Tag: hollyweirdness

Recommended reading…

Get it HERE.

“A journalist’s twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to “gobsmacking” (The Ringer) new revelations about the FBI’s involvement in this “kaleidoscopic” (The New York Times) reassessment of an infamous case in American history.

Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader’s every order — their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history’s most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia — or dystopia — was just an acid trip away.

Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O’Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the “official” story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi — prosecutor of the Manson Family and author of Helter Skelter — turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O’Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions:

  • Who were Manson’s real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties?
  • Why didn’t law enforcement, including Manson’s own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him?
  • And how did Manson — an illiterate ex-con — turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers?

O’Neill’s quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco’s summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA’s mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, Chaos mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.”

Why So Many People Believe Taylor Swift Is a Psy-Op

You’d have to go back to the peak years of Bob Dylan’s cultural relevance, when one critic cum stalker started searching the songwriter’s garbage for clues about his lyrics, to find a musician who attracts as many amateur code breakers as Taylor Swift does. Swift has fed the frenzy by declaring that her songs, her liner notes, her social-media posts—basically everything around her—might have hidden meanings embedded in them. As she told The Washington Post in 2022, she and her fans have “descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.”

That scavenger-hunt mentality can lead would-be decoders in directions the singer might not prefer, as with the “Gaylors” who search for signals that Swift is secretly queer. Now a different subculture is getting in on the act: A chunk of the GOP has been conjuring alleged evidence that Swift is a deep-state psy-op, and that maybe—we’re just asking questions here—the NFL is in on it.

This theory got its first burst of mainstream attention last month, when Fox’s Jesse Watters aired a video that, he claimed, shows that “the Pentagon psychological-operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.” The person speaking in the video was not in fact from the Pentagon, she was citing Swift as a generic example of celebrity influence, and this all happened years after Swift became super popular anyway, but Watters still seemed to think it might explain “why or how she blew up like this.” He then interviewed a former FBI agent, who said that Joe Biden’s presidential campaign would like Swift’s support (which is true) and that she could move substantial numbers of votes into Biden’s column (which is not the track record that pop-music endorsements have historically had in American politics).

The psy-op rumor mutated into its most infamous form a few weeks later. Vivek Ramaswamy, until recently a presidential candidate himself, posted on X, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

Keep reading

‘Sect and the city’: Striking photo shows bosses of ‘orgasm cult’ OneTaste leave NYC courthouse with female entourage, after two of them were charged with forcing women into sex acts

It made for a glamorous change to the usual perp walk outside Brooklyn Federal Court.

The founder and the ex-sales boss at ‘orgasmic meditation cult’ OneTaste dressed to impress as they appeared with an entourage of supporters to face charges of forcing women into sex acts and keeping them in ‘residential warehouses‘.

But there were no grimy mugshots for Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz as they faced down photographers outside the New York courthouse for a procedural hearing on Thursday. 

Their San Francisco based company was making $12million a year from their sexual disfunction treatments for women which included being genitally massaged by a man with a latex glove.

It won praise from celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloe Kardashian, and welcomed 35,000 people to its events in 2018.

But the FBI began investigating in November that year after ex-customers came forward saying they were left in debt after paying for expensive classes, and former employees said they were ordered to have sex with potential investors.

Former staffer Ayries Blanck filed a lawsuit against the company in August of 2015, claiming they subjected her to a ‘hostile work environment, sexual harassment, failure to pay minimum wage and intentional infliction of emotional distress’.

But she was counter-sued by the group for breaking a non-disclosure agreement when she contributed to the 2022 Netflix documentary Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste in 2022.

Blanck’s sister Autymn repeated allegations that OneTaste ‘condoned violence’ and ‘found strangers to rape her’.

Prosecutors say that Daedone and former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz deployed a series of abusive and manipulative tactics against volunteers, contractors, and employees.

They also claim the duo rendered OneTaste members dependent on the group for their shelter and basic necessities and limited their independence and control.

The company operated in 39 cities including New York, San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas, Boulder, Los Angeles, Austin and London, but some former customers alleged that they were ‘raped’ after becoming involved in the company, with one telling the BBC she was attacked by a man called ‘Jake’.

The company closed all of their US locations in 2018 halting all in-person classes, and Anjuli Ayer, who became CEO in 2017 is not facing charges.

But she told Dailymail.com last year the allegations are ‘totally false’, and that consent is the ‘first thing’ they teach.

‘I did not anticipate a five-year snowballed media campaign of negative allegations against us,’ she added.

Keep reading

Granddaughter of pedophile who founded Children of God SEX CULT opens up about what it was like to be raised inside twisted ‘religious’ sect – from being forced to be intimate with adult males as a CHILD to facing heinous physical and sexual abuse

A woman has candidly revealed how her grandfather founded the Children of God cult to promote his liberal views on sexuality – practicing polygamy and free love even with underage members.

Faith Jones appeared on a recent episode of the Cults To Consciousness podcast to discuss her harrowing experience as part of the sect, which was later known as The Family International.

The now 47-year-old was born into ‘The Family’ in 1977 in Hong Kong and was considered cult royalty as the granddaughter of psychosexual leader David Berg.

Berg founded the organization in 1968 out of Huntington Beach, California, before it evolved to have a following of more than 15,000 members worldwide, including Joaquin Phoenix and Rose McGowan.

Faith has said that her grandfather, who died in 1994, encouraged sexual and physical abuse against children as part of the sect’s principles. 

Keep reading

John Schneider Under Secret Service Investigation After Calling for Joe Biden to Be ‘Publicly Hung’

John Schneider has reportedly gotten the attention of the president of the United States.

According to Deadline, after the Dukes of Hazzard star, 63, expressed that President Joe Biden should be “publicly hung” in a since-deleted reply to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Secret Service has opened a probe into his statements.

The statement was written in response to a tweet in which Biden, 81, expressed that former President Donald Trump “poses many threats to our country.”

Keep reading

Recommended reading…

Get it HERE

“Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place where a dizzying array of musical artists congregated to create much of the music that provided the soundtrack to those turbulent times. Members of bands like the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Monkees, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, the Turtles, the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Steppenwolf, Captain Beefheart, CSN, Three Dog Night, Alice Cooper, the Doors, and Love with Arthur Lee, along with such singer/songwriters as Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Judi Sill and David Blue, lived together and jammed together in the bucolic community nestled in the Hollywood Hills.
 
But there was a dark side to that scene as well.
 
Many didn’t make it out alive, and many of those deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Far more integrated into the scene than most would care to admit was a guy by the name of Charles Manson, along with his murderous entourage. Also floating about the periphery were various political operatives, up-and-coming politicians, and intelligence personnel – the same sort of people who just happened to give birth to many of the rock stars populating the canyon. And all of the canyon’s colorful characters – rock stars, hippies, murderers, and politicos – happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.
 
Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon is the very strange, but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a hippie utopia.”

Suspect in Los Angeles Dismembered Torso Case Is Hollywood Scion, Whose Wife and In-Laws Remain Missing

The suspect in a Los Angeles case, where a dismembered torso was found in a dumpster, is reportedly a scion of a prominent Hollywood family whose wife and in-laws are missing.

Murder suspect Sam Haskell Jr., whose family is known for Christmas movies, was arrested after a homeless man found a headless body in a dumpster, according to a report by Fox News.

The Los Angeles Police Department said they responded to a dumpster at around 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday near the intersection of Ventura Boulevard and Rubio Avenue in Encino, where they found a woman’s torso.

Police said the victim has not yet been identified, but that the woman’s body may belong to the murder suspect’s wife.

Keep reading

Goldie Hawn Knows That Aliens Have Touched Her Face

Goldie Hawn believes she’s had a close encounter with the third kind. On a new episode of the Apple Fitness+ audio experience Time to Walk, the Oscar and Golden Globe winner recounts her experience with extraterrestrials and her journey with them over the years.

A dancer by trade, Hawn was just a 20-year-old in Anaheim, California, when she first began wondering about the great unknown. “That was a time when, you know, there was a lot of UFO sightings,” says Hawn during the episode. “I remember this so clearly: I went outside my door, and I sat on the little ledge, and I looked up at the dark sky. And I saw all these stars. And all I could think of was, How far does this go? How little are we? Are we the only planet in the whole wide universe that has life on it?”

It was then, she says, that she knew she was destined to make contact with aliens. “I said, ‘I know you’re out there, I know we’re not alone, and I would like to meet you one day.’”

Smash cut to four months later, when the future First Wives Club star was working another dance job in West Covina, California—a city that’s “very close to the desert,” as she’s careful to note. Exhausted from dance rehearsals, Hawn asked a friend if she could take a nap in his car, a decision that still baffles her to this day. “I don’t know why I said that,” she says. “I don’t know why I didn’t just lie down on the bleachers.” After getting into the car to sleep, “I got this high-pitched sound in my ear,” she says. “It was this high, high frequency.”

That’s when she looked out the window. “I saw these two or three triangular-shaped heads,” Hawn recalls. “They were silver in color, slash for a mouth, tiny little nose, no ears. They were pointing at me, pointing at me in the car as if they were discussing me, like I was a subject. And they were droning…” Throughout her encounter with the two to three silver-headed creatures, she was unable to move her body, Hawn says. “I was paralyzed. And I thought, Oh, my God. I want to get up. I didn’t know if it was real or not real.”

Eventually, Hawn was able to “burst out” of the episode, she says. “It was like bursting out of a forcefield,” she recounts. “Of course I go back to all the kids and stuff, and I went, ‘Oh, my God. I think I made contact with outer space.’”

Keep reading

UK Parliament sends letters to social media platforms demanding demonetization of Russell Brand

The UK Parliament has sent letters to TikTok and Rumble expressing concerns that comedian Russel Brand could be profiting off the platforms.

“I am writing concerning the serious allegations regarding Russell Brand, in the context as a user of TikTok with more than 2.2 million followers on the platform,” the letter to Theo Bertram, TikTok Director of Government Relations, Europe, began.

The following day after TikTok was sent the letter, Rumble received a similar letter from Dinenage, noting Brand’s 1.4 million followers on the platform, and asking whether Rumble “intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr. Brand’s ability to earn money on the platform.”

“The Culture, Media and Sport [Committee] is raising questions with the broadcasters who previously employed Mr. Brand or production companies who employed him, to examine both the culture of the industry in the past and whether that culture still prevails today,” Committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage MP wrote.

Dinenage noted that while Brand no longer appears on television, he has amassed a following on various social media platforms, “including on TikTok where this weekend he republished his pre-emptive response to the accusations made against him by The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches.”

“While we recognize that TikTok is not the creator of the content published by Mr. Brand, and his content may be within the Community Guidelines set out by the platform, we are concerned that he may be able to profit from his content on the platform.”

Dinenage requested that TikTok confirm whether Brand is able to monetize his content on the platform, and tell “what the platform is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate or potentially illegal behavior.”

Keep reading

YouTube suspends Russell Brand from making money off the streaming site after sex assault claims

YouTube said Tuesday that Russell Brand will no longer make money from the video streaming site after several women made allegations of sexual assault against the comedian-turned-influencer.

YouTube said monetization of Brand’s account, which has 6.6 million subscribers, has been suspended “following serious allegations against the creator.”

“This decision applies to all channels that may be owned or operated by Russell Brand,” the Google-owned video service said.

The suspension means Brand won’t be able to earn money from the ads that run within and alongside YouTube videos, which have titles including “What REALLY Started the Hawaii Fires?” and “Covid Tsar Admits Lockdowns Were NEVER About Science.”

Other channels associated with Brand’s main YouTube page include Awakening With Russell, which has 426,000 subscribers, Football Is Nice, which has some 20,000 subscribers, and Stay Free With Russell Brand, which has 22,200 subscribers.

Keep reading