Monday, January 5, 2026

Review: Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship. With an introduction by Peter Werbe.

Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship. With an introduction by Peter Werbe. Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship. With an introduction by Peter Werbe. by NOAM CHOMSKY; Introduction by Peter Werbe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gabriel Jackson
The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-39
The complexities of modern society that baffled and confounded the unsuspecting anarchist workers of Barcelona, as Jackson enumerates them, were the following: the accumulating food and supply problems and the administration of frontier posts, villages, and public utilities. As just noted, the food and supply problems seem to have accumulated most rapidly under the brilliant leadership of Juan Comorera. So far as the frontier posts are concerned, the situation, as Jackson elsewhere de-scribes it (p. 368), was basically as follows: "In Catalonia the anarchists had, ever since July 18, controlled the customs stations at the French border. On April 17, 1937, the reorganized carabineros, acting on orders of the Finance Minister, Juan Negrín, began to reoccupy the frontier. At least eight anarchists were killed in clashes with the carabineros." Apart from this difficulty, admittedly serious, there seems little rea-son to suppose that the problem of manning frontier posts contributed to the ebbing of the revolutionary tide.


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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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Review: Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes

Teasing Secrets from the Dead: My Investigations at America's Most Infamous Crime Scenes by Emily Craig My rating:...