See the article here:
30 May, 2010
Haliburton at fault in Deepwater explosion?
According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, referenced in The Huffington Post, Haliburton was in charge of cementing the well to keep gas from leaking, and the failure in this process is the likely cause of the explosion.
27 May, 2010
BP: Obama's Do-Nothing "Root Causes" Commission
The Obama commission could come up with a way to transition to a green economy or any of a number of imaginative, forward-looking, Utopian schemes that would address the "root causes" of the BP disaster …”.
But no, they won’t. Because the human race is already doomed.
Keep typing. We’re already dead.
http://www.truthout.org/bp-oil-spill-ecosystem-slowly-being-murdered59903
Title is the link
BP: Obama's Do-Nothing "Root Causes" Commission
Obama had this frozen, robotic expression on his face when he announced that he'd put his signature on the executive order establishing the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. He looked a bit like he'd been replaced with an animatronic doll, one programmed to speak very eloquently and say precisely nothing. Obama's commission is supposed to carry out a six-month investigation into the reasons underlying the explosion of the Deepwater Horizons offshore drilling rig. Securely informed and enlightened by such knowledge, the United States will be able to "prevent and mitigate the impact of any spills that result from offshore drilling."
Obama has been quite chastened by the tens of thousands of barrels of oil daily billowing into the Gulf of Mexico entailing a multi-billion dollar "clean-up effort." This effort involves burning the oil, removing toxic billows from the water and sending toxic plumes into the air and dispersing toxic dispersants on the even-worse oily gunk coating the waters of the Gulf, even when the government says to use something slightly cleaner. BP didn't listen to the government and the government responded by demanding from BP a good explanation for its refusal to listen to government mandates. This deafness probably has also irritated Obama and contributed to the push for an independent commission to investigate the spill.
Obama's lolly gagging while an ecosystem is slowly being murdered has unnerved some of the commentariat who usually remain silent on his screw-ups. James Carville commented, "I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here ... They're naive! BP is trying to save money, save everything they can ... Somebody has got to, like shake them and say, 'These people don't wish you well! They're going to take you down!'" This is unusually sage advice from Carville, who belongs to the wing of the business party congenitally blind to the logic of corporations.
Obama promised during his address that not only BP but also DC be held responsible. So, the commission will "consider both the root causes of the disaster and offer options on what safety and environmental precautions we need to take to prevent a similar disaster from happening again." Stern stuff. Obama must have liked the sound of it, returning nearly verbatim to the line, asking: "what lessons we can learn from this disaster to make sure it never happens again?"
Continue reading at link above.
But no, they won’t. Because the human race is already doomed.
Keep typing. We’re already dead.
http://www.truthout.org/bp-oil-spill-ecosystem-slowly-being-murdered59903
Title is the link
BP: Obama's Do-Nothing "Root Causes" Commission
Obama had this frozen, robotic expression on his face when he announced that he'd put his signature on the executive order establishing the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. He looked a bit like he'd been replaced with an animatronic doll, one programmed to speak very eloquently and say precisely nothing. Obama's commission is supposed to carry out a six-month investigation into the reasons underlying the explosion of the Deepwater Horizons offshore drilling rig. Securely informed and enlightened by such knowledge, the United States will be able to "prevent and mitigate the impact of any spills that result from offshore drilling."
Obama has been quite chastened by the tens of thousands of barrels of oil daily billowing into the Gulf of Mexico entailing a multi-billion dollar "clean-up effort." This effort involves burning the oil, removing toxic billows from the water and sending toxic plumes into the air and dispersing toxic dispersants on the even-worse oily gunk coating the waters of the Gulf, even when the government says to use something slightly cleaner. BP didn't listen to the government and the government responded by demanding from BP a good explanation for its refusal to listen to government mandates. This deafness probably has also irritated Obama and contributed to the push for an independent commission to investigate the spill.
Obama's lolly gagging while an ecosystem is slowly being murdered has unnerved some of the commentariat who usually remain silent on his screw-ups. James Carville commented, "I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here ... They're naive! BP is trying to save money, save everything they can ... Somebody has got to, like shake them and say, 'These people don't wish you well! They're going to take you down!'" This is unusually sage advice from Carville, who belongs to the wing of the business party congenitally blind to the logic of corporations.
Obama promised during his address that not only BP but also DC be held responsible. So, the commission will "consider both the root causes of the disaster and offer options on what safety and environmental precautions we need to take to prevent a similar disaster from happening again." Stern stuff. Obama must have liked the sound of it, returning nearly verbatim to the line, asking: "what lessons we can learn from this disaster to make sure it never happens again?"
Continue reading at link above.
Gulf Oil Leak - second largest deposit in the world
The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world
BP oil leak: Fallen Deepwater Horizon was tapping second largest oil deposit in the world
If there is a single aspect to the dangers of the BP oil leak, it lies in the question CEO Tony Hayward and other BP executives have been avoiding since the first drop of oil went rogue: How much oil is leaking?
The real answer is - more than anyone wants to admit, because the well holds enough oil to make Saudi Arabian drillers jealous.
The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world. Viewzone.com reports, “The site covers an estimated 25,000 square miles, extending from the inlands of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas. “
The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade. Part of the reason the well exploded is because the site also contains large deposits of natural gas.
Speculation as to why BP has tried to hide the amount of oil spilling may be two-fold. There are legal issues and lawsuits in the works. The less said by BP now, the better it may play out for them in the future. The other, more alarming aspect, is the event of total wellhead failure before relief wells are completed in August.
Considering the size of the deposit, if BP loses control of the flow completely, the scope of the disaster would be unfathomable.
The New York Times has reported that scientists suspect the leak is thousands of times larger than what BP has been reporting. Some estimates are as high as one million gallons a day.
Rock particles, gas and oil escaping under pressure are pushing against the capstone on the sea floor that surrounds the actual well. If it collapses, the canyon of oil will escape with a vengeance.
Neither BP nor anyone else wants to say what will happen if the wellhead gives way or the sea floor around it caves in. All anyone is certain of is that the worst case scenario is the one everyone wants to avoid.
BP oil leak: Fallen Deepwater Horizon was tapping second largest oil deposit in the world
If there is a single aspect to the dangers of the BP oil leak, it lies in the question CEO Tony Hayward and other BP executives have been avoiding since the first drop of oil went rogue: How much oil is leaking?
The real answer is - more than anyone wants to admit, because the well holds enough oil to make Saudi Arabian drillers jealous.
The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world. Viewzone.com reports, “The site covers an estimated 25,000 square miles, extending from the inlands of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas. “
The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade. Part of the reason the well exploded is because the site also contains large deposits of natural gas.
Speculation as to why BP has tried to hide the amount of oil spilling may be two-fold. There are legal issues and lawsuits in the works. The less said by BP now, the better it may play out for them in the future. The other, more alarming aspect, is the event of total wellhead failure before relief wells are completed in August.
Considering the size of the deposit, if BP loses control of the flow completely, the scope of the disaster would be unfathomable.
The New York Times has reported that scientists suspect the leak is thousands of times larger than what BP has been reporting. Some estimates are as high as one million gallons a day.
Rock particles, gas and oil escaping under pressure are pushing against the capstone on the sea floor that surrounds the actual well. If it collapses, the canyon of oil will escape with a vengeance.
Neither BP nor anyone else wants to say what will happen if the wellhead gives way or the sea floor around it caves in. All anyone is certain of is that the worst case scenario is the one everyone wants to avoid.
23 May, 2010
The War Is Making You Poor Act
The War is Making You Poor Act
Put forth by Congressman Alan Grayson
OK! Where do we vote for this? Call your congressmen, congresswomen and senators to vote for this bill! Tell em, let the Pentagon pay for their own misery. Why do we have to give them more?
“We take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war. We put the cost of both guns and butter on our Chinese credit card … on 'emergency supplemental'. A nine-year ‘emergency’.”
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/war-making-you-poor-act
The War Is Making You Poor Act
By Congressman Alan Grayson
Next week, there is going to be a "debate" in Congress on yet another war funding bill. The bill is supposed to pass without debate, so no one will notice.
What George Orwell wrote about in "1984" has come true. What Eisenhower warned us about concerning the "military-industrial complex" has come true. War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape, so much so that no one notices it anymore.
But we’re going to change this. Today, we’re introducing a bill called ‘The War Is Making You Poor Act’. The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars. Next year’s budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American’s income. Beyond that, leaves over $15 billion to cut the deficit.
And that’s what this bill does. It eliminates separate funding for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and eliminates federal income taxes for everyone’s first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for couples). Plus it pays down the national debt.
The costs of the war have been rendered invisible. There's no draft. Instead, we take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war.
We put the cost of both guns and butter on our Chinese credit card. In fact, we don't even put these wars on budget; they are still passed using 'emergency supplemental'. A nine-year ‘emergency’.
21 May, 2010
Truth about the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
I received the following in an email.
What the scientists are not allowed to say.
Due to threat of severe repercussions scientists confirming these findings cannot be named.
Summary of what is happening
The estimated super high pressure release of oil from under the earth's crust is between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels per day. The flow of oil and gas is bringing up with it rocks and sand which causes the flow to create a sandblasting effect on the remaining well head device currently somewhat restricting the flow, as well as the drilled hole itself. As the wellhead becomes worn it enlarges the passageway allowing an ever-increasing flow. Even if some device could be placed onto the existing wellhead that would be able to shut off the flow, what remains of the existing wellhead would not be able to contain the pressure.
The wellhead piping is originally about 2 inches thick. It is now likely to be less than 1 inch thick, and thinning by the moment. The oil has now reached the Gulf Stream and is entering the Oceanic current, which will carry it throughout the world within 18 months. The oil along with the gasses, including benzene and many other toxins, is depleting the oxygen in the water. This is killing all life in the Ocean. Along with the oil along the shores there will be many dead fish etc that will have to be gathered and disposed of.
Summary of expectations
At some point the drilled hole will enlarge itself beneath the wellhead to weaken the area the wellhead rests upon. The intense pressure will then push the wellhead off the hole allowing a direct unrestricted flow of oil etc. The hole will continue to increase in size allowing more and more oil to rise into the Gulf. After several billion barrels of oil have been released, the pressure
within the cavity five mile beneath the Ocean floor will begin to normalize.
This will allow the water, under the intense pressure at 1 mile deep, to be
forced into the hole and the cavity where the oil was. The temperature at that
depth is near 400 degrees, possibly more. The water will be vaporized (turn to
steam) creating an enormous amount of force, lifting the Gulf floor. It is
difficult to know how much water will go down to the core and therefore not
possible to calculate the rise of the floor. The tsunami wave this will create
will be from 20 to 80 foot, possibly more. Then the floor will fall into the now
vacant chamber. This is how nature will seal the hole.
Depending on the height of the tsunami, the Ocean debris, oil, and
existing structures that will be washed away on shore and inland will leave the
area from 50 to 200 miles inland devoid of life. Even if the debris is cleaned
up, the contaminants that will be in the ground and water supply will prohibit
repopulation of these areas for an unknown number of
years.
Florida State scientist: NOAA ignores spill findings – 80,000 barrels a day
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/7011584.html
BP – Obama Admin Coverup?
http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m5d9-Gulf-oil-spill-Suggestions-of-BP-cover-up-with-Obama-Administration-on-massive-amount-of-oil-being
Video: The Oil is in the Loop Current – Will head up the East Coast
http://video.godlikeproductions.com/video/Oil_Spill_Disaster_2010_part197_-_Eric_Burris_Gives_Tuesday_Oil_Spill_Forecast
Benzene in the Air - Plans to Evacuate Gulf Population
http://gazbom.blogspot.com/2010/05/benzene-killer-plans-in-place-to.html
What the scientists are not allowed to say.
Due to threat of severe repercussions scientists confirming these findings cannot be named.
Summary of what is happening
The estimated super high pressure release of oil from under the earth's crust is between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels per day. The flow of oil and gas is bringing up with it rocks and sand which causes the flow to create a sandblasting effect on the remaining well head device currently somewhat restricting the flow, as well as the drilled hole itself. As the wellhead becomes worn it enlarges the passageway allowing an ever-increasing flow. Even if some device could be placed onto the existing wellhead that would be able to shut off the flow, what remains of the existing wellhead would not be able to contain the pressure.
The wellhead piping is originally about 2 inches thick. It is now likely to be less than 1 inch thick, and thinning by the moment. The oil has now reached the Gulf Stream and is entering the Oceanic current, which will carry it throughout the world within 18 months. The oil along with the gasses, including benzene and many other toxins, is depleting the oxygen in the water. This is killing all life in the Ocean. Along with the oil along the shores there will be many dead fish etc that will have to be gathered and disposed of.
Summary of expectations
At some point the drilled hole will enlarge itself beneath the wellhead to weaken the area the wellhead rests upon. The intense pressure will then push the wellhead off the hole allowing a direct unrestricted flow of oil etc. The hole will continue to increase in size allowing more and more oil to rise into the Gulf. After several billion barrels of oil have been released, the pressure
within the cavity five mile beneath the Ocean floor will begin to normalize.
This will allow the water, under the intense pressure at 1 mile deep, to be
forced into the hole and the cavity where the oil was. The temperature at that
depth is near 400 degrees, possibly more. The water will be vaporized (turn to
steam) creating an enormous amount of force, lifting the Gulf floor. It is
difficult to know how much water will go down to the core and therefore not
possible to calculate the rise of the floor. The tsunami wave this will create
will be from 20 to 80 foot, possibly more. Then the floor will fall into the now
vacant chamber. This is how nature will seal the hole.
Depending on the height of the tsunami, the Ocean debris, oil, and
existing structures that will be washed away on shore and inland will leave the
area from 50 to 200 miles inland devoid of life. Even if the debris is cleaned
up, the contaminants that will be in the ground and water supply will prohibit
repopulation of these areas for an unknown number of
years.
Florida State scientist: NOAA ignores spill findings – 80,000 barrels a day
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/7011584.html
BP – Obama Admin Coverup?
http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m5d9-Gulf-oil-spill-Suggestions-of-BP-cover-up-with-Obama-Administration-on-massive-amount-of-oil-being
Video: The Oil is in the Loop Current – Will head up the East Coast
http://video.godlikeproductions.com/video/Oil_Spill_Disaster_2010_part197_-_Eric_Burris_Gives_Tuesday_Oil_Spill_Forecast
Benzene in the Air - Plans to Evacuate Gulf Population
http://gazbom.blogspot.com/2010/05/benzene-killer-plans-in-place-to.html
19 May, 2010
BP: Beyond Prosecution
Mention the name of the corporation BP to Scott West and two words immediately come to mind: Beyond Prosecution.
West was the special agent in charge with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) criminal division who had been probing alleged crimes committed by BP and the company's senior officials in connection with a March 2006 pipeline rupture at the company's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope that spilled 267,000 gallons of crude oil across two acres of frozen tundra - the second largest spill in Alaska's history - which went undetected for nearly a week.
West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal probe would result in felony charges against the company and the senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees at the Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.
In fact, West, who spent more than two decades at the EPA's criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture - about six months before it happened.
In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a "slap on the wrist" for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.
He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP's record are being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface that has been spewing upwards of 200,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month
Continue reading
http://www.truthout.org/how-bushs-doj-killed-a-criminal-probe-into-bp-that-threatened-net-top-officials59648
West was the special agent in charge with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) criminal division who had been probing alleged crimes committed by BP and the company's senior officials in connection with a March 2006 pipeline rupture at the company's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope that spilled 267,000 gallons of crude oil across two acres of frozen tundra - the second largest spill in Alaska's history - which went undetected for nearly a week.
West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal probe would result in felony charges against the company and the senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees at the Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.
In fact, West, who spent more than two decades at the EPA's criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture - about six months before it happened.
In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a "slap on the wrist" for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.
He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP's record are being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface that has been spewing upwards of 200,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month
Continue reading
http://www.truthout.org/how-bushs-doj-killed-a-criminal-probe-into-bp-that-threatened-net-top-officials59648
HIG - Hoodlum in Government
Wilhelm Reich's term “Hig” [Hoodlum in Government] formalized by U.S. government
Friends,
As you all know Wilhelm Reich had coined the term "Hig" [Hoodlum in Government] to refer to the phenomenon in which authoritarian persons of a particularly embittered, manipulative, sadistic, gossipy or voyeuristic bent seem to be embedded in high proportion throughout the structures of the State.
This term even comes up in connection with some of his legal papers in reference to his conflicts with the US Govt. which are now preserved at the Wilhelm Reich museum:
http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/conspiracy.pdf
How ironic now, about fifty years later, that the US Govt. is formalizing Reich’s term, HIG, and using it as an acronym to describe the new "anti-terrorist" special interrogation teams set up by Obama.
What a world we live in!
Petros Evdokas
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has started using special law enforcement and intelligence teams to interrogate suspected militants in the United States and abroad, including the Pakistani-American arrested in the Times Square bombing plot, a top official said on Tuesday.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the formation of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) in August and gave the reins to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, replacing the Central Intelligence Agency that did have the lead role in intelligence interrogations.
The program calls for the deployment of Mobile Interrogation Teams, made up of specialists [HIGs?] from across the law enforcement and intelligence community, to question important detainees, whether they are in U.S. custody or in the custody of a foreign government.
"There have been a number of deployments of these Mobile Interrogation Teams to include for the Faisal Shahzad case," said John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.
Continue reading:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100519/pl_nm/us_usa_intelligence
Friends,
As you all know Wilhelm Reich had coined the term "Hig" [Hoodlum in Government] to refer to the phenomenon in which authoritarian persons of a particularly embittered, manipulative, sadistic, gossipy or voyeuristic bent seem to be embedded in high proportion throughout the structures of the State.
This term even comes up in connection with some of his legal papers in reference to his conflicts with the US Govt. which are now preserved at the Wilhelm Reich museum:
http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/conspiracy.pdf
How ironic now, about fifty years later, that the US Govt. is formalizing Reich’s term, HIG, and using it as an acronym to describe the new "anti-terrorist" special interrogation teams set up by Obama.
What a world we live in!
Petros Evdokas
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has started using special law enforcement and intelligence teams to interrogate suspected militants in the United States and abroad, including the Pakistani-American arrested in the Times Square bombing plot, a top official said on Tuesday.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the formation of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) in August and gave the reins to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, replacing the Central Intelligence Agency that did have the lead role in intelligence interrogations.
The program calls for the deployment of Mobile Interrogation Teams, made up of specialists [HIGs?] from across the law enforcement and intelligence community, to question important detainees, whether they are in U.S. custody or in the custody of a foreign government.
"There have been a number of deployments of these Mobile Interrogation Teams to include for the Faisal Shahzad case," said John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.
Continue reading:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100519/pl_nm/us_usa_intelligence
16 May, 2010
Oily Ploy
"Could the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion be part of a larger scheme to "reform" the energy industry, just as the Obama administration has "reformed" healthcare, banking and automobile manufacturers? Worse, is "cap and trade"--possibly the worst legislation ever penned--the ultimate endgame behind this spill, which they are now capitalizing upon?
The first red flag receiving virtually no attention is that Halliburton (of Dick Cheney fame) had finished a cementing process only 20 hours prior to Deepwater Horizon erupting in flames. Lawsuits have already been filed, with Reuters reporting on April 29, "Halliburton improperly and negligently performed its job in cementing the well, increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill." --Victor Thorn
Rest of article:
http://americanfreepress.net/html/gulf_oil_spill_222.html
The first red flag receiving virtually no attention is that Halliburton (of Dick Cheney fame) had finished a cementing process only 20 hours prior to Deepwater Horizon erupting in flames. Lawsuits have already been filed, with Reuters reporting on April 29, "Halliburton improperly and negligently performed its job in cementing the well, increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill." --Victor Thorn
Rest of article:
http://americanfreepress.net/html/gulf_oil_spill_222.html
15 May, 2010
Interview Psi-Op Radio: Roderick MacKenzie, JFK Witness
Roderick MacKenzie worked for the mob in 1963 during the JFK assassination. He ran the “safe house”, made false I.D.s for everyone from Lee Harvey Oswald to Michel Victor Mertz. Got his orders from Sam Giancana and his pay vouchers from Permindex.
Don’t miss this interview! On Psi-Op Radio, Sunday evening, May 16
West coast: 5:00 to 7 p.m. East Coast: 8:00 to 10 p.m.
http://psiopradio.com/
Click on the box on right American Free Radio to bring you to the Live Interview. Click “Listen Live”.
Rod MacKenzie was interviewed in the new PARANOIA book, available at:
www.paranoiamagazine.com
The interview will also be archived.
Don’t miss this interview! On Psi-Op Radio, Sunday evening, May 16
West coast: 5:00 to 7 p.m. East Coast: 8:00 to 10 p.m.
http://psiopradio.com/
Click on the box on right American Free Radio to bring you to the Live Interview. Click “Listen Live”.
Rod MacKenzie was interviewed in the new PARANOIA book, available at:
www.paranoiamagazine.com
The interview will also be archived.
13 May, 2010
Millennial Rants in Three Ring Binders
An interview with Joan d'Arc in /P/P/J (Psionic Plastic Joy) Winter 2008-2009
by Jason Rodgers (POB 1683, Nashua, NH 03060)
PPJ: If Paranoia had an occult slogan, what would it be?
Joan d'Arc: I would say our sensibility is more kitsch than occult. So I would steal Paul Laffoley's slogan and say it's "beyond the kitsch barrier."
PPJ: Can you tell us a little bit about the publishing history of Paranoia?
Joan d'Arc: Sure. Frank Difficult and I started a bookstore called Newspeak in April of 1992, which had a focus on anarchist and conspiracy titles and underground magazines, and we rented kook films from Frank's collection. I got immersed in conspiracy literature and rekindled my earlier interest in the JFK assassination. I soon found myself being pulled by the top of my head into the fascinating genre of horror known as UFO abduction literature. Not only did it scare the pants off me but I came back with my pants on backwards!
That summer I started the I-Am-Providence Conspiracy League after H.P. Lovecraft's tombstone epitaph. We started collecting information in 3-ring binders that we kept open to the public. When we had amassed three binders full, Al Hidell came up with the idea of publishing a zine called Paranoia. Luckily, having no idea how to manage a publishing empire didn't stop us from doing it!
Basically, we didn't really expect to get Paranoia off the block. But a couple of distributors picked it up and it got on the newsstands and started to catch on. The first issue was copied at Kinkos. It had an interview with Tribulation 99 filmmaker, Craig Baldwin, who used to come to Providence quite a bit to show films at Brown. After that we found a printer who used that crappy newsprint that turns baby-shit brown after a few years. I'm looking at it now, and I’m sneezing.
The first four issues were black and white tabloid style covers and then we introduced color on the fifth one. Initially, the articles were written mostly by members of the group, but by the second issue we had an article by John Judge on Jonestown and an interview with Alan Cantwell on man-made AIDS, which at the time was just so far outside of people's perception. Now it's an accepted theory.
I'm not quite sure how we actually caught the wave into the new millennium unscathed. It's a phenomenon in itself. I guess we were at the right time and right place; at the point where the world changed and we stayed the same. We came to appear less and less outlandish as the world became more preposterous. At first people thought we were ridiculous, but we seem pretty normal by today's standards. I remember one radio interview we had in 1993 where they were totally laughing at us. That radio station is now long gone. Who's laughing now?
The magazine seems to have little in the way of formal dogma or agenda. It seems more like a convergence of diverse trajectories.
Joan d'Arc: Thank you. That's a fair assessment and I'm glad you see it that way. The sense of editorial invisibility partly derives from necessity. In the beginning we were a small group of people who couldn't on their own have continued to keep the content varied and interesting over time. If we had stayed that small, and there was no email, no internet, then it would have just been this insular clique of paranoids from H.P. Lovecraft's hometown. But we always had the sense that we didn't want Paranoia to have, as you call it, an agenda. Unless you want to call subversion an agenda.
I think the reason for the detectable convergence from all directions derives from the fact that we have essentially allowed synchronicity to rule. We're not into editorializing or popping our "expert" fat heads in to say, "here's what WE think is going on." First, because we don't feel that we're experts. Secondly, because we've always had an understanding that the magazine is not a platform for our own ideas, nor is it a pedestal for our own egos. Third, because we really don't have an agenda. We want to stay in the background. We're still collecting millennial rants in three ring binders. That's still an accurate portrayal of what we do.
PPJ: What do you see as the value of presenting these outsider, heretic, and extremist points of view?
Joan d'Arc: I hadn't noticed that we had extremist points of view! I'm too buried in it to see over the mountains of information being generated now in the 21st century. I don't really pay attention to insider thinking. The outsiders are my people. I don't watch TV, I don't listen to talk radio, I don't read the newspaper. I don't juxtapose insider news to outsider news and try to figure out which one is the "truth." There's nothing to hold it up against, really. Some things are truer than others, you might say, but largely the media has lost its grip. The fringe is populating the interior now, like black spots on a white soul. Or are they white spots on a black soul? Conspiracy theories still seem ridiculous to some people, although I will say, George Bush has put Paranoia on the map, speaking of someone with a black soul.
In terms of value do you mean "services" or "disservices"? I guess there's a "value" on a societal level, from say a democratic point of view. Freedom of Information is what we like to call it. In America we "get" that, although there are still some people who would exercise fascist control over what they believe is a ridiculous or impossible worldview. But on a personal level, the value is that it opens your mind to all the possibilities on the color wheel. It's not just black and white and you're not in Kansas anymore.
In terms of disservice, I would say, there are people who are highly sensitive to the viral sensorium. I've seen them fall; get shattered; lose their sense of balance. Over the years I've been able to fend off this malaise by growing a crust over my sensitive areas, wherever they're located, so I don't end up in the nut house and my family has to bring me my pajamas. That's the only way to deal with some of this material if you're going to be playing right in the chemical slop of it. There's a disservice for sure. If you don't want your joy stolen; if you want to keep a tight grasp on your naïve, childlike worldview, don't read Paranoia. That should be the warning label.
Of course, we don't have a warning label because we don't want to treat people like they're children. We start with the basic assumption that people are capable of sifting, handling and managing large volumes of information to find their own proofs and make their own judgments, if that's the way they wish to spend their time. Be aware that you might also end up falling out of your chair laughing. As someone put it to me recently, we have an extraordinary balance between serious and funny. We're masters of juxtaposition and frying-pan-over-the-head journalism. Here's a bit of trivia: Paranoia got first place in an article on pull quotes in the Washington Post a few years ago for a pull quote about the Queen being a shape-shifting, baby-eating reptoid.
Washington Post article : http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1683&dat=20020805&id=RMAaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=X0AEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6764,3939819
"The Reptoid Invasion" by Alexandra Bruce in PARANOIA All Girl issue #24 http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/PDFs/Para24.pdf (Takes a minute to open)
Obviously, conspiracy theories can be both informing and disinforming. In fact, our disclaimer reads: "We do not knowingly publish disinformation, but sometimes it's hard to tell." Beyond checking pertinent factoids in someone's article, reading it for internal consistency, checking the references, how do you make a judgment that something is completely baked? Whose truth do you judge it by? How do you apologize for someone else's embarrassing worldview? I've got my own and I don't apologize to anyone for it.
PPJ: Existentialism is a recurring theme in your work. What is your interpretation of this school of philosophy?
Joan d'Arc: Well, I'm essentially interested in the cover-up concerning the true nature of reality, and I've tried to see where the existentialists and phenomenologists can help us see the situation we're in. Phenomenology describes exactly what it's like to be in your body looking out, without any prior concepts or constructs. By stripping off layers of socialization, phenomenologists like Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Sartre can help us understand the role of shared personal constructs in the development of our consensus reality.
So how I apply that is, in an article entitled "Beings in NothingDrive" (issue 39), I analyzed the Travis Walton alien abduction of 1975 (see the film Fire in the Sky) from the point of view of being in his body and trying to think as he may have thought. I brought in the theories of Jean Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as they might be applied to this scenario. The result was admittedly kitsch, but nobody complained. I would say, I try to have fun and stretch the boundaries of conspiracy and paranormal studies with other avenues of thought from, say, Carl Jung to P.D. Ouspensky.
PPJ: What is the most bizarre paranoid thought you regularly entertain?
Joan d'Arc: That would probably be the idea that the earth is a wilderness protectorate with ET "game wardens" making sure we don't venture too far from home. But those thoughts were entertained regularly in the 1960s by space agencies and think tanks like the Brookings Institute. It's known as the Zoo Hypothesis and, although it certainly seems bizarre, that’s because you're judging it through a filter that's been foisted upon you since birth.
The view that earthlings are the only humanoid beings in the universe is brought to you by the materialist paradigm holding up your worldview, specifically, I have pointed out, the Darwinian paradigm, which is the ruling scientism on the top of the entire pyramid of control. As I explain in my book, Phenomenal World, Darwinian evolution keeps us from the truth of our ancestry from the sky rather than from the water. All other control paradigms line up behind that one. If that one falls, the dominoes fall. My belief is that if we came out of the water, it was because that's where the space capsule landed.
Connected to that is the idea that the Earth is a controlled DNA repository for the ongoing creation and dissemination of life forms, including humans. It is in this sense that the world of our perception (the phenomenal world) can be considered a "construct," and I mean it here in a physical sense. I might add here that I’m not a Scientologist, although it might sound like I am. I've read a lot about Hubbard, but mainly my sources are Richard Hoagland and pictures he has discovered of our own celestial backyard taken by NASA.
PPJ: On the flipside, what conspiracy theory do you feel has the most solid historical backing?
Joan d'Arc: The JFK assassination has now been proven to be a conspiracy. The best book on this subject now is Joan Mellen's Farewell to Justice. The government drags out the skeletons every year in November to do the amnesiac shuffle, but everybody knows the truth. Lee Harvey Oswald was a "patsy" as he said he was. He was a CIA counterintelligence operative; he was recruited when he was very young; and the CIA used him as the scapegoat. He had no idea what he was even being arrested for.
Continue reading at the new PARANOIA ParaMedia Page:
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/millennialrants.html
by Jason Rodgers (POB 1683, Nashua, NH 03060)
PPJ: If Paranoia had an occult slogan, what would it be?
Joan d'Arc: I would say our sensibility is more kitsch than occult. So I would steal Paul Laffoley's slogan and say it's "beyond the kitsch barrier."
PPJ: Can you tell us a little bit about the publishing history of Paranoia?
Joan d'Arc: Sure. Frank Difficult and I started a bookstore called Newspeak in April of 1992, which had a focus on anarchist and conspiracy titles and underground magazines, and we rented kook films from Frank's collection. I got immersed in conspiracy literature and rekindled my earlier interest in the JFK assassination. I soon found myself being pulled by the top of my head into the fascinating genre of horror known as UFO abduction literature. Not only did it scare the pants off me but I came back with my pants on backwards!
That summer I started the I-Am-Providence Conspiracy League after H.P. Lovecraft's tombstone epitaph. We started collecting information in 3-ring binders that we kept open to the public. When we had amassed three binders full, Al Hidell came up with the idea of publishing a zine called Paranoia. Luckily, having no idea how to manage a publishing empire didn't stop us from doing it!
Basically, we didn't really expect to get Paranoia off the block. But a couple of distributors picked it up and it got on the newsstands and started to catch on. The first issue was copied at Kinkos. It had an interview with Tribulation 99 filmmaker, Craig Baldwin, who used to come to Providence quite a bit to show films at Brown. After that we found a printer who used that crappy newsprint that turns baby-shit brown after a few years. I'm looking at it now, and I’m sneezing.
The first four issues were black and white tabloid style covers and then we introduced color on the fifth one. Initially, the articles were written mostly by members of the group, but by the second issue we had an article by John Judge on Jonestown and an interview with Alan Cantwell on man-made AIDS, which at the time was just so far outside of people's perception. Now it's an accepted theory.
I'm not quite sure how we actually caught the wave into the new millennium unscathed. It's a phenomenon in itself. I guess we were at the right time and right place; at the point where the world changed and we stayed the same. We came to appear less and less outlandish as the world became more preposterous. At first people thought we were ridiculous, but we seem pretty normal by today's standards. I remember one radio interview we had in 1993 where they were totally laughing at us. That radio station is now long gone. Who's laughing now?
The magazine seems to have little in the way of formal dogma or agenda. It seems more like a convergence of diverse trajectories.
Joan d'Arc: Thank you. That's a fair assessment and I'm glad you see it that way. The sense of editorial invisibility partly derives from necessity. In the beginning we were a small group of people who couldn't on their own have continued to keep the content varied and interesting over time. If we had stayed that small, and there was no email, no internet, then it would have just been this insular clique of paranoids from H.P. Lovecraft's hometown. But we always had the sense that we didn't want Paranoia to have, as you call it, an agenda. Unless you want to call subversion an agenda.
I think the reason for the detectable convergence from all directions derives from the fact that we have essentially allowed synchronicity to rule. We're not into editorializing or popping our "expert" fat heads in to say, "here's what WE think is going on." First, because we don't feel that we're experts. Secondly, because we've always had an understanding that the magazine is not a platform for our own ideas, nor is it a pedestal for our own egos. Third, because we really don't have an agenda. We want to stay in the background. We're still collecting millennial rants in three ring binders. That's still an accurate portrayal of what we do.
PPJ: What do you see as the value of presenting these outsider, heretic, and extremist points of view?
Joan d'Arc: I hadn't noticed that we had extremist points of view! I'm too buried in it to see over the mountains of information being generated now in the 21st century. I don't really pay attention to insider thinking. The outsiders are my people. I don't watch TV, I don't listen to talk radio, I don't read the newspaper. I don't juxtapose insider news to outsider news and try to figure out which one is the "truth." There's nothing to hold it up against, really. Some things are truer than others, you might say, but largely the media has lost its grip. The fringe is populating the interior now, like black spots on a white soul. Or are they white spots on a black soul? Conspiracy theories still seem ridiculous to some people, although I will say, George Bush has put Paranoia on the map, speaking of someone with a black soul.
In terms of value do you mean "services" or "disservices"? I guess there's a "value" on a societal level, from say a democratic point of view. Freedom of Information is what we like to call it. In America we "get" that, although there are still some people who would exercise fascist control over what they believe is a ridiculous or impossible worldview. But on a personal level, the value is that it opens your mind to all the possibilities on the color wheel. It's not just black and white and you're not in Kansas anymore.
In terms of disservice, I would say, there are people who are highly sensitive to the viral sensorium. I've seen them fall; get shattered; lose their sense of balance. Over the years I've been able to fend off this malaise by growing a crust over my sensitive areas, wherever they're located, so I don't end up in the nut house and my family has to bring me my pajamas. That's the only way to deal with some of this material if you're going to be playing right in the chemical slop of it. There's a disservice for sure. If you don't want your joy stolen; if you want to keep a tight grasp on your naïve, childlike worldview, don't read Paranoia. That should be the warning label.
Of course, we don't have a warning label because we don't want to treat people like they're children. We start with the basic assumption that people are capable of sifting, handling and managing large volumes of information to find their own proofs and make their own judgments, if that's the way they wish to spend their time. Be aware that you might also end up falling out of your chair laughing. As someone put it to me recently, we have an extraordinary balance between serious and funny. We're masters of juxtaposition and frying-pan-over-the-head journalism. Here's a bit of trivia: Paranoia got first place in an article on pull quotes in the Washington Post a few years ago for a pull quote about the Queen being a shape-shifting, baby-eating reptoid.
Washington Post article : http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1683&dat=20020805&id=RMAaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=X0AEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6764,3939819
"The Reptoid Invasion" by Alexandra Bruce in PARANOIA All Girl issue #24 http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/PDFs/Para24.pdf (Takes a minute to open)
Obviously, conspiracy theories can be both informing and disinforming. In fact, our disclaimer reads: "We do not knowingly publish disinformation, but sometimes it's hard to tell." Beyond checking pertinent factoids in someone's article, reading it for internal consistency, checking the references, how do you make a judgment that something is completely baked? Whose truth do you judge it by? How do you apologize for someone else's embarrassing worldview? I've got my own and I don't apologize to anyone for it.
PPJ: Existentialism is a recurring theme in your work. What is your interpretation of this school of philosophy?
Joan d'Arc: Well, I'm essentially interested in the cover-up concerning the true nature of reality, and I've tried to see where the existentialists and phenomenologists can help us see the situation we're in. Phenomenology describes exactly what it's like to be in your body looking out, without any prior concepts or constructs. By stripping off layers of socialization, phenomenologists like Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Sartre can help us understand the role of shared personal constructs in the development of our consensus reality.
So how I apply that is, in an article entitled "Beings in NothingDrive" (issue 39), I analyzed the Travis Walton alien abduction of 1975 (see the film Fire in the Sky) from the point of view of being in his body and trying to think as he may have thought. I brought in the theories of Jean Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as they might be applied to this scenario. The result was admittedly kitsch, but nobody complained. I would say, I try to have fun and stretch the boundaries of conspiracy and paranormal studies with other avenues of thought from, say, Carl Jung to P.D. Ouspensky.
PPJ: What is the most bizarre paranoid thought you regularly entertain?
Joan d'Arc: That would probably be the idea that the earth is a wilderness protectorate with ET "game wardens" making sure we don't venture too far from home. But those thoughts were entertained regularly in the 1960s by space agencies and think tanks like the Brookings Institute. It's known as the Zoo Hypothesis and, although it certainly seems bizarre, that’s because you're judging it through a filter that's been foisted upon you since birth.
The view that earthlings are the only humanoid beings in the universe is brought to you by the materialist paradigm holding up your worldview, specifically, I have pointed out, the Darwinian paradigm, which is the ruling scientism on the top of the entire pyramid of control. As I explain in my book, Phenomenal World, Darwinian evolution keeps us from the truth of our ancestry from the sky rather than from the water. All other control paradigms line up behind that one. If that one falls, the dominoes fall. My belief is that if we came out of the water, it was because that's where the space capsule landed.
Connected to that is the idea that the Earth is a controlled DNA repository for the ongoing creation and dissemination of life forms, including humans. It is in this sense that the world of our perception (the phenomenal world) can be considered a "construct," and I mean it here in a physical sense. I might add here that I’m not a Scientologist, although it might sound like I am. I've read a lot about Hubbard, but mainly my sources are Richard Hoagland and pictures he has discovered of our own celestial backyard taken by NASA.
PPJ: On the flipside, what conspiracy theory do you feel has the most solid historical backing?
Joan d'Arc: The JFK assassination has now been proven to be a conspiracy. The best book on this subject now is Joan Mellen's Farewell to Justice. The government drags out the skeletons every year in November to do the amnesiac shuffle, but everybody knows the truth. Lee Harvey Oswald was a "patsy" as he said he was. He was a CIA counterintelligence operative; he was recruited when he was very young; and the CIA used him as the scapegoat. He had no idea what he was even being arrested for.
Continue reading at the new PARANOIA ParaMedia Page:
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/millennialrants.html
Interview with PARANOIA Magazine
Paranoid Times:
An Interview with Providence’s PARANOIA Magazine
By Rebekah Bergman
(This interview appeared in The College Hill Independent (Brown University/RISD) Weekly, October 29, 2009 – Note: The newspaper published only a small part of the entire interview and we are not sure if they liked our comments about Noam Chomsky) :-)
What is your role at PARANOIA?
Joan: One of my roles is covered by the phrase “huntergatheress” – a title I came up with in the early 90s because it felt like I was hunting and gathering fringe material for publication. Today I still do that, although my hunting and gathering niches are located in the more virtual ground of cyberspace. Of course, once I gather the carcass of the beast, I have to tear it apart and consume some, and give some to the other staff members to consume and make tools. We sometimes refer to it as “editing,” “proofreading” and “fact checking.”
Al: Joan and I both wear many hats. I have generally been the “numbers” guy, the “technical” guy and the “graphics/layout” guy, but not always. Editorially, Joan and I tend to balance each other out in terms of areas of interest and credulity, so I think we make a good team.
Can you tell me about the history of the magazine? How did PARANOIA first come to be?
Joan: PARANOIA was born out of the Providence Conspiracy League in my now defunct Providence book store, Newspeak, in 1992. For your readers at Brown, Newspeak was originally located on Richmond Street in 1992, and then moved to the bottom of College Hill in the Steeple Street building (above New Rivers Restaurant). It was the only book store back then that sold conspiracy books. Now conspiracy books are ubiquitous. Back then we raised some eyebrows and everyone thought we were pretty much nuts, until George “Dubya” Bush put us on the map during his nightmare twice-stolen presidency.
Al: One day, I brought a red binder into the store, and I'd pasted a big picture of Lee Harvey Oswald on the front. That became a repository for various conspiracy clippings and material, and it quickly evolved into a magazine once the binder couldn't hold any more. Joan and I invested $500 each to have it printed, and we took it door-to-door to various independent bookstores in the Providence area. Soon, we managed to convince a few gullible magazine distributors to carry us, and we were on our way.
How would you describe the magazine's mission? Has it changed at all since 1992?
Al: I think our mission has always been to confuse and scare people by presenting alternative and even contradictory viewpoints, in a crafty mix of entertainment and enlightenment. We've broadened our subject matter over the years, but the mission has remained constant.
Was there an original public need or demand for a conspiracy magazine?
Joan: Well, we thought there was, in order to counter the mainstream, but also to counter the leftists, who had a problem with “boundaries”, in other words, who they could touch or what they could talk about. We were arched somewhere between the left and the right, somehow subsuming both of them and struggling to show people how the two polarities didn’t really exist, except where they were meant to divide and conquer and keep us arguing. Consider that there was not yet an internet, and the newspapers, even supposed leftist newspapers, were still parroting the mainstream media’s explanations, and some still do, for instance, you still have Noam Chomsky arguing against 9/11 conspiracy theories and JFK conspiracy theories. So we felt back then and still do that the left wasn’t going far enough in its analysis. So in our broaching of these untouchable subjects, we were often mistaken as “right wing.” But over the years, by mixing left and right points of view into our fringe analysis, people finally caught on that we weren’t right wing at all, we were just trying to get them beyond right-left thinking.
Was there any publication PARANOIA was using as a model?
Joan: Not that I can think of because we were the only periodical that was willing to touch a lot of the “untouchable” material and mix it in with absurd kookiness and really scrub out the brain of all earlier assumptions. As the book buyer for Newspeak, I was able to get my hands on conspiracy books, and these book titles became more and more ubiquitous as the years rolled by and as the juggernaut rolled out its New World Order plans; for instance, the most popular book in the land in 1994 was William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse. However, if we were mimicking anything in popular culture it may have subconsciously been the tabloids. If you look at the first four issues of PARANOIA (posted as PDFs on our website), you’ll see the early tabloid style: black and white covers where several stories start right on the cover. In fact, this style made many people wonder whether we were serious or tongue-in-cheek. The answer to that conundrum is that we were both, but we were also protecting ourselves from lawsuits under the “parody” clause of the Constitution.
At the time, were there any competing conspiracy publications or any other magazine whose readership you were hoping to catch? How about now? Have other publications followed your lead?
Joan: There were a few conspiracy magazines we were aware of in 1992. But mainly we had our own ball to roll up the hill and we were rolling it in our own freestyle. I don’t think anyone has ever captured that style and I don’t think the style has a name, except for “PARANOIA.”
Al: The thing is, we started this thing with no magazine publishing experience whatsoever and just kind of closed our eyes and jumped into it. Concepts like competitive analysis, reader demographics, and advertising revenue were completely foreign to us. We just wanted to publish a cool magazine.
How, if at all, was PARANOIA responding to current events in 1992?
Joan: Initially, in 1992, we were responding to the Ruby Ridge event in Idaho, where the FBI and federal marshals had a violent confrontation with the Weaver family, culminating in the killing of Randy Weaver’s pregnant wife. This event was followed by the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, and the FBI siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco. These events sparked a huge outpouring of citizen paranoia, and we were there to take notes. We also covered the man-made AIDS theories, which the left wouldn’t touch, as well as many historical conspiracies, like the JFK and RFK assassinations, Jonestown, Watergate, the Kent State massacre, the Pine Ridge massacre and Leonard Peltier- usually getting to issues that the left wouldn’t address, for instance, that the victims who died at Jonestown were killed by mercenaries, not by Kool-Aid.
Do you think the magazine was at all influenced by the surge in 'zines' in the 1990s?
Al: It was more like various technological and economic forces were influencing lots of people at the same time, and at some point we all realized that there was a 'zine scene. I view the 'zine surge as part of a larger trend towards DIY/prosumer culture, the relative democratization of media production.
How did you start soliciting writers? Has your network of writers grown?
Joan: The first few issues of PARANOIA were actually written by the members of the Providence Conspiracy League. Then after the magazine got out there by newsstand distribution, we began to establish relationships with other writers. So if you notice on our free PDFs on the website, the original writers were Joan d’Arc, Al Hidell, Mark Westion, and various other pseudonymous individuals from the Providence Conspiracy League. Back then, I had to write to people using pen, paper, and stamps and wait a long time for a reply. Submissions were often handwritten and I had to type the articles myself. So as you can imagine, yes, since the internet and email, our pool of writers has grown enormously, and also, we don’t have to type as much.
How would you describe your writers? What drives them to submit their theories to PARANOIA?
Al: I think our writers are driven by the same forces that drive most writers—the desire to express and share their view of the world. They are passionate about their ideas, but they generally don't fit the stereotype of the wild-eyed, rambling kook. We're all rather boring and ordinary, actually, although we still receive the occasional ream of dense, rambling, pages written in tiny, shaky handwriting.
What was your first circulation? What is your current circulation?
Joan: First circulation was a zine we had xeroxed at Kinko’s on the east side of Providence near Brown. Maybe at most 100 copies. We sold it at Newspeak. But when we mailed it to a few magazine distributors, they suggested more pages and a heavier print stock. So we had to find a real printer. We did both of those things and by the second issue we were distributed to newsstands mainly on the east coast. Once larger distributors got on board the circulation grew to as high as 15,000 copies. We printed about 10,000 copies of issue 51, the current and last issue in magazine format.
Where can a person get the current issue or back issues of PARANOIA?
Joan: The best place to get current or back issues is directly from us at www.paranoiamagazine.com or POB 1041, Providence, RI 02901 (each issue is $7). The website also contains several free PDF downloads of sold out back issues. If you felt like taking a road trip, there are now two libraries where one can see a complete set of all 51 issues of PARANOIA: Baylor University Political Archives in Waco, Texas, and University of RI, Special Collections, in Kingston, Rhode Island. If Brown University would like a complete set, we can perhaps arrange that.
Can you tell me about your reader-base? Who is the typical PARANOIA reader? What motivates them to read your publication?
Al: We eventually made some feeble attempts at gathering demographic data from our readership in order to be more effective at attracting advertisers, but the whole thing went against our grain and it kind of petered out. Also, most of our readers probably aren't particularly eager to reveal their personal information anyway. I mean, we're a conspiracy magazine.
What are you hoping to give the reader with each issue?
Joan: A third eye in their forehead that gets bigger and bigger with each issue.
Al: Again, it's a mix of entertainment and enlightenment. God knows which is which. We always say, “We let the reader decide.”
Who decided to name the magazine PARANOIA? Why?
Al: I came up with the name. It seemed like a good in-your-face name, a way to throw the coincidence theorists off balance. It was like saying, “Yeah, we're paranoid. And we have good reason to be. What's your point?”
Why do the editors use pseudonyms?
Joan: To protect us from people who throw pies.
Al: And from Noam Chomsky.
Continue reading at the link below.
Available along with other news and interviews at the new ParaMedia Page here:
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/paratimesinterview.html
An Interview with Providence’s PARANOIA Magazine
By Rebekah Bergman
(This interview appeared in The College Hill Independent (Brown University/RISD) Weekly, October 29, 2009 – Note: The newspaper published only a small part of the entire interview and we are not sure if they liked our comments about Noam Chomsky) :-)
What is your role at PARANOIA?
Joan: One of my roles is covered by the phrase “huntergatheress” – a title I came up with in the early 90s because it felt like I was hunting and gathering fringe material for publication. Today I still do that, although my hunting and gathering niches are located in the more virtual ground of cyberspace. Of course, once I gather the carcass of the beast, I have to tear it apart and consume some, and give some to the other staff members to consume and make tools. We sometimes refer to it as “editing,” “proofreading” and “fact checking.”
Al: Joan and I both wear many hats. I have generally been the “numbers” guy, the “technical” guy and the “graphics/layout” guy, but not always. Editorially, Joan and I tend to balance each other out in terms of areas of interest and credulity, so I think we make a good team.
Can you tell me about the history of the magazine? How did PARANOIA first come to be?
Joan: PARANOIA was born out of the Providence Conspiracy League in my now defunct Providence book store, Newspeak, in 1992. For your readers at Brown, Newspeak was originally located on Richmond Street in 1992, and then moved to the bottom of College Hill in the Steeple Street building (above New Rivers Restaurant). It was the only book store back then that sold conspiracy books. Now conspiracy books are ubiquitous. Back then we raised some eyebrows and everyone thought we were pretty much nuts, until George “Dubya” Bush put us on the map during his nightmare twice-stolen presidency.
Al: One day, I brought a red binder into the store, and I'd pasted a big picture of Lee Harvey Oswald on the front. That became a repository for various conspiracy clippings and material, and it quickly evolved into a magazine once the binder couldn't hold any more. Joan and I invested $500 each to have it printed, and we took it door-to-door to various independent bookstores in the Providence area. Soon, we managed to convince a few gullible magazine distributors to carry us, and we were on our way.
How would you describe the magazine's mission? Has it changed at all since 1992?
Al: I think our mission has always been to confuse and scare people by presenting alternative and even contradictory viewpoints, in a crafty mix of entertainment and enlightenment. We've broadened our subject matter over the years, but the mission has remained constant.
Was there an original public need or demand for a conspiracy magazine?
Joan: Well, we thought there was, in order to counter the mainstream, but also to counter the leftists, who had a problem with “boundaries”, in other words, who they could touch or what they could talk about. We were arched somewhere between the left and the right, somehow subsuming both of them and struggling to show people how the two polarities didn’t really exist, except where they were meant to divide and conquer and keep us arguing. Consider that there was not yet an internet, and the newspapers, even supposed leftist newspapers, were still parroting the mainstream media’s explanations, and some still do, for instance, you still have Noam Chomsky arguing against 9/11 conspiracy theories and JFK conspiracy theories. So we felt back then and still do that the left wasn’t going far enough in its analysis. So in our broaching of these untouchable subjects, we were often mistaken as “right wing.” But over the years, by mixing left and right points of view into our fringe analysis, people finally caught on that we weren’t right wing at all, we were just trying to get them beyond right-left thinking.
Was there any publication PARANOIA was using as a model?
Joan: Not that I can think of because we were the only periodical that was willing to touch a lot of the “untouchable” material and mix it in with absurd kookiness and really scrub out the brain of all earlier assumptions. As the book buyer for Newspeak, I was able to get my hands on conspiracy books, and these book titles became more and more ubiquitous as the years rolled by and as the juggernaut rolled out its New World Order plans; for instance, the most popular book in the land in 1994 was William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse. However, if we were mimicking anything in popular culture it may have subconsciously been the tabloids. If you look at the first four issues of PARANOIA (posted as PDFs on our website), you’ll see the early tabloid style: black and white covers where several stories start right on the cover. In fact, this style made many people wonder whether we were serious or tongue-in-cheek. The answer to that conundrum is that we were both, but we were also protecting ourselves from lawsuits under the “parody” clause of the Constitution.
At the time, were there any competing conspiracy publications or any other magazine whose readership you were hoping to catch? How about now? Have other publications followed your lead?
Joan: There were a few conspiracy magazines we were aware of in 1992. But mainly we had our own ball to roll up the hill and we were rolling it in our own freestyle. I don’t think anyone has ever captured that style and I don’t think the style has a name, except for “PARANOIA.”
Al: The thing is, we started this thing with no magazine publishing experience whatsoever and just kind of closed our eyes and jumped into it. Concepts like competitive analysis, reader demographics, and advertising revenue were completely foreign to us. We just wanted to publish a cool magazine.
How, if at all, was PARANOIA responding to current events in 1992?
Joan: Initially, in 1992, we were responding to the Ruby Ridge event in Idaho, where the FBI and federal marshals had a violent confrontation with the Weaver family, culminating in the killing of Randy Weaver’s pregnant wife. This event was followed by the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, and the FBI siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco. These events sparked a huge outpouring of citizen paranoia, and we were there to take notes. We also covered the man-made AIDS theories, which the left wouldn’t touch, as well as many historical conspiracies, like the JFK and RFK assassinations, Jonestown, Watergate, the Kent State massacre, the Pine Ridge massacre and Leonard Peltier- usually getting to issues that the left wouldn’t address, for instance, that the victims who died at Jonestown were killed by mercenaries, not by Kool-Aid.
Do you think the magazine was at all influenced by the surge in 'zines' in the 1990s?
Al: It was more like various technological and economic forces were influencing lots of people at the same time, and at some point we all realized that there was a 'zine scene. I view the 'zine surge as part of a larger trend towards DIY/prosumer culture, the relative democratization of media production.
How did you start soliciting writers? Has your network of writers grown?
Joan: The first few issues of PARANOIA were actually written by the members of the Providence Conspiracy League. Then after the magazine got out there by newsstand distribution, we began to establish relationships with other writers. So if you notice on our free PDFs on the website, the original writers were Joan d’Arc, Al Hidell, Mark Westion, and various other pseudonymous individuals from the Providence Conspiracy League. Back then, I had to write to people using pen, paper, and stamps and wait a long time for a reply. Submissions were often handwritten and I had to type the articles myself. So as you can imagine, yes, since the internet and email, our pool of writers has grown enormously, and also, we don’t have to type as much.
How would you describe your writers? What drives them to submit their theories to PARANOIA?
Al: I think our writers are driven by the same forces that drive most writers—the desire to express and share their view of the world. They are passionate about their ideas, but they generally don't fit the stereotype of the wild-eyed, rambling kook. We're all rather boring and ordinary, actually, although we still receive the occasional ream of dense, rambling, pages written in tiny, shaky handwriting.
What was your first circulation? What is your current circulation?
Joan: First circulation was a zine we had xeroxed at Kinko’s on the east side of Providence near Brown. Maybe at most 100 copies. We sold it at Newspeak. But when we mailed it to a few magazine distributors, they suggested more pages and a heavier print stock. So we had to find a real printer. We did both of those things and by the second issue we were distributed to newsstands mainly on the east coast. Once larger distributors got on board the circulation grew to as high as 15,000 copies. We printed about 10,000 copies of issue 51, the current and last issue in magazine format.
Where can a person get the current issue or back issues of PARANOIA?
Joan: The best place to get current or back issues is directly from us at www.paranoiamagazine.com or POB 1041, Providence, RI 02901 (each issue is $7). The website also contains several free PDF downloads of sold out back issues. If you felt like taking a road trip, there are now two libraries where one can see a complete set of all 51 issues of PARANOIA: Baylor University Political Archives in Waco, Texas, and University of RI, Special Collections, in Kingston, Rhode Island. If Brown University would like a complete set, we can perhaps arrange that.
Can you tell me about your reader-base? Who is the typical PARANOIA reader? What motivates them to read your publication?
Al: We eventually made some feeble attempts at gathering demographic data from our readership in order to be more effective at attracting advertisers, but the whole thing went against our grain and it kind of petered out. Also, most of our readers probably aren't particularly eager to reveal their personal information anyway. I mean, we're a conspiracy magazine.
What are you hoping to give the reader with each issue?
Joan: A third eye in their forehead that gets bigger and bigger with each issue.
Al: Again, it's a mix of entertainment and enlightenment. God knows which is which. We always say, “We let the reader decide.”
Who decided to name the magazine PARANOIA? Why?
Al: I came up with the name. It seemed like a good in-your-face name, a way to throw the coincidence theorists off balance. It was like saying, “Yeah, we're paranoid. And we have good reason to be. What's your point?”
Why do the editors use pseudonyms?
Joan: To protect us from people who throw pies.
Al: And from Noam Chomsky.
Continue reading at the link below.
Available along with other news and interviews at the new ParaMedia Page here:
http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/paratimesinterview.html
07 May, 2010
The Secret Team (online book)
A retired Air Force Colonel's documentation of the CIA covert takeover of the USA (online book)
The title is the link
06 May, 2010
Weather Control Vs. Planet Earth
The Weather Rangers
By Joel Carlinsky
My recent series of messages expressing concern about the prospect of weather control technology being misused to interfere with normal atmospheric metabolism brought me a number of angry responses from some readers who seem not to understand the point I was trying to make. Most of them seemed to think any weather that kills people or harms their crops is bad weather and should be prevented. Some of them expanded the list of bad weather conditions to include any weather that destroys other property as well.
This attitude is short-sighted. It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the atmosphere. People who evaluate anything the atmosphere does according to how it affects human life and property in the short term fail to recognize that the atmosphere is not just a non-living inanimate mass of non-living gases. It is a well-organized system of closely-related components that work together just as the components of a living organism do. Interference with the functioning of the system in any one part can seriously disrupt the entire system.
The atmosphere has a metabolism just as a living organism does. In the normal course of this metabolism, a certain amount of the atmospheric energy is processed through a series of stages, cycling from lively, moving OR to DOR, to water, and back again, and forming the main components of the atmosphere along the way. The nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen that are the basic gases in the atmosphere are formed as a result of this process of atmospheric metabolism.
It is not just an accidental coincidence that these elements are also the main elements found in the living organism. Living organisms are a part of the atmospheric processes. The general vitality of all living things in an area depends to a very great degree on the functioning of the biological energy field to which they are exposed. Normal weather and normal health are both parts of the same underlying phenomenon.
Weather becomes stuck in a state of chronic drought when excess DOR builds up in an area. If the DOR situation goes on long enough, the drought become permanent and the area becomes a desert. This is not only a question of rainfall. Desert life-forms show biological characteristics typical of deserts, quite aside from those associated with less water. In many species, including humans, this can extend to behavioral characteristics as well as morphological ones.
Strong circulatory storm systems such as hurricanes and tornadoes are a self-healing reaction by the living atmospheric energy to clean itself of DOR and bring back the mobility of the normal moving atmospheric energy. When there is a lot of DOR around, a strong movement is triggered, usually in the form of a tornado, that reverses the stagnation and afterwards the atmosphere and the biosphere both are functioning far better.
There has always been some DOR. It is a natural part of the metabolic cycle of both atmosphere and organism. But in the last 60-odd years, the amount of DOR has been vastly increased by the advent of nuclear technology on this planet. Both nuclear explosions and more slowly, but just as inexorably, nuclear power plants, produce huge amounts of DOR. To a lesser, but still significant degree, any electromagnetic technology does the same. Deforestation of large areas and the damning of large rivers also contribute significantly to the stagnation of the atmospheric energy.
As a result, the normal atmosphere is increasingly hard pressed to cope with this ongoing assault, and an increase in strong storms is the result as the atmospheric energy tries to clean itself and remain capable of functioning. Any interference with this self-healing response by any technological means would be extremely ill-advised since the re-mobilization of the atmospheric energy is vital to metabolism of all living things as well as being the only process by which the atmosphere can return to normal behavior over the long term.
The mechanistic conception of the atmosphere as dead, inanimate, and nothing but a non-living mass of gases that just happens to do whatever it does at random, without any coordinated purpose or over-all organization is a reflection of the dead and deadened biosystem of the mechanists, who are unable to feel the life energy in their own bodies and project their lack of life sensations onto the cosmos via theories of a non-living natural world. These theories of a dead, non-living atmosphere mislead mechanistic thinkers into the idea that intervention in the interests of preventing "bad weather" can do no harm.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Halting the healing process of the atmosphere to prevent short-term highly-localized damage from storms will inevitably end up causing far more damage than any number of storms could ever cause. Carried far enough, such well-intended but ignorant tampering could spell the ultimate death of the atmosphere of the earth.
The Reich cloudbuster is the only effective means of purposeful intervention in atmospheric behavior. The attempts by cloudseeders to augment precipitation by adding condensation nuclei to selected clouds have failed to produce any convincing evidence even after over 60 years of trying. And while several unorthodox inventors have made exaggerated claims for various electromagnetic devices purported to "control weather", none have ever done any better. An understanding of the orgone energy field of the earth and how it underlies all atmospheric behavior conclusively rules out any possibility of anyone ever inventing any electromagnetic method of effective weather control.
So I am not really too concerned at some deluded crackpots like the so-called "Weather Rangers", who claim to be able to control weather with some electrical device really being able to do any harm. All they could possibly do with any such device is just what all other electromagnetic technology does; add a little bit to the total amount of DOR in the world and make the over-all condition of the atmosphere just a little bit worse.
But what is dangerous about these people is not their bogus and ineffective technology, but their mechanistic attitude. They are setting a horrendous precedent. If at some future date some such irresponsible group like the Weather Rangers were ever to start using real cloudbusters instead of the crackpot equipment these deluded cranks are using, the world could be in very bad trouble indeed.
That is why I thought the ignorance and misconceptions on which the Weather Rangers are basing their actions should be exposed and contrasted to the healing practice of atmospheric medicine with the cloudbuster as advocated by Reich and those who understand the proper use of the cloudbuster to help a damaged atmosphere return to healthy self-regulation.
By Joel Carlinsky
My recent series of messages expressing concern about the prospect of weather control technology being misused to interfere with normal atmospheric metabolism brought me a number of angry responses from some readers who seem not to understand the point I was trying to make. Most of them seemed to think any weather that kills people or harms their crops is bad weather and should be prevented. Some of them expanded the list of bad weather conditions to include any weather that destroys other property as well.
This attitude is short-sighted. It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the atmosphere. People who evaluate anything the atmosphere does according to how it affects human life and property in the short term fail to recognize that the atmosphere is not just a non-living inanimate mass of non-living gases. It is a well-organized system of closely-related components that work together just as the components of a living organism do. Interference with the functioning of the system in any one part can seriously disrupt the entire system.
The atmosphere has a metabolism just as a living organism does. In the normal course of this metabolism, a certain amount of the atmospheric energy is processed through a series of stages, cycling from lively, moving OR to DOR, to water, and back again, and forming the main components of the atmosphere along the way. The nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen that are the basic gases in the atmosphere are formed as a result of this process of atmospheric metabolism.
It is not just an accidental coincidence that these elements are also the main elements found in the living organism. Living organisms are a part of the atmospheric processes. The general vitality of all living things in an area depends to a very great degree on the functioning of the biological energy field to which they are exposed. Normal weather and normal health are both parts of the same underlying phenomenon.
Weather becomes stuck in a state of chronic drought when excess DOR builds up in an area. If the DOR situation goes on long enough, the drought become permanent and the area becomes a desert. This is not only a question of rainfall. Desert life-forms show biological characteristics typical of deserts, quite aside from those associated with less water. In many species, including humans, this can extend to behavioral characteristics as well as morphological ones.
Strong circulatory storm systems such as hurricanes and tornadoes are a self-healing reaction by the living atmospheric energy to clean itself of DOR and bring back the mobility of the normal moving atmospheric energy. When there is a lot of DOR around, a strong movement is triggered, usually in the form of a tornado, that reverses the stagnation and afterwards the atmosphere and the biosphere both are functioning far better.
There has always been some DOR. It is a natural part of the metabolic cycle of both atmosphere and organism. But in the last 60-odd years, the amount of DOR has been vastly increased by the advent of nuclear technology on this planet. Both nuclear explosions and more slowly, but just as inexorably, nuclear power plants, produce huge amounts of DOR. To a lesser, but still significant degree, any electromagnetic technology does the same. Deforestation of large areas and the damning of large rivers also contribute significantly to the stagnation of the atmospheric energy.
As a result, the normal atmosphere is increasingly hard pressed to cope with this ongoing assault, and an increase in strong storms is the result as the atmospheric energy tries to clean itself and remain capable of functioning. Any interference with this self-healing response by any technological means would be extremely ill-advised since the re-mobilization of the atmospheric energy is vital to metabolism of all living things as well as being the only process by which the atmosphere can return to normal behavior over the long term.
The mechanistic conception of the atmosphere as dead, inanimate, and nothing but a non-living mass of gases that just happens to do whatever it does at random, without any coordinated purpose or over-all organization is a reflection of the dead and deadened biosystem of the mechanists, who are unable to feel the life energy in their own bodies and project their lack of life sensations onto the cosmos via theories of a non-living natural world. These theories of a dead, non-living atmosphere mislead mechanistic thinkers into the idea that intervention in the interests of preventing "bad weather" can do no harm.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Halting the healing process of the atmosphere to prevent short-term highly-localized damage from storms will inevitably end up causing far more damage than any number of storms could ever cause. Carried far enough, such well-intended but ignorant tampering could spell the ultimate death of the atmosphere of the earth.
The Reich cloudbuster is the only effective means of purposeful intervention in atmospheric behavior. The attempts by cloudseeders to augment precipitation by adding condensation nuclei to selected clouds have failed to produce any convincing evidence even after over 60 years of trying. And while several unorthodox inventors have made exaggerated claims for various electromagnetic devices purported to "control weather", none have ever done any better. An understanding of the orgone energy field of the earth and how it underlies all atmospheric behavior conclusively rules out any possibility of anyone ever inventing any electromagnetic method of effective weather control.
So I am not really too concerned at some deluded crackpots like the so-called "Weather Rangers", who claim to be able to control weather with some electrical device really being able to do any harm. All they could possibly do with any such device is just what all other electromagnetic technology does; add a little bit to the total amount of DOR in the world and make the over-all condition of the atmosphere just a little bit worse.
But what is dangerous about these people is not their bogus and ineffective technology, but their mechanistic attitude. They are setting a horrendous precedent. If at some future date some such irresponsible group like the Weather Rangers were ever to start using real cloudbusters instead of the crackpot equipment these deluded cranks are using, the world could be in very bad trouble indeed.
That is why I thought the ignorance and misconceptions on which the Weather Rangers are basing their actions should be exposed and contrasted to the healing practice of atmospheric medicine with the cloudbuster as advocated by Reich and those who understand the proper use of the cloudbuster to help a damaged atmosphere return to healthy self-regulation.
03 May, 2010
02 May, 2010
Gimme My Tin Foil Hat
Review of: PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader, Volume 1
By G. T. Goodale
The masthead of every issue PARANOIA magazine had a tongue in cheek disclaimer, a warning, a childproof device that instructed the editorial philosophy that ensued in each and every issue: "We don't knowingly print disinformation, but sometimes it's hard to tell." What that meant, to quote one of the two pillars of the magazine Joan D'Arc, their only editorial preconception was "if the article is internally consistent, and sourced".(1) And well written, and informed, and interesting. Containing hidden or forgotten historical detail and or the suppression of same. The collective amnesia around recent events. UFOs, mad science, pyramids with eyes. Weirdness. You know; defenders of faiths forgotten and the faiths made up, iconoclasts of all shapes and sizes. Where creationists and alienists could coexist in the same three-staple quarterly with great cover art - sometimes seemingly just for the weirdness attached but for the most part in fairly sober, straight forward and serious transposition. Parallax viewing for the masses. Edited. And sourced: The rub and bane of so much of what passes in loose leaf as conspiracy theorem and alternative history and lest we forget, the hard bound 'advanced' reassuring tomes of the court historian and a fluffy press.
Brought together by Al Hidell and Joan D'Arc, PARANOIA was made issue after hard wrought issue into an important lasting source of hard and soft research material and reference. That will last forever. Come hell. And high water. (Which has happened before apparently. I read about it somewhere. In PARANOIA probably). Together with some of the wackiest fun stuff you've ever read you'll also get the grim; interviews like the one in this first issue with a Rod MacKenzie. Not a fun story.(2) Unless you think being part of the support crew(s) in the assassination of JFK as fun. This source that D'Arc has discovered may prove to be as important as a Richard Case Nagell or a Marita Lorenz in setting the background and players in Dallas in the days before during and after the killing. (3-4-5)
Some who have more invested in favored scenarios than in new information may be contrary to what is revealed but I feel it is more than outweighed by the near anecdotal revelations about the common cause that brought about the spycraft and criminal activity in the Plaza, this common threat they saw in the back of Jack Kennedys head. Not to mention the details. Specific details. Anyone with any passing knowledge or understanding of the deep politics and mechanics of the assassination will find the interview confirming, illustrative, an open window in a otherwise smoke filled room.
In this new paperback format a stubborn tradition is kept alive; that stubborn contrary notion that we, collectively, have been and are still being lied to. The reasons for the lies, the lies upon lies, well, that's what PARANOIA tries to be about. It is and always will be a repository of finely ground, well-baked detail. And the half baked too, because not all the chickens have come home to roost. Because not all the details are in just yet. And because I'd rather know than not know, as a general rule, a rule the fine editorial team at PARANOIA sticks to, I'll keep reading.
All this (and more) is now a nicely sized squareback edition that has everything the magazine had sans the ads. And without the distressing waste of unsold printings destroyed by retailers. Where and what the dear reader takes from it, well, as Ben Franklin said; "A republic, if you can keep it." And your mind, if you don't lose it. The PARANOIA READER Volume 1 may just keep you sane. I'm taking my copy to the next Tri-Annual 3rd Thursday of the 3rd month meeting of the Tin Foil Hat Society. First in my chapter to own one.
(1) http://psiopradio.com/2010/04/25/psiop-radio-podcast-112-100425-wguests-paranoia-magazine-editors-joan-darc-and-al-hidell/
(2) The Men That Don't Fit In; Joan D'Arc Interviews JFK Witness, Roderick A MacKenzie III. PARANOIA The Conspiracy Reader, Volume 1 2010, page 73
(3) THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, Dick Russel 1992
(4) MARITA, Marita Lorenz and Ted Schwarz 1993
(5) PLAUSIBLE DENIAL, Mark Lane 1991, page 2 to 310
By G. T. Goodale
The masthead of every issue PARANOIA magazine had a tongue in cheek disclaimer, a warning, a childproof device that instructed the editorial philosophy that ensued in each and every issue: "We don't knowingly print disinformation, but sometimes it's hard to tell." What that meant, to quote one of the two pillars of the magazine Joan D'Arc, their only editorial preconception was "if the article is internally consistent, and sourced".(1) And well written, and informed, and interesting. Containing hidden or forgotten historical detail and or the suppression of same. The collective amnesia around recent events. UFOs, mad science, pyramids with eyes. Weirdness. You know; defenders of faiths forgotten and the faiths made up, iconoclasts of all shapes and sizes. Where creationists and alienists could coexist in the same three-staple quarterly with great cover art - sometimes seemingly just for the weirdness attached but for the most part in fairly sober, straight forward and serious transposition. Parallax viewing for the masses. Edited. And sourced: The rub and bane of so much of what passes in loose leaf as conspiracy theorem and alternative history and lest we forget, the hard bound 'advanced' reassuring tomes of the court historian and a fluffy press.
Brought together by Al Hidell and Joan D'Arc, PARANOIA was made issue after hard wrought issue into an important lasting source of hard and soft research material and reference. That will last forever. Come hell. And high water. (Which has happened before apparently. I read about it somewhere. In PARANOIA probably). Together with some of the wackiest fun stuff you've ever read you'll also get the grim; interviews like the one in this first issue with a Rod MacKenzie. Not a fun story.(2) Unless you think being part of the support crew(s) in the assassination of JFK as fun. This source that D'Arc has discovered may prove to be as important as a Richard Case Nagell or a Marita Lorenz in setting the background and players in Dallas in the days before during and after the killing. (3-4-5)
Some who have more invested in favored scenarios than in new information may be contrary to what is revealed but I feel it is more than outweighed by the near anecdotal revelations about the common cause that brought about the spycraft and criminal activity in the Plaza, this common threat they saw in the back of Jack Kennedys head. Not to mention the details. Specific details. Anyone with any passing knowledge or understanding of the deep politics and mechanics of the assassination will find the interview confirming, illustrative, an open window in a otherwise smoke filled room.
In this new paperback format a stubborn tradition is kept alive; that stubborn contrary notion that we, collectively, have been and are still being lied to. The reasons for the lies, the lies upon lies, well, that's what PARANOIA tries to be about. It is and always will be a repository of finely ground, well-baked detail. And the half baked too, because not all the chickens have come home to roost. Because not all the details are in just yet. And because I'd rather know than not know, as a general rule, a rule the fine editorial team at PARANOIA sticks to, I'll keep reading.
All this (and more) is now a nicely sized squareback edition that has everything the magazine had sans the ads. And without the distressing waste of unsold printings destroyed by retailers. Where and what the dear reader takes from it, well, as Ben Franklin said; "A republic, if you can keep it." And your mind, if you don't lose it. The PARANOIA READER Volume 1 may just keep you sane. I'm taking my copy to the next Tri-Annual 3rd Thursday of the 3rd month meeting of the Tin Foil Hat Society. First in my chapter to own one.
(1) http://psiopradio.com/2010/04/25/psiop-radio-podcast-112-100425-wguests-paranoia-magazine-editors-joan-darc-and-al-hidell/
(2) The Men That Don't Fit In; Joan D'Arc Interviews JFK Witness, Roderick A MacKenzie III. PARANOIA The Conspiracy Reader, Volume 1 2010, page 73
(3) THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, Dick Russel 1992
(4) MARITA, Marita Lorenz and Ted Schwarz 1993
(5) PLAUSIBLE DENIAL, Mark Lane 1991, page 2 to 310
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