A mishmash of informed snark, piquant opinions, refined nastiness, occasional schmaltz, & tawdry graphics, served up continuously since 2006 by COSMIC CONNIE, aka CONNIE L. SCHMIDT. Covering New-Age/New-Wage culture & crapitalism, pop spirituality & religion, pop psychology, self(ish)-help, alt-health hucksterism, conspiranoia, business babble, media silliness, Scamworld, politix, & related (or occasionally unrelated) matters of consequence.
Today, believe it or not, is the ninth (9th)
blogaversary of Whirled Musings. I imagine that some are either
surprised or disappointed that this little outpost of the
blogopshere is still whirling. Indeed, its failure to die is not
from lack of effort on the part of some of the forces of evil in
Scamworld. Most notably: the stupid, evil, psychopathic little prick
who unsuccessfully sued me earlier this year.
But I'm still blogging. The orbit of my Whirled has been a little
wobbly of late but it's still spinning. (And the above image was brought to you courtesy of a Google Images search result for Whirled Musings.)
I will have more Kevin Trudeau court docs to share soon, as well
as other news about other scammers. And I'll get to that, slowly
but surely, as I work to address some of the other Matters of
Consequence with which I have been concerned for the past several
months.
For now, I thank you once again for your support of this blog
over its nine years (and counting!) of existence. And if you're
wondering what to give a nine-year-old who has everything but
money, there's always that "Donate" button at the upper
left hand side of the Web version of this Whirled. Every little
bit helps. Thanks!
Six years ago today, on July 25, 2009, Colleen Conaway died at a San
Diego mall during a seminar hosted by James Arthur Ray, the infamous
star of The Secret and now a convicted killer (though he
was convicted, and served a much-too-short prison sentence, for the deaths of three other people in Sedona, Arizona in October of 2009).
Reportedly Ray, who had a history of recklessness and arrogance where his followers are concerned, has paid civil
penalties for Colleen's death, but he has never been charged,
tried, or convicted on any criminal charges for same, and more
than likely never will be. And since his release from prison a little over two years ago, after serving time for the Sedona "sweat
lodge" deaths of James Shore, Kirby Brown, and Liz Neuman,
he has been making lame attempts to become the selfish-help star
he used to be. Not surprisingly he has been exploiting the deaths
of his followers, and his own time in prison, as something of a hero's
journey (with himself as the hero, of course).
In 2009, after rising to the top of his
industry, James was involved in a terrible accident that
claimed the lives of three people he cared about deeply. The
anguish of that event would have been enough… but it didn’t
end there.
James subsequently lost his business that took 20 years to
build, his entire life savings, his home, his reputation and
many so-called friends and colleagues deserted him.
Simultaneously, his Mother was diagnosed with cancer, his
Father with dementia…James eventually lost his freedom.
Through all of this, James states, “In the process of
losing everything…I actually found myself.”
His experience proves that it’s the challenges,
difficulties and austerities of life that we reset ourselves,
reboot, reassess and realize once again what’s truly
important. It’s our challenges and crisis that present the
greatest opportunities if we’re only willing to utilize
them in that way.
Of course, Colleen is not among those
"three people" whose lives were claimed in the
aforementioned "accident." She rates no mention at all in Death Ray's world, apparently.
Colleen may have been all but forgotten by many, but some of us
will never forget. My heart goes out to her family and friends on
this sad anniversary.
I'm on the run right now but just wanted to pop on to the Whirled to announce, in case you haven't already heard, that serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, will be the star tonight of a long awaited American Greed episode on CNBC. Here's the link to an extended preview.
And if you want to find out more about what it was like to be a member of Katie's biggest scam of all, the Global Information Network (GIN), and to have invested a lot of money for no return, read my friend John Foster's book, Kevin Trudeau's Roadkill Victims He Doesn't Want You to Know About. John was a founding member of GIN and a member of Katie's "Inner Circle," and like virtually every other GIN member who invested anything, he got royally screwed. Here's a link to the Smashwords page for John's book. In related news, more court docs have become available and I'll share those soon (or you can hop onto PACER and get them yourself). Included among these are various orders concerning the refunds due to the purchasers of Katie's diet book -- the book whose infomercials helped to land him in prison. The FTC wants to start doling out the dough.
But meanwhile you can read another long awaited piece of content, the receiver Robb Evans' latest "Forensic Accounting Report." No big surprises in this 400-plus page tome; clearly, Katie has been cleverly hiding his money while playing the role of the poor imprisoned pauper ("the Receiver cannot state with certainty that it has located all of Trudeau's assets and revenue generated by Trudeau and the Trudeau Entities because of numerous obstacles the Receiver faced...") ... but here's the info anyway. More soon!
