By now most people reading this already know that there are a number of unanswered questions surrounding the Colorado theater shooting, so I just want to quickly point out a few things and maybe make a few connections along the way.

Apart from the fact that the DHS and the FBI released a memo in May this year to security and emergency services to be on the alert for a 'terrorist' attack at a movie theater; apart from the fact that on the same day as the Aurora massacre, Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine was holding an identical drill 17 miles away that simulated a shooter in a movie theater; apart from the fact that the FBI is officially known to have set up 'terror attacks' that included creating the plan, providing the weapons and equipment, preparing the location of the attack and even driving the vehicles to pull it off; APART from all that, there is the also the problem of the eyewitnesses to the Colorado shooting who stated that the gunman (James Holmes) seemed to have an accomplice.

So far in this series, I've focused a lot on history and science, albeit some of it of a particularly paranormal persuasion. To jog the reader's memory, the first installment began with a discussion of prophecy and prediction and asked some questions such as: Can prophecies be true? If so, are they all true? All fake? How can we weed out the cons from the clairvoyants, and can a good source give a bad prediction? How come? Well, today I want to veer in a slightly different direction - no climate science, companion stars, catastrophic comets, or non-coding DNA. No, I want to ground this one in something a little more SOTT-ish: politics and conspiracies.

Over the course of the Hit List series, some readers may have wondered what place so-called 'paranormal' research has on an alternative news website. And others may, as I did just under a decade ago, wonder what on earth political conspiracies have to do with so-called 'spirituality'. I hope the answer to the former question is at least partially clearer by now, after seven installments. In a world as controlled as our own, where lies can be glibly passed off as indisputable fact, with media, corporations, academia, and government acting as shapers of public opinion on every subject, an individual finds him or herself in a situation not dissimilar to that of Theseus in the Minotaur's labyrinth. At every turn we are confronted by lies, even (and perhaps especially) when it comes to our most basic views about the nature of reality. And we would be lost if not for the thread of Ariadne.

While I'm on a Greek bent, let me share something a forum member recently pointed out from Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages:

It is generally admitted that the effect of the Delphian oracle upon Greek culture was profoundly constructive. James Gardner sums up its influence in the following words: "Its responses revealed many a tyrant and foretold his fate. Through its means many an unhappy being was saved from destruction and many a perplexed mortal guided in the right way. It encouraged useful institutions, and promoted the progress of useful discoveries. Its moral influence was on the side of virtue, and its political influence in favor of the advancement of civil liberty."

In other words, there's our answer to the second question: a good oracle (or spiritual source) doesn't shy away from politics. Like a Greek cynic, or the proverbial Cassandra, the prime role of an oracle is to present a vision of the world as it is, no matter how painful or unpopular the view, and provide the only alternative fit for a lie: the truth. So, yes, we track 'high strangeness', and our worldview is quite at odds with the materialistic dictum peddled and enforced by PhD's and media pundits the world over. Everything you 'know' is a lie, and that includes all your metaphysical assumptions about the way the 'reality' really works. Luckily there's a way out of the labyrinth, and (please excuse me for going Biblical here!) the truth will set you free.

An Islamist who believes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States were an American conspiracy is the front-runner in Egypt's presidential race, a new poll shows.

Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, formerly a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, led the field of 13 candidates with 32 percent of the vote in a survey released Monday by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

Mr. Abolfotoh expressed his views on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in an interview last year with Egypt scholar Eric Trager.

Mr. Trager, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, quoted Mr. Abolfotoh as saying:

"It was too big an operation .... They [the United States] didn't bring this crime before the U.S. justice system until now. Why? Because it's part of a conspiracy."

Egyptians will vote Wednesday and Thursday in their first presidential election since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak last year. If none of the candidates wins a majority, the two top vote-getters will compete in a runoff next month.

Let's start with this: according to the Pentagon, the production and acquisition costs of Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet, the military's most expensive weapons program, have risen yet again, this time by 4.3% since 2010 to $395.6 billion. If you're talking about the total cost of the system, including maintenance and support for the nearly 2,500 planes that will some (endlessly delayed) day be produced for the military, that has now reached an estimated $1.51 trillion, a 9% rise since 2010. All this for a plane that some experts doubt has any particular purpose in the future U.S. arsenal.

A course for U.S. military officers has been teaching that America's enemy is Islam in general, not just terrorists, and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following World War II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima or the allied firebombing of Dresden.

The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that it, too, was critical of Islam.

The teaching in the military course was counter to repeated assertions by U.S. officials over the last decade that the U.S. is at war against Islamic extremists - not the religion.

"They hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit," the instructor, Army. Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, said in a presentation last July for the course at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. The college, for professional military members, teaches midlevel officers and government civilians on subjects related to planning and executing war.

Dooley also presumed, for the purposes of his theoretical war plan, that the Geneva Conventions that set standards of armed conflict, are "no longer relevant."

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- The five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks used their weekend war court appearances to stage "peaceful resistance to an unjust system" being used for political reasons, defense lawyers said Sunday - a day after the 9/11accused turned the judge's plans to hold a simple arraignment into a 13-hour marathon of prayer and protest.

"The system is a rigged game to prevent us from doing our jobs," argued criminal defense attorney David Nevin, accusing the prison camp commander of making it impossible to learn from alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed how the CIA waterboarded him 183 times and used other since-outlawed techniques to break him.

Mohammed, his nephew and three other men allegedly trained, advised and financed the 19 hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing 2,976 people. All could get the death penalty, if convicted.

The self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four other accused terrorists were ordered to stand trial at a hearing before a Guantánamo military tribunal that descended into chaos on Saturday as the defendants refused to acknowledge the judge and their lawyers repeatedly challenged the legitimacy of the court.

The accused men, one of whom was brought to the arraignment hearing strapped to a restraining chair after refusing to attend, dropped their previous insistence on pleading guilty and demanding to be executed in favour of largely sitting in silence as defence lawyers attempted to raise the issue of torture and question the independence of the judge.

None of the defendants chose to enter a plea at the hearing and reserved it for a later appearance. The judge set a tentative trial date of May 2013 although he acknowledged that there are likely to be more delays. After a 13-hour session to arraign the suspects, proceedings have been adjourned until 12 June.

Mohammed's lawyer, David Nevin, told the court that "the world is watching" the trial after the US government admitted to waterboarding the accused terrorist 183 times. Another defence lawyer, James Connell, called the military tribunal a "blight on America's international reputation and her commitment to the rule of law".

Washington - A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.

Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names.

The timeline of the activity tracks USA TODAY's reporting on the military's "information operations" program, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan - campaigns that have been criticized even within the Pentagon as ineffective and poorly monitored.

It is not photographs of US soldiers mocking Afghan insurgents' bodies that incites violence, but the plain fact of US occupation

The LA Times released new photos Wednesday of US soldiers posing in a celebratory manner with the corpses of dead Afghan suicide bombers. The photos were provided by a soldier from the 82nd Airborne division who felt that they revealed a "breakdown in leadership and discipline", with the hope that the photos would force the Army to correct this situation.

However, US military officials requested the LA Times not publish any of the photos. The Pentagon statement argued that the photos "do not represent the character and professionalism of the great majority of our troops in Afghanistan" and that the photos "have the potential to indict" all of our troops in Afghanistan "in the minds of local Afghans, inciting violence and perhaps causing needless casualties".

Al-Qaeda fighters have returned to Afghanistan and will use the country as a base to launch September 11-style attacks on Western cities, according to the American ambassador to Kabul.

Ryan Crocker told The Daily Telegraph that if the West was to leave Afghanistan too early, al-Qaeda would be able to increase its presence.

With the US preparing to withdraw the majority of its combat forces from Afghanistan next year, Mr Crocker warned: "If we decide we're tired, they'll be back.

"Al-Qaeda is still present in Afghanistan. If the West decides that 10 years in Afghanistan is too long then they will be back, and the next time it will not be New York or Washington, it will be another big Western city."

Mr Crocker, 62, who previously served as ambassador to Iraq, said that while progress had been made, Afghanistan would need Western support for years to come.

Nato officials believe that up to 100 al-Qaeda fighters have returned to the country, based mainly in the Kunar and Nuristan provinces near the border with Pakistan. Hundreds more are based in Pakistan and could return if circumstances were to change.