I Live In A Giant Racist Insane Asylum Called America

Any country that mandates it's addicted citizens join a worthless cult has GOT to be a nuthouse:

   "Peer-reviewed studies peg the success rate of AA somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. That is, about one of every fifteen people who enter these programs is able to become and stay sober. In 2006, one of the most prestigious scientific research organizations in the world, the Cochrane Collaboration, conducted a review of the many studies conducted between 1966 and 2005 and reached a stunning conclusion: “No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA” in treating alcoholism. This group reached the same conclusion about professional AA-oriented treatment (12-step facilitation therapy, or TSF), which is the core of virtually every alcoholism-rehabilitation program in the country."

The fact, it's always been a racist nuthouse, too? 

Just icing on the cake,…

 

New Game: What Worthless False Hope (For NewAgers) Can They Effortlessly Exploit A Homeless Veteran Into?

I told everybody this was "a pretty shitty thing to do" but - hey - NewAge do-gooders loovvve believing whatever they see on the internets, don't they? 

"The homeless Grand Rapids veteran whose time-lapsed, videotaped makeover became a viral hit has been locked up again, for trespassing and creating a disturbance at a Burger King restaurant.

James Allen Wolf’s fall was not unexpected."

Because Alcoholic Anonymous' success rate was still not available,...

 

Give Away Scientology Memberships On Game Shows

 Getting a Vet all cleaned up to join a cult is a pretty shitty thing to do. But, by focusing only on this physical "transformation" and not the mental mindfuck they've pushed this poor schmuck into, people are patting themselves on the back and calling it applause.

It's creepy, is what it is,...

 

NewAge Makes Sense Of Google's Cesar Chavez Doodle

I can't tell if I should stop blogging or reading, because they're definitely hurting my worldview. For example, check out this bit from a Victor Davis Hanson column I was reading:

I opened my Easter Sunday Google browser and did not find a Christian icon on the page, but instead a (badly done) romantic rendition of a youthful Cesar Chavez, apparently our age’s version of a politically correct divinity. 

Yet I wondered whether the midlevel Googilites who post these politically hip images knew all that much about Chavez. I grant in this age that they saw no reason to emphasize Christianity on its most holy day.

Alright, so we've got Google - which is about as NewAge as you can get - slighting Christianity in typical NewAge fashion. So far so good - nothing new or revealing. It's Victor Davis Hanson as Glenn Reynolds. But then Hanson adds this:

Most hagiographies ignore Chavez’s eerie alliance with the unhinged Synanon bunch. In these parts, they had opened a foothill retreat of some sort above Woodlake, not far from here. (I visited the ramshackle Badger enclave once with my mother [I suppose as her informal "security,"], who was invited as a superior court judge to be introduced to their new anti-drug program in their hopes that county officials might save millions of dollars by sentencing supposedly non-violent heroin addicts to Synanon recovery treatments. Needless to say, she smiled, met the creepy  “group,” looked around the place, and we left rather quickly, and that was that.) 

I don’t think that the Google headliners remember that Charles Dederich (of rattlesnake in the mailbox and “Don’t mess with us. You can get killed, dead” fame) was a sort of model for Chavez, who tried to introduce the wacko-bird Synanon Game to his own UFW hierarchy.

 Wha-wha-what? I've been over this before (and been told I was off-base) but Synanon was your average NewAge cult:

The Synanon organization, initially a drug rehabilitation program, was founded by Charles E. "Chuck" Dederich, Sr., (1913–1997) in 1958, in Santa Monica, California, United States. By the early 1960s, Synanon had also become an alternative community, attracting people with its emphasis on living a self-examined life, as aided by group truth-telling sessions that came to be known as the "Synanon Game". Synanon ultimately became the Church of Synanon in the 1970s, and disbanded permanently in 1989 due to many alleged criminal activities, including attempted murder, and civil legal problems, including Federal tax-evasion problems with the Internal Revenue Service.

Note the jargon - "alternative" - and the results. Another great clue is this:

Charles Dederich, a reformed alcoholic and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), was said to be an admired speaker at A.A. meetings.

Alcoholics Anonymous - more cult crap. Or how about this:

Control over members occurred through the "Game". The "Game" could have been considered to be a therapeutic tool, likened to a form of group therapy; or else to a form of a "social control", in which members humiliated one another and encouraged the exposure of one another's innermost weaknesses, or maybe both of these.[4] Beginning in the mid-1970s, women in Synanon were required to shave their heads, and married couples were made to break up and take new partners. Men were given forced vasectomies, and a few pregnant women were forced to have abortions.

And there goes Cesar Chavez. (Words you will never read on Instapundit or Althouse:) So what have we learned (about this world we live in today)?

 

We've learned that, on Easter, a famous and powerful NewAge cult (Google) promoted a famous and powerful NewAge cultist to the world (Chavez) who served in a famous and powerful NewAge cult (Synanon) under a almost-unknown NewAge cult leader (Dederich) and they committed a rash of horrible NewAge cult crimes that hardly anyone talks about. And - in the usual cult fashion - they did it on Easter to piss off their enemies, continue their religious war, and manipulate the public. That's what we've learned. Ugly shit, happening today, right under our noses - and directed at us. Now tell me, if I really want to carry on at all:

 

Should stop blogging or reading?

 

It's All Data To Me,...

If this were a rational country, I've found what would easily be the top story of the day:

A 73-year-old woman faces drunk driving charges – after crashing while on her way to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. 

Boulder police say Brenda Geers hit an 18-year-old college student as she crashed into the St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church on Colorado Avenue.

So let's add it up: 

She's a drunk. On her way to a drunkard's cult meeting, where they insist on talk of a "higher power," which - alone - would be enough to drive anyone to drink.

She then hits a kid, and - just to prove all this "spiritual" nonsense is of no help what-so-ever - drags this poor innocent (who's just starting out in life) 25 to 30 feet, until they crash into one of the houses set up to convince that kid how good God is as he watches over us.

 Incredible. 

My only thought: 

 Boy - that AA really works!

ADDED: The only thing that could've made this story "better" is if the cross had fallen off the church's steeple and speared the kid through the heart,..

 

Whether Charlie Sheen Is Crazy Is A Matter Of Opinion (Whether This Society He's In Is, Is Not)

Damn it, there's just not a lot of NewAge news out there today - we've been looking - but the gremlins are keeping most of it to themselves. We did find this informative letter, which should make Whole Foods a little nervous, considering they're one of the biggest purveyors of the Homeopathy scam in America:

Dear Editor,

One particularly troubling trend in the modern world is the advancement of faith in the supernatural, superstition, and pseudoscience.

This trend is also puzzling, as we live in an age where real information is so readily available. Unfortunately, so is bad information and propaganda.

On Feb. 5, hundreds of people in 23 countries around the world overdosed on homeopathic so-called "remedies" to demonstrate that there's nothing in it.

Homeopathy was simply stated by a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann, who had no evidence and was just making assertions based on primitive and unscientific beliefs about "vibrations" and other nonsense. He asserted that water has "memory," that poisons can cure the symptoms they cause, and that if you dilute a poison by such a degree that there are no molecules of the poison left, somehow this will cure ailments.

Of course, this violates the laws of thermodynamics, as well as the principle of Avogadro's limit in chemistry.

When you buy homeopathic "remedies," you are buying water and/or sugar. Nothing more. And yet, pharmacies sell those sugar pills alongside real remedies. Shame on them! If someone forgoes real medical treatment in favour of this superstition, they may well die.

And die they do! Don't take our word for it, here's a confession from someone who believes in it:

Just what is it that makes so many people so angry about homeopathy? I’ve been using it on and off for years — arnica tablets for when the kids fall over, a magic box of special remedies which helped cure my hay-fever. I’ve always thought it was something harmless, something all of us did now and again.

Apparently not, though. In the past few months, whenever I’ve mentioned my guilty homeopathy secret to friends, it’s as if I’ve confessed to a penchant for child sacrifice.

‘What?’ the general reaction has been. ‘Don’t you realise all homeopaths are charlatans; their remedies are nothing more than sugar pills; they’re a drain on the NHS; they’ve resulted in the deaths of gullible innocents all over the world?’

Now why would any "follower" let a little thing like "the deaths of gullible innocents all over the world" come between them and their magic water? It's perfectly natural to ignore death for water, right? Of course it is.

Doesn't everybody know kings and queens have been using Homeopathy for 200 years? That's before there was really even medicine!

After our Charlie Sheen post on Alcoholics Anonymous, we were reminded AA's an evil that's been around for 80 years, but so what?

A cult is a cult is a cult is a cult - how long any particular cult has been around doesn't matter. It still should give you the creeps - as it does Charlie Sheen.

The point, to us, is that after Charlie Manson, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and all the rest, cults (and cultish thinking) have been accepted into mainstream American thought to such an extent that now, when they kill, nobody thinks that cults have anything to do with it - because cults are part of the fabric of our society. When's the next time Oprah will have a Scientologist on her show/network?

When's the next time Oprah will offer a Scientologist their own show - like she did Kirstie Alley?

Why, this cult business is happening to such an extent that even doctors, rather than saving our lives, are fighting for their own against it.

But don't be fooled - we're all being made fools of by these people - get this:

"I think it's a scam," said Jeremy Adler. "I really do."

Adler's claims of a scam come after working for three months as the manufacturing manager at a Seattle company called Biomed Comm. The company makes and sells a variety of homeopathic remedies advertised as treatments for autism, menopausal symptom relief, and boosters of immune systems and energy.

Last week the State Department of Health ordered the company and it's founder and CEO Barbara Brewitt, PhD to cease and desist her making and selling of drugs without a license. They also directed her to stop "posing as a medical doctor."

Adler is the whistleblower who started the investigation that led to the Department of Health action. He tells KOMO 4 News he still stands behind those accusations.

"The comment was made once that we don't care what the government says because we're homeopathic," he said Brewitt told him and other employees. "We can make this stuff in a bathtub if we want to."

FDA regulations are different for the makers of homeopathic remedies where the active ingredients are markedly diluted in their final medicinal form. "In clinical studies, patients have reported increased memory, focus and energy, stronger heart and immune systems, relief from stress and headaches, weight loss, increased muscle mass and improved sleep, among other factors," it says on the Biomed Comm website. "Biomed's cell signalers are being taken by autism and HIV (AIDS virus) patients as well as baby boomers who want to stave off aging. "

The Department of Health ordered Brewitt to immediately "stop her unlicensed practice of manufacturing drugs," saying that they do not have the necessary federal approval.

Adler, who says he was hired to help establish a small manufacturing facility in Woodinville, says many of the medicines were mixed by Brewitt herself in her own kitchen as she chanted over a crystal bowl.

"She told all of us the magic is in the chanting and the crystal bowl," said Adler. "And that's what caused everything to work was the energy from the crystal bowl."

Folks, by allowing these NewAge "ancient teachings" to flourish within our modern society, we've slipped further away from reality than Charlie Sheen ever could - no matter how many drugs he's done.

It can even be said that, by mentioning the cult of AA in his ravings, he's made an important contribution to getting us back on track.

And the sooner we come to terms with that, the better off we all will be.

Especially if anyone's serious about wanting to "help" the likes of Good Time Charlie.

Everybody's Focussing In (On The Wrong Thing)

We put this topic in our subhead yesterday - that few follow-up on Charlie Sheen's charge about AA being a cult - and, today, this is the only article we've found about it, with the rest focusing on Sheen's ranting, rather than the validity of his words. (Wouldn't you rant, if you were railroaded into a cult that was accepted by society, but you weren't?) Which, now that we think about it, is exactly the process used on us as well:

Actor Charlie Sheen is stirring controversy and criticism after delivering an on air rant during an interview on the Alex Jones Show. During the on air radio rant, Sheen criticized the producer of his hit CBS television sitcom Two and a Half Men, but also made some negative references to Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Speaking of his sobriety and the group known for their infamous 12 step program and helping others take their alcohol addictions one day at a time; Sheen described AA as a “bootleg cult.”  Is he right?  You may be surprised to discover that Charlie Sheen isn’t alone in his assumption that Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult.  Also, many drug and alcohol treatment centers have developed into cults, for example Synanon.  So what about Alcoholics Anonymous?

Drugs and Cults: Connected?

Drugs and cults are often connected.  Many cult leaders ranging from Charles Manson to Jim Jones were associated with drugs.  Whether it was using mind altering drugs as a form of control or claiming to cure drug and alcohol addiction, cults and drugs have a long history. Many testimonies, often given by former cult members, usually involve some form of drug use. Either drugs were used by the group, by the group's leader, or the member joined the group to overcome an addiction.

Drugs, Cults and a Higher Power

Some cults use their 'special connection' to God as a lure to gain new members; proposing a cure for drug and alcohol addiction. There have been many allegations against various drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers indicating that the facility was not offering “therapy” but rather mind controlling techniques that likened the group to a cult. Many people who have attended Alcoholics Anonymous or have been sent to live in residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities have left the experience asking if they were involved in a cult.

Is there one easy, definitive answer or is being in this type of group a different experience for everyone?  Can one person join a group like A.A. and leave with a positive feeling and another leave as though they were spiritually and emotionally abused?
The problem may arise from the fact that 12 step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and other drug and alcohol treatment centers focus on one thing: mind control and behavioral techniques. 

As these groups are founded on the premise of altering your thoughts, mind set and behavior, it is inevitable that the association with cult like tendencies will be made.

Yeah, "inevitable", unless you're programed by a NewAge cult culture to be more concerned with a man screaming for freedom, rather than a cult scheming on it.

That shit works like a charm.

Oh - and BTW, that drug and alcohol treatment center, Synanon? That's Scientology, and the courts will force you to go into their bullshit to get "help". This bullshit just never stops.

But, then, nobody wants it to.