I recently wrote an analysis of the Boston Bombings and the idea that 'actors' were used in place of victims. In that article I made reference to other websites and researchers who had taken up this meme and run with it. Author and researcher Dave McGowan has been cited most often (to me at least) as having made the best case for 'actors'. McGowan has published a multi-part series of articles, all of which rely heavily on photographs to make his case. In this article I'll be looking at the 'evidence' that he presents for the 'actors' theory. Before I begin though, I should explain how and why my approach differs from what appears to be the way McGowan has approached this event.

The short explanation is that my approach employs a sane mind, logic and critical thinking. McGowans' approach employs mostly his imagination possibly fueled by crack cocaine or psychotropic drugs. I also assume he uses some metaphorical surgical gloves and tweezers or similar intangible instruments, because he pulls most of his 'evidence' out of his ass, metaphorically-speaking.

The longer explanation is that, when trying to decide whether a particular conspiracy theory or particular angle on a conspiracy theory is likely to be true or false, my approach is to first look at the plausibility of the theory in question. In terms of the Boston bombings, the idea that 'actors' took the place of real victims is the theory. When I first was forced to consider this theory, it took me about 3 minutes of rumination before it began to make no logical sense whatsoever. I more or less spelled out the lack of logic in my previous article, but it can be summed up as: why would a US intel agency chose to use actor victims at a bombing that is designed to terrify the US population into believing that evil terrorists are out to kill them when they could VERY easily just plant a bomb and let the bomb do what bombs do best, kill and maim people? Why would a US intel agency chose to do this when, if you think about it, it massively complicates the planning of such an operation and greatly increases the chances of the official story falling apart? To date, no one has offered a sensible answer to this question. For his part, at the end of his series of articles on the topic, Dave McGowan suggests that all of the alleged "fakery" is:

a campaign aimed at erasing the line between reality and fantasy - between what is objectively real and what is make-believe. For many years now we have seen a blurring of the line between news and entertainment, as well as, through 'reality' television, a blurring of the line between what is 'real' and what is scripted. We are now entering an age when there will be no dividing line at all between news, scripted entertainment and 'reality' TV. It will all be one and the same. In the new 'reality' we will be living in, nothing will be real and everything will be true.

That's fair enough, but hasn't that already been achieved, to a great extent, with the long list of US/Israeli/British false flag "Muslim terror attacks" over the past 15 years? Isn't the yawning chasm between what most people believe about "Muslim terror attacks", and the likely truth behind them, wide enough that it constitutes an already massive break with reality? What do the PTB have to gain, vis a vis the public, by adding the 'actor victims' element into the mix. If the average person in the street is none the wiser about the presence of 'actors', isn't that functionally the same, from a psy-ops point of view, as if victims were real people and not actors? If people believe the 'actors' to be real victims, what's the point in having actors rather than real victims? Maybe the answer is that US intel agencies have suddenly grown a conscience and an aversion to killing people, hence their use of 'actors'? But the last time I checked, those high-level intel and government types were still a bunch of conscienceless, blood-thirsty, murderous bastards who delight in the suffering of others.

So basically, that's where I was coming from when I began to look at the 'actors' theory. I could find no logical reason for the inclusion of 'actors' and many reasons why they should NOT be used. In addition, I found the alleged evidence for 'actors' at Boston sorely lacking in that it relied on conjecture, supposition and a good measure of imagination, all to make the evidence fit the pre-established theory. Basically, all of the 'actors' theorists seem to have used an "ink blot test" approach to their analysis of the photographic evidence from the Boston bombings.

Note, it wasn't that I was averse to the idea of the Boston bombings being staged by some element of US intel agencies - far from it. I was more or less fully convinced (based on the hard evidence and historical context) that the Boston bombings were a dyed-in-the-wool, false flag "homegrown terrorism attack", designed, like all others, to justify US imperial warmongering and to terrorize the American people into trusting their authorities and looking to them for protection.

So, let's look at some of McGowan's 'evidence':

Our own Jon Green wrote in December about how, following the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, GOP Sheriff Joe Arpaio was going to have his 3,000-strong gun-toting "posse" of volunteers patrolling Arizona's schools, just like the NRA wanted. (This article was co-authored by John Aravosis.)

Today we find out that the posse reportedly included at least one man convicted of sex crimes against children. And even worse, and what no one has apparently yet realized: The convicted child sex criminal posse member worked for Arpaio for years in the Sheriff's office until he was arrested in 2009.

Are we to believe that Arpaio had no idea who this guy was?

Armed child-sex criminals roaming Arizona's schools. What could possibly go wrong?

What's worse is that Arpaio has been facing heavy criticism for his alleged laxity on prosecuting sex crimes, particularly sex crimes against children. From the NYT:

The Bilderberg Group, an annual gathering of royalty, statesmen and business leaders, will this week take place at the Grove Hotel, a golf resort in Watford, Hertfordshire.

Guests will include George Osborne, the Chancellor; Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor; and Ken Clarke, the Cabinet Minister who also sits on the group's steering committee, according to a list of participants published on www.bilderbergmeetings.org.

Other attendees include Lord Mandelson, the former Labour First Secretary; Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State; Timothy Geithner, the former Secretary of the US Treasury, and Gen David Petraeus, the former Allied commander in Afghanistan and head of the CIA.

As the situation in Syria intensifies, its neighbor Turkey, which is at the frontline of the offensive against President Assad's government, is being dubbed as the world's leading jailer of journalists by a New York - based media watchdog.

­The latest investigation says that 76 journalists were detained in Turkey as of August 1, 80 per cent of which were imprisoned as a direct result of their work. The remaining 20 per cent of the cases are still being investigated by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) workers. The report also claims that three-quarters of jailed journalists have not yet been convicted of any crime but are held while they await "resolution of their cases."

The findings claim that "the Turkish government is engaging in a broad offensive to silence critical journalists through imprisonment, legal prosecution and official intimidation," as 70 per cent of those in jail were Kurdish and the rest being accused of participating in plots against the government, or membership of outlawed organizations.

A number of people have been killed in an exchange of fire between Syrian rebels and fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, say reports.

Lebanese security sources said the clashes took place on Lebanon's side of the border, near the town of Baalbek.

Hezbollah is fighting alongside the army in Syria, but the clashes have rarely crossed onto Lebanese soil.

Meanwhile the Red Cross has said it is alarmed by the worsening situation in the besieged Syrian town of Qusair.

It has appealed for access to the town, which lies just 10km (6 miles) over the Lebanese border.

Thousands of civilians are believed to be trapped as pro-government forces - including Hezbollah fighters - battle rebels.

UN Committee Against Torture report recommends 40 separate measures to be taken before UK is given clean bill of health

The British government's human rights record since the attacks of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq is facing ferocious criticism from a United Nations panel, which warns that prompt action is needed to ensure the country meets its obligations under international law.

In a report published on Friday, the UN Committee against Torture recommends more than 40 separate measures which it says will need to be taken if the UK is to be given a clean bill of health.

While the committee has focused on the failure to hold to account those responsible for human rights abuses in the so-called war on terror, and for the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, it also raises a series of other serious concerns over matters that include the controversial Justice and Security Act, the forced removal of failed asylum seekers to Sri Lanka, and the failure to hold a public inquiry into the state's involvement in the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

The report - which will doubtless make uncomfortable reading across Whitehall - contains the harshest criticism that the committee has yet made of a British government. It is the first substantial criticism since 1992, when the UK was told that were it not for the mistreatment of terrorism suspects in Northern Ireland, it would have been found to have "met in virtually every respect" its obligations under the UN convention against torture.

Gunmen have shot dead the prosecutor investigating the murder of Pakistan's ex-leader Benazir Bhutto.

The men on a motorcycle killed Chaudhry Zulfikar as he left his home and headed to a hearing in the case.

Chaudhry Zulfikar was at the helm of a number of highly controversial cases, including the 2007 Bhutto assassination in which Musharraf is accused of involvement.

Zulfikar was on his way to a court in Islamabad when gunmen fired at him from a taxi, hitting him in the head, shoulder and chest, said police officer Mohammed Ishaq.

Zulfikar then lost control of his car, which hit a woman passer-by and killed her, said another police officer, Mohammed Rafiq.

Zulfikar's guard, Farman Ali, returned fire and is believed to have wounded at least one of the attackers, Rafiq said. Ali also was injured in the attack.

Police official Yasin Farooq said the attackers fled after killing Zulfikar, and that a massive search has been launched to find them.

A motive for the killing was unclear, but Zulfikar's involvement in the two particularly high-profile cases will likely be scrutinized closely.

Government prosecutors have accused Musharraf of being involved in the Bhutto assassination and not providing enough security to Pakistan's first female prime minister. Musharraf, who was in power when was killed, has denied the allegations. At the time of the attack, he blamed the assassination on the Pakistani Taliban.

The Bhutto case has lingered for years in the Pakistani court system. A number of alleged assailants are on trial but no one has been convicted. The case burst into the headlines when Musharraf returned in March after four years in exile.

Zulfikar was also the government's lead prosecutor in a case related to the 2008 terrorist attack on the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 166 people.

The idea that many 'terrorist' attacks are in fact carried out by government intelligence agencies is not a new concept (we here at Sott.net have spent the last ten years attempting to highlight the evidence for government complicity in 'Islamic terrorism' for one example). What is new is the idea that these government-inspired or perpetrated terrorist attacks are somehow doubly "fake" in the sense that some or all of the details of the attack didn't actually happen in any real sense. The idea is that, not only was the attack fake in the sense that government, not 'Muslim terrorists' or 'homegrown terrorists', were responsible, but that the apparent victims were fake also, their roles, where necessary, being portrayed by 'actors', presumably working for the government. The claim that 'crisis actors' were used in place of real victims has been made about the December 2012 Sandy Hook shootings, the more recent Boston marathon bombings and even the May 22nd knife attack on a British soldier in London.

To clarify, the idea of 'actors' as it is being used in this context is not the same as 'media plants'. Media plants are people placed at the scene of a government false-flag terror attack who pose as 'eyewitnesses' to establish an official narrative for the media and public. 'Actors', on the other hand, are people who are supposedly part of the false-flag attack itself and who pose as victims of the attack but who are not really injured at all.

The Sandy Hook massacre last December seems to have been the first major event where the 'actors' idea gained traction. Within a month of the massacre, there were literally hundreds of Youtube videos and articles supposedly providing proof that the parents and neighbors of the victims were actually crisis actors and, therefore, the entire event was probably staged and no one was killed. The 'hoax' was, it is claimed, a crass and obvious attempt by the government to impose 'gun control' on America.

Many of the Sandy Hook hoax videos have received tens, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of views. I wrote about the implausibility of that particular 'actors' theory here and tried to compile the best evidence for Sandy Hook being a US intel 'black' operation here and here. Despite my efforts, (not that I ever expect them to make much difference) the 'terror attack actors' idea continued to gain pace and made a serious reappearance at the Boston Marathon bombings.

Taxpayers are likely to have to pay millions towards the cost of policing the secretive Bilderberg meeting of the global elite due to gather in Hertfordshire next week.

The clandestine meeting of royalty, prime ministers and business chiefs is taking place in Britain for the first time since 1998, sparking fears of "violence and disturbance" by protesters.

The Bilderberg organisers, who include Tory Cabinet minister Ken Clarke, do not release a guest list but a roll-call of luminaries are expected to descend on a luxury Watford hotel from June 6, forcing police to step up security.

Hertfordshire police have refused to release the cost of security for the event, which has previously drawn anti-capitalist demonstrators in other locations around the world.

However, they are in talks with the Home Office about a grant for "unexpected or exceptional costs" that is only given out if it threatens the stability of the force's policing budget. The final bill would have to total more than one per cent of the police force's overall spend - or about £1.8 million - for the grant to be successful.

The invitation-only Bilderberg meetings are attended by around 140 members of the international elite.

Washington (CNN) - The Internal Revenue Service has told House GOP investigators they have identified 88 IRS employees who may have documents relevant to the congressional investigation into targeting of conservative groups, according to a congressional source familiar with the investigation.

The IRS asked these employees to preserve all the "responsive documents" on their computers, and it has been in the process of collecting it all to comply with congressional requests for information. The IRS missed its May 21st deadline to turn over documents to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The same source said the IRS argues it missed its deadline because of the scope of documents it is collecting.

The request for documents was a bipartisan one, but Republicans are privately preparing to seize on the fact that if nearly 90 IRS employees may have been somehow involved in this targeting, it is evidence that the controversy extends well beyond the mistakes by a few low level employees.

However, with no documents in hand, there is no way to know how many of the employees being asked to preserve documents were truly involved in the activity in question. The IRS, in a statement to CNN, said the large number reflects its effort to ensure they are as responsive as possible to the Congressional requests.

"The IRS and Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel are moving aggressively and taking the data requests very seriously. As a precautionary measure, the IRS is casting a wide net to capture any potentially related materials. Our goal is to be exceedingly thorough during this process to ensure we identify any and all pertinent records," the IRS statement said. "The IRS has received numerous congressional requests involving an extensive set of questions and calls for data. Responding to these requests is a top priority for us. We have been in contact with committee staff, and we continue to provide them updates as we diligently work through these requests."