Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Review: The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging

The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging by Noelle Cook
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspir...

Disclosure movement

Love has won Amy Carlson
I am most definitely a starseed!" Yvonne proclaimed in response. "I see and understand things differently."

There are a variety of starseed checklists because there are numerous kinds of starseeds. Each one has its own set of characteristics. The checklist for "Indigo Children" includes: "headstrong, creative, prone to addictions, an 'old soul,' intuitive or psychic, tendency to isolate, independent and proud, possesses a deep desire to help the world in a big way, wavers between low self-esteem and grandiosity, easily bored, diagnosed with ADD, prone to insomnia or nightmares, history of depression, looks for real friendships only, and easily bonds with other non-human living things." If you check fourteen or more items from the list, then you are "in fact an indigo." The comments section for the meme was filled with people identifying themselves as Indigo Children based on their responses.

My favorite list is a meme Yvonne reposted on Facebook that describes common "Ascension Symptoms." In Yvonne's theology, "Ascension" or "Dis-closure" is what happens when the world starts transitioning to 5D, a process that seems a lot like the biblical apocalypse from the book of Revelation.


Post-theosophy new age syncretism
Typically, that training isn't free. Nor are the different sacred items needed to activate your full starseed powers and ready yourself for Ascension. It's all quite involved and requires a series of classes, healing and channeling sessions, and the purchase of an assortment of items, elixirs, and ointments, each of which has a unique spiritual purpose.

You can see how all this works together with Love Has Won, the online spiritual group that Yvonne started following during the pandemic. Love Has Won is a descendant of theosophy, the I AM movement, alien religions, and several other New Age traditions. Its leader, Amy Carlson, picked and chose elements of all those versions of New Age faith and then added her own...


Plandemic
The changes reflect how the pandemic has remade the health and wellness and New Age spiritual communities. Now the Expo features some of the big-gest names in anti-government, anti-mask, and anti-vaccination activism. People shell out fifty dollars a ticket to hear television and film producer Del Bigtree talk about his movie Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. His session sold out quickly. Bigtree would go on to become Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s 2024 presidential campaign spokesperson.

Audiences pay the same amount to hear British conspiracy guru Sacha Stone. Prior to the pandemic, Stone was a relatively benign wellness advocate. During the pandemic, Stone went hard into conspirituality when his anti-vaccination advocacy catapulted him to right-wing fame. Now Stone talks about how the Illuminati rule the earth and are trying to control humanity through vaccines that implant a soul-controlling nanochip with each injection. Like Del Bigtree, Sacha Stone is closely connected with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The closing event of the entire 2023 Expo is the world premiere of the film Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening, produced by anti-vaccination activist and conspiracy theory peddler Mikki Willis. The original plan-demic film-Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19-went viral on social media after its release in May 2020, especially after being pro-moted by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Despite being banned by mainstream social media platforms, it continued to spread online, becoming one of the most damaging sources of medical misinformation during the pandemic.

Prior to producing these films, Willis worked as a videographer for Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign and did the same for Tulsi Gabbard's 2020 presidential run. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote the foreword for the book version of Plandemic, which was published in October 2021. Here's what Kennedy had to say: "Mikki Willis is the Paul Revere of the rebellion against the burgeoning totalitarianism of the Biosecurity State. Willis' incendiary film, Plandemic, sparked the seeds of revolution in a billion open minds and ignited the dangerous global conflagration of critical thinking." In 2024, Willis worked for Kennedy's presidential campaign and produced the video introducing him to voters.


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Review: No One Left Behind: The Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story

No One Left Behind: The Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story No One Left Behind: The Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher Story by Amy Waters Yarsinske
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Sunday, December 28, 2025

Review: Love and Politics

Love and Politics Love and Politics by Judith Malina
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

Introduction by Ira Cohen

Unique perspective
Pressing

Everything is intrusion. The cow on the field trespasses. The mote in my eye, Like the eyeball in its socket Presses against the lid, Seeking its space in the nothing, Where something seemed To be pressing against it, Scraping, adhering, piercing, lying still.


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Saturday, December 27, 2025

Review: Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest Growing Faith

Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest Growing Faith Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World's Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



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Review: The Sinking of the Titanic by Bruce M Caplan

The Sinking of the Titanic by Bruce M Caplan The Sinking of the Titanic by Bruce M Caplan by Bruce M. Caplan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bulkheads as well as fire in coal from leaving port
K. Whiteman, of Palmyra, N.J., the Titanic's barber, was lowering boats on deck after the collision, and declared the officers on the bridge, one of them First Officer Murdock, promptly worked the electrical apparatus for closing the water-tight compartments. He believed the machinery was in some way so damaged by the crash that the front compartments failed to close tightly, although the rear ones were secure.

Whiteman's manner of escape was unique. He was blown off the deck by the second of the two explosions of the boilers, and was in the water more than two hours before he was picked up by a raft.

"The explosions," Whiteman said; "were caused by the rushing in of the icy water on the boilers. A bundle of deck chairs, roped together, was blown off the deck with me, and I struck my back, injuring my spine, but it served as a temporary raft.

"The crew and passengers had faith in the bulkhead system to save the ship and we were lowering a collapsible boat, all confident the ship would get through, when she took a terrific dip forward and the water swept over the deck and into the engine rooms.

"The bow went clean down, and I caught the pile of chairs as I was washed up against the rim. Then came the explosions which blew me fifteen feet.

"After the water had filled the forward compartments, the ones at the stern could not save her, although they did delay the ship's going down. If it wasn't for the compartments hardly anyone could have got away."


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Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Review: Better than Sex

Better than Sex Better than Sex by Hunter S. Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Narraged by Scott Sowers

...if you want to get elected, it is better to be Mean than to be Funny.


Casual racism
...As for fleet movements—they’re not essential in that every other ordnance (weapons, bombs, boats, etc.) except hospital ships is already in place over there … and they won’t really need hospital ships, anyway.
Not to take Saddam’s head … Shit, even a phoney head would look good for a South Lawn photo op on October 15. Who’s going to call the president a liar when he’s parading around in public with a rotting human head that he says is Saddam Hussein’s?
Not me, James. And probably not you either. Because there will be a certain resemblance. And you know how those sand-niggers are about using body-doubles. Hell, they all look alike, anyway …

...

And let me remind you that there are laws against kidnapping and brutalizing famous journalists—even if you are the next president. You could do that, but it would be wrong. Remember what happened to Tex Colson.… Indeed, putting me on a subhuman Arkansas chain gang might send a demoralizing message to many decent Americans of all ages, James, and would almost certainly get a Clinton administration off on a wrong karmic foot.


Jack Kennedy was a warrior. So was his brother, Bobby. They were more than just politicians: They were political professionals, high rollers. They saw the enemy as just another set of gongs to be beaten savagely. And they were very good boys to have on your side in a bad fight—and all fights against Richard Nixon were bad. He was criminally insane. George Bush was a punk, compared to Nixon. The quality of the opposition has steadily declined since the sixties.


That is the real lesson of presidential politics in the nineties. Never admit anything, except where you were born. Of course Bill Clinton never inhaled when he put the bong to his lips. Of course he never knew Gennifer Flowers.


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Saturday, December 13, 2025

Review: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jerome Kagan Galen's Prophecy: Temperament In Human Nature

Kagan has given us painstakingly documented evidence that high reactivity is one biological basis of introversion (we'll explore another likely route in chapter 7), but his findings are powerful in part because they confirm what we've sensed all along. Some of Kagan's studies even venture into the realm of cultural myth. For example, he believes, based on his data, that high reactivity is associated with physical traits such as blue eyes, allergies, and hay fever, and that high-reactive men are more likely than others to have a thin body and narrow face. Such conclusions are speculative and call to mind the nineteenth-century practice of divining a man's soul from the shape of his skull. But whether or not they turn out to be accurate, it's interesting that these are just the physical characteristics we give fictional characters when we want to suggest that they're quiet, introverted, cerebral. It's as if these physiological tendencies are buried deep in our cultural unconscious.


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Review: Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn My rating: 4 of 5 stars ...