Konformist Book Club: Steamshovel Press Special

SteamhovelPress.com:

POPULAR PARAPOLITICS
NEW E-BOOK!
BY KENN THOMAS

219 pages of commentary on the nexus between parapolitics and popular culture by Steamshovel Press editor Kenn Thomas. Includes first hand accounts of Elvis Presley's funeral; the last of the great Beat writer conferences; and never before published commentary by JFK Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden on famed researcher Sherman Skolnick.

Now available only on CD, as PDF, and through US Mail. $15 post paid to Kenn Thomas, POB 210553, St. Louis, MO 63121.

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THE NEW ISSUE AND NEW RELATED DVDs
http://steamshovelpress.com/new_order_form.html

Steamshovel Press # 23
All conspiracy. No theory.

CONTENTS INCLUDE:

Charles Fort: Dogma be Damned by Skylaire Alfvegren; Southern California, Cult Mecca, by Adam Gorightly; Parapolitics in Popular Culture: The Prisoner by Kenn Thomas; Notes on Conspiracy Theories, by Jim Keith; Correspondence with Jim Keith; Freeplay Excerpted by Len Bracken; Short Shrift: Beatnix and Comix by Kenn Thomas; Caries, Cabals & Correspondence with X. Sharks DeSpot; Robert Anton Wilson RIP; The O’Reilly Factor In The JFK Assassination by Bill Kelly; Dark Matters by James Romberger.
PDF: $7; PRINT OUT: $10; SUBSCRIPTIONS: $25. Be sure to include e-mail address with order. All checks payable to “Kenn Thomas” at POB 210553, St. Louis, MO 63121


New Steamshovel Press DVDs now available!


Kenn Thomas at Conspiracy Con,
San Jose, CA, May 2007

Moving beyond the confines of 9/11, Thomas reviews the current parapolitics around the globe, starting with the assassination-by-polonium-poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, through the Valerie Plame spy scandal, to the remaining mysteries of the Trade Towers' destruction. "Parapolitics is activity that happens alongside the normal politics people read in the papers and see on TV, not instead of it," explains Thomas. "It's not just a matter of saying that the media just lies and that the Bush baddies are responsible--although gawd knows that's true. We ignore the conspiracies that exist in the wider world, such as global jihad and the assassinations that culminated with Litvinenko, at our peril." This lecture will put these other global conspiracies in the context of what's happening in America. Also includes a tribute to the late author of Illuminatus!, Robert Anton Wilson, including rare footage. 1 hour DVD, $10


Arthur Koestler On Bisociation

Rare footage of famed author of Thirteenth Tribe, Sleepwalkers, Ghost in the Machine and Case of the Midwife Toad, discussing creativity. Koestler explains and demonstrate! s "bisociation", a term Robert Anton Wilson applied to the stud y parapolitics and conspiracy. 30 Minute DVD, $5


PARAPOLITICS, THE VIDEO
90 minute DVD, $10
Television appearances discussing the bug bombs of Korea, JFK Jr., Jimmy Hoffa, Marilyn Monroe; and the parapresidency. Includes footage of the late Jim Keith, author of Saucers of the Illuminati and Mind Control/World Control. ALSO: a rare interview with Christ Conspiracy author Acharya S and paranormalist writer Skylaire Alfvegren’s appearance on the unaired TV pilot, Conspiracy Zone discussing the moon hoax.


KENN THOMAS ON CONSPIRACY
90 minute DVD, $10

Steamshovel editor’s television appearances and lecture footage, including a news report on the UFO he witnessed at Area 51; a roundtable discussion from the Fox network on the JFK assassination, the Y2K affair, global surveillance and conspiracy theory; lectures on the Maury Island UFO and UFO researcher deaths; and the Octopus.


Now available as PDF exclusively from Steamshovel!

PARAPOLITICS BY KENN THOMAS

Join Steamshovel Press editor Kenn Thomas as he tracks parapolitics—aka conspiracy theory—in the 21st Century. Thomas has traveled and lectured about conspiracies throughout America for the past decade, appearing in the major media as the sharpest critic of the consensus view of current affairs. From the Kennedy assassination to 9/11, Thomas examines the underlying parapolitics that animate the secret elites and the war ravaged planet they manipulate. Parapolitics collects Thomas' lecture remarks, interviews, correspondence and articles printed in the underground press from around the world. PDF only, $20 (via disk or supply e-mail address)

Steamshovel Press #23 print out, $10

Steamshovel Press #23 PDF, $7

Kenn Thomas at Conspiracy Con DVD, $10

Arthur Koestler on Bisociation DVD, $5

Parapolitics the Video DVD, $10

Kenn Thomas on Conspiracy DVD, $10

Parapolitics The Book PDF, $10

All of the above discount, $50

All checks payable to “Kenn Thomas” (not “Steamshovel Press”) at
POB 210553
St. Louis, MO 63121

Please supply an e-mail address if ordering PDFs sent via internet. Otherwise, a CD will be sent.

NOTE: Steamshovel Press back issues 4 through 23 are available for $10 each. Photocopies will be supplied when actual issues are no longer available.

Are You a Konformist?

click to enlarge

From Humbug, Volume 1, No. 11, October 1958

Courtesy of Kenn Thomas of SteamshovelPress.com...

Photo of the Week

Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press & William S. Burroughs (well, sort of...)

Klassic Konformist

Acharya S, Kenn Thomas & Robalini in Laughlin, Nevada, late nineties...

Steamshovel Press Reviews

Kenn Thomas
SteamshovelPress.com

We laugh to keep from crying seems to be the lesson learned from The Sinister Truth, a graphic novel about MKULTRA. MKULTRA, of course, is the brainwashing program conducted by the CIA largely in secret although much has been learned about it since from declassified files. Researchers have poured over such things and produced much in terms of documenting and exposing this record of human abuse. Writer Jason Ciaccia and Aaron Norhanian have taken it in a different direction, as a satirical graphic novel. MKULTRA luminary Sidney Gottlieb appears as the first protagonist, a mad scientist rendered in Ralph Steadman like fashion, cavorting with hookers, making murderous chaos of laboratories, LSD drenched mania animating his every move. All the scenes of mayhem, of course, are accompanied by very neatly typed references to their corresponding government file or report. According to Sinister Truth it all started after Eisenhower snubbed Castro, forcing the Cuban dictator into the arms of Soviet Communism. Much of the Sinister Truth graphically depicts the various absurd assassination attempts against the Cuban dictator. The subject begs an even more thorough examination through such gallows humor and sick comedy-the roots of MKULTRA trace back to back engineering North Korea's brainwashing of American pilots and that could make a volume in and of itself. The creators state that their research involves over 18,000 recently declassified CIA File. Surely this is a cause for a multi volume series!

http://www.sinistertruth.com/

Prison remediation activists have produced It’s More Expensive To No Nothing, a DVD documentary about the effect of the rehabilitation programs behind bars. Steamshovel receives a lot of mail from prisoners in part because it presents points of view that differ from the mainstream which has an ideational center that many prisoners have long since departed. Reasons for this include unjust incarceration in some instances, in other instance prisoners seek to more to affirm the dissenting view of the world that led to criminal behavior; and, of course, many are just bored with whatever copies of Time and Newsweek the prisons leave out for reading purposes. It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing points out the cost advantage of remedial programs--$5000 for rehabbing as opposed to the $75,000 it costs to keep someone in prison for a year. Much often is said about many prisoners being exactly where they want to be—Charles Mansion often offered as the prime example, and with these figures that becomes easier to understand. So in a way this documentary exposes a prisoner scam; but, of course, in a more important way it makes a common sense argument about retraining and release, especially for nonviolent first offenders. Ordering Steamshovel in prison can be the first step in literacy retraining, one that allows for intellectual self-respect—that is, literacy as a gathering of intelligence rather than acquiescence to the status quo. There are hardball realities to face, though: many prions reject material that has even simple urse words—in one case, a book was returned that had a small amount of public hair appearing in a photo—and the outsourcing of prison maintenance to groups like Wackenhut ensure via competition that the prison industry will continue to be grown. Nevertheless, this documentary leads the way to the glimmer of hope that still resides within the locked up readership.

Contact: polly@humaneexposures.com

Westholme Publishing reprinted The Flying Saucer as part of its “America Reads” program, designed to present long forgotten fiction from various times in American history, although the fiction all seems British. The other two immediate volumes include Limbo, about cyborgs trying to takeover and replace human limbs; and One, a 1984-like examination of state suppression of individuality. These other two belong solidly in the science fiction camp. As the first novel to ever use the term “Flying Saucer” in its title, however, and coming so close to that first post-War wave of sightings that included Kenneth Arnold and Maury Island, the type of fiction represented by The Flying Saucer brings it a step closer to reality as actually experienced rather than speculated about. UK author and historian Bernard Newman has the first of the “saucers”--described actually as rockets--come down in Leicestshire but by chapter three has natives discovering them in the American southwest. It’s not a real alien threat, however, only a group of scientists staging crashes in order to unite world political factions, a la the sentiment expressed in the time of the novel by Douglas MacArthur and much later by Ronald Reagan. Unite the world behind a common threat from space, only here the threat includes depriving the earth of its gold. Saucer hysteria and parapolitical paranoia played out in prose contemporary to the day, without the filter of all the science-fiction excesses that came after and with some humor.

info@westholmepublishing.com

Peter Gersten, 2012

Kenn Thomas
SteamShovelpress.com

Already amused and a bit disgusted that "Skeptical Inquirer" would devote an issue to attacking people skeptical of the official view of 9/11, I became a little more disgusted than amused that it spent four pages trying to goad on what it expects to be Peter Gersten's suicide. Gersten, an FOIA champ from way back who liberated UFO files, expects to leap into some kind of space-time portal during Winter Solstice in 2012 from Bell Rock in Sedona, AZ. Writer Robert Scheaffer mocks and makes fun of the 69 year old's rationale the bottom line of which is "in March 2012 I will reach 70 years of age...I think then it will then be time for me to move on."

Sheaffer doesn't concern himself with issues involving what Arthur Koestler called "self-delivery"--picking and choosing one's own time and place of expiration. Rather he reviews Gersten's colorful interpretation of coming celestial alignments, and in that "aren't I a good astronomer" style of SI, pretending that Gersten and his simpaticos are merely ignorant and confused by pseudo-science.

Apparently Gersten even engaged Scheffer a bit via blogs:

http://badufos.blogspot.com/2011/02/2012-peter-gerstens-leap-of-faith.html

In the latest SI, however, Sheaffer does his best to embarrass Gersten with astronomical analytic superiority. Despite claiming that he hopes Gersten "acquires some common sense" before his leap, nothing of Sheaffer's tone suggests he's trying to talk sense to Gersten."...there's nothing more for any rational person to say," and if the reader gets worked up, he's "going to feel rather silly about it", the writer concludes. "At least I would." And it is, of course, all about him.

Gersten's Freedom of Information Act requests culminated in great research. Geresten was the lawyer for CAUS, Citizens Against UFO Secrecy. Scheaffer starts under-playing the value of Gersten's work, claiming that little in the files he uncovered "wasn't already known" and pointing out that the government also withheld much. This isn't a cover-up says Scheaffer because there were reasons -- the US didn't want Cuba to learn how it listened in on one of its pilots, for instance. Um, to paraphrase Noam Chomsky, there are always "reasons". Readers can only assume that if the government has a reason for withholding information about 9/11, Skeptical Inquirer would be wiggy with that. So what does that do to the premise of this entire issue?

Steamshovel Press Update

Kenn Thomas
SteamshovelPress.com

Steamshovel Press is spending this week trying to get out to more people everything it produced last week. This includes the following web site/blog editorials/blogs:

At Silver Screen Saucers:
http://silverscreensaucers.blogspot.com/

At Skylaire Alfvegren’s LOWFI Fortean site:
http://forteanswest.com/lowfiguesteditorial-KennThomas0711.php

Recent audio interviews with Steamshovel’s Kenn Thomas appear here:

Two with Whitley Strieber:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/dreamland/jfk-ufo-connection
http://www.unknowncountry.com/special/kennedy-ufos-and-masters-deception

On Greg Bishops’s Radio Misterioso:
http://radiomisterioso.com/tag/kenn-thomas/

On The Paracast:
http://www.theparacast.com/?s=Kenn+Thomas

And “Long Overdue Book Reviews” have been appearing at steamshovelpress.com, along with the “Parapolitics Offhand”.
The current “product line” includes: the flagship book, JFK & UFO; the new PDF offering, Popular Parapolitics; the DVD of Tim Leary w/Kenn Thomas, Café Chaos; and a back issue special. Plus a new intro by Kenn Thomas appears in the recent re-issue of Jim Keith’s Casebook on the Men in Black and an article on Nazis UFOs by Kenn appears in Tim Beckley’s Round Trip to Hell In A Flying Saucer.

Steamshovel also has a new facebook account and a facebook page. Go check it out, “like” it and recommend it to others.

So have fun with all that! Direct any feedback to Steamshovel’s new gmail addy:

SteamshovelPress@gmail.com