Alex Jones & Exposing Corruption  

.
 
 
  A Word About Alex Jones...

Alex Jones is Austin's leading conspiracy theorist.  He advocates the usual mix of laughable conspiracy paranoia, from the Federal Reserve and the Rockefellers to the CFR and the UN.  He's gained quite an audience, if for no other reason than he's passionate about his beliefs.  When Alex gets a good head of steam, he's pretty entertaining to watch.

Anyway, Alex has a few of his own "personal" conspiracy theories.  I say personal because they aren't as commonplace as the usual Web theories.  This section is designed to address many of those theories.

Alex can be seen on Austin Public Access Cable, channel 10, on Tuesday nights from 8:30 pm to 11:00 pm; he is also a frequent host of "Bad Bob Presents" on Monday evenings from 11:00 pm to midnight, also on channel 10.  He is frequently joined by another public-access conspiracy theorist, Jeff Davis.  Mr. Davis also hosts his own show on Monday nights from 7:00 to 8:00 pm; the duo hosts another show in the afternoon on either Wednesdays or Thursdays, but I'm unsure of exactly when.  Alex is also fairly unique in that he's gathered enough of a following to have a commercial radio program; he can be heard on Saturday evenings on 98.9 KJFK from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm.

One of Alex's fans has set up a web site.  He clearly agrees with Alex on most things, although he is open-minded enough to have included e-mails from myself as well as links I've sent him debunking many of Alex's claims.  It's called Wake Up With Alex Jones & Jeff Davis.  He's set up a link where you can listen to Alex in streaming audio.  Be sure you have the RealPlayer plugin installed if you want to hear it.  Another site, PoliticalTexan, has also archived his shows in streaming audio here.  Also, Alex and Jeff are involved in an organization called Texas Best Seminars.

I should note that I bear neither Mr. Jones nor Mr. Davis any ill will.  However, much of what they say is simply untrue and I think that people ought to have a resource that tells them why.  I am not, nor would I ever, suggest censoring either man.  Guys like this, I suppose, are the price we pay for the First Amendment.
 
  Executive Order 12986

One of Alex's favorite claims is that the US government is giving away its land to the United Nations.  He claims that Executive Order 12986, signed by President Clinton on January 18, 1996, effectuated this transfer.  Obviously if this was true, it would be a pretty serious charge.

Unfortunately for Alex, reading the Order itself dispenses with this ridiculous notion.  As it turns out, the EO grants immunity from lawsuits to an international environmental organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCNN).  Indeed, it doesn't even give full protection to the IUCNN, because the EO specifically withholds immunity for the organization's property and assets similar to foreign governments, immunity from search and confiscation, and immunity for acts in their official capacities.  The EO actually gives pretty watered-down protection to the IUCNN!

Where does President Clinton get the power to do this, you might ask?  The answer is a statute passed by Congress in the 1940's, today codified as 22 U.S.C. §288, et. seq.  It gives the president the power to designate via Executive Order international organizations which will be immune from suit, and also permits him to specify which types of immunity will be given to the organization in question.  A later amendment to the act makes the IUCNN an eligible organization, so it's not just the President but also the Congress which thinks this organization should be given immunity.

This power has been used fairly consistently since its inception.  The annotated edition of the code lists 72 organizations which enjoy immunity, including such benign organizations as the World Tourism Organization, the United Bureau for the Protection of Intellectual Property, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.  Being on the list is hardly permanent as well; 10 organizations are listed as having their immunity revoked.
 
The actual text of Executive Order 12986 is available from the White House web page here.  You can also find it via searches on the Government Printing Office's web page in the C.F.R. and Federal Register, but the WAIS interface is kind of clunky.  If you'd prefer paper researching, the Federal Register cite is 61 Fed. Reg. 1693 (1996); the C.F.R. citation is 3 C.F.R., 1996 Comp., 156.

The text of 28 U.S.C. §288 is available at the House of Representatives Law Library web page here, and from Cornell Law School here.  The Cornell page is only the text of the statute itself, so it's a bit easier to read; the House page is an annotated edition of the code, which is nice because it includes a list of each organization to enjoy §288's protections, as well as organizations that have been removed from the list.

Alex backs away from this proposition when confronted with the facts on-air.  He usually retreats into some notion that by granting immunity to the IUCNN, we're setting the stage for a takeover.  Note two important things about this, though.  First, it shows his original claim was wrong; a preliminary step is not the same thing as an actual land giveaway, so his initial claim is simply false.  Second, like all good conspiracy theories, the "preliminary step" notion is completely unverifiable.  Heck, President Clinton blowing his nose could be a "preliminary step."  That's a meaningless argument that isn't grounded in reality.

Please also note that I'm not saying granting this organization immunity is a good thing; it may not be.  It may be a poor policy choice.  Maybe we shouldn't give international organizations lawsuit immunity.  There's a legitimate argument to be made there.  However, it's not a land giveaway.  That much is for sure.  Alex's claim just isn't factually true.
 
 
  The ASAP Program & County Commissioner's Court

Another of Alex's bogeymen is the ASAP program.  This is a kind of involved story, so bear with me.

ASAP stands for Absent Student Assistance Program.  Basically what it means is that if a student is absent, a police officer visits the parent's home that evening.  Now, you might say that this is a horrid waste of both the taxpayer's money and the police officer's time.  And you'd be right.  But, of course, Alex has to take it one step further.

When one of Alex's associates was visited by police officers when his kid was sick (he'd forgotten to call in), Alex and company went ballistic.  Alex decided that he and the rest of the Texas Best Seminars crowd would go to the County Commissioner's Court to voice their grievances.  OK, so far so good.  Alex goes on-air and encourages people to come.  Again, no problem.

The problem is that somebody at the Court was threatened, or at least claims to have been threatened, by someone they apparently thought to be associated with Alex.  Which isn't terribly surprising; although Alex himself didn't advocate violence, many of his listeners presumably aren't so civilly inclined.  Anyway, when Alex and crew show up, there's a few SWAT team members around (they're not decked out in body armor or anything; they're just wearing ordinary police uniforms with a little "SWAT" patch on their chests).  One of the officers tells Alex to basically not be disruptive.  To most people, this is a reasonable request -- government proceedings are entitled to a degree of decorum -- but not to Alex!

On Alex's next show, he (again) goes ballistic.  Now he's pulling out videotape (Austin County Commissioner's Court is videotaped and shown on another cable channel) and screaming about how the officers violated his rights to free speech, etc., etc.  Unfortunately, that's not true; it's pretty clear from the tape that the officers weren't trying to stifle the content of Alex's speech; they just didn't want him to make a circus of the proceedings.   Which ought to be obvious: when it came time for Alex to speak, they let him rave on about how much evil and corruption there is in government.

He's also upset because the officers were SWAT officers.  But so what?  SWAT team members have to do something when they're not handling bomb crises or hostage situations.  Apparently, the SWAT headquarters in next door to the court.  So what's the big deal?  Isn't it better to have them at the meeting doing something than resting idle at headquarters?  Wouldn't the latter be a bigger waste of tax dollars?

So now Alex is at war with the Court.  He and his associates go down to the Court every Tuesday and rant and rave.

The sad thing is, there are good points to be made against the ASAP program.  As I said before, it's a waste of tax money and police resources.  And it's largely ineffective.  One of the good things that Alex and company did was catch the program's proponents in a fib: the program only yielded a very small increase in attendance, but when the proponents showed up to defend their program they used an extremely zoomed-in graph that distorted the true numbers.  If Alex and company had focused on that, their position would be far more effective.  Instead, they yell about the "Nazi-like" tactics of both the Court and the ASAP program, scream how this is another step toward the impending world government takeover, etc., etc.  Bottom line: ASAP is a bum deal for the taxpayers, but hardly the fascist regime Alex and company claim.

UPDATE: Alex & company won a victory on the ASAP issue.  Now, there will be a phone call placed to parents prior to a visit by a police officer.  Somehow, I have feeling that Alex's ranting and calling the Commissioner's Court names had little to do with the new policy.  Anyway, it's a victory for the taxpayers, and I guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.     The "3-acre hangar"

This one I'm actually a little bit fuzzy on.  Apparently, there's a project to build a large sheriff's department facility, and among the plans are a set-aside of three acres for a hanger.  Alex has been ranting and raving about how big this is, and how it must be for an army of helicopters, or something like that.

There are at least two problems with Alex's perception.  First of all, three acres isn't that big.  My parent's home in Houston is built on 1/4 of an acre.  So twelve houses in my parent's subdivision make up the same area as this facility. I've got news for Alex: that's really not that much space.

Second, it's pretty clear from the passage Alex quotes that it's not the hangar that is three acres, but rather the land for the hangar.  Which makes sense: you've got to have some paved outdoors area around the hangar.  At least, I've never seen a hangar without some surrounding outdoors space for the aircraft to sit.

All around, another of Alex's incoherent ramblings.
 
  Thumb-scanning  
To demonstrate how Alex can take a legitimate political position and twist it beyond all recognition, look at thumb scanning for driver's licenses.  Texas has had this scanning for a couple of years now.  And civil libertarians are upset about it; they feel (as I do) that the scanning is intrusive and has great potential to be abused.  In a country that values its privacy, this type of program seems to be a huge step in the wrong direction.

But naturally, Alex takes it one step further.  According to him, this is a deliberate attempt by government to track its citizens for the nefarious purposes of the coming one-world government.  The idea, I suppose, is that it'll make it easier for them to herd people off to concentration camps.

Let's be realistic for a moment.  Scanning proponents aren't evil and they don't intend for the program to be used for evil.  It's not a deliberate maneuver by the alleged New World Order.  What it is is a misguided policy judgment, and nothing more.

UPDATE: On Wednesday, March 25, 1998 Alex Jones was arrested at the local DPS office when he went to renew his driver's license and protest thumb scanning.  He was accompanied by a small group of protestors, none of whom was arrested.  It is unclear from the footage I've seen whether he was arrested for not having his thumb scanned (unlikely) or for making a public disturbance and keeping other people from conducting their business at the DPS (more likely; the news footage showed Alex at the DPS counter screaming at the clerk that he wanted to renew his driver's license and that he wouldn't submit to a thumbscan when the police arrested him).  I suppose Alex now fancies himself a Martin Luther King, Jr.-type figure.  I'd dispute that; MLK never said racism came from the New World Order.
 
  Government Corruption

Here I'm actually going to do something unusual: praise Alex.  Because sometimes, in spite of himself, he does a good thing.  Alex and the rest of the Tuesday-morning bunch uncovered some documents that gave county money to a "Fred Flintstone" of "Bedrock, TX" for some type of project.  Clearly, an example of brazen government corruption.  If Alex stuck to this kind of stuff, he'd be doing the community a great favor.

Unfortunately, like the little boy who cried "wolf," this claim is getting little play because of its source.  What ought to lead to investigations is largely being ignored because of the other ludicrous claims put forth by Alex.  Alex would be far more effective if he'd lay off the fanciful conspiracy theories and focused on the real corruption in government.  It's not as sexy, but at least it's real.  

 

Go Back to Damien's Home Page   -   Go Back to Debunking Conspiracy Myths   -   Send me E-Mail