(April 4, 2024 at 6:12 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Probably just Jeremy Clarkson.
Boru
Jeremy is not that bad on his new farm show. You should give it a try.
The Solar Eclipse Is the Super Bowl for Conspiracists
Far-right conspiracy theorists are claiming that “elites” will use the eclipse to control humanity, sway the presidential election, and everything else under the sun.
“Major Events Surrounding The April 8th Solar Eclipse,” Alex Jones wrote. “Masonic rituals planned worldwide to usher in New World Order.”
Authorities along the path of the eclipse in the US have issued warnings about loss of cell coverage and electrical outages. Additionally, some towns have already declared an emergency, and National Guard troops have been put on standby. This has made the conspiracists only more convinced, even though the preparations in these towns have often been centered around the huge influx of tourists expected to congregate on April 8. For those deep in conspiracy land, the context doesn’t matter.
On Telegram, one well-known conspiracy influencer known as the Health Ranger, who has 75,000 subscribers, wrote that the eclipse “sure would be the perfect cover story if our terrorist government wanted to take down the power grid and cause mass chaos while blocking all citizen communications. Kinda convenient if you want to declare martial law and unleash a dictatorship before Trump can win in November.”
There are dozens of examples being shared online, but among the most quoted involve the fact that the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will be firing up the Large Hadron Collider on that day for the first time in two years. Many online are linking the celestial event to the restart of the device that, more than a decade ago, found the Higgs boson, which many misleadingly label the “God particle.”
If that wasn’t enough, NASA is launching three satellites as part of its Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission. Unfortunately for NASA, Apep is also the name of an ancient Egyptian snake god associated with darkness and destruction—a coincidence that conspiracists have decided is relevant. A celestial body known as the devil’s comet will also be visible to the naked eye during the eclipse.
Finally, many have linked the eclipse with the imminent sacrifice of red heifers in Israel, a practice that some Jews and evangelicals believe will variously herald the construction of a Third Temple in Jerusalem, the return of the messiah, or the end of the world.
“Red Heifers from Texas have arrived in Israel where they will be sacrificed during the Solar Eclipse,” the operator of a prominent conspiracy channel on Telegram wrote this week in a post viewed more than 120,000 times. “At the same time, CERN will be opening up demonic portals.”
Videos citing all of these coincidences have been posted by conspiracists—as well as many Christian evangelical pastors and churches—and have amassed millions of views on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok in recent weeks.
Sovereign-citizen guru David Straight has also posited a wild conspiracy called Operation Balloon, claiming that the government, using the eclipse blackout as cover, will deploy balloons filled with poisonous gas. Straight didn’t, however, explain why the government wouldn’t just do this at night, when it’s also dark and people are typically not staring at the sky.
https://www.wired.com/story/solar-eclipse-conspiracies/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
