On December 20, 2006, the world was stunned to learn that a talk-radio show promoting McFengshui (which denies the validity of the techniques and history of authentic feng shui) had become one of the most powerful interrogation tools used against high value detainees in the War on Terror.

A Pentagon leak detailed the program’s success rate when applied to detainees in extraordinary rendition, and expressed interest in tapes of the “other fascinating fields” the show covers.

“Brain-dissolving ability”

“The Emy Louie Show,” broadcast live every Tuesday at 9am EST (6am PST) on the 7th Wave Network, is generally dismissed as ear candy for people who can’t think critically. But in a prepared statement, a National Security Agency (NSA) spokesdroid acknowledged that NSA eavesdroppers quickly realized its “brain-dissolving ability” could potentially be more useful than waterboarding.

Skeptical interrogators were stunned by how quickly detainees began giving them information after listening to just two shows. “Dude, those Louie shows are so f**n moronic they make me puke, but they work way better than everything else!” enthused one official, who asked to remain anonymous because his mother would not approve of his foul language.

Making the best of interrogation

Emy Louie, who markets herself as “an acclaimed feng shui architect,” hosts the hour-long McFengshui love-fest. Attempts to contact her for comment (using intentions, affirmations and crystals) were not successful.

However, in a publicist’s statement that paid homage to the grammatical greatness of Fearless Leader GW “Shrub” Bush, Louie said that she was “proud to have been chosen to be a part of the 7th Wave Network.” She promised detainees that their listening experience would “help them make the best of” their interrogation sessions, because the programs include relentless propaganda and products forced on “their mind, body, and spirit.”

The publicist’s statement includes Louie confessing the McFengshui Creed (developed by Lin Yun) which states that Feng Shui began in China

over four thousand years ago, [and] is the ancient art of placement that strives to create positive energy flow and harmony in one’s environment.

When asked for comment, spokespeople for traditional feng shui derided Louie’s public admission of faith. They offered a link to a web page with facts about the real meaning of feng shui.

Moving to the Helpful Friends sector

For the first interrogation, detainees must listen to “trend-setting feng shui masters” Denise Linn, Karen Kingston, and Terah Kathryn Collins. (Trend-setting is a code phrase in the McFengshui religion that means people invent concepts and sell them as ancient wisdom.)

A typical Louie broadcast also includes experts that support the McFengshui worldview and undermine a detainee’s perceptions of reality. On the first show, Sam Gosling (U Texas-Austin, Psychology) talked about his research for the journal Environment and Behavior. He introduced his “residue theory” of personal spaces, and the Personal Living Space Cue Inventory (PLSCI), “designed to document comprehensively features of personal living spaces.”

Gosling’s concepts and abbreviations are ideally suited to enhancing the bank accounts of McFengshui practitioners and the susceptibilities of sleep-deprived detainees. According to reports, at the end of the first session a sobbing detainee is returned to their cell, where they find a packet of red dots and a diagram of the McFengshui Bagua. By the second session, detainees plead with guards to stop playing tapes of the shows in exchange for information.

When pressed for comment, spokespeople for traditional feng shui laughed and said that based on the government’s use of the show in the War on Terror, the Arctic would freeze solid before McFengshui believers would acknowledge reality.