If You're Looking for a Conspiracy, Look in the Right Place
Here's a Conspiracy Theory for You
I got another hysterical post about the evils of Aspartame claiming they were renaming their evil, customer-killing substance as a plot to, well, continue making money killing the customers from whom they are supposedly making billions.
Aside from the idiocy of a business deliberately killing its customers in order to make more money, it just ain't so. The studies don't bear out that Aspartame is a killer - at least not the credible ones. Besides this whole thing and other hysterical posts about evil corporations killing their customers got started, not from some do-gooder trying to save mankind. It got it's start with religion. Well not a religion so much as a cult.
Many of these borderline hysterical warnings about evil corporations trying to kill you are the remnants of an old Scientology fund-raising strategy. It's not bout Aspartame. It's about extorting money. In the case of Aspartame, the Scientologists sued claiming Aspartame is a mind-control substance. The only reason the company has settled is not because the case has ANY merit, but because the Scientologists had filed so many lawsuits that defending them was going to be prohibitively expensive.
Scientology has for decades used defamation of a company or individual as a tactic to extort money. They put their mind-numbed followers to work writing negative stuff about a product or a person on social media and then they file dozens of baseless lawsuits against the targeted person or company are. Ever wonder why so many millions are working "voluntarily" to bring down Monsanto? They're not volunteers. They're Scientology conscripts, scooped up through programs like Scientology's NARCANON (which is NOT Narcotics Anonymous which calls itself NA to differentiatte themselves from the Scientology recruitment groups). Not all of the anti-GMO crowd are Scientologists. Most are just dupes, sucked in by a good corporate conspiracy theory. Oddly enough, a lot of them are progressives who support more and bigger government to solve the problem of big government/corporate oppression of the masses. It kind of reminds me of someone trying to keep wolves from stealing their sheep by feeding the wolves a lot of mutton.
To make these kinds of attacks stop, the targets of this type of assault (corporations, media outlets and individuals) usually pay up, especially if they have lots of money. The settlement amount is always an amount that isn't nearly what it would cost to fight literally hundreds of lawsuits and a massive public disinformation campaign. This tactic is what has supported Tom Cruise's and John Travolta's "church" all these years.
Many of the original bogus attacks are still going on with the help of excitable conspiracy theorists and gullible friends of friends who trust everything their friends send them. It's sad how easily we believe the worst of people or companies and refuse to believe that nasty people would do such a thing to them deliberately for money.
L. Ron Hubbard a B-science fiction writer in the 40s once told an interviewer that the way to really make money was not to write novels, but to invent yourself a religion. Dianetics came out in print a couple of years later and Captain Ron was on his way to becoming a multi-millionaire on the backs of the mentally ill.
If you want to get into some real conspiracies, stop worrying about the Illuminati and the Freemasons and take a look at really icky groups like Scientology. I've included a few links to some germaine articles in the reference section. If you have the patience, you can find much more interesting stuff, but you'll have to dig. Scientology is a vindictive bunch and they will take down anyone who crosses them by suing them into bankruptcy. Fortunately, I'm already bankrupt so I'm not worth bothering with.
Just Sayin'.
Tom
References:
- https://how2becomeachristian.wordpress.com/tag/scientology-fund-raising/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_the_legal_system
- http://www.csj.org/infoserv_groups/grp_scientology/co087_scientology_prozac.htm
- http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca@iimetro.com.au/aspartame.htm
- http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/scientology-defectors-describe-violence-humiliation-in-the-hole/1270047
- http://www.texasobserver.org/scientology-defectors-privacy-fight-sparks-epic-showdown-comal-county-court/
- http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2011277347_scientology07.html
- http://scientology-facts.blogspot.com/2005/11/scientology-religion-or-racket.html
- http://www.xenutv.com/blog/
- http://abcnews.go.com/US/pr-crisis-scientology-abc-news-exclusive/story?id=15813613
- http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/Declaration/exhibg.html
- http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/282987/34/Federal-suit-Scientologist-spent-30-mil-to-cover-death
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261386/Scientologists-make-followers-work-slave-labour-according-lawsuits-members.html
