Encyclopedia of American Loons

A.k.a. “Low Carb” Lyon

Harry Lyon is a perennial candidate for various political positions in Alabama, representing various parties. He is perhaps most famous for being the Democratic candidate for the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012 (running a hopeless campaign against Roy Moore) on a platform of random drug testing of school children and executing illegal Mexican immigrants on Alabama soil: “It would only take five or 10 getting killed and broadcast on CNN for it to send a clear message not to fool, or not to step foot rather, in Alabama,” said Lyon.

Lyon is a lawyer whose credentials include having served in the marines and being shot twice, neither time while in the military: One in what Lyon describes as an intentional hunting “accident”, the second by one Robert Black after Lyon poured Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup on Black’s car; Black was charged with attempted murder but acquitted after the defense subpoenaed Lyon’s neighbors to testify about his character. Lyon claims that Black was framing him by pouring chocolate over his own car. In 2001 Lyon was convicted of menacing after pulling a gun on a neighbor and holding police at bay for two hours. When running for the Supreme Court, though, Lyon claimed that “[o]ther than a traffic ticket, I have never broken a law,” since the gun one doesn’t count in his book. He has also “never been disbarred,” which should be encouraging but probably tells you more about the Alabama bar association’s, uh, bar for disbarment. He also swore that he is not crazy.

At one point he planned to run for mayor of Pelham as “Low Carb” Lyons, with a platform of driving the fat folks out: “Let’s face it. The fact is that fat people are ugly and disgusting to look at as much as is traffic congestion and wasteful spending by our city government,” said Lyon. He is also on the record calling“faggotry” an abomination and saying that “only sick and perverted persons believe in homosexuality or lesbianism, though there are a lot of them.” He is also apparently opposed to the separation of church and state. In short, he’s not really all that different from Roy Moore.

Apparently his statements are not supposed to be taken seriously, however; Lyon ran on a platform of my-statements-should-not-be-taken-seriously before it got popular.

Diagnosis: Since he has not a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected to anything, we should probably count him as colorful and (generally) harmless. Though Lyon is no more crazy than the people the good folks of Alabama tend to actually elect to political office.

Hat-tip: John Archibald (http://blog.al.com/archiblog/2012/03/then_democrats_last_hope_in_al.html)

James Aloysius “Ace” Lyons is retired admiral in the United States Navy, currently chief executive officer of LION Associates, and delusional wingnut and conspiracy theorist.

Lyons has claimed (during a National Press Club conference) that, under the Obama administration, the Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in infiltrating every US security agency. He also stated that CIA director John Brennan is a Muslim convert and secret Saudi agent. (Presumably Lyons got the idea from John Guandolo; you don’t get to get your ideas from Guandolo and still count as reasonable.) As Lyons states, it is “interesting that no counterintelligence alarm was triggered at the time that this alleged conversion was occurring.” Which may, of course, be because it never happened, but Lyons’s mind doesn’t work in a manner that allows him to consider that possibility: “Most likely, that’s because at that time the sophisticated Islamic objectives driving the global jihad movement by the Muslim Brotherhood were not understood by those who witnessed his ‘conversion.’” According to Lyons, Brennan has a “track record of empowering the Muslim Brotherhood both domestically and abroad,” for instance allowing “the jihadist enemy access to the highest level of government,” such as in his meetings with “terrorists like Nihad Awad.” For the record, Awad is the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

And according to Lyons, Islam is not a real religion, but “a political movement masquerading as a religion,” and presumably as such completely unlike his brand of fundie Christianity. It means that you cannot even in principle be a Muslim without being a terrorist. Lyons, of course, has his own idea about how to deal with foreign policy issue, and has suggested that the only way to gain credibility and win “hearts and minds” in the Middle East is to “kill them into submission.”

And of course, the conspiracy goes all the way to the top. “Not only is Obama anti-American and anti-Western,” says Lyons (at the Iowa National Security Summit), but he is actively “pro-Islam, pro-Iranian, and pro-Muslim Brotherhood,” and to achieve the aims of the radical Islamists – imposing sharia law on the US – he has been colluding with Bill and Hillary Clinton. In his attempt to take down America, Obama used “sequestration” “as a vehicle for unilateral disarmament”. One suspects that Lyons does not know what “sequestration” and “unilateral disarmament means”. That’s actually the charitable interpretation of what he’s saying.

To top it all, Russia was likely blackmailing Obama. No, Lyons cites no evidence whatsoever. But Russia was blackmailing Obama because they know the truth that he wasn’t born in the United States.

He also argued that that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning to start up a political party to influence American domestic politics, which is puzzling since he thinks they already control the Democratic party. Then again, Lyons’ most characteristic trait is not his acute cognitive faculties.

Moreover, Lyons has weighed in on Benghazi, and even been part of the wingnut Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi whose goal was to find the real truth (which they already know, of course – they just need to make the evidence fit). According to Lyons the GOP-led Benghazi Special Committee was aiding the Benghazi cover-up. The evidence for the committee being part of the conspiracy is that they found no conspiracy. So it goes.

Lyons is not fond of zeh gays either, saying that “the gay, lesbian, transgender lifestyle is nothing but a return to a pagan ethic … which has led to the downfall of previous civilizations.” And at the CPAC conference in 2010, Lyons’s said that “in the Navy in the late nineteen hundreds, homosexuality was rampant in the United States Navy. It was so bad that mothers would not let their sons enlist in the Navy until the Navy cleaned its act up. … On board ship the Navy found that there are three things unacceptable to good order and discipline and its impact on readiness. You cannot have a thief aboard, you cannot have a drug-user or a drug-pusher and we found out you could not have a homosexual.” He did not cite sources because he is a venerable retired admiral, and venerable retired admirals don’t need to cite sources.

He should not be confused with equally crazy conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist James Lyons-Weiler.

Diagnosis: Crazy dingbat yelling at clouds and accusing them of all sorts of ills that exist only in his own deranged mind. But wingnuts have nevertheless been sure to promote him to the many who don’t care about such things either – Trump proudly mentioned Lyons’s endorsement during his campaign, for instance.

Quacks and altmed promoters have made persistent efforts at the state level to achieve legislation either officially endorsing their practices or – more obviously – removing pesky measures that might make them minimally accountable or responsible for providing evidence that the nonsense they peddle is efficacious or at least safe. Naturopaths are particularly persistent (and make no mistake: naturopathy is ridiculous, anti-scientific quackery.

And they have enablers in those state legislatures. In Michigan, for instance, they found a champion in Lisa Posthumus Lyons, the Republican representative for District 86 between 2011 and 2016 and chairperson of the House Education Committee. In 2013, Lyons introduced Michigan House Bill 4152 (2013), which would license naturopathic “physicians” in the state – and it should be noted that the bill was a bipartisan effort, with Ellen Cogen Lipton being the Democratic half. The bill defines “naturopathic medicine” as “a system of practice that is based on the natural healing capacity of individuals for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases,” which is a rather laughable attempt at defining “naturopathy”. (They did not attempt to define “natural”, but presumably just assumed the woo connotation.)

Lyons is also on record congratulating one Kelly Hassberger for opening her new Naturopathic Health Clinic in Grand Rapids; one notes that Hassberger focuses on “homeopathic medicine”, which is hardly surprising given naturopaths’ troubled relationship with facts and evidence, and the nonsense that passes for “accredited” naturopathic “education”. Despite the fact that naturopathy is medieval medicine-inspired, quasi-religious nonsense and naturopathic “education” an unfunny joke, House Bill 4152 would give naturopathic pracitioners wide-ranging authorization to offer nonsense and quackery to patients in difficult situations.

The bill didn’t pass then, but Lyons returned with Bill 4531 in 2015. A good survey of the authorizations in that bill, and the dangerous nonsense Michigan naturopaths actually offer, can be found here. Again she found a bipartisan group of co-sponsors (Andy Schor (D-Lansing), George Darany (D-Dearborn and co-chair of the Committee on Health Policy), Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), Brandon Dillon (D-Grand Rapids) and current chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, and Kathy Crawford (R-Novi)). The bill hasn’t been signed into law thus far, but even if it isn’t we expect further, similar efforts down the road.

Diagnosis: A danger to public health, no less. Lyons is an apparently ardent champion of pseudoscience and quackery, and has – or at least had – the power to do real harm to real people.

Nancy Mace is an author and businesswoman who in 2013 also sought (and failed) to get the GOP nomination for the US Senate in South Carolina. Though she received less attention than fellow candidate Lee Bright, she is not much less of a loon. As behooves a wingnut candidate for political office, Mace is a climate change denialist, and she seems to have made climate change denialism a central pillar of her campaign, claiming for instance that a recent freeze in South Carolina disproved the fact that climate change exists, which is not how this works. Mace’s goal as a candidate was of course to challenge communist collaborator and anti-war fanatic Lindsey Graham. One of her tactics was to suggest that Graham is gay, or – to use Mace’s slur – a “nancy boy”.

We don’t have that much to say about Mace, but since she’s currently also running in a special election for the South Carolina State House (election on November 14), we thought it worth to mention here.

Diagnosis: Devoted anti-science advocate. She didn’t get elected last time (despite being the Tea Party favorite), and shouldn’t be this time either. Even if she isn’t, however, we won’t be surprised if she makes a reappearance down the road, and it’s good to take note of her name for possible later reference.

If you know of one person called “Christy Mack”, it may not be this entry’s Christy Mack, but this entry’s Christy Mack (this Christy Mack) is far more powerful and dangerous. This entry’s Christy Mack, the wife of a wealthy investment banker, is the founder of the Bravewell Collaborative, an organization whose goal has been to promote the study and use of CAM (or “integrative medicine” as it is currently known, or “quackery” as it was previously known) in medical academia. In other words, Mack has been one of the most important figures in the marketing of and attempts to legitimize pseudoscience and woo, attempts that have thus far been dismayingly successful – there has been a proliferation of quack departments in medical centers in North America (part of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine), including many of the most prestigious medical schools in the US (one example of Bravewell’s efforts here; another one here; a general discussion of Bravewell is here).

Bravewell has done major investigations themselves to justify their push for alternative medicine – not into whether such treatments work, of course, but into how popular they are (and in the process rebrands “food/nutrition” and “massage” as “alternative medicine” to boost their numbers.) Actually, in 2012 they also investigated how “successful” the treatments have been … by asking the various quack centers to report how successful they feel that the various treatments defined as “complementary” has been for various conditions (boosted by the centers’ own “customer satisfaction” reports). Best to stay away from, you know, actual records and data, since that would be unlikely to yield the conclusions they want. Oh, and we just have to quote the conclusion from that report: “One of the most striking, though perhaps predictable, conclusions of this study is that integrative medicine is, in fact, integrative. It integrates conventional care with non-conventional or non-Western therapies; ancient healing wisdom with modern science; and the whole person – mind, body, and spirit in the context of community.” Inanity hardly comes dafter than this.

The Bravewell Collaborative shut down in 2015, according to Mack, because “our principal strategies had achieved our goals, and when integrative medicine had become part of the national conversation on healthcare, our members collectively decided that it was time to sunset the organization,” a justification that certainly seemed believable at the time (though one should perhaps not exaggerate the success of Trojan horse efforts from the CAM community). A discussion of its achievments is here. Note that improved health outcomes for patients was apparently never part of their agenda.

An interview with Mack and some of her collaborators – including Ralph Snyderman, former dean of Duke University Medical School and now devout promoter of pseudoscience – is reported on here.

Diagnosis: Bravewell has been one of the most influential and powerful forces of pseudoscience and woo in the US, and Mack is one of many extremely wealthy people who has ample time and resources to realize themselves by claiming to have quasi-magical powers and insight, and use those to justify efforts to ruin their societies. Most of these are harmless, but Mack is certainly not.

Christopher Macosko is a Professor at the University of Minnesota most famous for receiving Templeton funding (apparently) to “study” intelligent design. Macosko has a PhD in Chemical Engineering, and no expertise in any field related to evolution, but promoters of intelligent design creationism take what they can get; the purpose of funds for studies in any case not scientific inquiry but outreach.

Macosko apparently became a born-again Christian as an assistant professor after a falling-out with a business partner, and for many years he taught the freshman seminar “Life: By Chance or By Design?” According to Macosko “[a]ll the students who finish my course say, ‘Gee, I didn’t realize how shaky evolution is’,” which tells you quite a bit about Macosko’s course and nothing about the foundations for the theory of evolution (the title, though, tells you a bit about how poorly Macosko understands that theory).

Since he does possess a PhD, in an unrelated field, Macosko is also a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s sad and ridiculous petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientist, but unlike most pseudoscientists, Macosko is affiliated with a real university, which might give a sheen of legitimacy to his efforts to those who don’t know better. Still pseudoscience.

Another intelligent design creationist (his relationship, if any, to last entry’s Christopher Macosko is unclear), Jed Macosko is an assistant professor (of biophysics) at Wake Forest University who, unlike most ID proponents, appears to publish peer-reviewed scientific research. None of the serious publiscations seems to touch on Intelligent Design, of course, but it gives him credentials, which can be used for marketing ID regardless of whether they actually help establish intelligent design creationism research as a scientific enterprise. Macosko is also a Fellow of William Dembski’s International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, and a Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture between 2001 and 2003. Unsurprisingly, Macosko is also a signatory to their ridiculous petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, which – to put it simply – does not reflect scientific dissent from Darwinism.

In addition to peer reviewed research that does not concern Intelligent Design, Macosko produces

non-peer-reviewed material that does, indeed, purport to support ID, and is perhaps best known for co-editing, with Dembski, “A Man For This Season: The Phillip Johnson Celebration Volume” (information about the volume here); Macosko himself contributed a chapter on “how Johnson has influenced [the authors] approach to biology and what implications such an ID-fiendly approach would have for biology” coauthored with David Keller, a University of New Mexico chemist who is not a biologist either. Funny that.

He is also on the editorial board of the pseudojournal Bio-Complexity, and was involved – giving biological guidance – in the subversive creationist game CellCraft; subversive, since it was not marketed as promoting ID and those using it might not notice that the biology was deliberately skewed creationistwise. That game is not his only outreach effort. There is a reasonably thorough discussion of some of his 2002 public lectures on “Darwinism and cell complexity” (marketed as “Free scientific lectures offered”) here. One of these lectures, at UC Davis, is titled “Life’s Molecular Machines: By Chance or by Design?” (sponsored by a Christian Bible-study group called Grace Alive and opened with a plenary prayer) and yes – as you’d expect, it predictably and misleadingly suggests that evolution is “by chance”, which it is certainly not. The other “scientific” lecture, “If Darwinism is Unfounded, Why Do so Many Smart People Believe It?” was to be given at the Grace Valley Christian Center. Apparently anti-science is science, only more comprehensive since it includes the “anti” part as well.

Diagnosis: One of the slicker, more professional-seeming anti-scientists in the creationist enterprise, and as such probably one of the more dangerous. No, it isn’t more scientific or rational, or less anti-science, than green-ink rants in weird font combinations about how the Bible disproves that the Earth is round, but it sounds more professional and is deliberately targeted toward those who aren’t really well-versed enough in evolutionary biology to tell the difference.

A deliverance ministry is a Christian organization that attempts to cure peoples’ ills (perceived or real) by casting out demons. You can probably figure out yourself how this kind of delusion has the potential to cause some genuine harm – despite the fact that the people promoting this stuff are so flagrantly lunatic that you’d think no one would (or even could, given the lack of coherence in what they write) conceivably take them seriously. Well, they do. Gene Moody, for instance, seems to have had some success with books like Deliverance Manual, featuring the chapter “Cleaning Your House (of Demons)”, where he speaks highly of someone who threw out their kid’s Big Bird toy since the toy gave Satan “legal ground”; it’s sort of hard to avoid concluding that people like Gene Moody are the baddies in any story remotely connected to reality. Taking toys from kids and burning them is a trait not usually associated with the heroes in the stories.

Well, Stan and Elizabeth Madrak are among Moody’s disciples. The Madraks own and run the website Demonbusters, a raging black hole of End Times conspiracies and delusional rantings in CAPSLOCK about all sorts of nonsense. Did you know that the condition generally known as “diabetes” is really demon possession? No, you didn’t. “Financial problems” is demon possession, too. And breast cancer is caused by the demon of feminism and gender equality.

An example of their style of advice: “Look through your home as you pray and the Lord will let you know what items need to be destroyed that have become an idol to you. Any type of collection - dolls (roots come from voodoo [I don’t think that’s correct]), owls and frogs (abominations to the Lord, as stated in the Bible), unicorns (lust and financial problems), etc. You may have only one or two of these items, but they are just as deadly as a collection. We have read and heard countless testimonies of what these items can do [more here]. Dolls levitate, walk and talk; owls caused cancer and when destroyed the person was totally healed. Please pray and seek the Lord regarding which items you must destroy. With pictures of movie stars you form a soul tie. One example is of a woman who came to us for DELIVERANCE from men and drugs. As I was praying for her the Lord impressed that the picture of Marilyn Monroe that was hanging above her bed was part of the problem. Marilyn Monroe had trouble with men and drugs and she died because of it.”

You want more? Here is more: “A triangle pointing up or down is a sign of the unholy trinity to satanists, and is revered as a holy symbol. A triangle in a circle is a really high holy symbol of satanism. Notice how many things on the market today are shaped like triangles. Clocks, radios, buildings, the list goes on. Pyramids are triangles. You will find many satanic symbols used on the patches of the boy scouts, girl scouts, and NASA Space program [!].”The boy scouts are a recurring target for the Madraks; it’s apparently an “Indian”-derived, demon-riddled organization. The Madraks don’t like native American stuff.

And “Crystals are the rage today. They are demonic. You get your very own demon in every piece. It is part of the New Age movement. How about unicorns? They are so cute! There are statutes and pictures and stuffed animals and blankets and jewelry of unicorns. Yep! You guessed it! Unicorns are symbols for satanism. Occultism looks at it as a symbol of their god. I’ve read of testimonies where just having a unicorn what-not in the house caused financial, sexual and physical problems. Been sick a lot in your life? Can’t sleep at night? If you look around your house, you may find pictures and the like of frogs and owls. Oh No! Not my ceramic frogs and owls? YES! The Bible says that owls and frogs are abominable things. People laughed at Jesus too for what He taught and did [wheeee]. The people that won were the ones that listened and acted upon His words.”

There’s a nugget of dim self-awareness in the last sentence. However, Stan Madrak claims that people who laugh at him get punished by God.

Candles are demonic, too. You should not use candles. Other items to avoid include “items from other countries such as Africa, China, Japan; American Indian artifacts, carvings, pictures, Buddha statutes,” “stuffed animals,” “Paisley pattern on anything. Nike is a Greek god, according to the dictionary.” Also “Collections[!], Pictures of movie stars, some items passed down from ancestors, Shamrocks, Any kind of good luck charm, Statues, Oriental objects, African items, Indian items, American Indian items, Any items that are used in witchcraft, The Book of Mormon, satanic bible, Books on other religions, Rock and roll music.” These should all be destroyed.

Diagnosis: Yes, there is some post hoc problems with some of the causal inferences they draw from testimonies, but that’s really not the main problem here. Completely insane, and although they won’t be able to harm many, those unlucky few who find themselves under the influence of the Madraks will not get the help they need.

Wayne Madsen is a deranged conspiracy theorist whose work is published on the blog Wayne Madsen Report and occasionally picked up by major media outlets out to make fools of themselves – most famously, perhaps, the Observer in 2013 (discussed here) – and even more often by disreputable outlets that don’t really care. Madsen is also a frequent contributor to the Alex Jones show.

Trutherism

More than anything, Madsen is associated with 9/11 conspiracy theories, and he has even self-published a book according to which the attacks were planned and carried out as a joint Israel–Saudi Arabia venture, with the blessing of the US, as a “false flag” operation. In particular, according to Madsen, the 9/11 attacks were “an operation carried out by Mossad, Saudi intelligence, ... and elements of the CIA.” The book was the culmination of a decade’s worth of deranged ruminations: Madsen first made some waves with truther nonsense in 2003, when claiming to have uncovered information in a classified congressional report that he said contained information linking the September 11 attacks to the government of Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration through. Even the Saudi Foreign Minister eventually got annoyed with him.

Cynthia McKinney appears to be a fan of Madsen’s work on 9/11, despite the fact that Madsen has pushed conspiracy theories involving her, too.

Israel and Mossad

Conspiracies involving Israel and Mossad are staples in Madsen’s writing. In addition to causing 9/11, Mossad was responsible for assassinating hundreds of Iraqi scientists after the invasion in 2003 (published in The Palestine Telegraph), and in 2005, Madsen claimed that “an unidentified former CIA agent” had informed him that the USS Cole was hit by a Popeye cruise missile launched from an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine, making that, too, a false flag operation (unidentified former CIA agents are common sources of information among deranged people writing in CAPSLOCK on the Internet). Unnamed sources also informed him, in 2010, that Blackwater was conducting false-flag operations in Pakistan, blaming it on the Taliban (in an article published in Pakistan Daily). Moreover, “Israel reportedly has plans to relocate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines,” says Madsen, the operative word being “reportedly”. That one was picked up by a number of Middle Eastern ~~junk conspiracy magazines~~ newspapers, too.

In 2008 Madsen suggested, in an ArabNews article, that Mossad was behind the criminal prosecution of governor Eliot Spitzer. In particular, Madsen claimed that the prostitution firm that entangled Spitzer in a call girl ring, was as a Mossad front, and that Spitzer was actually outed by Russian-Israeli gangsters angry at Spitzer’s crack down on Wall Street malfeasance. And just to make sure, Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik was an Israeli agent who murdered 77 people on behalf of Tel Aviv.

In general, Mossad (and AIPAC) control the CNN, and – more generally – that “the Israeli lobby owns the Congress, media, Hollywood, Wall Street, both political parties and the White House.”

Obama

Madsen is a birther. In 2008, Madsen reported that unnamed “GOP dirty tricks operatives” had found a Kenyan birth certificate registering the birth of Barack Obama, Jr. on August 4, 1961. Madsen’s claims were duly picked up by the WND.

But not only is Obama a Kenyan – he is also gay. Indeed, claims about Obama’s visits to the bath house and how Obama used basketball pickup games to pick up men, popular on wingnut sites during Obama’s presidency, often originated with Madsen. According to Madsen, Obama has long worn “clear nail polish” and frequented Chicago bathhouses, and during his presidency “White House S&M ring order[ed] special videos from Abu Ghraib;” the White House would also, on Obama’s order, ensure that President Bush’s “feces and urine are classified top secret” and “captured” from special toilets and “flown back from Europe,” which tells you much more about what fantasies run through Madsen’s mind than it does about Obama. Apparently, Obama had homosexual trysts in particular with Representative Artur Davis, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Senate majority leader Bill Frist.

And not only was Obama a Kenyan and gay; he was also a Saudi mole – Madsen was one of the main promoters of that idea, widely popular in certain circles and endorsed, for instance, by Trump’s advisor Roger Stone, who calls Madsen his “friend”.

In 2012, Madsen self-published a book, Manufacturing a President, arguing that Obama was a creation of the CIA, even though he is a Saudi mole and the CIA is controlled by Mossad. The world is a strange place.

A few other claims

Madsen has promoted a dizzying array of conspiracies and wild claims also beyond those mentioned above. A couple of examples:

In 2002, The Guardian picked up Madsen’s claim that the US Navy had aided in an attempted overthrow of Hugo Chavez, his sources being the usual one. The claims actually made it to the US Senate, making a fool of Sen. Christopher Dodd.

In 2005, Madsen asserted that the US was secretly running the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (in a hearing in DRC). Local newspapers (conspiracy rags, mostly) ran with the story, with New African claiming that Madsen’s testimony “was so revealing that the mainstream Western media … have refused to print it,” which is even more evidence for there being a conspiracy. So it goes.

And in 2009, Madsen claimed that unidentified Mexican and Indonesian journalists had been told by unidentified UN World Health Organization officials and scientists that the 2009 H1N1 strain of swine flu virus appeared to be the product of U.S. military sponsored gene splicing (it doesn’t appear that way, not even remotely). Madsen knows a remarkable number of unidentified people who just happen to overhear or be told extremely secret information. The story was picked up by several questionable media outlets, including Russia Today.

Diagnosis: Utterly deranged nutter with a mind unclouded by facts, evidence or reason, who at least lets his bigotry shine through rather clearly in his ravings about world politics. The scary thing is that Madsen appears also to have a lot of influence among those whose agendas would be well served if Madsen’s conspiracy theories were true, which is apparently a substantial number of people, media outlets and politicians.

Response to the SPLC
calling out Maffei and
his hate group as a
hate group, pointing out
that the SPLC must be
in league with the Jews.
Epic fail, in other words.

Catholic Counterpoint is a publishing group specializing in radical traditionalist Catholic materials, covering topics from the rise of the Antichrist to 9/11 conspiracies. It is run by John Maffei. One of the videos Maffei sells is “Synagogue of Satan” by devout Father John O’Connor, an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Maffei’s catalogue, according to his promotional materials, includes “all [O’Connor’s] presentations on the Zionist movement and how it controls the U.S. thru [sic] the banking system … and their bringing us into two world wars. … Few have the courage to speak the truth about the six million Jews that supposedly died in the concentration camps of Germany. This is a history course that will set you free.” Maffei is apparently a big fan of Hutton Gibson, no less; his website features a thoroughly bizarre collection of photos of Gibson, and Maffei has extensively promoted Gibson’s books at various extremist conferences, such as the 2006 conference of The Barnes Review, a journal specializing in Holocaust denial, published by Willis Carto. Maffei also pushes the writings of legendary Father Charles Coughlin, a leading anti-Semite in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, and even a book by neo-Nazi Artie Wheeler that describes Wheeler’s rather complicated (and flamboyantly insane) 9/11 conspiracy theory.

To top it all, Maffei pushes alternative health products, including a “miracle soap” and a book on how doctors are in a conspiracy to make people sick rather than cure them.

Maffei wants us to know that (http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/04/18/philadelphia-hate-groups-skinheads/) he’s not racist, though: “I come from a beautiful neighborhood in Philadelphia. An Italian neighborhood in South Philadelphia. It’s completely destroyed. But I’m not a racist. I just remember how it used to be.”

Diagnosis: Some of our entries describe people who fail criticial thinking in one particular area, but are nevertheless overall good people who do lots of good things. John Maffei is not among those. Dreadful nonsense.

Hat-tip: SPLC.

Allen Magnuson is a young-earth creationist affiliated with the worldwideflood project (“Mission: To define a feasible design range for Noah’s Ark”), and thus with the flood geology movement. Magnuson does have a PhD in Theoretical & Applied Mechanics, which is unrelated to the fields in which he conducts his pseudoscience, but credentials are deeply cherished by pseudoscientists, and Magnuson is himself for instance a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. Magnuson himself is not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, however. According to Magnuson, he used to consider “the book of Genesis to be an allegory or legend. While I was preparing [a Sunday school] lesson, I realized that the Ark’s dimensions and proportions as given in Genesis 6:15 were those of a modern cargo ship. It became clear to me at that point that God designed the Ark as a seagoing ship with the animals as the cargo.” This is not how data work.

The other people involved in the worldwideflood project are:

Jim Lovett, who is currently working for Answers in Genesis at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, designing the exhibits for their Ark Park.
Jim King, who “led discussions on the effect of hull form on the seakeeping of Noah’s Ark for the AiG Creation Museum.”

Diagnosis: Pseudoscience hardly comes more obviously pseudoscientific than the delusional nonsense Magnuson is engaged in. Probably relatively harmless, though.

Dennis Mahon is a white supremacist, former Klansman, and terrorist, active until 2005 when he showed an album of old pictures of himself in his Ku Klux Klan robe and proudly listed the number of places he claimed to have bombed since the early 1980s to a woman he had picked up who turned out to be an informant. The places allegedly bombed included an abortion clinic, a Jewish community center and offices of the IRS and immigration authorities. Mahon was convicted of sending a mail bomb in 2004 to a government diversity office in Scottsdale, Arizone, injuring three people.

Prior to being caught Mahon was notable as a neo-nazi and champion of – of all things – the Ba’ath party, organizing a pro-Saddam rally in Tulsa in 1991. In the KKK he attained the rank of “Imperial Dragon”, and founded the Oklahoma White Knights of the KKK in 1988, leading groups in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. He was also involved in negotiations between the Klan and the Aryan Nations. In the 1990s he joined Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance. Apparently he also led a Christian identity enclave in Elohim City.

Diagnosis: Perhaps this entry ought to have been more substantial, given Mahon’s substantial role in this garbage, but we really cannot be bothered. Hopefully neutralized.

The blog Republican Faith Chat (formerly Baptists for Brownback), notable for its extreme religious fervor and bloodlust (recommending that the poor and homeless be poisoned, for instance) and whose welcoming message is “Conservative Christians ONLY. Liberals, Atheists Not Welcomed!”, is probably satire – though it is hard to tell – which means that its resident pastor, Tobin Maker, is … well, it’s not entirely clear, but if he’s real, he might just be the most extreme wingnut and bloodthirsty religious fanatic on the Internet.

George Malkmus is also a religiously motivated crackpot, but at least he takes his delusions in a slightly different direction. Reverend Malkmus promotes the Hallelujah Diet and claims to have eliminated his own colon cancer and other serious health problems decades ago by “following biblical principles for a natural diet and healthy lifestyle.” These claims are, needless to say, hard to verify, though in 1998 Malkmus admitted that he never consulted a cancer specialist for diagnosis but relied on nutritionists and chiropractors. He also ostensibly had a stroke in 2001, which he claims to have treated with woo and no scientifically recognized medical intervention. Perhaps the most striking thing about his medical history is how abysmally poor his health has (ostensibly) been while (putatively) following his diet.

Together with his wife Rhonda Jean, he operates Hallelujah Acres, where they arrange seminars (some held by his “health ministers” Olin Idol and Graeme Coad – names to take note of) and sell various “health” products. They and their followers claim that their methods have helped people with obesity, cancer, arthritis, and a wide range of other health issues. Needless to say, they haven’t. Malkmus also maintains relationships with Charlotte Gerson, Joel Robbins (a chiropractor, which is not the same as an MD), Mary Ruth Swope (who claims that Barley Green can cure cancer, which it cannot), and the Contreras family, who runs the Oasis of Hope Hospital, a “cancer clinic” that you should avoid unless you want your cancer to kill you just as quickly but far more expensively than if you left it untreated.

The Malkmuses estimate that more than a million people worldwide have tried their diet, more than 3,000 have taken their training, hundreds have become “Health Ministers”, and more than 220,000 receive his newsletter. In 1995, Malkmus also received an honorary doctorate degree in literature from Louisiana Baptist Seminary, which is hardly anything to be proud of (especially after they awarded one to George Malkmus). In 1997, Malkmus announced that he had formed a “strategic alliance” under which the aforementioned Oasis of Hope Hospital would offer the Hallelujah Diet and report on their results: “for the first time, the cause and effect relationship between diet and disease will be put under scientific scrutiny at a Christian cancer hospital.” The resulting “study” (really nothing more than a customer satisfaction survey conducted by one Michael Donaldson, a chemical engineer) is described here. We can safely call it “underwhelming”.

Malkmus is staunchly opposed to science-based medical care, and claims (of course) that his methods are better and safer. He is, for instance, anti-vaccine, claiming that dietary measures are more effective than immunizations, and has been caught marketing videotapes by Lorraine Day, a Holocaust denier who warns people that medical care is “against God’s will”. Mainstream medicine, according to Malkmus, is just a conspiracy by Big Pharma to fill us with toxins: “All drugs are toxic to the system and create new problems! The solution to our physical problems is not more pollution!” and “[t]he taking of drugs places a person on a vicious downhill spiral that will create ever more physical problems and ultimately end in an early demise.” According to Malkmus, the “whole approach of the medical community” – those who, as opposed to Malkmus, actually know what they are talking about – “is wrong when it comes to using drugs and other harmful treatments (radiation, chemotherapy, etc.) to deal with disease. They are always talking about cures and treatments for specific symptoms but they will never find a way to cure disease through the use of drugs!” Ah, the standard gambit of pseudoscientists who wouldn’t be able to distinguish a symptom from an underlying cause if their lives depended on it.

By contrast, the Hallelujah diet does nothing at all. Malkmus, of course, promotes it as the miracle cure for everything. The diet at least seems to consist primarily of uncooked fruits and vegetables, supplemented by Barley Green, Herbal Fiberblend, Udo’s Choice Perfected Oil, vitamin B12, and at least two 8-ounce glasses of carrot juice daily. Barley Green and Herbal Fiberblend were made by The AIM Companies™, a multilevel marketing company in which Malkmus happens to be a distributor, but that’s just coincidence.

As evidence for the diet’s efficacy, Malkmus can offer you testimonials. He also points out that people used to live on a “diet composed of raw fruits and vegetables, gathered by hand, as found fresh and untainted in nature” before the Flood, when “man lived an average of 912 years, without any recorded sickness for the first almost two thousand years of recorded history.” But after the Flood, when “God allowed animal flesh to be added to His original diet and the cooking of food began, … physical problems began. Looking at Genesis 50:26, we see that the life-span of man dropped from an average of 912 years on God’s original diet to 110 years, in ten generations.”

Diagnosis: Abject bullshit, of course, backed up by rambling pseudoscience and hardline religious ravings. Malkmus seems to be good at marketing, however. We’ll give him that.

Carolyn Maloney is the U.S. Representative for New York’s 12th congressional district and, together with Bill Posey, the greatest friend of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists in Congress (anti-vaccine conspiracies are a bipartisan thing).

For instance, Maloney introduced the “Comprehensive Comparative Study of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Populations Act of 2007” (H.R. 2832) legislation that would require the National Institutes of Health, ostensibly to conduct a comprehensive comparative study of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations in support of spurious claims asserting a link between vaccines and autism, and partially guided by the standard anti-vaccine myth that there are no large-scale studies comparing the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children (there are, of course, but they don’t show what antivaccine advocates want them to show, so they want new ones to be conducted until they get different results). The bill did not pass, so Maloney (unsuccessfully) re-introduced it in 2008.

She introduced similar legislation (with Bill Posey) in 2013 to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct or support a study comparing total health outcomes, including risk of autism, between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. The details are discussed here; note how the bill assumes that scientists are in a conspiracy to hide the truth and effectively says that research done by qualified researchers shouldn’t count in the study (qualified researchers tend to be biased by truth and accuracy.)

And make no mistake: Maloney is antivaccine, and has been caught parroting anti-vaccine nonsense on several occasions, such as Dan Olmsted’s false claim that the Amish don’t vaccinate and don’t get autism. And during a hearing held by by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee she grilled CDC representatives demanding to know why autism prevalence has gone from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 88. Of course, there is no autism epidemic (there really isn’t) and the perceived increase in autism is due primarily to developments of screening programs, broadening of diagnostic criteria, diagnostic substitution, better detection and increased awareness. So to prevent the CDC representative from responding with facts Maloney emphasized that she “doesn’t want to hear that we have better detection” – yup: “explain this to me, but do so without referring the actual facts, since I reject those.” Maloney, who has no background in medical research, claimed that detection cannot account for a jump from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 88, even though there are plenty of examples from medical science of screening programs, broadening of diagnostic criteria, diagnostic substitution, and better detection accounting for even larger increases in the prevalence of a condition. So yes, Maloney has already decided that the vaccine program or some other environmental factor (that is, vaccines) is causing an “autism epidemic,” which doesn’t exist, and to support her position, she adopts the nonsensical “too many too soon” trope so beloved by antivaccinationists.

It’s also worth noting that Maloney marched with Jenny McCarthy in her infamous antivaccine Green Our Vaccines rally in 2008.

In addition to her antivaccine views, it is worth pointing out that Maloney co-sponsored the 2009 reintroduction of the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act to limit public access to scientific research (some details here and here. (Maloney was bought and paid by Elsevier to do so.)

Diagnosis: Maloney is scientifically utterly ignorant, and as such staunchly anti-science. And to support that position, Maloney subscribes to conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, she also has the power and influence to use her anti-science views and commitment to conspiracy theories to really do substantial harm. We count her as one of the more dangerous loons in the US at present.

We can’t be bothered with more than a brief note on this one. Steve Malzberg is the host of The Steve Malzberg Show, a cable news and opinion show on Newsmax TV, and a standard wingnut of the kind who claims that Obama was disturbingly like a tyrant for implementing Obamacare, and speculates that Hillary was gravely ill during her campaign because she wore “a long coat with black pants” while addressing an event in Nantucket. For the most part, however, Malzberg’s contribution to lunacy consists of giving opportunities for other wingnuts, including truthers, racists, conspiracy theorists and rambling lunatics to say crazy things. As a good wingnut himself, Malzberg has little time for science, and is, of course, a climate change denialist (that Obama is not, is further evidence that he was in danger of becoming a tyrant). In 2014, Malzberg himself argued that Honeymaid was in danger of incurring the wrath of 95% of the population in virtue of an ad featuring a homosexual couple, and in 2013 that the show “Everybody Loves Raymond” is a tool of the feminists.

Malzberg has also urged wingnuts to create conservative alternatives to popular websites that he thinks have a liberal bias: “We need a conservative Facebook, a conservative Google, a conservative Twitter,” said Malzberg; presumably he had in mind something like this.

He has also toyed with anti-vaccine ideas (for instance when defending Rand Paul’s anti-vaccine comments, and proudly described his reluctance to get his teenage son an HPV vaccine because he had bought into conspiracy theories to the effect that the HPV vaccine is dangerous (thoroughly debunked). Said Malzberg, “I’m not going to vaccinate my kid so that some female won’t get cervical cancer maybe when she’s 60 years old.”

Here Malzberg ties the Ferguson protests to Islamic extremism in the Middle East, accusing the Obama administration of sympathizing with the “grievances” of both Hamas and the Ferguson protestors, creating, as Malzberg put it, “a bizarre world of sorts.” The word “bizarre” is certainly appropriate.

Diagnosis: Wingnut and conspiracy theorist, though his primary role is to broadcast batshit insanity dropping from the mouths of other lunatics. As such, he must – as an enabler of intellectual shit shoveling – be counted as a significant threat to society and civilization.

Neil Mammen is a wingnut and author of the elegantly titled Jesus is involved in politics!: Why aren’t you? Why isn’t your church? The Only Way to a Happier, Healthier, Safer and Mutually Prosperous America and 40 Days Toward a More Godly Nation: Why Only Churches Can Lead Us to a Happier, Healthier, Safer and Mutually Prosperous America (both published by the hate group the American Family Association).Mammen is the kind of guy who thinks people with political power ought to be religious fundamentalists, and is very concerned about politicians he perceives not to be true Christians™, such as Obama (so, the definition of “true Christian” is someone who agrees with Mammen on politics, in which case it follows by definition that only true Christians can govern the way Mammen would like): “… anytime you get somebody who disdains law [like Obama], doesn’t care for the law, who hates the Lawgiver and doesn’t think he deserves his sceptre, doesn’t think that the law giver knows what’s good for you, for us, then naturally you’re going to get pain, suffering, disease and death.” Note that, according to Mammen, only Christianity™ is based on reason and rationality; all other religions are based on faith.

He has also written about how to protect your kids in college, where they may be exposed to facts that contradict what their pastors taught them and discover that people of different faiths and political convictions aren’t necessary pawns of Satan.

Diagnosis: Wingnut fundie; not one of the central characters in the crazy movement, but probably not anyone you should listen to nonetheless.

John Mangopoulos is a rightwing extremist and alt-right activist from Lansing, Michigan, who currently hosts the show “Battle of Ideas” and once ran for U.S. Congress against Debbie Stabenow and Susan Grimes Munsell; Mangopoulos was endorsed by the Reform Party.

He is probably most famous as a men’s rights activist who claims that divorce is the “number one” problem facing America, a problem he blames on women and the government – divorce is “government subsidizing women to break up families”. He dismisses accusations of “domestic violence” as a legal tool routinely used by corrupt lawyers and social workers to ensure that custody is awarded to women; with regard to domestic violence, women lie about 97 percent of the time, says Mangopoulos, relying primarily on his own ass as source for the figure. By contrast, women are apparently safest when they are married with a family, and single mothers are committing child abuse, partially because “9 out every 10 single American women are sluts.” According to Mangopoulos, the definition of “date rape” is “whore’s remorse.”

Another group that commits child abuse is the gays, and Mangopoulos claims that homosexuals account for nearly half of all molestations even though homosexuals themselves make up roughly 2 percent of the population. This is … not correct. He has even coined a word, “homonausia”, which expresses the “true feelings of normal people toward homosexuality and homosexualism,” since to bigoted lunatics like Mangopoulos it is inconceivable that other people may be less bigoted than himself without having mental health problems. Here is Mangopoulos thanking God for sending Katrina to New Orleans to get rid of the gays, and claiming that the people of New Orleans are lucky he’s not God, since he would have done far more than sending a simple hurricane.

Mangopoulos has also long been firmly opposed to public schools, which he claims are nothing but anti-christian liberal propaganda factories – he refers, for instance, to Michigan State University as “Michigan State Perversity.”

He also brags about having been engaged with imaginary bogeymen in the imaginary war on Christmas long before “O’Reilly made it fashionable”. Mangopoulos likes to emphasize the inclusivity of Christmas celebrations as compared to the exclusivity of Kwanzaa, which he calls a phony, made up, “holiday” and the antithesis to Christmas. The main reason Christmas celebrations are more inclusive is because helikes Christmas celebrations and has no interest in any alternatives, therefore they exclude him. He has offered Merry Christmas greetings to Jews, Muslims, and others to make his point, which surely offends them very deeply (even beyond the rather obvious fact that Mangopoulos isn’t really wishing them merry anything, of course).

Trivia: On his youtube videos, commenters regularly mistake him for Stephen Colbert’s impersonation of rightwing crazies (Mangopoulos sort of does look a bit like Colbert), making the comment sections mildly amusing. Indeed, since the idea was raised, I am not completely sure myself that Mangopoulos isn’t just a Colbert persona.

Diagnosis: With the small caveat that he might be a poe, Mangopoulos is definitely one of the most furiously confused, bigoted religious extremists in the US. He seems to be pretty obscure, however.

The Greater Good is an antivaccine documentary (and illustrative example of the pernicious genre medical propaganda film) that made its rounds in the expected circles, and were promoted by the usual group of conspiracy theorists and anti-science advocates (such as Joe Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher). They even tried to push it on public schools. It is dealt with in some detail here.

The basic set-up is familiar, and the agenda clear:

Present some tragic stories of “vaccine injuries” to manipulatively appeal to the viewers’ emotions, without too much discussion of details to ensure that it is impossible to verify or falsify (at least one of the central stories has been demolished in court, thus giving the interviewees even more room to recruit the viewer’s empathy in their attempt to build a conspiracy theory targeted at Big Pharma, the courts, all of medicine, science and the need to evaluate evidence carefully; the other cases present no evidence whatsoever that vaccines are actually to blame for the tragic events beyond correlations that do not really seem even to be genuine correlations). Nor does it, of course, mention how vaccines prevented uncountable tragedies by eradicating small-pox and polio, since that doesn’t really fit the chosen narrative.
Create a manufactroversy by pitting a few real experts against a panel of pseudoscientists and conspiracy theorists, then editing he results to fit the desired narrative.
Then dismiss the real experts (but trying to make it seem like everything is fair and “balanced”) and plump for the conspiracy theories and the pseudoscience the “documentary” had built up to accepting all along.

The pseudoscientistst and conspiracy theorists presented as experts include:

Bob Sears, who has now firmly endorsed the anti-vaccine movement, and whose misinformation about medical issues targeted at parents is a serious cause for concern given his celebrity status. In the documentary, he primarily runs a blatantly dishonest toxins gambit and tries to claim, against better knowledge and judgment, that vaccines haven’t been sufficiently well studied for safety (This is false, and Sears knows it; he’s lying.)
Larry Palevsky, who writes articles for anti-vaccine sites and promotes and recommends a wide array of quackery and faith healing, including “acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, chiropractic, osteopathy, cranial-sacral therapy, environmental medicine, homeopathy, and essential oils, along with natural healing modalities such as aromatherapy, yoga, Reiki, meditation, reflexology, and mindfulness.” In the documentary, Palevsky pushes the toxins gambit for all its worth, since it’s a more effective means for scaring people without background in chemistry or medicine than being accurate or truthful; he even tries the breathtakingly intellectually dishonest “the vaccines didn’t save us”gambit.
John Green III, another anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.
Christopher Shaw, a currently legendary, Canadian anti-vaccine crank responsible for several of the garbage “studies” frequently cited by the antivaccine movement.
Barbara Loe Fisher, the granddame of the anti-vaccine movement herself.

There are also a couple of lawyers (such as Kevin Conway), bent on misrepresenting the role of the vaccine court. It is also worth noting, if anyone had any doubts about what kind of “documentary” this is, that the end credits state that “this film was vetted by Dr. Lawrence D. Rosen, MD, FAAP and Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld, MD, FRCP for scientific and medical accuracy,” which is more or less like consulting whale.to. Dr. Rosen is an “integrative” pediatrician who is chair-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Complementary and Integrative Medicine and staunchly anti-vaccine; indeed, he seems to still think that thimerosal causes autism (though he is notoriously vague), which is an idea approximately as well-refuted as flat earth). You can read more about Dr. Shoenfeld here.

The producer, Leslie Manookian (formerly Leslie Manookian Bradshaw), is – apparently – a homeopath, which means she is about as ridiculous as you can get in the realm of pseudoscience (though she had the whereabouts not to list those qualifications on the filmmaker bio page), and has previously been active in the comment sections of vaccine-related blog posts. (She also used to list mercola.com, Mothering Magazine and the anti-vaccine website NVIC at the top of her list of vaccine information sources). After the “documentary”, Manookian has apparently become something of a mainstay at pseudoscience and anti-vaccine conferences, such as Freedomfest, and has been associated with the Weston A. Price foundation, a quack organization if there ever was one. In 2015, Manookian and the foundation’s Kim Hartke managed to get a piece of anti-vaccine propaganda posted as press release on CNBC’s Globe Newswire, consisting primarily of the old antivaxx shedding myth disguised as “news”. (It is discussed here).

Diagnosis: Apparently an influential figure in the antivaccine movement, Manookian is a crank through and through. Dangerous.

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

Evan Mantel works for the wingnut Media Research Center, which is exactly what you think it is and has absolutely nothing to do with research (a corollary of Badger’s Law). Bigotry is a central part of their (religious fundamentalism-based) creed, of course, and they are notoriously occupied with and concerned about positive depictions in the media or on television of groups of people they don’t like, especially gay people.

The danger of such positive depictions led Mantel to write about the Modern Familyepisode where Cam and Mitch got engaged, to try (and miserably fail) to explain why this show is so dangerous: You see, Mantel admits that the episode “moved me like a good art is supposed to do. But that’s the problem. It moved me.” Indeed, and despite his affiliation, he admits that Modern Family“made me feel joy for Cam and Mitchell after the Supreme Court over-ruled California’s Prop 8,” and those feelings are “what makes this show great. And dangerous. It relies on feelings which mislead.” According to Mantel, “there is no logical argument in favor of gay marriage,” just the “sweetness” and “touching” feelings, which he wants viewers to remember is “not a realistic portrayal of reality.” No, Mantel didn’t think long and hard about this. Thinking is apparently not his strong suit.

Diagnosis: Bigot.

Pleiadians are humanoid aliens that come from the stellar systems surrounding the Pleiades stars, and who are deeply concerned about Earth and its future. Because they are so concerned, they have contacted several New Agers to convey their message, the exact content of which varies between the contactees but generally contains a significant amount of incoherent babble and political opinions that align curiously well with those of the contactee. According to Barbara Marciniak, the message is “[i]f you can clear people of their personal information, they can go cosmic.” If you are an advanced alien species, able and willing to communicate across light years, and that is your message, you’ve failed rather epically.

According to Marcinak and her books – at least Bringers of the Dawn and Earth: Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library (with Karen Marciniak and Tera Thomas) – humans and Pleiadians share common ancestors who arrived from another universe and seeded various worlds in our universe with their DNA (the fact that the stars in the Pleiades are only tens of millions of years old is a thorn in the side of the hypothesis, and best left alone). Pleiadians appeared before we did, and have therefore had time to ascend to the next “evolutionary stage”, which has something to do with other dimension, and currently wants to help us. Pleiadians are apparently 9/11 truthers.

In fact, Pleiadians have related to Marciniak lots of information about various conspiracies surrounding:

Biological threats and “the rising death count and mysterious demise of world-famed microbiologists” (in 2004)
Chemtrails, “insidiously blocking out sunlight in urban areas,”
“The proliferation of mad cow disease, SAR’S, the avian flu and other such destabilizing environmental conditions are officially treated as random activities; yet on some level of awareness, people intuitively recognize the underlying implications of what is transpiring.”
The Washington sniper
The Columbia explosion
Recent “disclosures revealing pornographic photographs and videos connected to government approved mind control techniques,” which is a staple conspiracy idea at whale.to and similar sites (and hence apparently where Marciniak gets her news).

The Media is of course hiding these things, just as they are trying to divert out attention from “magnetic pole shifts, huge changes in atmospheric pressures and temperatures, and unusual fluctuations in magnetic fields [that] are taking place throughout the solar system.” The pole shifts have apparently been noted by “many” conveniently unnamed astronomers. Also, although “[n]umerous ET races have been interacting with humanity and operating on Earth for more millennia than you can imagine […] the presentation of selected ET factions into the public domain will be filled with staged events designed to deceive people and distract them from noticing the more disturbing, secret hidden agendas being carried out with the very same ET races.”

Unfortunately, such conspiracies have been allowed to remain in place since people are only now “steadily emerg[ing] from various stages of deep denial due to the effects of the accelerated energy.” What kind of energy? “The ever-increasing influx of cosmic energy shakes everything up on a subatomic level.” Ah, that kind; the “powerful subtle energies”, which is a contradiction in terms. And apparently the “accelerated energy involve a huge transformation of consciousness that will collectively unlock specific perceptual limitations,” which suggests that the Pleiadians don’t really know what “unlock” means. In any case, “[a]s this all-powerful inner-knowledge genie emerges, newly realized psychic and intuitive abilities will help you to achieve levels of personal empowerment that will assist you in dealing with the spiritual dynamics of the transformation.” Yes, it’s all a massive and indigestible word salad. But you know when all of this is going to culminate (Marciniak wrote this in 2005)? It’s going to culminate in 2012. That’s when.

There is also plenty of numerology and astrology in her work.

Diagnosis: Some think that it is mean to mock vecordious ramblers like Barbara Marciniak, but she has sold thousands and thousands of books and generated quite a movement. And it is not to the betterment of humanity; that’s for sure. She deserves whatever mockery we can give.

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki

#1911: Harry Lyon

#1912: James "Ace" Lyons

#1913: Lisa Lyons

#1914: Nancy Mace

"1915: Christy Mack

#1916: Christopher Macosko

#1917: Jed Macosko

#1918: Stan & Elizabeth Madrak

#1919: Wayne Madsen

#1920: John Maffei

#1921: Allen Magnuson

#1922: Dennis Mahon

#1923: George Malkmus

#1924: Carolyn Maloney

#1925: Steve Malzberg

#1926: Neil Mammen

#1927: John Mangopoulos

#1928: Leslie Manookian

#1929: Evan Mantel

#1930: Barbara Marciniak