If you search the word ‘parapolitics’ in the website of the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, the query will throw no results. Doing the same on Google first finds an old political scandal involving the Colombian paramilitary forces.
The truth is the term was (probably) coined by the late Peter Dale Scott as a way to describe the obscured inner workings behind political developments and historical events, which transpire beneath the surface of public perception. Nowadays that kind of investigative journalism is derided with the ‘weaponized’ term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ by mainstream media. Ironically enough, those same mainstream outlets are seeing their Monopoly of Truth severely eroded by alternative news websites which are favored by the younger audience.
These alt-news digital sites owe a huge debt to the analog zines of prior decades, which relied on such things as ‘snail mail’, carbon paper and photocopiers –Google those, kids!– to allow the dissenting writing of their authors reach a small yet-faithful readership. Standing tall above many of those raw publications was Steamshovel Press, the brainchild of Kenn Thomas –who has also distinguished himself for his books involving the grandaddy of all conspiracy theories: The JFK assassination– and which saw the contributions of writers like Jim Keith, Alan Cantwell, Alexandra ‘Chica’ Bruce and, of course, my dear friend Greg Bishop, who for a while also ran his own ‘zine’ called The Excluded Middle (Greg has also contributed for our own Darklore Anthology with an essay about his late friend Dr. Mario Pazzaglini, a clinical psychologist who was greatly interested in the subject of ‘alien writing’).
After some years of trying to adapt to the new digital frontier of the World Wide Web, many of the old ‘zines went the way of the dodo. Same was true with Steamshovel Press, but now comes the news that Kenn Thomas is re-launching the publication with the help of Olav Phillips as the new publisher, both as a Kindle version AND a hard copy made with real paper and color illustrations, which will certainly appeal those of us who still have a fetish for paper and the smell of fresh ink.
Steamshovel Press Issue 24 features:
- Ezekiel’s Wheel within a Wheel Revealed
- Ti West, Jownstown and the Big Lie
- Publish and Perish: The Mysterious Body Count of UFOlogy and the Darker Side of Conspiracy Research
- Kerry Thornley’s FBI Files
- Pulling the Cosmic Trigger: The Contact Experiences of Philip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson
- The Devil and Dr. Perry
- ET Go Home: Let’s Retire the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis
- An Interview with S. Miles Lewis
- The Legacy of John Judge
- Transhumanism: The Wingmakers Perspective
- The 9-9 Phone Intercepts and the 9-11 War Games
Some of the articles, like ET Go Home –written by Greg Bishop– can be read for free online. Here’s a little excerpt which no doubt will make a few heads in MUFON spin out of control:
The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis or ETH as it is known, is a viable, logical theory, but does not account for all the data, and if you are looking for a hypothesis that stands up to objective scrutiny, you must let the theory fit the data and not the other way around. Unbeknownst to most UFO fans and luminaries, there are relatively new ideas in physics (known collectively as “m-brane” theory) that actually support the idea that beings can travel almost instantaneously to the Earth from distant planets, but they are only theories with no experimental evidence as yet to back them up, and once again, they do not fit much of the reported data spanning decades or centuries, at least not in any way that makes logical sense.
Full steam ahead! Next stop: Conspiracy Station.
- Steamshovel Press new website
- [UPDATE]: To download the FREE pdf version of the latest magazine issue, click here
