It was with something like relief that I began reading MI6 Are The Lords Of The Global Drug Trade by James Casbolt. After the heavy duty, immensely complex ruminations on 9/11 which have dominated the conspiracy airwaves recently, here was something like a back-to-basics piece of conspiracy theorising, with all the faults of the genre.

The author makes the following statements at the beginning of the piece:

“The global drug trade is controlled and run by the intelligence agencies. In this global drug trade, British intelligence reigns supreme.

“I worked for MI6 in ‘black ops’, cocaine trafficking with the IRA and MOSSAD in London and Brighton between 1995 and 1999. My father Peter Casbolt was also MI6 and worked with the CIA and mafia in Rome, trafficking cocaine into Britain.”

“As intelligence insiders know, MI5 and MI6 control many of the other intelligence agencies in the world (CIA, MOSSAD etc) in a vast web of intrigue and corruption that has its global power base in the city of London, the square mile.

“The CIA operates under orders from British intelligence and was created by British intelligence in 1947. The CIA today is still loyal to the international bankers based in the city of London and the global elite aristocratic families like the Rothchilds and the Windsors.”

So, that’s simple, then: British intelligence agencies control the others and are running the world’s drug traffic. For these startling revelations the author offers no evidence (of course) and they remain only extraordinary and uncheckable claims, of no more interest than if, for instance, he had said he was the Ghost of Christmas Past.

There are, though, some checkable facts later in the piece. Casbolt writes that the late Tibor Rosenbaum “funded and supported ‘Permindex’, the MI6 assassination unit which was at the heart of the John F Kennedy assassination.”

But Permindex has been researched to death, and there is no evidence that Rosenbaum funded Permindex, or that it can be found “at the heart” of the JFK assassination. Indeed, it has no connection at all with the case.

Casbolt also writes of “Sir Francis de Guingand, former head of British intelligence, now living in South Africa (and every head of MI5 and MI6 has been involved in the drug world before and after him)”.

But Freddie de Guingand (as he was more usually known) was a distinguished British soldier of WWII vintage who served as General Montgomery’s Chief of Staff in the North African and European campaigns, died in 1979 and was definitely not head of British intelligence. (What’s more, all the heads of MI5 and MI6 have been identified).

Another illustrious corpse in the dramatis personæ of Casbolt’s great conspiracy theory is William Casey, to whom he refers as “head of the council of the media network ABC. Many insiders refer to ABC as ‘The CIA network’”. There may be another ‘William Casey’ with a link to ABC – I looked but I couldn’t find one – but, from the context, Casbolt must be referring to the late William Casey who was head of the CIA under Ronald Reagan, and died 19 years ago. Google ‘Casbolt’ and you discover other articles in which the author extends his claims into ‘greys’, 9/11, alien abductions, underground bases and alien-human hybrids. Uh-huh.

These articles are now to be found on Casbolt’s new website, (www.Jamescasbolt.com), where the mission statement reads: “Tearing down the strongholds of the New World Order” and a head and shoulders shot of a personable-looking man in his early-to-mid-30s is presumably Casbolt.

Now, most of this is nonsense, and transparently so, as even a cursory look at Casbolt’s few checkable claims reveals: MI6 is not running the world’s drug traffic or the CIA. The rest of his output seems to consist of bad reworkings of other conspiracy sub-genres. Or, perhaps Casbolt is a hoaxer, his articles parodies of the original material, in which case they are poor parodies. Or are we seeing the beginning of something bigger and more complex, some kind of disinformation project, perhaps?

Yet Casbolt’s articles have been carried, without comment or criticism, by www.rense.com, perhaps the leading American conspiracy website, as well as a long (and growing) list of others, including Truthseekers, www.abovetopsecret.com, www.conspiracyplanet.com and www.Davidicke.com, to list the first few coughed up by Google. Which tells us that these sites, whatever their webmasters might profess to be doing – seeking or spreading the truth, resisting the New World Order – are simply not serious. They may be profitable – Rense carries substantial advertising and Icke has many books and DVDs for sale – they may be sincere, and even influential, but they are not serious. Web-publishing contentious political articles without checking the content, especially these days when so much is just a quick search away, is frivolous. This is entertainment, a branch of show business. This may be stating the obvious – but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.