1st Annual Conspiracy Con: An Exercise in Group Paranoia
as reported by Skylaire Alfvegren
It was in the shadow of two federal rulings significant to the conspiratorially-inclined (a possible stay of execution for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and a possible trial for FBI sharp shooter Lon Horiuchi, who bungled the infamous raid in Ruby Ridge, Idaho) that the first conference on conspiracies was held in northern California.
Last-minute ads on Art Bell, as well as notices on the speakers' web sites, attracted an international, near-capacity crowd. "People called and said they were canceling their vacations," remarked conference producer Brian Hall. 40% of those in attendance traveled from outside California (an unprecedented figure for such an event), some as far away as Denmark and Australia, to experience seven of "the world's most controversial speakers" under one roof.
A number of the speakers--fringe pin-up David Icke, Jordan Maxwell, recovered CIA mind control sex slave Cathy O'Brien and her partner, Mark Phillips--are familiar to anyone who's trolled the American UFO lecture circuit. "There are many types of conferences that briefly touch on the issues that we're addressing here. UFOs, New Age, spirituality, alternative healing, preparedness. But in my opinion, they fall short because they don't address the issues that we face right now," remarked Hall, who, along with Charles Wren and Victoria Jack, have been involved in organizing Bay Area UFO conferences for a decade. "How can we even begin to address the possibility of life and intelligent civilizations on other worlds if we don't even know who we are and what is happening right under our noses? There are forces working very hard to not only suppress esoteric knowledge, but to maintain a population of taxpaying zombies stuck in survival mode."
Although stuck with the first slot of the conference (8:30am), Mark Phillips and Cathy O'Brien packed them in. O'Brien bills herself as the first victim of MK Ultra to speak out about her own torture; Mark Phillips, an ex-intelligence agent, rescued O'Brien and her daughter in 1983. Together they wrote Trance-Formation of America, which details the US government's involvement in white slavery operations, an international child porn ring, drug dealing and of course, mind control.
O'Brien's personal saga of sexual torture and mind control at the hands of everyone from current Vice President Dick Cheney to third-rate country singer Boxcar Willie paved the way for other self-styled mind control survivors (Bryce Taylor, Arizona Wilder) to come forward. Trance-Formation is filled with claims so outlandish even conspiracy theorists have trouble swallowing them (her mind control programming was triggered by The Wizard of Oz, the CIA controls the country music industry, etc.), and it was apparent that many attendees wished to make up their minds about her claims after witnessing her in person.
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