Misfire and Fury?

15^th August 2022

It’s me again, Mark, for a third week running - as Craig is unavailable to do the newsletter again. This time it’s COVID, and I can’t blame him at all for not wanting to write a newsletter while getting over it.

In this week’s newsletter, I start off talking about an amazing documentary about Gloriavale that I went to see with Bronwyn and another couple of skeptics on the weekend. It’s called simply “Gloriavale”, and I’d recommend watching it if you have a fascination for these kinds of religious groups like I do.

Daniel Ryan has a piece this week that he wrote a while ago and thought would be of interest to skeptics, about acupuncture and ACC. If you find that it makes your blood boil, I can recommend sticking needles in Governing Vessel Point GV20, Spleen Channel SP6 and your LU5 Sedation Point to help calm you down.

I had a listen to NASA’s recent teleconference about their plans to look into UFO sightings. It seems that NASA don’t really think that aliens are visiting us, but I do have my suspicions about why they’ve decided to publicly launch this new study - read below to find out more.

Finally we have part two of Bronwyn’s look into Highden Manor, where she goes even deeper down the rabbit hole.

Your homework for this week is to watch the new Stuff documentary about the key players in the New Zealand conspiracy scene, called Fire and Fury. Craig will have more to say about it next week, so if you’ve watched it he’ll make a lot more sense to you. If you watch it you’ll likely recognise a lot of the names at the start of the documentary, as we’ve been talking about them and their weird beliefs here in this newsletter. Damien De Ment, Chantelle Baker, Claire Deeks et al, Carlene Hereora (known on Facebook as Carlene Louise), Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer, Amy Benjamin and Kyle Chapman have all been featured here in the past.

For bonus marks you can watch the episode of Counterspin that Kelvyn and Hannah put together last night titled “Deep State Hit Piece Misfires”, featuring Carlene, Kyle, Damien and Amy. Hopefully it’ll be online in their video catalogue soon (which, as I mentioned last week, is now hosted on Alex Jones’ Infowars video platform). It’ll come as no surprise to hear that pretty much everyone on the show doubled down on the kinds of things they had been exposed as having said in the past, like threatening to execute MPs, as well as reiterating many of the silly beliefs they have that we have been shining a light on in this newsletter, such as Satanic Ritual Abuse, the vaccine being a bioweapon, and more.

Mark Honeychurch

I highly recommend Gloriavale

Mark Honeychurch - 15 August 2022

By which I mean I recommend watching a new documentary called “Gloriavale”, which focuses on the infamous religious group. I most definitely don't recommend converting to their religion and moving to the Gloriavale compound on the South Island. I went to a Film Festival viewing of the documentary yesterday, before general release to cinemas next week, and there was also a fascinating Question and Answer session afterwards with some of the filmmakers and subjects of the documentary. Here's the trailer:

Acupuncturists taking advantage of ACC claims

Daniel Ryan - 15 August 2022

One of the more controversial treatments the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) currently pays out for is acupuncture. This is controversial partly because of the lack of clinical evidence for acupuncture's efficacy, a fact that ACC has admitted in a past meeting.

NASA to investigate UAPs - what are they, and are they real?

Mark Honeychurch - 15 August 2022

NASA recently held a press teleconference where they announced that they will be investigating UAPs - Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This is a new term being used instead of UFOs, given that UFO suffers from both not being very descriptive (Unidentified things people see in the sky might not be Flying, and they might not be Objects - planets, clouds and aurora are often mistakenly thought to be mysterious objects, but none of them are flying; and the Northern and Southern aurora aren't objects, just cool light shows caused by solar particles), and having a lot of baggage attached to it - when people read UFO, they instantly think aliens. Here's NASA announcing their project:

In the shadows of the (Highden) Temple

Bronwyn Rideout - 15 August 2022

Before you read further, I want to make it clear that this article is in no way an indictment about the sexual activities of consenting adults, or casting any aspersions or judgement on sex work. Instead, I am taking a surface view of some current controversies where the absence of effective mechanisms to address accusations levelled at ISTA are embedded in its foundation.