Forget 2012 prophecies, Mayan calendars and lurking planets that go only by the name "X" … there’s an even kookier conspiracy theory in town, and it has to do with our nation’s fearless leader and his teenage teleportation adventures on Mars.

Yes, you read that right.

It seems that two government employees and self-professed time-travelers — er, "chrononauts" — Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings have come forth and named President Obama as one of their own, along with the current head of DARPA, Regina Dugan.

• Conspiracy theorists predict 'end of the world'
  
• Expert says it's a misreading - it's a symbolic date
• Refers to a new period in the religious calendar

An inscription found in the Mayan temple of Tortuguero make a prediction of an apocalyptic even in 2012 - with some conspiracy theorists predicting the world being swallowed by a black hole, the sun, or just clipped by a passing asteroid.

The Mayan inscriptions refer to Bolon Yokte 'descending from the sky' in 2012 - a god associated with war and the underworld. But a German expert, Sven Gronemeyer, says that the whole thing could just be a misreading. [dm]

Technology, as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 2001 Supreme Court opinion, has the power "to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy." Few other technologies have as much power to do this as drones. Because they can perch hundreds or thousands of meters in the air, drones literally add a new dimension to the ability to eavesdrop.

They can see into backyards and into windows that look out onto enclosed spaces not visible from the street. They can monitor wi-fi signals or masquerade as mobile phone base stations, intercepting phone calls before passing them along. Using a network of drones, it would be possible to follow the movements of every vehicle in a city - a capability that would be invaluable to a police department tracking the getaway car in a bank robbery but invasive if used to track a patient driving to a clinic to get treatment for a confidential medical condition.

As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.

The temperature is some 30C. The humidity stifling, the noise unbearable. In a yard between two enormous tea-drying sheds, a number of dark-skinned women patiently sit, each accompanied by an unwieldy looking cloth sack. They are clad in colourful saris, but look tired and shabby. This is hardly surprising - they have spent most of the day in nearby plantation fields, picking tea that will net them around two cents a kilo - barely enough to feed their large families.

Vivek Baid thinks he knows how to help them. He runs the Mission for Population Control, a project in eastern India which aims to bring down high birth rates by encouraging local women to get sterilised after their second child. As the world reaches an estimated seven billion people, people like Vivek say efforts to bring down the world's population must continue if life on Earth is to be sustainable, and if poverty and even mass starvation are to be avoided.

Half a dozen teams decided to give it a shot. They developed sophisticated computer models, submitted their best guesses and waited. As part of the ground rules, they could not change their forecasts, which were checked against actual quakes that hit during the study period.

The goal was to see whether there was a reliable way to flag a seismic hotspot before the ground shakes.

The exercise, which began in 2006 and wrapped up last December, was not aimed at predicting quakes, which remains elusive. Instead, researchers were asked to pinpoint regions where quakes were more likely to occur based on past seismic history, activity on fault lines or other factors. The state was divided into 7,700 sections and teams had to give probabilities of quakes of varying magnitudes occurring in each one.

Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal.

The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him.

She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy.

Texas-born Mr Johnson, who served as the state’s governor and senator, completed Mr Kennedy’s term and went on to be elected president in his own right.

The tapes were recorded with leading historian Arthur Schlesinger Jnr within months of the assassination on November 22, 1963, and had been sealed in a vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston. [dailymail]

Renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan once described a "baloney detection kit" — a set of tools that skeptical thinkers use to investigate any new concept. A few of the key tools include a healthy distrust of information that isn't independently verified, critically assessing an idea rather than becoming irrationally attached to it simply because it's intriguing, and a preference for simple explanations over wildly speculative ones.

The waxing obsession with the planet Nibiru , which conspiracy theorists say is a planet swinging in from the outskirts of our solar system that is going to crash into Earth and wipe out humanity in 2012 — or, in some opinions, 2011 — shows that an astonishing number of people "are watching YouTube videos and visiting slick websites with nothing in their skeptical toolkit," in the words of David Morrison, a planetary astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center and senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

No word yet on alien starships, but now that many Cold War-era Area 51 documents have been declassified, veterans of the secret U.S. base are revealing some of the clever - and surprisingly low-tech - ways they hid futuristic prototypes from prying eyes.

The CIA created Area 51 in 1955 to test and develop top secret U.S. military projects in the remote Nevada desert. More than 50 years later, the base still doesn't officially exist and appears on no public U.S. government maps. In the 1950s and '60s, Area 51 was the epicenter of the OXCART project, intended to create the successor for the U-2 spy plane.

The OXCART plane was expected to be undetectable in the air as it flew surveillance and information-gathering missions over the Soviet Union. But Area 51 personnel soon found it necessary to conceal the craft from the Soviets eyes even when it was still being tested on the ground. [ natgeo ]

Dubbed the “online persona management service,” this technology would enable a single soldier to assume upwards of 10 different identities. As United States Central Command Commander Bill Speaks told The Guardian, “The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US.”

Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command. [The Guardian]

It’s not hard to imagine why the announcement sounds suspicious: A decade-long search for an international terrorist ends with his body dumped at sea, with no photos, film or other documentation provided.

President Barack Obama's announcement on Sunday night that United States forces had killed Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden leaves a lot for conspiracy theorists to chew on. [ See Conspiracy Theories ]

"The potential is tremendous," said Barna Donovan, a professor of communications at St. Peter's College in New Jersey and author of the forthcoming book "Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious" (McFarland & Company, 2011).

In fact, the conspiracy theorists are already out. Politico reporting that radio host Alex Jones, who thinks the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, said that he believes that the government had bin Laden frozen for years. Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has also called the announcement a fake as did an arm of a Pakistani Taliban group, according to the website. A facebook group Osama bin Laden NOT DEAD has begun collecting attracting like minded people, and apparently fake photos of bin Laden's battered face have added fuel to the fire.

Osama Bin Laden has been Dead a while...

An uncovered letter written by John F Kennedy to the head of the CIA shows that the president demanded to be shown highly confidential documents about UFOs 10 days before his assassination.

The secret memo is one of two letters written by JFK asking for information about the paranormal on November 12 1963, which have been released by the CIA for the first time.

Author William Lester said the CIA released the documents to him under the Freedom of Information Act after he made a request while researching his new book 'A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier.'

The president’s interest in UFOs shortly before his death is likely to fuel conspiracy theories about his assassination, according to AOL News. Alien researchers say the latest documents, released to Mr Lester by the CIA, add weight to the suggestion that the president could have been shot to stop him discovering the truth about UFOs. [ DM ]

A bizarre spate of television presenters dissolving into on-air gibberish has sparked claims that the U.S. military could be to blame. Are U.S. government microwave mind-control tests causing TV presenters' brains to melt down?

In four high-profile cases, the latest involving fast-talking Judge Judy, the presenters have started off speaking properly but have then descended into undecipherable nonsense - looking confused and unstable. 

The frequency of the 'attacks' - and the fact that recorded examples of the mental meltdowns have been popular on websites - has led to conspiracy theorists pointing the finger at shadowy government experiments.

It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money. [ INFOWARS.COM ]

Last week, 40 million doses of the government's H1N1 vaccine expired, and by year's end another 30 million doses will go bad as well. That will be 70 million doses, or about 43 percent of the total reserved for the American public, incinerated at a cost of nearly half a billion dollars.

In April 2009 the H1N1 virus (better known as the swine flu, much to the dismay of pig farmers and pork producers) leapt onto the world stage after being diagnosed in Mexico. Mexico City and other large cities were soon (temporarily) shut down as infections spread across the globe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevent (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) soon declared the flu a serious threat that could infect millions. Governments ordered huge quantities of vaccine to protect their citizens, and some people panicked.

Yet the swine flu epidemic never materialized, and in fact killed only about 12,000 people worldwide — about one-third the number killed just in the United States each year by seasonal flu. What happened?

Nearly half of American Adults see the government today as a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Adults see the government today as a threat to rights. Thirty-seven percent (37%) hold the opposite view. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Most Republicans (74%) and unaffiliateds (51%) consider the government to be a threat to individual rights. Most Democrats (64%) regard the government as a protector of rights.

Additionally, most Americans (52%) say it is more important for the government to protect individual rights than to promote economic growth. Just 31% say promoting economic growth is more important. But again a sizable number (17%) of Adults aren't sure which is more important.

If the conspiracy theorists are on to something, they could be plotting the invasion of Iran, planning the funeral of the Euro or scheming to wipe out French poodles in pink sweaters at this very minute.

Or perhaps the world's financial and political leaders are simply schmoozing about their golf game as they enjoy a "chocolate massage" followed by the "honey body scrub" and the "spectacular oxygen Echo2 facial" at the Dolce Hotel's spa in Sitges.

It is also possible that the world's executives, media moguls, and financial gurus came to the elegant seaside town near Barcelona to study the booming gay tourist market there (although they missed the wild Carnival celebration by a few months) and to sneak a preview of next year's international horror film festival.

But ordinary citizens can only guess at the goings-on at the annual meeting of the secretive Bilderberg Group, a media-barred pow-wow of the global elite that in the past has reportedly attracted former US President Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and David Cameron, and US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner. Even the late Enoch Powell once attended.  [ INDEPENDENT ] 

Long secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday.

Metal detectors, X-ray machines, and dogs are used at security checkpoints to look for bombs. Now a next-generation technology under development in Cambridge will look for the bomber.

With funding from the US Department of Homeland Security, Draper Laboratory and other collaborators are building technology to detect potential terrorists with cameras and noninvasive sensors that monitor eye blinks, heart rate, and even fidgeting.

Was there a government conspiracy on 9/11 2001?

 1. Why didn't jets intercept the airliners since they had numerous warnings of terrorist attacks?

2. Why did Ashcroft stop flying commercial airlines, citing an unidentified "threat" in July 2001?

3. Why did FEMA lie about their presence in New York on 9/11?

4. Why didn't the Secret Service hustle Dubya out of the classroom?

Pandemic fears creating customers far and wide for body bags...

As concerns grow of a possible flu pandemic onslaught this autumn, alert authorities worldwide have been stockpiling emergency supplies. Masks, gloves and anti-viral medications are on the list. And body bags.

If citizens refuse to comply with isolation or quarantine orders in the event of a health emergency, they may be imprisoned for up to 30 days and fined $1,000 per day that the violation continues.

Council, police and other organisations made more than half a million requests for confidential communications data last year.

The statistics constitute a 44 per cent rise in requests over the past two years.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which was created to help the authorities to fight the threat of terrorism, gives organisations such as local councils, the police and intelligence agencies the power to request access to confidential communications data, including lists of telephone numbers dialled and e-mail addresses to which messages have been sent.