Thomas Wictor

Last night while I slept—having a wonderful dream about discovering a photo album full of priceless postcards of World War I flamethrowers—the word went out on Twitter to label me a conspiracy theorist. Saying that certain ideas are nothing but conspiracy theories allows the accuser to not address troubling notions. In this case the Twits don’t want to accept that Hamas murdered Mohammed, Ahed, Ismail, and Zakaria Bakr and used their corpses in an elaborate deception operation on the Gaza Beach, July 16, 2014.

Before I discuss conspiracy theories, here’s what an Irish Twitter user said after I told another person that the Irish Republican Army almost murdered me with a nail bomb in Regent’s Park, London, on July 20, 1982.

So much derangement in so few words! Because I objected to almost being murdered by the IRA, that makes me a unionist. It may surprise some Irish people, but not everybody follows the Emerald Isle’s politics, so I have to explain that a unionist is someone who supports the continued union between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Well, I’m neither an Irish nationalist nor a unionist, BECAUSE I’M NOT IRISH. I was an innocent bystander in Regent’s Park on July 20, 1982. Though I wanted and still want every IRA terrorist killed, it’s only because murderers deserve to die. The Real Michael McDowell is a stereotypical myopic, alcoholic Irishman filled to the brim with hate, so he thinks that I’m choosing sides in his perpetual, Third World tribal war.

He also thinks that I collect World War I flamethrowers. The most widely produced World War II—yes, Second World War—American flamethrower was the M2.

In the US there are no federal laws concerning the ownership of flamethrowers, but they’re illegal in California, except if you’re a legitimate collector. A working M2 in good condition would cost me about $20,000. An original, working World War I flamethrower from any nation? At least $100,000.

The price is moot because none are available. Only a handful survive, and they’re all in museums.

I don’t collect World War I flamethrowers. What I collect is photos, postcards, and information, such as this Swedish flamethrower manual from 1918.

It’s funny to hear a supporter of the Regent’s Park bombing—at which I was present—clutch at his pearls and sob about “cruellest[sic] deaths.” This is called “cognitive dissonance.” At the Regent’s Park bombing, the victims were dismembered by the nails that “the lads” put in their explosive device. The Real Michael McDowell lacks a functioning brain and conscience. He’s just a good-for-nothing drunk who loves to hate.

In addition, he thinks non-Irish people are supposed to know what “#vinb” means. I clicked the hashtag and ended up no wiser.

Who the hell is Vincent Browne?

What if I put “#gmanpa” in a tweet, and you clicked it and landed here?

Would it mean anything to you?

Nobody hates with more passion and stupidity than the Irish. Not all the Irish, of course, but far too many.

Conspiracy theories

Here are two of the tweets that I found on my timeline today.

Bipolar Bear never gave me a single example of my dishonesty. I asked him several times, but he dodged furiously and with all his strength until I left him alone.

As to the second message, I’m amazed that someone thinks that Operation Four Little Martyrs requires a conspiracy as complex as the ones surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the John F. Kennedy assassination. If we’re to believe the 9/11 and Kennedy conspiracies, we’re talking tens if not hundreds of thousands of people involved.

The Executive Branch (twice)
the CIA (twice)
all other American intelligence agencies
the Mossad (twice)
the Warren Commission
the 9/11 Commission
the FBI (twice)
the Dallas Police Department
the Texas Department of Public Safety
the NYPD
the New York Fire Department
the New York Port Authority
the United States Congress (twice)
the staff of Logan International Airport
the Federal Aviation Administration
the US Air Force
the Pentagon
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
the US Secret Service
the staff of Parkland Memorial Hospital
the staff of Bethesda Naval Hospital
American Airlines
Silverstein Properties, Inc.
the Texas School Book Depository Company
the Jews

I could go on and on and on.

How many conspirators were involved in Operation Four Little Martyrs? Well, here are the men who carried out the operation.

The paramedics of the four ambulances were almost certainly coerced, since the commander in the purple shirt showed them where to park.

Doctors, hospital staffers, and morgue attendants were involved, but some obviously weren’t forced.

Although western reporters witnessed the operation, most are not active conspirators. One exception is the NBC News camera crew that set up in a room at the al-Deira Hotel and captured the sound of the first explosion on video.

The red arrow marks the steel container that was hit by a small Israeli air-to-surface missile moments later. As you can see, there’s nobody on the beach or the breakwater. NBC News had no reason to be filming. Someone obviously tipped them off.

However, nobody called and said, “We’re going to set off an improvised explosive device at 4:10 p.m. in order to trick the IDF into firing at the steel container, and then we’ll lay out the corpses of four children we murdered yesterday.”

No. What happened was that someone said, “You might want to have a camera going out the window at around 4:00 p.m.”

None of the reporters asked questions. They passively did as they were told and watched everything unfold. The western reporters didn’t know ahead of time what was going to happen.

What differentiates Gaza from New York and Dallas is the culture of Pallywood. Since everyone in Gaza is used to fraudulence, the number of active conspirators in Operation Four Little Martyrs was certainly less than fifty. When the deception began, all the witnesses and reporters simply did what they always do: They watched, they got out of the way, or they helped by claiming to have seen Israeli naval shells throw the boys hundreds of meters apart.

Here’s another element absent from New York and Dallas.

If you’re under the gun every second of every day, are you going to speak out? Are you going to interfere? Are you going to call attention to yourself in any way?

Or are you just going to try and survive?

I’ve been given access to interviews conducted in Gaza. Palestinian witnesses say that this scene took place about two minutes after the second explosion.

That’s Alex Marquardt of ABC News running right through the spot where the bodies of Mohammed, Ahed, and Zakaria Bakr will later be “found.”

Let’s see a show of hands: How many of you believe that two ambulances arrived, two teams of paramedics ran to the beach, the paramedics recovered the bodies of the three boys, and the boys were then put in the ambulances and driven away, all in under two minutes, before the western reporters got to the scene?

The people who accuse me of being crazy are actually arguing that.

Well, to make the Real Michael McDowell apoplectic, I’ll end with one of my most valuable possessions, an original watercolor by Friedrich Ludwig Scharf (1884-1965).

It shows a World War I German flamethrower squad leader, holding an improvised stick igniter. The stick had a wad of kerosene-soaked rags tied to the end. When the automatic igniters ran out, they used the stick versions after lighting them with matches.

This is the only such watercolor in existence. When I die it goes to a museum, where it’ll continue to exist long after the Real Michael McDowell is nothing but dust that smells faintly of whiskey and hate.