One night, back in 2005, I had
the singular misfortune of
listening to a badly recorded cassette tape. On it, I discovered my NewAge wife's best friend from Luxembourg (a school teacher, of all things, named Nadia Eisen, above) had been discussing her life with a
psychic. Yikes!
As if half-baked educators talking to vicious bullshit artists wasn't bad enough, to my continued horror, I also heard my wife of 20 years,
Karine Anne Brunck (above) asking the same fraud for advice. You see, less than a month after my mother-in-law (above) was euthanized - for what seemed, to me, an extremely painful bout of cancer - the attending "NewAge physician",
Dr. Robert Wohlfahrt (a
homeopath running his scam operation in France)
heightened the drama of death by having sex with my (now-ex) wife right at the start of the grieving period. Without a care for our marriage - you'll notice hardly anyone in this piece cares about the social boundary of marriage - he called her his "virgin/whore" (words she would've found offensive coming from me) and encouraged her to investigate the cult of
Ken Wilber.
The immoral scammer on the cassette - calling herself
Doti Boon, The California Psychic - also offered encouragement, and - except to ask if I was into open marriages - without knowing (or caring) anything about me, proudly proclaimed "I don't see any problems here." Predictably, being a
charlatan, that conversation took place
long before Doti Boon could know what was to come:
They talked before the terrible arguments with my wife began. They talked before I discovered
my wife was part of a cult (which is what lead me to the cassette that uncovered the affair). They talked before I discovered my ex was buying the homeopath gifts, and before I had ever heard of homeopathy, or understood what kind of scam it is; before I knew my wife had emptied our bank accounts, and, of course, before our divorce (which, I might add, was conducted only after I'd been forced to sell almost everything I owned.)
Their chat took place before I discovered my wife's other best friend, a maliciously stupid Belgian believer named Emmanuelle Taijmans (above) knew about the affair, and happily spent time in Europe with my ex and that kinkily murderous man. My wife talked to the psychic before I read the e-mails, between my ex and the man who gave her sick mother water, and completely fell apart.
They talked before I lost 80 pounds, practically, overnight, while fielding calls from cultists telling me, "Give up. She's with us now." They talked before I slipped into severe depression; before I was driven to attempt suicide (while on anti-depressants) and before I suffered a bruised disc in my neck from involuntary muscle spasms while screaming in my sleep. All of which caused me to incur huge medical bills.
Most importantly, their recorded conversation took place before I discovered 20 years of those tapes hidden in my wife's closet. I also found receipts for all the worthless
"energy" crap, seminars, initiations, etc., she'd been spending our money on. That's when I started investigating the phenomena of cultism to the point where I started pondering the same question I'm pondering, three years later, as I write this:
Extrapolating from my experience, what price is society paying for
journalism's propensity to play blind, pretending they can't see those living under the umbrella of
cultish NewAge beliefs as actively hurting America, and in ways it's citizens aren't aware of, or
can hardly process, in advance?
"Do you ever wonder what is the greatest enemy of the free press? One might mention a few conspicuous foes, such as the state censor, the monopolistic proprietor, the advertiser who wants either favorable coverage or at least an absence of unfavorable coverage, and so forth. But the most insidious enemy is the cowardly journalist and editor who doesn't need to be told what to do, because he or she has already internalized the need to please—or at least not to offend—the worst tyranny of all, which is the safety-first version of public opinion."-
Christopher Hitchens, writing for
SlateFor instance, after San Francisco's Mayor,
Gavin Newsom, was busted for sleeping with the wife of his best friend (and campaign manager) rather than doing the decent thing - admonishing him to disappear - the papers dutifully trumpeted his statement of defiance (
"I am not going away!") and
kept the mayoral scumbag's silly back-stabbing mug in our faces until a landslide victory at the polls was tastefully manufactured.
The cowards did this even after he
further embarrassed the betrayed friend who could, almost single-handedly, take credit for all the mayor's accomplishments.
The press claimed this was a sign of The City's (and, presumably, their own)
"sophistication", while others saw it as another example of the
Paris of the West's
cultural depravity, considering the mayor had "made his bones" by trying to make gay marriage legal because he cared so much about the importance of the institution in everyone's life. (Everyone but his best friend, that is.) All this hypocrisy was put on bright display for The City's ever-growing army of cynical drug addicts, presumably to make them more cynical, as they hide behind their ever-present pitch black sunglasses.
It also provided nice memories for the kids. You know, the ones raised on
The Wire.
Following that outstanding period of rabble-rousing journalism, it was dutifully noted that "Gavie Baby" was dating an actual big breasted
Scientologist from Hollywood for a while. That alarming bombshell was worthy of only one question-and-answer session, with no follow up questions, because the clearly sharp-as-a-tack mayor said he knew nothing - absolutely nothing - about
"the world's most dangerous cult". I mean, what more could
a room full of journalists have asked after hearing
that? Come on, San Francisco is only the same city that put Jim Jones, the leader of the murderous
People's Temple, on the board of it's Housing Authority, with the blessing of the entire political, religious, and "spiritual", establishment.
No - everybody keep moving - there was nothing worthy of further investigation here. Just as there was nary a peep when it eventually looked like Gavie's buxom beauty was part of the L. Ron cult's plans to recruit the mayor, or at least distract him, as they were sneakily trying to turn The City's
North Beach section into another Clearwater, Florida. That plan was foiled by the Board of Supervisors, who may be a cookoo crew but, because there's so many of them, now and again may react to a well-applied elbow, followed by the words, "Did you see that?".
Anyway, since nobody in town was going to say anything weird was going on,
Gruesome Newsom eventually got a note from America's cult expert, Rick Ross. Not for the Scientology shenanigans but for attempting to honor a
yoga cult that had recently killed a black professor in New York. (Yea, yea, I know, yoga's a harmless
exercise routine - not a 5,000 year old "spiritual" practice that causes people to abandon reality and walk around naked - got it.) Only one of The City's alternative rags, the S.F. Weekly, thought Ross's warning was worth a bit of column space, though they too didn't see anything so out of the ordinary to seriously press the issue of why there is so much cult involvement in The City. (All big city mayors get warning letters from cult experts, right?)
But how could
The S.F. Weekly know anything was off kilter when they were so busy putting together a nice, shallow, write up - by a naked yoga enthusiast - for the local sex cult that operates downtown? I mean, a woman-friendly sex cult (as opposed to a male-friendly sex cult) is another normal thing for any American city to have, right? It is when you allow the
Falun Gong to stage their creepy silent protests, daily, outside of San Francisco City Hall, and
any other North American city they can get away with badgering.
No, except for one ass-covering editorial in
The San Francisco Chronicle (just in case) it doesn't look like the local papers are ever going to openly wonder what's in The City's Kool-Aid since the mayor declared he's not a drunk anymore. Are you kidding? Why investigate the influence of cults when big brained journalists are studiously doing other things, like convincing their girlfriends that signing up for women-friendly naked yoga classes is
work?
Meanwhile, right across the bay in Oakland, California, an actual serious journalist,
Chauncey Bailey, was shot dead - in broad daylight - by the black-owned
health food cult of
Your Black Muslim Bakery. Though it's original leader, Yusef Bey, had been on T.V. for years,
making every crackpot claim a man could make, he - and his successors - still, amazingly, had
the support of Oakland's political establishment - including the mayor, Representative and anti-war activist, Barbara Lee, and even the Oakland Police Department - while Bey and his "soldiers" openly ripped the city off while they raped, tortured, and killed Oakland's citizens.
Here's a question: Why was only one reporter working on a story of this magnitude before Chauncy Baily's murder and - fuck the stupid
Chauncy Baily Project - where are the rest of them regarding cultism? Probably still reporting on the problems of
Wiccans.
Compounding
my personal pain, while I was staying with a rabid
environmentalist, I saw the Bay Area's Contra Costa County papers were also shilling for the magic water known as
homeopathy (I'll mention here that it's also used in almost half of the homes in
France. At the same time, England is providing the one source of light in this whole sorry tale by, finally, making headway in eliminating quackery. This is in spite of opposition from Prince Charles, countless
celebrities, and many in the general public.) As a matter of fact, NewAge
quack medicines are sold, across the country and around the world, in most Health Food stores, including those yoga-loving fonts of wisdom known as
Whole Foods, and Trader Joes.
I hear Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, is about to start selling
homeopathy as well. I'd think a reporter, somewhere, would be interested in why billions of dollars are going to
criminal enterprises, wouldn't you? Oh - don't answer - I didn't notice that huge bottle of all-important
supplements on your shelf there.
I've already mentioned that Nevada's medical board has been called
"one of the five worst" in the country as they try to become the alternative medicine capital of the world. (I thought "What happens in Vegas,..." Oh, never mind.) The gamblin' state is doing this as SCAM practitioners are receiving government grants through
NCCAM and other
government sources (thanks to the support of crank politicians, such as Iowa's Tom Harkin (D) and Utah's Orrin Hatch (R) above) while NewAgers are
infiltrating hospitals, and
medical schools, being called
fascists by actual doctors, and doing their damnedest to
stifle online debate about their practices, which, in many cases, have been
revealed as nothing more than outright
medical fraud resulting in more than a few
patient deaths.
But is the media capable of putting it all together? Nah. It's much more effective to let a poor black guy
with a goofy stage name and couple of years of college do it. Yea, that's the ticket.
As I've said before, more than a few
celebrities (who have been been very open about their cult connections) have joined in the fascistic
Rule The World Campaign. Everyday at 3 (at least in my area) Oprah Winfrey is spreading
The Secret, and other forms of New Age "spirituality", and
quackery, on a
massive scale, without any serious pressure from,...the,...um,...press. Again, we have another subject - Oprah's billion dollar operation - where the job of protecting the public good is being left to various individuals and science organizations.
I don't think I have to mention Oprah's also providing support to the airy-fairy presidential aspirations of Barack Obama, whose campaign is now being called
a cult by such nut cases as those in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and a few other media outlets. But, as far as I know, they haven't asked him about Oprah's beliefs, nor pressured him to shut the cultish fervor down. Hey - it's a political campaign - and we all know people regularly swoon and feint at political campaigns. Just ask John McCain.
Hillary Clinton - who famously said "There are worse things than infidelity" when the (Thank goodness) former president, Bill Clinton, was on his way to being impeached for lying about his exploitation of
Monica Lowensky - has talked to psychics and been involved in other cultish behavior. She did this while betraying her feminist credentials by taking the lead in attempting to destroy every woman that claimed her husband took advantage of them. (Somehow even
feminists missed all that.) Now the "first black president", and his wife, are slowly being revealed as racists too - after years of wooing the black vote.
Bill Clinton's depravity, like Hillary's Nixonian vindictiveness, is typical, hypocritical, NewAge behavior, as well as
a national joke (right along with questions about Hillary's own
infidelities) but, as he's been touring the country with the likes of Tony Robbins - and openly quoting Ken Wilber - there have been no questions about cult cheerleading from the media when it comes to the Clinton family's desire for power in - no, scratch that -
over America.
As I said, this blog is written by a layman who has, admittedly, suffered greatly - I'm no kind of a journalist - but, considering all I've discovered in a very short period of time, is it any wonder so many average citizens are conspiracy prone these days? I think - starting from the experience of my own personal tragedy - the ability of average citizens to think critically, attempt
defending their health, and to simply understand the larger forces arrayed against them (what the president called "The Evildoers" without, and what
James Randi and many
scientists are calling "The Endarkenment" within) has been seriously compromised.
There simply haven't been enough
good column inches written in the world's newspapers, calculating the enormous personal and public destruction NewAge beliefs have
wrecked on so many, in
a multitude of ways, within the structure of the Western World.
Yes, once again, I'm looking for the help of journalists. I am only one man without the resources to do a job of this magnitude justice. Without delay, I think it's about time for actual journalists to begin to challenge the menace of the NewAge in society. To leave this battle to people like me, and the likes of Scientology's attackers,
Anonymous, is a total abandonment, not only of journalism's role in society, but the welfare of our nation and the world.
Here's an outrageous proposal to get you started:
If Senator Charles Grassley can
investigate Christian organizations for financial improprieties, then, damn it, the NewAge's operations can be tackled, seriously, by the so-called ink stained scribes of the Fourth Estate as well. As the San Francisco Chronicle's Marshall Kilduff said about The City's previous reaction to cultism:
"What have we learned,...Absolutely nothing."And, I'm sure, more of us are going to pay if educating the public is a job left to Rappers.
Oh man, if you want to see a picture of what is easily the ugliest "psychic" on Facebook - yes, even uglier than Silvia Browne! - look no further than our personal favorite, Doti Boon, "The California Psychic".
I know, I know - don't look at it: the title was a joke! - just continue on, reading, until it's sight can be erased from your mind:
Well, well, well - another "psychic" story: 
It looks like reports about Janet Adams, who ran San Mateo's Psychic and Crystal Vision shop, have brought others forward to say "Karma kicks you in the butt." (Really, that's what they're saying.) According to this latest San Jose Mercury News report, Dianna Czellecz says Adams got her for $1,000 and:
"None of Adams' predictions came true, and a candle she gave Czellecz to ward off evil spirits turned out to be a Glade strawberries and cream air freshener."
Yes, you know I love that! Say the word "psychic" and what TMR hears is "Class - all the way!" 
And, speaking of San Francisco's South Bay - and "class" - is anybody looking into the "work" of Doti Boon ("The California Psychic") down there? 
I'm just askin' because she and Corky Whitacre (great "scam name") have got that whole "Center For Creative Living" scam going on down there, and - as I found out the hard way - "Psychic readings with Doti are always very interesting!" 
I wonder if Doti knows - since she told my ex-wife, Karine Brunck, she had "special powers" and to hook up with that Quack, Robert Wohlfahrt - that those two went on to kill three people? She must know: she's psychic!
Anyway, the beautiful Janet Adams (they're all beautiful) is now in San Mateo County jail on $500,000 bail, after already having "served two years for two felony convictions in 2004, and those cases involved swindling."
"A San Mateo woman who advertised herself as a psychic has been arrested for allegedly bilking an 85-year-old woman of more than $80,000 by falsely claiming that both their husbands would die if the woman didn't hand over money, authorities said Friday.
"This, I thought, is crazy. If true, it is evil. But surely it is too crazy; it implies too gross a violation of ordinary human behavior, to be true. If it was true, there was something totalitarian there, something like the atmosphere of a Stalinist show-trial, the demand that privacy and dignity be ripped away to appease,...apparent emotional derangement,.."
(I'm only using the quote, above, as a launching-off point because it captures, perfectly, what I thought about the occult - and the behavior of it's practitioners - as I slowly discovered the metaphysical underpinnings of my wife, Karine Brunck, being taken advantage of by Robert Wohlfahrt, Wissimbourg, France's homeopathic village quack who had just euthanized her mother, less than a month before:) 
Well, it's Halloween, a day that will never be the same for me, because it means it was three years ago, today, that I first heard the name "Robert Wohlfahrt" and - for the rest of my life - this man's "beliefs" and actions will haunt me daily. 
From the moment Karine had returned from France, after she had been away for six months caring for her mother, she had been behaving strangely. Our greeting at the airport was stiff and overly-formal. She told me it was "culture shock", which I understood, having stayed in Wissembourg and returned to America to see a grimy, and sometimes threatening, San Francisco with new eyes. 
Sex that night was awful. Since I didn't know she had just had sex with Robert hours before, I also didn't know how to interpret Karine's awkward responses, and blamed myself for what was a less-than-stellar performance. This set the tone for the next four months we were together: Karine, acting in a cold and distant manner, and me wondering how long her "culture shock" would last and what I could do to bring us back together. 
Karine's bizarre behavior started affecting everything, turning our home life very dark, like the atmosphere in the movie, The Exorcist. She'd stay away from the house for almost entire days, only to return and glower at me. I found her masturbating constantly - in the bathtub, the bed, and even the kitchen. 
After months of this, I was happy when her best friend, Nadia Eisen, had arrived from Luxembourg. Nadia and I had always gotten along, and though she suffered from Crohn's disease (which would leave farts floating around the house that could peel paint off the walls, and forced me to shoo some visitors away with lame excuses) I always looked forward to Nadia's visits, because they always featured the three of us together, laughing, eating, and drinking around our table like family. 
But it wasn't like that this time. This time, Karine and Nadia were always whispering in French, conspirators with a secret they would not divulge. They watched me closely, like I was an animal in the zoo, and arranged weekend trips away without inviting me along. 
After Karine's lies stacked up to the breaking point and The Big Bang occured, we had such a terrible fight that our friend and neighbor, Lloyd, came over and, concerned, told Karine to go to his wife while he stayed with me. Shaking his head, he listened to Karine's panting confession of an affair on that horrible Doti Boon "psychic" tape with me, watched me cry, scream, and make terrible animal-like sounds until, basically, I became so exhausted I passed out. 
On the day after our fight, I jumped out of bed and immediately called Lloyd's, asking if Karine was still at his house. He said yes and put her on the phone, but our conversation kept quickly descending into open warfare. It was like she only had three settings now: lie, deny, or defiance, and I wasn't having any of it.
But now I had no idea where my wife was. I also didn't know if her mind was right. All I knew was she was planning on returning to France (because she had told me a series of lies about why she had bought a ticket) but I had no idea if she was leaving immediately. 
Marina Marks, the heroine of 'The Grift,' Debra Ginsberg’s novel of slow-burn spookiness, is a psychic who came by her profession honestly — that is to say cynically, in the time-honored, dishonest way — by realizing that an observant person could make a fine living inventing fortunes for strangers.”
One night, back in 2005, I had the singular misfortune of listening to a badly recorded cassette tape. On it, I discovered my NewAge wife's best friend from Luxembourg (a school teacher, of all things, named Nadia Eisen, above) had been discussing her life with a psychic. Yikes!
As if half-baked educators talking to vicious bullshit artists wasn't bad enough, to my continued horror, I also heard my wife of 20 years, Karine Anne Brunck (above) asking the same fraud for advice. You see, less than a month after my mother-in-law (above) was euthanized - for what seemed, to me, an extremely painful bout of cancer - the attending "NewAge physician", Dr. Robert Wohlfahrt (a homeopath running his scam operation in France) heightened the drama of death by having sex with my (now-ex) wife right at the start of the grieving period. Without a care for our marriage - you'll notice hardly anyone in this piece cares about the social boundary of marriage - he called her his "virgin/whore" (words she would've found offensive coming from me) and encouraged her to investigate the cult of Ken Wilber.
The immoral scammer on the cassette - calling herself Doti Boon, The California Psychic - also offered encouragement, and - except to ask if I was into open marriages - without knowing (or caring) anything about me, proudly proclaimed "I don't see any problems here." Predictably, being a charlatan, that conversation took place long before Doti Boon could know what was to come: 
They talked before the terrible arguments with my wife began. They talked before I discovered my wife was part of a cult (which is what lead me to the cassette that uncovered the affair). They talked before I discovered my ex was buying the homeopath gifts, and before I had ever heard of homeopathy, or understood what kind of scam it is; before I knew my wife had emptied our bank accounts, and, of course, before our divorce (which, I might add, was conducted only after I'd been forced to sell almost everything I owned.) 
They talked before I lost 80 pounds, practically, overnight, while fielding calls from cultists telling me, "Give up. She's with us now." They talked before I slipped into severe depression; before I was driven to attempt suicide (while on anti-depressants) and before I suffered a bruised disc in my neck from involuntary muscle spasms while screaming in my sleep. All of which caused me to incur huge medical bills. 
Yes, once again, I'm looking for the help of journalists. I am only one man without the resources to do a job of this magnitude justice. Without delay, I think it's about time for actual journalists to begin to challenge the menace of the NewAge in society. To leave this battle to people like me, and the likes of Scientology's attackers, Anonymous, is a total abandonment, not only of journalism's role in society, but the welfare of our nation and the world. 
"This is like a concentration camp. There is no way out unless you die."
