What led to this?
When taking back newspaper issue remainders to a recycling bin, I saw some other paper on top of material already in there. I knew it wasn't the nearby sub-daily, and at first thought it was the Snooze or the StartleGram.
So I pulled it out. Actually pulled two out.
And, voila! Two issues, from last December, of the E-pooch.
First, the price? $4.50! Thar's gold in them thar suckers that have been born every minute!
Second, page count? 48 for one, 36 for the other, unless I missed a section on it.
Ad hole? A whopping 1/8 of a page that wasn't house or semi-house (Falun Gong classes, or a book about Falun Gong, that might not be under direct control of E-pooch but probably pass on a cut — the Shen Yun dance troupe is direct Falun Gong) on the 48 pager and ZERO in the second.
And, there's no way that many $4.50 suckers exist to pick up the slack. So, what gives?
The NYT in 2020 said the paper — but mainly referring to its online presence, obviously — grew bigly by betting on Trump and Facebook. Betting on Hucksterman would do nothing to boost a print issue. (The NYT missed that it's also bet big on SEO flooding and botting. If most of the top returns on DuckDuckGo are its own, I can bet what Google looks like.)
So, does founder Li Hongzhi have Daddy Warbucks money? Whether he does or not, he IS a fucking nutter:
In 1998 Li Hongzhi stated that he believes alien invaders walk the Earth and that modern science and race-mixing are part of their ploy to overtake humanity, and he has reportedly said that he can walk through walls and make himself invisible.
Even the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi didn't claim to be able to walk through walls like post-resurrection Jesus.
Moving beyond him, Wiki says Robert Mercer shoveled the funds in from 2012-2016. Interesting that he is shown as disappearing just as the bets on Trump start. Supposedly wealthy Falun Gong practitioners help today, though the NYT piece note that some editorial staff (and former) were upset by the Trump pivot and things connected to it.
Non-opinion editorial content, especially in the two issues I saw being Christmas week and the week before, seemed to promote old-fashioned small town America and Christmas spirit. Naturally, the Falun Gong cultural-religious DNA of a mashup of Buddhism (karma, the swastika symbol and other things from Buddhism's Indian roots), Daoism (the yin-yang) qigong (the exercises) and feng shui (the energy focuses, which could also be an appeal to Hindu chakras).
Bottom line? A unique version of pink slime self-foisted on top of a new religious movement. Not "news" other than it rerunning wire stories. Features, opinion, and religious propaganda.
