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#1240: Paul Joseph Watson

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Paul Joseph Watson (no relation to the Sea Shepherd guy) is a versatile and tireless reporter for Alex Jones’s PrisonPlanet and InfoWars, and hence responsible for much of the bullshit to be found in rich supply on those websites. In other words, Watson is a staunch supporter of a variety of (mutually inconsistent) conspiracy theories (inconsistency doesn’t matter, apparently, since these people are mostly JAQing off anyways – a favorite trick for avoiding consistency expectations) and an impressive array of pseudoscience and denialist ridiculousness.

It’s difficult to paint a representative picture without giving him more space than he warrants, or to pick highlights, but Watson was for instance instrumental in promoting the conspiracy surrounding John Holdren’s alleged totalitarian global population control scheme (FEMA concentration camps wouldn’t be far behind). And don’t get him started on climate change, Bilderbergers or 9/11, though even Watson thinks the “no plane/hologram” theories are wrong.

At least there are people who think that Watson is an agent for the British royalty and the Knights of Malta (like George Bush) or a “direct descendant of eugenicist Bertrand Russell” (yes, some crucial confusions there), and they may, indeed, be worth a read if you like a break from coherence or appealing web designs.

Diagnosis: Amply paranoid addlebrain. He is pretty tireless, though, and has made some impressive contributions to clogging up the Internet with bullshit.

#1241: Alfred Lambremont Webre

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Alfred Lambremont Webre is an almost legendary UFO crank, 9/11 truther and conspiracy nut, and one of those people that really justify the existence of places like whale.to or Red Ice Creations. Webre claims to have been a co-architect of the Space Preservation Treaty and the Space Preservation Act, and is, with one Stephen Bassett, the co-drafter of the Citizen Hearing, a proposed public forum to create a fact-finding process surrounding extraterrestrial phenomena and alleged government suppression of such facts from the public. Of course, all the facts are ostensibly already on the table, but Webre would not in a million years accept facts that don’t line up with what he already “knows”. He is also on the Board of Advisers for the New Energy Movement, a free energy lunacy group, and congressional coordinator for The Disclosure Project (I am not completely sure what that is, but with Webre as a coordinator I sort of have some idea).

The brouhaha over his Wikipedia entry is rather illustrative. When it was proposed for deletion, Webre’s fans, well, went nuts (a figure of speech, of course – none of his fans were ever but), culminating in Webre’s own, pithy assessment of the situation: “My view is that Wikipedia’s action continues to be part of the CIA time travel controlled US Presidency's retaliation against me for having exposed Soetoro/Obama’s participation in a 1980–83 secret CIA jumproom project.” Indeed, such is his view.

Not very surprisingly Webre thinks that the events of September 11, 2001, were a false flag operation, but he has his own spin. According to Webre the powers that be were employing secret exotic technologies developed by DARPA and CIA, including Tesla-based time travel that permitted Donald Rumsfeld to have images of the events at the World Trade Center on 9/11 30 years in advance in 1971. In 2006 he therefore submitted a Memorandum to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor under Article II of the US Constitution, the Treason Article. His time travel hypothesis has earned him the respect of a number of truthers through his participation at various truther conferences. He also participated in Joan Ocean’s 2011 Dolphins and Teleportation Symposium together with e.g. Andrew Basiago and Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, though the truthers rarely emphasize that.

Interestingly, Webre has enjoyed a rather impressive international career. Until Nov. 2010, Webre was – due to his impeccable credentials – an international war crimes correspondent for Iran’s PressTV. It was on Iran’s PressTV that he for instance accused Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for being an “out and out Zionist,” going on to describe a conspiracy between Vancouver police and serial killer Robert Pickton “to commit ritual Satanic murders with high-ranking politicians” and claiming that the Queen of England abducted 10 Aboriginal children in 1964 to have them killed. Concluding his comments, Webre described Canada as “the ultimate Zionist state under the British Crown and under Israel.”

He was also, it should be mentioned, a central participant at a 2007 conference in Kuala Lumpur as part of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s campaign to criminalize war and convict Bush and Blair of war crimes.

With one Dr. Carol Rosin he founded the Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS) in 2001, as an outgrowth of the previous ISCOS, Institute for Cooperation and Security in Space. Their mission is to educate decision-makers and others on why it is important to ban space weapons. With the help of former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Space Preservation Act was originally introduced into the 107th Congress on October 2, 2001 (HR 2977) and included provisions banning “extraterrestrial” weapons, as well as chemtrails and “exotic weapons systems” such as HAARP. A revised Act was introduced to Congress in 2002. Webre himself apparently resigned from the Board of Directors of ICIS in 2011 to focus on a treaty to ban HAARP.

The reason why a ban on extraterrestrial weapons is important is, according to Webre, that although “we live in a populated universe,” Earth “has been quarantined.” Though “the quarantine was lifted in 1947, the year from which the UFO phenomenon began in full force around our planet,” according to Webre; “Earth’s humanity is not yet sufficiently evolved to be included in the universal society,” and the militarization of outer space by humans (who were “planted and cultivated here under the stewardship of more advanced societies”) is a main reason why the quarantine persists.

Webre has accordingly written a number of books on exopolitics, consistently taking a completely insane and evidence-free, speculative approach. In 2012, he launched ExoUniversity.org, an “educational” entity offering online courses on exo-sciences, psi-sciences, and exopolitics, with an Earth Day forum entitled “An Introduction to Time Travel with an Emphasis on Teleportation.” Indeed – though it seemed impossible – Webre’s claims seem to have gotten even more bizarre lately. In 2011, for instance, he launched a boycott (of Examiner.com, it seems) to protest the CIA coverup of president Obama’s trips to Mars (the US government apparently has a secret base there where they meet with aliens).

Diagnosis: Deranged, unhingedly delusional madman. Nevertheless, Webre has managed to garner a surprising level of political clout, and several people of power around the world, from Dennis Kucinich to the Iranian government, seem to take him very seriously, thus making him – against all odds – an exception among the whale.to crowd in having actual detrimental influence on society.

#1242: Jay Weidner

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Some time after the death of legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, people started, with the help of an array of well-known tools such as pareidolia, confirmation bias, selection bias and motivated reasoning, to find a variety of esoteric images (from circles to triangles) and connections in his films, and a variety of conspiracy theories, from the ridiculous to the unhinged, has predictably appeared.

Among the most prominent promoters of Stanley Kubrick-related conspiracies is Jay Weidner, called by Wired Magazine an “authority on the hermetic and alchemical traditions,” “erudite conspiracy hunter,” and “considered to be a ‘modern-day Indiana Jones’ for his ongoing worldwide quests to find clues to mankind’s spiritual destiny via ancient societies and artifacts.” At least Jesse Ventura and History Channel treat him as an authority, and the latter featured him as such in their “documentary” on The Lost Book of Nostradamus and as a producer in Nostradamus 2012. But he remains most famous for his Kubrick-related work. Notably, Weidner argues that Kubrick was hired to direct the fake Apollo moon landing and for some reason hid a coded confession in The Shining (featured in his documentaries here, and here - he actually takes endorsement by David Icke to be a selling point). The clues are, suffice to say, pretty weak (the Grady twins resemble the Gemini sign, the typewritten “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” should be read as “A-11” rather than “All”, and there is a scene where Danny wears an “Apollo-11 USA” shirt). Weidner did, however, make an appearance in the entertainingly stupid Room 237.

At the core of the Kubrick conspiracies is of course the idea that Kubrick was part of a Freemason-Illuminati conspiracy and devoted his film career to hide clues of its existence in his films (the purpose of that remains abundantly unclear). Eventually the Illuminati decided he had crossed the line with his final film Eyes Wide Shut(for apparently exploring trauma-based mind control) and went on to assassinate him (here, for instance).

Weidner is also the co-author of The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye (that would be this item); Alchemy and the End of Time, and A Monument to the End of Time (with Vincent Bridges), as well as a contributor to the book The Mystery of 2012 (Sounds True).

Diagnosis: Although a monstrously delusional conspiracy theorist, Weidner is a decent craftsman and is able to make even the most egregious bullshit sound plausible to the weak of mind. As such he has managed to garner quite a bit of an audience for his ridiculous claims. Worth keeping an eye on.

#1243: Ronald Weinland

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Ronald Weinland is a hardcore religious crackpot and leader of the Ohio-based doomsday cult the Church of God (a Herbert Armstrong splinter group), who apparently thinks that he has been appointed by God to reveal the timetable of the end of the world, as described in Revelations, to his fellow humans. His claims are laid out in his book 2008: God’s Final Witness, which identified his wife Laura as another Revelation witness, and which he continues to promote despite the rather obvious fact that his predictions for 2008 failed rather badly. He originally prophesied that Christ would return on September 29, 2011, but later changed it to May 27, 2012 (and issued a stern warning to those who mock him that they would be divinely cursed with “a sickness that will eat them from the inside out”). Tough luck, and after that date came and passed Weinland backpedalled and provided Pentecost 2013 instead, all the while urging his followers to give him money. Currently the idea seems to be that Jesus will return on “a future Pentecost,” and some people seem willing to continue to send him money.

The return, believes Weinland, will be heralded by a World War III that will cause the destruction of the US and most of the world, except for ten European countries that will unite under the rule of the Anti-Christ (most likely the Pope). Things will then go badly for the final 3.5 years of the Earth. There is a website debunking his claims (a rather straightforward task, really) here, though I am not completely convinced the people behind that site are ideally well-hinged either.

In June 2012, Weinland was convicted of five counts of tax evasion, and is therefore currently in jail, where he belongs.

Diagnosis: Rarely has anyone been a more deserving or easier target for mockery than the Weinlands. And he still seems to have supporters out there. Words fail.

#1244: Laura Weise

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A.k.a. Dooney

Laura Weise is a rather obscure figure, but whale.to features an extensive collection of her work. Her own website, complete with a large collection of her aura photos of herself, is here. Weise is an etheric warrior, which is apparently one who employs orgone energy in her or his battle against imaginary enemies and voices in her head. There is no winning those battles, one suspects, but Weise offers you plenty of advice and products that, if used without inhibition, will very likely boost your chances of getting the help you obviously need if you are engaged in this kind of combat. Especially if you heed Weise’s implicit warning and watch out forthe people who are following you – if you develop your abilities you will apparently be followed; Weise has experienced that they have sent helicopters to hover over their house. (Fortunately Weise can counter their attempts with her psychic powers).

On her website, Weise offers Energy Coaching (“[g]et your energy system aligned and your aura cleared. Learn how to protect yourself from attack and neutralize your attackers. Credit card payment available”), Energy Bracelets (“[g]emstone bracelets for sale, our etheric helpers in the crystal world”), Cards of Destiny Readings (“[f]ind out what’s in store for you for the next year, and learn more about your personality and relationships”), Etheric Exercises (“[w]ays of practicing and basic tools for etheric health. Everything from grounding to working with cetaceans and higher dimensions,” some of which includes working with pyramids and triangles to boost your psychic abilities), Boosting (“[l]earn how to send love energy, basic to advanced,” including the new feature “13D Holographic Heart Boosting”) and Using Crystals. All the techniques are apparently helpful in countering psychic attacks, which tells you more about the nature of those “attacks” than Weise cares to admit.

As for the 13D thing, apparently Laura has “been boosting from the 13th dimension for several years now.” Apparently the thirteenth dimension “is where the cetaceans hang out.” However, to “begin the 13D HH boosting, you first have to raise your awareness to the 13th dimension. Once you have done that, you boost in the normal manner, through your heart chakra.” So it requires some practice. Weise learned it from “a combination of Lemurians, Atlanteans and dolphins.” (She recounts here dolphin interactions here; “Carol” is Carol Croft.

Diagnosis: Probably very, very harmless.

#1245: Dave Welch

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Dave Welch is an extremist pastor, committed theocrat, and founder and executive director of the U.S. Pastor’s Council (it is unclear to what extent it qualifies as a “group”). For some reason (in fact not very surprisingly) he has also been given the opportunity to write occasional columns for the WND, an opportunity he has used for instance to provide massive “evidence” that Obama is really an atheist, meaning that Welch disagrees with him on political issues (interestingly on the same day as that column appeared another columnist, Pat Boone, claimed to have irrefutable evidence that Obama was a Muslim. That’s WND for you.) The incident also sums up Welch’s approach to politics– any policy he disagrees with violates the Constitution and is despotism and an attack on himfreedom, and shows that the people who agrees with it (and thus disagree with him) are evil.

Welch has accordingly accused President Obama of being an “enemy” of Christianity and the United States, arguing that pastors who acknowledge President Obama’s Christian faith are “much like the clergy of Hitlerian Germany and the ‘Positive Christianity’ that represented complete acquiescence to and control by the Nazi state.” In 2010 he called Obama, Pelosi and Reid “the Fourth Reich.” And seems to think that the assertion counted as an argument.

When Rick Perry announced his 2011 prayer rally, Welch was quick to insist that the event be limited to Christians only (in the name of religious freedom, of course), characterizing the alternative as a “polytheistic approach and […] interfaith event that requires Christians to squelch the mention of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Nor does he fancy gay rights. Gay people, according to Welch, constitute a “morally depraved special interest group,” and he was one of the wingnuts who warned of a “gay takeover” of Houston’s City Hall if the openly gay Annise Parker were elected mayor in 2009. That she was, in fact, elected (a sign of America’s “Cancer of the Soul”) he later used as evidence for the claim that Houston is a “sin-sick city.” Allowing gays to serve openly in the military is, furthermore, treason, and in 2010 Welch called a federal judge a “domestic enemy” for ruling that DADT was unconstitutional, concluding that “[w]e give Muslim radicals free reign, prosecute Marines and SEALs for doing their job, suppress religious expression – if it happens to be Christian – and now give destructive sexual behavior a promotion.” Welch seems rather unaware that Muslim radicals actually agree with him regarding gay equality, but his mind apparently has a hard time processing the fact that “I don’t like liberals” and “I don’t like Muslims” do not entail “liberals = Muslims”. To see how bad it would be to repeal DADT we should apparently look at what radical gay activists have done to our school children. And the polls suggesting that military members do not feel threatened by the homosexuals they know about, are duly dismissed with “I have yet to talk to a member of the military who agrees with that assessment,” for which there may be explanations that are consistent with the accuracy of said polls.

He has, on the other hand, praised Tim LaHaye as “one of the greatest pastors of all time.” Indeed, Welch seems to stand by the claims of fraudulent “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem, despite the fact that the ex-terrorist status of the latter is obviously spurious, even inviting him to Texas to give his testimony of how Jesus saved him from being a terrorist.

Welch is also a staunch creationist, claiming that clergy who accept the science of evolution are “no more a Christian than the chimpanzees from which he or she claims to have evolved.” And for Dave Welch, everything fits nicely into a single picture: “The direct linkage between Marx and Darwin is indisputable,” and “[a]s that jihad progressed through the 1900s, the assaults on free markets, private property and traditional morality were completed by Alfred Kinsey as he helped launch the sexual revolution of the ’60s …,” leading inevitably to “[t]he militant commitment of the Marxist/Democratic Party of 2011 America to radical sexual diversity,” which “is at its core driven by a hate for God’s created order,” at which time Obama claimed to be “‘evolving’ in his views on the definition of marriage.” In other words, “here is the trail of tears: Darwin to Marx to Kinsey to Obama.” Yes, Welch’s powers of reasoning are … unusual. Here he chimes in on the work on the Texas Board of Education, advocating theocracy in the process. “The reality,” says Welch (using terms he apparently doesn’t understand) “is that our struggle against spiritual, moral, cultural and political decline,” exemplified by the anti-Christian First Amendment, and the teaching of evolution and ban on mandatory prayers in public schools, “is simply the latest chapter in the war begun when Lucifer rebelled against God.”

Diagnosis: Completely insance Taliban theocrat, engaged in a zealous and Orwellian fight against all the things he professes to support, such as liberty, freedom of religion and common decency. 

#1246: Frances Cress Welsing

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Frances Cress Welsing is a D.C. psychiatrist and completely batshit insane. She is particularly noted for her afrocentric “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation,” and The Isis Papers; The Keys to the Colors (1991). Welsing claims that there is a system practiced (consciously and unconsciously) by the global white minority to ensure their genetic survival by any means necessary, a system that attacks people of color (particularly of African descent) in all areas of activity, and that it is, accordingly, imperative that people of color (particularly of African descent) understand how the system of white supremacy works in order to dismantle it. So far, so good, perhaps – some over-the-top formulations, but that can probably be excused when dealing with a real issue.

But no. In The Isis Papers she formulates her pseudoscientific melanin theory, the gist of which is that white people are the genetically defective descendants of albino mutants, a mutation that may have caused them (justifiably, it seems) to have been forcibly expelled from Africa. And it is because “pure whitness” is so easily genetically lost during interracial breeding that light-skinned peoples have developed an aggressive colonial urge. She also ascribes plenty inherent and behavioral differences between black and white people to this “melanin deficiency,” since melanin is apparently a superconductor that absorbs all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, can convert sound energy to light energy, and work as a minicomputer to process information; a deficiency would accordingly be bad). Her evidence is apparently restricted to “her experiences as a psychiatrist”.

White people’s (accurate) sense of their own inferiority is exhibited in various cultural practices: “On both St. Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, the white male gives gifts of chocolate candy with nut … If his sweetheart ingests ‘chocolate with nuts’, the white male can fantasize that he is genetically equal to the Black male … Is it not also curious that when white males are young and vigorous, they attempt to master the large brown balls, but as they become older and wiser, they psychologically resign themselves to their inability to master the large brown balls? Their focus then shifts masochistically to hitting the tiny white golf balls in disgust and resignation – in full final realization of white genetic recessiveness.” I suppose such gibberish is standard fare in some branches of post-modern Freudianism – big claims are justified by vague associations between words in any manner the practitioner may fancy – but it is no less loony for that.

According to Welsing psychiatry (that is, her brand of psychiatry) seems to be some sort of primary science. Her “Unified Field Theory Psychiatry” encompasses and grounds biology, psychology, and physics, and is a prerequisite to understanding the etiology of a unified field of energy phenomena, in particular the “behavior-energy” underlying racial conflict (yes, it is quantum woo), as well as homosexuality and sexism. And no, she doesn’t like gays. According to Welsing black male homosexuality was imposed on blacks by the white man in order to reduce the black population; it is a sign of weakness, and homosexual patterns of behavior are simply expressions of black male self-submission to other males in the area of sex, as well as in economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, and war.

But this, readers, is just the beginning of Welsing’s “scientifically based” theories of race. According to Welsing there is a correlation between high blood pressure and blackness of skin due to the fact that melanin picks up energy vibrations from other people under stress – the darker the skin, the more melanin, and thus the more vibrations would supposedly be picked up. This apparently explains why George Washington Carver was so successful in discovering useful products from plants – he owed his success not to his MA in chemistry, but to the fact that he was dark-skinned: The plants “talked to his melanin and told him what they were good for” during his early morning strolls. It is hard to see how such ideas, if incorporated in a school curriculum (which is what Welsing and her group try to achieve – just like creationists, the point is to get the rubbish into schools, not to gather evidence), would have any long-term positive effects for the target groups.

But melanin can do more than talking to plants. According to Welsing (and repeated in particular by Hunter Adams) the Dogon of Malidiscovered a dwarf companion of Sirius, Sirius B, which is invisible to the naked eye. They did so, according to Welsing, because the Dogon’s melanin, in addition to giving you ESP, functions in a manner similar to an infrared telescope, enabling them to detect Sirius B through the melanin in their pineal glands (yes, the pineal gland). Evidence, or plausible mechanism? Forget it – her justification is a matter of Freudian associations. She further claims that everything that happens on Earth is converted to energy and beamed up to Sirius B, and that the high melanin content of black people enables them to tap into that information. Thus, for instance, Greek oracles (who were apparently black, according to Welsing) were able to foresee the future, just as present-day blacks are able to do (but of course not melanin-deficient whites).

Diagnosis: Appalling pseudoscientific bullshit. And as with other pseudoscientce, it is all about outreach, not finding out what’s actually the case.

#1247: Clint Werner

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Marijuana is a tremendous source of ridiculous woo. But although claims to the effect that marijuana allows you to use more than the normal 10% of the brain are hardly worth discussing, the work of Clint Werner seems to have found an audience among people who really should know better. Werner is a San Francisco-based “researcher” and the author e.g. of Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease. Apparently the publishers didn’t give him sufficient space for a complete list of all the ailments from which marijuana, Werner asserts, can deliver you, which include in addition to Alzheimer’s (and most other forms of dementia) and cancer: epilepsy, tobacco addiction, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, type 1 and 2 diabetes, stroke-related disabilities, gastrointestinal irritation, schizophrenia, degenerative arthritis, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and retinitis pigmentosa. The book was apparently endorsed by Andrew Weil, and Werner earned himself some airtime on Coast to Coast AM with his … thing.

Werner has, of course, not the faintest trace of any relevant medical background, and has apparently no idea how scientific investigations work. Though he does, indeed, “cite” medical studies, the correlation between what these studies say and what Werner attributes to them appears to be somewhat worse than random, with a smattering of quote mining, cherry-picking, as well as liberal use of his own  imagination to fill in perceived gaps in the research. In short, there is no connection between marijuana and the effects Werner describes in his book but – big surprise – that has not prevented the book from achieving popularity among certain groups of readers.

And just for completeness sake, there is no evidence at present that cannabis cures cancer, whereas the evidence for cannabis as a therapeutic tool for dementia is “either inconclusive or still missing". Cannabis does not help with diabetes (this little detail apart), nor is there enough evidence to draw conclusions about the safety or efficacy of cannabinoids in the treatment of epilepsy. It is overall pretty worthless for glaucoma and has no measurable beneficial effect on anorexia or neurological disorders. A few areas of application do indeed seem promising –cannabinoids can serve as appetite stimulants, antiemetics, antispasmodics, and have some analgesic effects – but given the present state of research (due in part, of course, to legal problems any research runs into) any grand claims about the health benefits of cannabis are utter pseudoscientific rubbish.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific rubbish.

#1248: Allen West

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Allen West is a retired Lieutenant Colonel and the former Representative from Florida’s 22nd district. West is a Teabagger, and is often mentioned by other Teabaggers to deflect accusations of racism in the movement (West himself claims that racism in the Tea Party movement is a conspiracy invented by liberal media). He was elected in the Teabagger wave of 2010 but was defeated in his 2012 reelection bid, perhaps partially because people realized he was more or less clinically insane (though that should have been pretty damn obvious the first time around as well).

His 2010 campaign went over well with certain segments of wingnuts, however, and he did get the Sarah Palin stamp of approval early on. Also, Glenn Beck praised West for his service in Iraq, which ended (Beck didn’t mention) when West and his gang beat an Iraqi detainee senseless and used the information the detainee provided to arrest another, entirely innocent person, whereupon West was found in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, relieved of his post, and fined $5,000.

Perhaps the most famous incident of his 2010 campaign occurred when a reporter asked West about the IRS lien placed on him. West responded by saying that the IRS document was “faked”, and that he could document this. After he promptly failed to produce said documentation, he invented the interesting logical fallacy of “appeal to security clearance” to try to escape the “gotcha” questions, which consisted of claiming that he had an even higher security clearing than the president, therefore shut up. Christine O’Donnell also tried to invoke that one at one point, by the way.

Otherwise, West’s campaigns seem primarily based on relatively familiar stuff. For instance, House Democrats are communists. Indeed, there are“between 78 and 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the communist party, according to West, who failed to provide any references or indication of how he arrived at the numbers (well, in one sense he indicated it pretty clearly). He also diligently uncovered a “Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist” meaning in the Obama campaign’s “forward” slogan. So there is plenty of conspiracy going on. Indeed, since West refuses to believe that Obama could achieve anything, when e.g. statistics showed a drop in unemployment rates, West was quick to dismiss it as a conspiracy: “This is Orwellian to say the least and representative of Saul Alinsky tactics from the book ‘Rules for Radicals’ – a must read for all who want to know how the left strategize.” (No, he didn’t address the numbers themselves.) He has also compared Food Stamps to slavery, and, with dizzying lack of self-awareness, accused Obama of demagoguery – and for being a “disgusting racist” who “despises” white people. An equally impressive degree of self-awareness can be found in his assertion that “the Left tries to win the women's vote by talking from the waist down” – Democrats want the government to be the “sugar daddy” and replace men – while Republicans seek to reach the hearts and minds of female voters. Meanwhile Chuck Hagel is a “traitor” who dutifully serves “Barack Obama’s game plan to weaken the United States of America” – Obama wants to weaken the US ostensibly because he only cares about people on welfare (yeah, that’s the “reasoning”; such is the mind of Allen West).

Then there is Benghazi. According to West, the media’s focus on the Boko Haram group in Nigeria in Spring 2014 was part of the Obama administration’s efforts to draw focus away from Benghazi. “Are we witnessing an Obama ‘Wag the Dog’ moment with Boko Haram in Nigeria? I say yes,” said West. When Ahmed Abu Khattala, the accused perpetrator of the Benghazi attack, was captured just a few weeks later, West promptly tweeted that the capture was just a way for the Obama administration to distract from non-Benghazi scandals. In the meantime, he had also claimed to have gotten the horrible “truth” about Benghazi from a random, unnamed stranger seated next to him on a plane (Kent Hovind’s main source of scientific “information”), but he didn’t tell us what it might be, only that it was really shocking.

He also claimed that African American Democrats are trying to keep African Americans “on the plantation,” while casting himself as the “modern-day Harriet Tubman” ferrying them to rescue. In a critical summation of West’s style, Mother Jones aptly concluded that for West “every sentence is a proxy war in the larger struggle between patriots and the ‘people in this world that just have to have their butts kicked.’” You can probably guess his reaction to a 2013 admission by the IRS that it had particularly scrutinized tea party groups (a conspiracy spearheaded by Obama in person). It is, to put it mildly, not the only time West has endorsed whale.to-level conspiracy theories.

When he lost his seat in the 2012 general election (which included at least one incident of threats and harassment), the reason was that he was cheated out of it (he seems, indeed, to genuinely believe this), and when he finally conceded defeat (“[w]hile many questions remain unanswered”), he promptly struck a (delusional) martyr pose. Some other lunatics of the House, including Paul Broun and Louie Gohmert, nevertheless endorsed him for Speaker, despite the fact that he no longer helda seat (which is rather illuminating). In his political career West’s main achievement seems to have been being a keynote speaker at CPAC 2011, where he ranted more or less incoherently about the Civil War, Nazism and Obama – said political career seems to have been somewhat inhibited by the fact that West clearly has no idea how our system of government works (e.g. when he rejected Obamacare as “not the law of the land” but an “edict” that shows that President Obama is establishing a monarchy). He was, for instance, shocked to learn that Muslims, for instance, were allowed to vote in the US. He has threatened to run again in 2016, though.

In 2012 he joined the Thomas More Law Center’s Citizens Advisory Board, because the group doesn’t know or care about how government works either“knows the true threat to our nation posed by radical Islam and it has initiated and funded more cases challenging the Stealth Jihad being waged against our Nation than any other public interest law firm in America.”

Special mention should also be given West’s selection of chief of staff in 2010, local wingnut talk radio host Joyce “if ballots don’t work, bullets will” Kaufman, who for instance advocated hanging illegal immigrants charged with crimes and who apparently seems to think that automated phone recordings telling her to press 2 for Spanish is the end of the world and America and Jesus. Shortly after West was elected Kaufman resigned, allegedly due to the “liberal media’s ‘attacks’” on her and the “electronic lynching” she was receiving on the internet. West accused the media of racism and sexism in their “attack” on Kaufman, defending her as a “brilliant political mind.”

West’s memoirs, Guardian of the Republic, are most notable for its range of fake Founding Father quotes.

Diagnosis: A moronic clown. But when such clowns are given power and influence, like West, they stop being particularly funny. 

#1249: Ron Wexler

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Michael Westfall seems to be just a guy with a website (though he doesn’t seem to view himself that way) and despite being the origin of a copious amount of rapture-babble, wingnuttery and denialism we cannot quite bring ourselves to give him a separate entry.

Ron Wexler is probably not a household name either, but Wexler – an Orthodox Jew – is or was at least the leader of something called the The Commandments Commission, whose members include an impressive array of familiar wingnuts from David Barton to Benny Hinn, and which was endorsed in a Congressional resolution submitted by Todd Akin.

Wexler himself is of course as crazy as they come. He has suggested that natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina and Hurrican Rita are God’s punishments because “[i]t was revealed to me that in numerology, the numerical value of the Hebrew letters that make up the name Rita + God is equal 620. The number of all the Hebrew letters that make up the Ten Commandments is … 620! Is there a connection?” His really big idea, however, is promoting Ten Commandments Day with his Ten Commandments Pin: “imagine people of faith all over America – and in every area of society – identifying themselves with the standard of righteousness upon which this nation was founded” and he assures them that “God’s hand was on this artist” as he designed the pin, which  in “striking gold plated tone.”

And apparently the absence of the Ten Commandments from US court houses is a primary reason for why weather – and homosexuals – are running amok in the US at the moment.

Diagnosis: Some suggests it’s quite simply an ordinary scam operation, but even if that were the case Wexler would be notoriously nutty.  

#1250: Cisco Wheeler

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A.k.a. Linda Johnson or Linda Anderson

Cisco Wheeler (not her real name, but it is unclear what the real name is – Linda Johnson or Anderson has been suggested) is the co-author of The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Mind Controlled Slave as well as some other books (Behold a White Horse, which consists mostly of random Bible verses) about trauma-based conditioning, which made a rather significant impact on the fringier parts of the conspiracy community in the 1990s. She is, according to herself, a mind control victim of one of the Illuminati families – she is a descendant of Ulysses S. Grant – but has managed to gain a degree of freedom from her family’s control over her. Apparently her “father came from a transgenerational satanic family,” was a 33rd degree freemason, and Wheeler was accordingly trained in sexual activity from a young age by him, Dwight Eisenhower, various governors, the British Royal Family, and, most importantly, Joseph Mengele (yes, him), and her writings contain vivid accounts of the Satanic torture and black magic she imagines having been subjected to when she was younger. Apparently the Illuminati won’t hesitate to kill anyone who veers from their plan, yet Wheeler managed to escape – though she is still harassed by voices in her head and strangers at the grocery store. When asked why the Illuminati use mind control over their children, Wheeler jas produced some rather incoherent answers: “[T]he sole purpose – at the deepest layer of the system – lies mothers. They are the foundation. You have three mothers who are on a pedestal – their sole purpose is to rule and reign with the antichrist as his queen when he takes his throne. As god has a bride, so lucifer has a bride, and that bride is the mothers of darkness. That is the bottom line.” So there you go.

She is currently working with Fritz Springmeier to help other victims of mind control heal, which sounds like a no-win scheme. You can read her interview with one Wayne Morris here. And no, her story doesn’t even begin to add up, but that will probably not matter much to her target audience.

Diagnosis: If you think you have the types of problems that Wheeler and Springmeier offer to help you with, then you probably do need help – but Wheeler and Springmeier are also probably among the last people on Earth you should seek out for that help.

#1251: James P. Wickstrom

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James P. Wickstrom is an American radio talk show host, minister, white supremacist and staunch antisemite based in Linwood, Michigan. He has a reputation for, shall we say, “firm” rightwing views and for his intense devotion to fighting communists and whoever he perceives to be communists, which doesn’t have to have much to do with, you know, communism – disagreeing with Wickstrom is his main inclusion criterion (after ethnic or cultural background). As such, Barack Obama is an arch-communist, and … well, suffice to say that Wickstrom kicks wingnuttery up a notch.

As such, Wickstrom doesn’t try to reappropriate Nelson Mandela. Instead Wickstrom rejoiced his death in 2013, describing Mandela as a “vile black terrorist” (his column is here; it’s not for the faint of heart, partially also because of the, uh, colorful web design). He also weighed in on the Haiti earthquake in 2010: “Praise Yahweh for destroying these butchers of whites & voodoo creatures,” said Wickstrom. Indeed, and despite what some commentators suggest, Wickstrom doesn’t primarily seem to be a holocaust denier – instead, he is pro-holocaust. Let’s take it from the start.

Wickstrom has a background as a pastor in Christian Identity organizations, and did repeatedly (in the 80s) run for political positions e.g. for the Constitution Party or the American Independent Party. In the early 80s, he attracted national attention to the ideology of the Posse Comitatus movement, and in 1982 he decided to set up his own municipality, a Posse enclave within the boundaries of Fairbanks, Wisconsin, named the “Constitutional Township of Tigerton Dells,” with Wickstrom as “acting clerk” and Municipal Judge. and fellow Posse member Donald Minniecheske as Chairman and Assessor. Over the next months he attempted to file various documents indicating he was a judge or town clerk with local and state offices, and convinced his followers that debts and taxes were Constitutionally illegitimate. The results were as (the rest of us) would have predicted, and he was promptly arrested for “assuming to act as [a] public officer” and got to serve some time in jail (Minniecheske, on the other hand, turned out to have a rather longer criminal record and went away for a while). Wickstrom returned tojail a few years later over a plan to distribute $100,000 in counterfeit U.S. currency to white supremacists attending the 1988 Aryan World Congress.

As for ideology. Wickstrom has developed his own Two Seedline Racial Covenant Identity, an ideology which among other things, postulates that the Caucasian race is made in the image of God, whereas people of Jewish descent are not considered “children of God”, but rather “children of Cain.” It is thus the “white western, European” race that constitute the actual Israelites referred to in the Bible. Indeed, white people are, according to Wickstrom, the only ones who have souls. Jews, on the other hand … well, you get the gist. And Wickstrom doesn’t take prisoners: “I’d like to see these Jews all be brought to the VA [Veterans Administration hospital] and wooden chairs be put down on the lawn. Tie the Jews in. Bring these veterans down who have been mutilated, physically mutilated, their lives ruined without the opportunity of a family or children, and give them baseball bats and let them beat these Jews to death! Every one of them!” saus Wickstrom. “Take these chairs and Jews after they’re beaten to death, throw ‘em in the wood chipper! And from the wood chipper let the remains go into a big incinerary truck, which is right behind the wood chipper, and give them the holocaust they rightly deserve!” That goes for all Jews, even the children: “Take ‘em all and let none remain!” snarls Wickstrom with all the charm he can muster.

Currently he hosts a weekly Internet radio talk show, Yahweh’s Truth, devoted to what he perceives to be a communist, Zionist mandate operating in the United States whose goal is to destroy the Western civilized nations (i.e. the nations where Caucasians are the ethnic majority). “I have a dream that in the days to come there won’t be anyone who isn’t white that’s gonna be in America!” he told a group of skinheads during a 2003 meeting, a view he shares at least with “commander” Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement whose party platform demands that “all non-Whites currently residing in America be required to leave the nation forthwith and return to their land of origin: peacefully or by force.”

Diagnosis: You won’t many more repugnant beings in the US today. Hysterically crazy, and (although his influence seems limited) a threat to everything decent and good.

#1252: Keith Wiebe

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Keith Wiebe is the president of the American Association of Christian Schools, a wingnut fundie, Tennessee-based organization that functions as an umbrella for conservative Protestant Christian schools across the country for the purpose e.g. of (their own system of) accreditation. The organization is committed to a Taliban-inspired curriculum, and members must sign a Statement of Faith based on biblical literalism, creationism, and rejection of ecumenism. Nonetheless, AACS member schools enroll and try to ruin the lives and minds of over 100,000 students.

The AACS has, of course, an active lobbying program in Washington focusing on current federal and state legislative proposals in the areas it describes as “education, religious liberty, pro-family issues, and pro-life issues.”

In 2002 then president Carl D. Herbster was one of the evangelical Christian leaders who signed the “Land letter” to President Bush, outlining their theological support for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq as a just war, a rather revealing attempt of motivated reasoning.

As for Wiebe, he likes to call himself a “Dr.” but his degree is a fake degree from Bob Jones University (BJU). He is presently also a pastor of Grace Gospel Church in Huntington, West Virginia; President of the West Virginia Christian Education Association; and a member of the Board of Trustees of BJU. The group’s executive director Jeff Walton also calls himself “Dr.” but it turns out that his degrees are merely nonsense degrees from unaccredited institutions as well. Funny that.

Diagnosis: Sworn enemies of truth, reason and human decency, Wiebe and his gang are rotten to the core of their beings. They nevertheless wield a lot of power, which they use in zealous efforts to turn the US into a theocratic country modeled on Afghanistan anno 1995. 

#1253: Arizona Wilder

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A.k.a. Jennifer Ann Greene/Kealey (possible real names)

Billy Wilbanks supposedly is (or was) chair of the Science Department at Jackson College, Texas, an alleged educational institution that seems to be little the sort. Wilbanks’s rank ignorance about … well, anything remotely connected to science made its rounds on the Internet a few years ago, but the reason he doesn’t get a separate entry is that I have been utterly unable to locate any other reference to this character, making me somewhat unsure about the veracity of the initial story. Oh, well – he wouldn’t beat Arizona Wilder anyways.

Arizona Wilder is the glorious sometimes sidekick of David Icke, and possibly the craziest person on the Internet able to form minimally coherent sentences and (arguably) avoid color combinations unintentionally conducive to producing epileptic seizures. Wilder is, in short, into virtually every conspiracy theory and piece of pseudoscience known to the Internet, with little regard for internal consistency.

We’ll give her a chance to explain the basics: “The Illuminati, the clique which control the direction of the world, are genetic hybrids, the result of interbreeding between a reptilian extraterrestrial race and humanity many thousands of years ago. The centre of power is not even in this dimension – it is in the lower fourth dimension, the lower astral as many people call it, the traditional home for the ‘demons’ of folklore and myth. These fourth dimensional reptilian entities work through these hybrid bloodlines because they have a vibrational compatibility with each other. This is why the European royal and aristocratic families have interbred so obsessively, as do the so called Eastern Establishment families of the United States which produce the leaders of America. Every presidential election since and including George Washington in 1789 has been won by the candidate with the most European royal genes.”

Wilder first came to notice with the release of David Icke’s The Biggest Secret, his collection “evidence” for his theory that the world is dominated by shape-shifting reptilians from other dimensions. The book’s index even contains the entry, “Wilder, Arizona – see Mother Goddess”. The short story behind that (a longer one is here) is that the Queen of the UK is really the master reptilian: “I have seen her sacrifice people and eat their flesh and drink their blood. One time she got so excited with blood lust that she didn’t cut the victim’s throat from left to right in the normal ritual, she just went crazy, stabbing and ripping at the flesh after she’d shape shifted into a reptilian. When she shape-shifts, she has a long reptile face, almost like a beak, and she’s an off-white colour,” says Wilder. How does she know? Well, Wilder was herself born into the inner circle, with her destiny as a cult figurehead already set, and was ritually abused as part of her indoctrination – her chief handler being, as with most of these people, Joseph Mengele.

In Icke’s book she describes, at some length, human sacrifice rituals involving the Pope, the Clintons, the Reagans, both George Bushes, various members of the Royal Family, and Bob Hope, who summoned “snarling, hideous creatures.” The creatures who rule our planet cannot enter our dimension on their own but need to be anchored here with a sacrifice, and need adrenalchrome to keep them in human form. This chemical only comes into the blood when the victim has been tortured and traumatized, and Wilder’s job was to preside over the ceremonies and act as a conduit for the reptilians in her role as a “mother goddess.” Corroborating evidence? Yeah, you bet.

Her rants are popular at whale.to and the Icke forums, however, but that goes without saying. Wilder herself, however, seems to have mysteriously disappeared off the radar.

Diagnosis: Perhaps it is a bit mean to include her here. But some crazies actually take her seriously – indeed, enough of them to make her influence not entirely negligible.

#1254: Rick Wiles

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Apparently Ann Coulter has turned out too conciliatory for the wingnut mob, which may in part explain the sudden popularity and attempts to mainstream Rick Wiles instead. Wiles is “[l]ike David vs. Goliath,” a “citizen reporter who decided to take on the Big News Media” through his radio show and website Trunews, which has so little to do with “true” that he, in the manner of various “Freedom”, “Liberty” and “Values” organizations, had to put “true” in the name of his show instead, as if the name could make up for the lack of anything resembling truth in its content. Contentwise, Wiles is trying to give Jim Garrow, Kevin Swanson and Bryan Fischer a run for their money, and is arguably moderately successful.

The Commies are coming
According to Wiles, the 2012 election signaled the “communist takeover of the United States of America”; in particular, he declared that the election results demonstrated that communists had taken over the nation and that the scandal involving CIA Director David Petraeus was a Stalinesque set-up, while predicting that Obama’s IRS would now start raiding churches and shooting people.

Indeed, Wiles agrees with Cliff Kincaid that the U.S. would have arrested Barack Obama by now if only he weren’t the president, in part because of the nominations of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan, which was apparently illegal. In particular (and Wiles got this from fellow conspiracy theorist John Guandolo), Brennan is seeking to “aid and abet the enemy” through assisting Muslim Brotherhood agents who are infiltrating the government as part of a plot to introduce Sharia law to the US. Oh, but it’s bigger than that. You see, Saudi Arabia is slowly taking over the United States government, ever since they “put Barack Obama in power.”  Yes, “Barack Obama is a foreign agent” and “his administration is the product of a successful foreign penetration of the country” by Islamists. “The federal government is quietly being taken over and changed into a pro-Islamic, anti-Christian entity,” says Rick Wiles.

In fact, not only is Obama a Saudi agent; he is “emulating the antichrist” – “the latest incarnation of Satan’s spirit inside a human being in a high public office” – and Wiles has not been shy about expressing his fear that Obama may “declare himself as God” while visiting Israel. Evidence? Well, according to Wiles God was going sending a plague of locusts to Israel as a “biblical sign” ahead of Obama’s visit: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel is covered with locusts when he arrives in Jerusalem in three weeks,” said Wiles. “How many biblical signs do we need to see to know that this man is evil?” Well, some may say, at the very least it needs to happen first (which it didn’t – though there was a locust problem in Egypt in 2013, which was evidence enough for Wiles and prompted much stupid form the expected sources). On the other hand, it was reported by the WND that a fly once landed on Obama, and according to Wiles this may be proof that the President is “possessed by a demonic entity” and the return of the Biblical “Lord of the Flies,” or Beelzebub (according to Wiles’s standards of evidence there is, however, no evidence whatsoever for evolution or global warming; clearly Wiles means something else than the rest of us by “evidence” and “proof”). Oh, there is more: The History Channel’s The Bible miniseries. Reacting to charges that the character depicting Satan looks similar to Obama, Wiles believes that “God guided the hand of the makeup artist and blinded the eyes of everybody on the movie set while it was being recorded” so that they wouldn’t see the resemblance. Or remember Dianne Reidy? Wiles thinks she’s a prophet.

So there is no wonder that Obama has “spiritually sodomized” the military in particular and the whole nation in general. And always one to completely lack any kind of perspective on anything, Wiles hasargued produced words to the effect that Obama is the head of a “modern day Nazi regime” (as well as the “fourth beast” of the Apocalypse), ostensibly because insurance plans under Obamacare will cost at least $20,000 per family, and the health care reform is really a ploy to bringing “population control,” Nazism and Marxism to America. At least the claim is not just a Godwin; according to Wiles America has been taken over by a Nazi dictatorship as the culmination of a plot set in motion following World War II. And it’s the same Nazi movement that is behind the events in Ukraine, and will lead to World War III where America and other Western nations will be the evil Axis Powers while Russia and China will be the good guys, as demonstrated by Muslims, gays and Obamacare. In response, Wiles has askedGod to deliver us from Obama, demanded that the military arrest him to prevent a second civil war and stated that “Islam must be eliminated from the face of the Earth” and “stomped out like cockroaches.”

Heck, even John McCain and Lindsey Graham have “sided” with the Muslim Brotherhood, “are in the pockets of radical Muslims,” and are “carrying out the instructions of their master” to turn America into a “Muslim bastion”.

And don’t get him started on Al Gore, who is clearly pushing a demonic Islamist force into America as demonstrated by Al Jazeera’s purchase of Current TV. Besides, people are having strange dreams where people eat a “fake manna” that represents “Lucifer trying to replicate what God did and feeding his people,” leading to a new demonic “spiritual transformation” and utter gibberish.

Against this background it is at least easy to see why the Republican-driven government shutdown in 2013 was actually a racist plot by President Obama to hurt white people. “Is the racist Obama administration specifically targeting conservative white people for shutdowns and evictions? I really think so. I think he is deliberately trying to provoke an outbreak of anger.” Thus works the mind of Rick Wiles.

The Illuminati is coming
Being hardly particularly concerned with internal consistence, Wiles appears to believe that the US government is really run by the Illuminati, which is linked to the 9/11 attacks. Also, the new One World Trade Center is actually a tribute to what he terms the “Free Mason/Illuminati New World Order” (because it is 1776 feet tall, and 1776 was the year the Illuminati was founded; you can’t don’t want to argue with that). In 2013, Wiles hosted Preston Bailey of the Spiritual Warfare Center to discuss how the “New World Order” is trying to restore the “Luciferian government” that existed before Noah’s Flood and will accelerate the End Times (which seems to be both a glorious and disastrous thing at the same time). Bailey told Wiles that he, based on information from his Illuminati “source”, didn’t believe that Obama was of the Illuminati’s bloodline, but instead the “forerunner of the Antichrist”; Hillary Clinton, however, is an Illuminati member. So there you go.

To sum it up – with the help of Wiles himself– a “deadly cabal of Illuminati, Freemasons, and Communists (masquerading as Progressives [cause they’re, in the mind of Wiles … not progressives?]) ... have infiltrated the U.S. leadership and brainwashed our children.” Apparently it started back in 2012 when Satan launched a “D-Day invasion” of America with “witches” like Madonna and Nicki Minaj performing “nationally televised occult rituals” and culminated in the re-election of “America’s illegitimate president, foreign agent Barry Soetoro.” Keep in mind that this guy has become pretty mainstream in wingnut circles.

And when Wiles had Joe Schimmel of something called Good Fight Ministries on his show they discussed the behavior of Miley Cyrus, concluding that she got rich and famous by making a “deal with Lucifer.” And hey: She has also been“baptized into the Illuminati” and is teaching people how to have sex with Satan.

The Sandy Hook and Columbine massacres (yes, he’s a Sandy Hook and Columbine truther) were accordingly carried out by MKULTRA and mind control assassins as part of the president’s nefarious plot to institute gun control. Meanwhile, the Ferguson protests appear to be a false flag operation initiated by the government to implement gun control and start a second civil war. Why on earth Obama would want a new civil war is left unexplained.

The gays are coming (but of course)
Really, though, it’s the gays. According to Wiles, “gay rights fanatics” are “going to get us all killed”. How? Well, you see, gay people are responsible for North Korea getting nuclear weapons to bomb us. How? Well, because there is “a terrible price to pay for outright rebellion against the Holy God of Israel and your sins are going to get us all killed.” Yes, that mechanism; and in order to avoid the nuclear bombs, America has to become a Christian nation, which it already is in other arguments Wiles are fond of using. Meanwhile Obama is sending weapons to Mexico and arming the Department of Homeland Security for the “full communist revolution.” It’s all going to hell, isn’t it? Lucky thing Wiles is making it all up from scratch.

Heck, even the Boy Scouts are allowing gays, which shows that the “Marxist-Communists” who have taken over the country are “ripping the heart out of the American people.” And in response to the Supreme Court’s marriage equality rulings Wiles claimed that Americans will escape (by rafts) to Cuba to escape gay marriage and … well, he seems to struggle with the grand picture here. In a moment of lack of self-insight breathtaking even for Rick Wiles he also lamented the lack of an “intelligent discussion” on gay rights – before promptly warning us about the dangers of gay “Nazism”. You see, gay rights advocates are literal Nazis who idolize Adolf Hitler – as a matter of fact Nazis had nothing to do with promoting the Aryan race, according to Wiles, but were instead bent on creating “a homosexual special race.” Indeed, “Hitler was trying to create a race of super gay male soldiers,” Wiles says, predicting that gay people in the US will realize Hitler’s goal and launch a mass “slaughter” and enslavement (yes, both) of Christians (his guest, Barbwire editor Jeff Allen, agreed). You won’t find that perspective in the history books, which I suppose is further evidence of a conspiracy to suppress the truth.

Everyone else is out to get him as well
When his views were exposed on the Rachel Maddow show, he received some messages that he concluded could only have come from “people who are demon-possessed,” thus serving as further proof that an anti-Christian holocaust is coming to America. The same mechanisms were in play during the protests against Texas’s restrictive anti-abortion legislation; the behavior of the pro-choice activists was literally demonic as “raw Satanic sewage coming up out of Hell” was running through the streets of Austin, said Wiles, warning us that the “Obamanistas” are just biding their time until they can carry out a “mass slaughter of Christians”. Apparently secular Jews are destroying America too.

Wiles on science, medicine and theology
With his son Jeremy, Rick Wiles felt the need to engage with the science when Pat Robertson asserted that Young Earth Creationism is “a joke.” As Jeremy explained, we cannot possibly know that the earth is billions of years old since Noah’s flood washed away all the evidence. Hence, the reason Robertson is attacking young earth creationism is because “he doesn’t want to feel like an outcast” [keep in mind that we are talking about Pat Robertson here] and is trying to make the Bible fit in with the secular scientific worldview. But of course, this is a losing strategy. After all, history has always shown that the Bible is 100% scientifically accurate, which is why Christians have always known that the earth is round while scientists were adamant that it was flat. Again, it may be tricky to argue with that in any fruitful manner.

To demonstrate his care for sound methodology, Wiles has also hosted a Bible code expert to prove that Obama is the Antichrist, though they admitted that a Bible code was strictly superfluous since according to them “[l]et’s just face it, he’s got a ring on that says, ‘There’s no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Messenger’” anyways.

Wiles has also warned about the dangers of Halloween – it’s a source of demonic possession. Apparently he’s seen it on TV.

He’s been a bit back-and-forth on the recent ebola outbreak, though, having at one point argued that it could help end the problems of “atheism and homosexuality” and promiscuity in this country, and at another that the government is going to release Ebola intentionally “as the cover to round up patriots who resist the takedown of the Republic.” Given his track record with consistency, he might believe both. In any case, it’s going to make Obama the worst mass murderer ever, worse even than Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot.

And for the grand finale, Wiles has actually argued thatObama might be creating an army of zombie cannibals, no less. The goal, I suppose, is marriage equality, pleasing the Saudi Arabian overlords, providing health care to the uninsured, workers’ control of production, and the end times. A zombie army would ostensibly be a great means for achieving these goals.

Allies
Wiles’s apparent supporters include Matt Barber, Harry Jackson, anti-Islam activist and insane conspiracy theorist Steven Emerson, Gary Cass, John Stemberger, Erick Stakelbeck, former congressman Tom Tancredo, Scott Lively, Larry Pratt, Pam Geller and, it seems, Rep. John Fleming (R-LA). At least his ebola conspiracies caused a fallout with Focus on the Family. On his side, Wiles claims that the attention he is receiving is proof of the endtimes since God in Wiles’s imagination promised him a national audience just before judgment strikes. Which makes one wonder why he cares about petty political issues or the alleged destructive powers of Obama, but I suppose a consistent agenda and worldview is the least of Wiles’s cares right now with all of this shit going down.

You can find a summary of his, even for Wiles, gloriously unhinged New Year’s Rant for 2015 here. There’s a good Rick Wiles resource here.

Diagnosis: Yup, this guy has apparently become pretty mainstream on the far right, and the people lining up to be guests on his show have genuine power and influence. Enough said.

#1255: T.S. Wiley

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Teresa S. Wiley is the author of Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival and Sex, Lies and Menopause, the topics of which are women’s health and hormonal issues. She has no remotely relevant background (even her alleged BA in anthropology turned out to be unsubstantiated), yet has nevertheless developed her own version of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, known as the Wiley Protocol, which has received some popularity after being advocated by flaky celebrities such as Suzanne Somers (who, needless to say, have no qualifications either). The protocol has no scientific tests or evidence to support it, and it does put women’s health at risk through dangerously high doses of hormones. You can read some criticisms here, and there is a website devoted to neutral investigation of the protocol here.

You already know something fishy is up when she claims that hormone imbalances, which cause many age-related diseases, are caused by humans straying from “natural” rhythms of light, seasonal eating and child birth –  references to imbalances of humors and appeals to nature being of course a familiar foundation for all things woo. It is, apparently, because of the appeal of imbalances and nature that Wiley doesn’t need evidence; it should just be obvious that she’s right. Which is precisely how crankery works.

Diagnosis: Hard to tell whether she’s a loon, really. Wiley is rather woolly when it comes to guaranteeing outcomes, so one wonders what confidence she has in her own protocol. Whether she’s a crank, however, is a no-brainer.

#1256: Margaret Wille

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Margaret Wille serves on the Hawaii County Council as Chair of the Committee on Agriculture, Water and Energy Sustainability, Vice Chair of the Planning Committee, and Vice Chair of the Public Safety and Mass Transit Committee. She is also a deeply delusional anti-GMO activist, and in that respect responsible for the sordid affair described in some detail here.

Essentially, Wille subscribes to all the standard conspiracy theories surrounding GMOs, and backs her commitments up by rank pseudoscience – real science, of course, has found none of the lasting harmful effects Wille ascribes to GMOs, but since evidence obtained through sound methodology and extensive study fails to line up with what Wille has come to believe through intuition, anecdotes, and the ever-pervasive fallacious appeal to nature science is dismissed – the scientists are in the pocket of Monsanto, being the standard justification.

In complete disregard of facts and reason, Wille led the charge ending in a ban on genetically engineered crops on the island of Hawaii in 2013. The ban was based on the usual misinformation, including but not limited to the myth of terminator seed technology, the purported causal effect of GMOs on allergies, lack of independent testing, the myth of GMOs influence on bees, the mythical link between GMOs and farmer suicides in India (!), and – not unexpectedly– the minor and utterly debunked, discredited and withdrawn Séralini study. And when the Hawaii council was supposed to be exposed to expert evidence? Well, Wille failed to invite any experts; instead, the Council was exposed to the testimony of self-declared expert, anti-GMO activist, and loon Jeffrey Smith, whose formal qualifications on matters related to GMO consist of a business degree from the hysterically unaccredited Maharashi University.

You can read the text of the 2014 moratorium initiative here. To the discredit of the inhabitants of Maui County, it passed.

Diagnosis: Manic denialist. And the larger concern is that anti-GMO activism has become the left’s answer to wingnut anti-evolution activism and climate change denial; it is precisely as well grounded in science and relying on precisely the same denialist tactics and misconceptions. Sad and scary.

#1257: David Williams

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David Williams is a chiropractor who runs the Alternatives newsletter (not atrustworthy source for medical information, to put things diplomatically). According to himself he has “developed a reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities on natural healing,” and “has personally identified 27 major medical breakthroughs that he’s used to formulate health remedies, therapies and supplements that address the root cause of illness.” Needless to say, these breakthroughs are characterized by a dearth of evidence supporting them, but I suppose real doctors are close-minded when they fail to take Williams’s claims at face value (insofar as the claims seem obvious to Williams himself). For instance, according to his bio, “he was the first to announce the now-famous method of using shark cartilage to reverse the effects of terminal tumorous cancer.” The method is famous, of course, since it has led to the endangerment of several shark species. It has absolutely no effect on cancer.

According to his bio, Williams is not only “America’s #1 expert in natural healing;” he’s “the ‘Indiana Jones’ of natural medicine,” meaning, apparently, that he travels around the world to locate new strains of unsubstantiated woo. And there is hardly a branch of woo that is too ridiculous for Alternatives, at least as long as it involves something that is natural (the classification of a cure as natural or not is apparently based on Williams’s intuitions) and can be connected to a product that Williams is marketing. Said products are marketed the way products are marketed by spammers (it’s secret, it’s revolutionary, and big pharma doesn’t want you to know about it).

Diagnosis: The pseudoscience is strong with this one, and it gives him a certain power over the weak of mind. A good reason to maintain a healthy distance.

#1258: John Williams

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Shadow Government Statistics, or Shadowstats, is a conspiracy blog run by John Williams that, for some reason and despite its inherent ridiculousness, has managed to draw some attention to itself. In the blog Williams re-analyzes published statistics on government economics and unemployment, and reinterprets them to yield completely different results. According to Williams the official numbers have been manipulated over the past 25 years for dark and shadowy political reasons. To counteract this, Williams uses government reported statistics to make various apocalyptic predictions, after stating that such statistics are rigged and manipulated and therefore not to be trusted. Yes, there is a consistency problem there, but such compartmentalization is part and parcel of good conspiracy theorizing. If you wish to read his reanalyses, however, you have to join the site for a nominal annual fee of $175.

For instance (to use an example available to us), when the government calculated that unemployment was 5 percent in April 2008 and that inflation was 4 percent and economic growth 2 percent in 2007, they were lying. According to Williams’s own backside, the economy shrank 2.5 percent in 2007, unemployment was really 13 percent and 2007 inflation 7.5 percent. His main selling point is that government economic data are “out of touch with common experience,” which is of course the start of all rigorous science … Typically, and as another example, Williams believes that taking into account the improvement in quality of items in inflation calculations in comparison to older items is a trick. Some statisticians, on the contrary, may think that it might be a bit hard to compare the price of an old land-line phone and the price of a modern smart phone, and somewhat misleading to count the price difference as mere inflation, but to Williams hedging on such comparisons is a “trick” done to reduce Social Security cost of living increases and reduce government outlays, by bribing the BLS. And so it goes.

More advanced financial analysis conspiracy theorists may perhaps move on to Zero Hedge, whose author avoided a separate entry because of anonymity.

Diagnosis: It is hard to argue that he is doing much harm, but Williams is by all lights a standard conspiracy theorist and pseudoscientist who deserves his own entry partially because his is a notable branch of the money-related conspiracies and lunacy so popular in the US (from gold buggery to anti-Fed crankery).

#1259: Lisa Williams

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Lisa Williams is apparently British, but she resides in Los Angeles (nominally, at least – mostly she seems to reside far, far away from anywhere in reality) and is hence arguably qualified. Williams claims to be a psychic medium, and is the granddaughter of celebrity fraud Frances Glazebrook. Accordingly, Williams is mostly famous for her extensive use of cold readings, which makes one wonder about the extent to which she even thinks she’s magical.

By giving a “reading” to a senior staff member of television host Merv Griffin, Williams managed to initiate a substantial television career for herself with Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead(2006–2007) and Lisa Williams: Voices From the Other Side on the Lifetime network (“I am not a skeptic anymore [implying that he ever was] because I have seen this woman do some of the most incredible things,” said Griffin [demonstrating that he never was]). The shows followed Williams around while she “communicated” with the dead, investigated haunted houses, and engaged in similar nonsense. Presumably to keep her audiences interested she claimed co to have spoken with the spirits of Bob Hope, Princess Diana, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe and Ray Charles. Matt Lauer once received criticism for not calling Williams out when Williams claimed to see a ghost standing behind him – after all, mediums scam people for significant sums of money every year, and one would presume that Lauer had some journalistic duty to investigate Williams’s assertions. Williams has also – but of course – appeared on Oprah to “diagnose” her studio.

Diagnosis: I suppose we are supposed to say that we suppose that Williams at least believes that she has magic powers herself. We cannot quite bring ourselves to pass that verdict, however, and choose to leave things instead – diplomatically – a bit open. Those who listen to her definitely suffer from severe critical thinking skill deficiencies, at least.
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