Just for fun though, I thought it would be interesting to check how the public had received some of Story's previous satirical tales. According to the article archive on his World Reports site, he has been posting them there since October 2005, with most of the action occurring since July 2006. I decided to check on the very interesting claim he makes in the second paragraph of the above article, namely that "Last December [2006], the US Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., was arrested on such a warrant." Surely we would have heard about something like that by now.

My search quickly showed that the only reason there weren't too many mentions of the "Warrant for Tony Blair" article, was merely because it hadn't had time to accumulate momentum yet. Because Story's article about Paulson's arrest had been republished on dozens of "respected" conspiracy websites around the Internet, and presented not as a political satire, but as God's Own Truth.

The article is titled "U.S. TREASURY SECRETARY HENRY M. PAULSON HAS BEEN ARRESTED IN EUROPE", published by Story on December 30, 2006 at www.worldreports.org (the page includes several updates). A search for the above title on Google produces hundreds of exact matches, which show that this article has been linked or reproduced on nearly every conspiracy site around the Internet, including such known stalwarts as Godlike Productions, Rumor Mill News, and Educate-Yourself, and also in many popular blogs.

Perhaps the most curious appearance of this story is on the "Elections 08" website of US Presidential contender, John Edwards (at blog.johnedwards.com). The comments accompanying it show that the site's readers take this information seriously and not as wishful thinking or satire - which makes it seem doubly strange that Mr. Edwards does not either clarify this for his readership, or remove the silly article from his site altogether. (NOTE: That page was subsequently taken down from Edwards' website, probably as a result of the earlier publication of the current work.)

Paulson was in Germany in December of 2006 for some high-level financial talks, actually involving the "hedge funds" of President Bush, and was thus conveniently on the spot of the alleged arrest. He was seen later at Gerald Ford's funeral, reportedly arriving late and disheveled.

And yet it should be obvious to anybody with a minimal understanding of International Politics, that an active member of the US Administration simply CANNOT be arrested anywhere in the world today - unless the arresting parties want to cause another World War. So what exactly is the writer of such plainly bogus "news" trying to achieve?

Having taken a good look at what the various websites have to say about this, it was quickly becoming obvious that Christopher Story does not in any way think he is publishing satire - quite the contrary. He appears to be taking his statements very seriously himself, vehemently defends his preposterous assertions as the One and Only Truth, and is furthermore threatening to sue for libel anyone who questions his factual statements:

"Instead of asking us such crude questions [such as, "where do you get this information" - SA], may we suggest that people who, without a cause, suggest we are liars, are laying themselves open to risk, since such allegations can be addressed in the English Court, where the laws of libel are much more stringent than in the United States." (See "January 1 Update" at the above link on World Reports.)

Click on the 'NEXT' arrow for page 3

Share this article with:

More Articles by Sol Aris:
• The Origins of Conspiracy
• Messages in Celluloid - The defeat of Isengard
• The Quarantine
• A Fascinating Recent Discovery on Temple Mount