web has been “used to spread disinformation”.

Wait…what? W3C??? Kingpin of Military-Industrial complex???

For those that don’t know W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C’s mission is:

To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

In my job as a web developer I have a lot of dealings with the standards developed by W3C. They helped develop the code that that is used in _all_ websites and they helped develop the ‘rules’ that allow web browsers such as the one you are using right now to view those websites.

Those ‘rules’ help make sure that code is used responsibly. It made Microsoft behave and develop the vastly improved browser of IE7. Its code is responsible for the fact that many, many more websites are accessible to people with disabilities than they used to be.

In a nutshell, what they do is draw up standards for code use for people like me and people like software developers. The idea of them being a ‘Kingpin of Military-Industrial complex’ is hilarious.

Here’s the full member list. Being a member ensures you one thing and one thing only: a say in how the standards of the future are shaped. I assure you there are no Illuminati lizards running around in Black Helicopters.

In all of the utterly crazy conspiracy theories I’ve seen so far, this one is right up there at the top of the tree.