Book Review: EXILE by J. Phelan

TOPICS:Janet Phelan Katherine Hine

August 12, 2016

By Katherine Hine

From its opening words of dedication, Janet Phelan’s EXILE hooks the reader with her intuitive grasp of the work’s place in history as she warns those of us awake enough to question the American Dream:

To the ones who came before, in gratitude And to the ones who will come after, so that you may know the magnitude.

From this point on Phelan takes the reader on a terrifying early millennium roller-coaster ride through a series of bizarre, seemingly coordinated attacks in some five countries – a ride she barely manages to survive.
Delivering on the widely acknowledged promise of her writing, Phelan produces another spellbinding work of investigative journalism, this time meticulously woven into memoir and punctuated by poetry. Despite exhausting struggles to survive brutalities that seriously threaten her and her mother’s lives, Phelan’s passion for the subject at no point diminishes her ever-present journalistic integrity – well supported by website references and a series of exhibits at the end of the book. The title “Exile” may evoke ambivalence in the growing numbers of North Americans who are fleeing the late, great “land of the free and home of the brave” to seek safety and sanity, if not liberty exactly, outside the U.S. Those contemplating such a dire step may call themselves emigrants but when such a move is made only as a last resort it may more accurately be considered exile.

The account begins with a police officer’s betrayal packaged as collaboration, which then seamlessly unfolds into the main course to explain the context of that betrayal. Phelan’s descriptions of the naiveté of her earlier self are sure to grip the reader with a stab of recognition as Phelan’s younger self initially silences her inner warning voice [p. 17]. This resonance is particularly acute as she deals with a man she does not know is playing a role – government operative/love interest Jack Smith. Over the course of the book we learn a bit of how, through repeated betrayals tucked away in a culture of pretty lies and inverted values, we have learned to not recognize what is wrong, to not protect ourselves, and to believe ourselves helpless.

Intertwining Threads

As the reader becomes immersed in Phelan’s edginess about the new arrival in her life, Jack Smith, she is injured in a traffic “accident”. The police pronounce the collision to be her fault and leave her at the scene with a bleeding head wound and no one to see her home. Even her neurologist repeatedly denies Phelan an appointment. When she seeks help at a local hospital emergency room she is surprised to be kept waiting some ten hours and politely asks for assistance. That assistance takes the form of a 250 pound attendant wielding a large syringe who attacks Phelan with it. When she awakens in a psychiatric lockup, she is told it was all a “mistake.” [pp. 20-21] Indeed. As Phelan later observes:

The normal supportive functions of society were being removed from my life. [p. 21]

Still weighed down from not receiving expected help for her injuries, Phelan faces the vague menace from her inner circle –“Jack Smith,” a man with no history prior to the 1990s, and her sister, Judy, a person “not bound by normal restraints” [p. 29] and known to kill the family pets and steal from their parents. [p. 30]

Just as the reader engages with the growing sense of foreboding close to home, a more external threat emerges – the now notorious “Elder Cleanse” guardian Melodie Scott [www.fiduciary.ca.gov/public/pf-545_2016_06_01_rev.pdf], then known as “the richest and most powerful conservator in California.” [p. 39]. Following an injury apparently inflicted upon their mother Amalie by Phelan’s sister Judy, Amalie falls prey to Scott and her partner in crime, attorney David Horspool. [p. 40] Scott initiates the typical predatory guardian attacks on Amalie’s wealth, including the use of force to isolate her from Phelan. Step by step Scott’s thievery and sequestering of Amalie would prove to be fatal to Amalie and to the plans she had made for Phelan to have any kind of financial security. Like so many elderly and other vulnerables targeted for predatory guardianship, Amalie had no need of a conservator, and would remain fully cognizant of all the crimes Scott was perpetrating on her, just as she remained alert to Phelan’s love and considerable but ultimately futile efforts to save her. Depleted financially and undermined by Judy’s collusion with Scott, Phelan finds she is no match for their combined criminality, all backed by those in the probate system who call themselves the judiciary.
As Phelan walks us through the parallel realities of a system turned upside down, some of this is familiar –The New Normal. Acts of evil are now described as good – and in need of defense. When Scott is caught cleaning out artwork and jewelry from Phelan’s parents’ home, it is Scott who claims outrage – and vengeance – for having to suffer Phelan’s interferences with her thievery.[Ex. 2] Yet Scott’s seizure of the perfectly competent Amalie, even when it results in evidence of life-threatening medical neglect [p. 55], generates no sanctions in California’s topsy-turvy probate system. That system instead uses restraining orders to sabotage the efforts of Phelan simply to get her mother medical treatment [p. 57] or to report her abuse to the designated “authorities” [p. 69]. In the surreal world of probate court and predatory guardianship, acts of benevolence and love for one’s parent are now deemed illegal and subject to restraining orders if not prosecution. [http://www.activistpost.com/tag/katherine-hine] Phelan discovers, as has this reviewer, that those we expect to provide help or at least accountability offer nothing of the sort. Not the touted “human rights” attorneys [p. 50], not the initially friendly politicians Boxer and Feinstein [p.129], not the California Attorney General or its DOJ., not Dennis Kucunich, nor Ron Paul. [pp. 129-130] Not surprisingly there was also no help to be had from Reporters Without Borders [p. 275], now known to be on the U.S. State Department payroll [www.counterpunch.org/2005/05/17/reporters-without-borders-unmasked/].What we call “law enforcement” becomes for Phelan, as for many of us, another dead end or worse. When Jack assaults her, they arrest him but the charges mysteriously disappear.[pp. 67-69]
The more Phelan struggles against the injustices of probate “court”, the more hostile the rest of her world becomes. Phelan’s house begins to burn as she sleeps. [p. 72] Her paperwork about the guardianship begins to disappear. Her home is repeatedly ransacked and drugs are planted there. [pp. 73-74] Phelan barely escapes arrest for this well known form of entrapment. She finds herself suddenly treated differently – sometimes violently – in public places where she had once been welcomed, or at least safe. [pp. 130-131] As too many of us have already experienced, “law enforcement” no longer take reports if they do not wish to. They tend to prefer targeting the citizen bringing in the complaint. At one crucial juncture law enforcement officers maneuver Phelan into a squad car where they gas her and tell her she is about to die. [p. 107] They take her to a place where she is injected, waking up days later in some sort of psychiatric lockup – complete with a roommate wearing brass knuckles. [p. 112] Phelan would later find by x-ray that she was chipped during that period of unconsciousness.[p.157] Her quick wits enable her to survive this round of weaponized psychiatry, but when efforts to find new housing go south, she is forced onto the streets where she learns to overcome the hazards of homelessness.
She tries homelessness in different states and encounters others who help change her paradigm but also finds out that a hit has been put out on her. Phelan finds herself repeatedly attacked with chemical weapons. Some “suits had come around offering” 10K to other homeless people should she be found dead. No reason given. Later the reward would go up to 50K. [p. 195] Many who would befriend her shrink back. Others offer only manipulation and deceit. She learns to recognize who is who.
At several points Phelan flees the country – once to Israel. When robbed re-entering Mexico from Guatemala she asks simply to be deported to California, but is instead again detained, this time for over a month. Overt life-threatening events from seemingly multiple sources continue – too many to elaborate – and they happen outside of the U.S. as well as inside it.
As Phelan learns to survive on the streets, she continues to be plagued by Scott and Judy’s joint plunder of Amalie’s estate and sabotage of her right to see her mother, whose death they finally succeed in bringing about. Each contact with the “court” system results in something worse. As her writing career takes off and she nears the end of homelessness in 2006, she becomes wise enough that when approached by a police officer in California wearing Hazmat gloves while handling her passport, she knows to wash off whatever he wiped on it. [p. 209]
Through an ambivalent “friend” Phelan finds what seems to be a safe place to live – in Oregon. Later the entire town where she moves is sprayed [p. 218] – this in addition to the chem trails we all experience as the “new normal.”
As Phelan becomes increasingly traumatized and uprooted, she shows her true mettle as a survivor, backed by the guiding spirits of both parents. Little by little she makes a name for herself exposing police brutality cover-ups via Internal Affairs boards [http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/01/385516.shtml], municipal water line blueprints showing alternative delivery systems [http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2007/05/10214.php], and, more recently, attacks on first world journalists. [http://journal-neo.org/2013/12/18/persecution-of-first-world-journalists-ignored-by-human-rights-agencies/]. In 2011, Phelan presents at a review conference of the U.N.’s Biological Weapons Convention [BWC] in Geneva, Switzerland and she reveals what others will not – the probable location of some of the stockpiles and the significance of Sec. 817 of the U.S. Patriot Act, enacted in violation of its responsibilities under U.N. conventions seeking to protect human rights, including the BWC. Phelan’s presentation summarizes the methods by which the U.S. continues to perpetrate human rights abuses, specifically demonstrating to the U.N. body and the world how the U.S. is “engaged in an offensive bio weapons program” [p. 260] and believes itself capable of doing so with impunity, according to Sec. 817.

Epilogue:

The Epilogue draws conclusions some might feel are unwarranted from the evidence presented. To avoid mixing cause with effect the reader should not miss the fact that Phelan had not been a typical target at the time Jack Smith was placed into her world. She was not a whistleblower or even a controversial figure at the beginning of the attacks. Her conclusion that certain select groups have been genetically pre-selected is well supported throughout the book and in 20th and 21st Century history. There is plausible evidence that simply by being Jewish, both Phelan and Amalie could have been included in such a genetically pre-selected group targeted for the de-population agenda. However her father, investigative journalist Jim Phelan, did happen to be a controversial and effective whistleblower.[pp.33-34] Given the underworld dogma that counsels serving up of revenge as a cold dish, nothing could be more cold than visiting the “sins” of the father onto the next generation. Then again, for those for whom murder and hatred are a way of life, perhaps any reason is sufficient – or no reason at all.
The answers to the issues we have good reason to know exist are no doubt multi-faceted. Exile devotes some attention to many of them – corporate plunder in the form of predatory probate “courts”, decades long chemical and biological attacks on our food supply, the terrorism of the psychiatric/pharmaceutical/prison/industrial complex police state, the unending wars, the mass incarcerations, and the fascination with the population’s every move, communication and genome, and the whistleblowers who warn us. All roads seem to lead to the genocide Phelan and others warn us is on the horizon. Genocide has historically been introduced by limiting the opening attacks to groups who are already despised, as Hitler did with the Jews, Communists and gypsies. Exile provides ample support in its Epilogue for the conclusions Phelan reaches to explain the elaborate lengths some entity or entities had to have gone to implement the relentless campaign she continues to have to resist. If ever there are to be answers for us at this time in history, it behooves us all to follow Janet Phelan’s relentless search for a truth that has eluded humanity throughout its intractable struggle to remove the boot from its neck.
An inactive attorney who practiced over 30 years in the courts of Oklahoma and Ohio, Katherine Hine is now with WLJA radio: www.wljaradio.net, hosting weekly broadcasts exposing illegalities of forced psychiatry in Ohio and the consequences of our current lack of judicial accountability. She continues to serve as executive director of the Ross County Network for Children in Ohio, was instrumental in 2008-2009 in helping rid the City of Chillicothe, Ohio of its traffic cameras through citizen initiative, has authored articles critical of forced psychiatry in the Columbus Free Press and one article addressing retaliation in the treatise: Expose: The Failure of Family Courts to Protect Children. She can be reached at katherinehine@wljaradio.net.
2014; Pub: BookPatch.com; ISBN: 1620309572, 9781620309575
Price: $15.99
348 pages, book size: 6” x 9”
Other books/J. Phelan:  Held Captive – pub. 2016, The Hitler Poems – pub. 2005