Skeptical News for 4 June 2001Skeptical News for 4 June 2001Archive of previous NTS Skeptical News listings
The Ghost's Vocabulary - 91.10
The Ghost's Vocabulary How the computer listens for Shakespeare's "voiceprint" by Edward Dolnick In 1842 literature and science met
with a thud. Alfred Tennyson had just published his poem "The Vision of Sin." Among the appreciative ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/...
EXCERPT......The machinery in place, Valenza and Elliott began by testing Shakespeare's poetry against that of thirty other writers.
Exciting results came quickly: The disputed "Shall I Die?" poem seemed not to be Shakespeare's after all. Three of the leading claimants
to Shakespeare's work--Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Sir Edward Dyer--were decisively ruled out. To Elliott's
good-humored consternation, the test dealt just as harshly with the claims put forward on behalf of the Earl of Oxford. Worse was to
follow. For even as this first round of tests ruled out the best-known Shakespeare candidates, it left a few surprising contenders. One
possibility for the "real" Shakespeare: Queen Elizabeth I. "That did it for our chance of appearing in Science," Elliott laments, "But it
vastly increased our chance of getting into the National Enquirer." (To his dismay, Elliott did find himself in Science, not as the
co-author of a weighty research paper but as the subject of a skeptical news brief with the headline "Did Queen Write Shakespeare's
Sonnets?")
The Case for Oxford - 91.10
The Case for Oxford by Tom Bethell Hamlet is derived from a story in Francois de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (1576), not yet
translated into English when Shakespeare adapted it. Shakespeare introduced new characters and greatly ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/beth.htm
Reply by Matus - 91.10
Tom Bethell's case for Oxford demonstrates once again that in the thousands of works on Shakespeare and his plays, something can be
found to support any notion. It also demonstrates that, as usual, Oxfordians must often resort to ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/...
Reply by Bethell - 91.10
... to mention Shakespeare doesn't concern me. I am pleased to hear that plays were classified as "riffraffs" by literary folk: this would
help to explain the use of a pseudonym by a play-writing nobleman. I agree that Shakespeare's ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/...
Looking For Shakespeare - 91.10
Looking For Shakespeare Two partisans explain and debate the authorship question. During the past two centuries doubts about the
identity of the author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare have brought a small cottage ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/...
Phoebe-Lou Adams Excerpts - 00.08 (Sidebar)
... professional cryptographers, have great fun with the rich and strange characters who have unearthed coded messages in
Shakespeare's plays, even while they demolish the alleged codes. November 1957 THE VANISHING EVANGELIST by Lately ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/08/plaexcerpts.htm
Looking For Shakespeare - 91.10
Looking For Shakespeare Two partisans explain and debate the authorship question. During the past two centuries doubts about the
identity of the author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare have brought a small cottage ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/...
The Case for Oxford - 91.10
... from a story in Francois de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (1576), not yet translated into English when Shakespeare adapted it.
Shakespeare introduced new characters and greatly enlarged the roles assigned to various characters ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/beth.htm
The Case for Shakespeare - 91.10
The Case for Shakespeare by Irvin Matus The new reading room of the Folger Shakespeare Library is dominated by a huge painting of
the sort that Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell might have characterized as being of "more than usually ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/shakes/matus.
It's a Jumble Out There - 00.09
... Atlantic Monthly and Atlantic Unbound. The Mynachlogddu-to-Stonehenge trek continues a long tradition of experimental
archaeology, with intrepid researchers exploring historical mysteries and putting speculative solutions to the ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/09/murphy.htm
The Diffusionists Have Landed - 00.01
... Related links: Archaeology & Ethnography A division of the National Park Service that "provides national coordination for the
protection, preservation, and interpretation of America's archeological and ethnographic resources." ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/01/001stengel.htm
The Atlantic | Apr 2001 | Letters to the Editors
... Goddess religion is not based on history, archaeology, or belief in any Great Goddess past or present. Our spirituality is based on
experience, on a direct relationship with the cycles of birth, growth, death, and regeneration in ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/04/letters.htm
http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/news/index.cfm?instanceid=12068
I've been following what the propents of artifical origin for the Face on Mars have been saying in light of the new NASA photographs.
At the moment, Richard Hoagland is the only one to make a comment (Van
Flandern
and Carlotto have no statement yet) and you can find it at
http://www.enterprisemission.com/about.htm
Much of the page rants about conspiracies and "political pressue" on NASA as well as casting doubts about the integrity of NASA. Hoagland does address the evidence but either distorts the findings or just ignores data that he doesn't like.
The new photograph is accompanied by data from MOLA (http://ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). MOLA is a laser altimeter used to map the surface of Mars. This data was combined with the photograph to produce a reasonably accurate picture of the Face (it actually is a mesa).
Hoagland dismisses the MOLA data with these paragraphs:
"The reality is that it is highly unlikely that any of us would recognize a picture of our own grandmother if it was stretched horizontally, flattened, compressed and shown upside down. So of course it doesn't look much like a Face. And there is one other major problem with NASA's argument. The MOLA instrument they are relying so much on has a resolution of 300 meters per pixel.
Or, to put it another way: NASA is basing its entire public "its just a hill" argument on a MOLA "image" that is six times worse than the
25-year-old Viking data! At that resolution, an object has to be about the size of baseball stadium to even show up. Frankly, trying to make their argument based on this "non-image" (which they still had to distort) is laughable ... and obviously desperate."
What is laughable is that Hoagland (or whoever wrote this) not only got the resolution for MOLA wrong, they also confused the horizontal resolution with the vertical resolution.The horizontal resoltion is 150 meteres per pixel. This is not great but MOLA can measure heights with an accuracy of +/- 30cm. This is the important bit of data that Hoagland ignores. Using the laser altimetry data (combined with the MGS images) we get a picture that has a resolution of 1.5m per pixel.
From what I have read of true believer reactions most have dismssed the findings as NASA can not be trusted, they nuked the original face of the photographs released are not of the same area imaged by Viking. The people engaging in covering up data and distorting the truth are not NASA. It is alleged experts such as Hoagland who gleefully will twist the data to suit their own ends.
To keep the myth that the "Face on Mars" is an artificial structure alive I suggest that the proponents cannot rely on fanciful convulted digital images to sustain their beliefs. The new data does put the issue to rest and only by ignoring it can Hoagland cope with it.
Shaun
Reports of UFO sightings are expected to rise over the next few weeks as the planet Mars passes close to the Earth. Astronomers expect many skywatchers to mistake the planet for some other unearthly body, as it will appear as a bright red light hovering over the tops of houses and trees.
On 13 June, Mars will be closer to the Earth than it has been for two years - close enough for the planet's polar ice caps to be seen through a small telescope.
You don't need a big telescope... to see one of the polar ice caps and dark patches on the planet
Society for Popular Astronomy
But leading astronomer Sir Patrick Moore says that although more visible, Mars will still be about 42 million miles away.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It will be nice and bright, low down in the sky after dark and it can look like a bright red star - and it normally sparks a new crop of flying saucers reports."
Michael Soper of Contact International, which researches and monitors UFO sightings, agreed there was a correlation between planet activity and unusual sightings, but he disputed that people could not tell the difference between the two.
He told BBC News Online: "The two do go together.
"But we do not expect there to be a boost in UFO sightings for another six months, which is linked to a rapid decline in the number of sun spots.
"The closeness of Mars used to produce more UFO sightings in the 1950s and 60s, but less so nowadays."
Mars lowdown
For astronomy buffs, the approaching Mars will appear quite low on the
horizon in the southern sky, between the constellations of Scorpius and
Sagittarius.
But a crystal clear night does not offer the best conditions for observing the planet, say experts.
Robin Scagell, vice president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, says slightly misty weather is better because it cancels out the shimmering effect caused by temperature differences.
Sir Patrick Moore: "UFO sightings expected"
He said: "You don't need a big telescope. A magnification of 40 or 50 will enable you to see one of the polar ice caps and dark patches on the planet.
"Mars really does look red, or rather a kind of salmon pink. It's caused by rusty dust. Mars has a lot of iron in its soil, which gives the whole planet this reddish colour."
For a really spectacular view of Mars, however, it is best to wait until August 2003.
Then the planet will be closer to the Earth than it has been for about 6,000 years - a mere 34.8 million miles.
The European Mars Express mission is due to be launched in 2003.
It will carry the mainly British Beagle II probe, which will land on the planet to search for evidence of water and other signs of life .
Jack Green from California State University thinks the lunar landscape shows evidence of volcanic activity.
He says although he's not expecting Godzilla to jump out of a crater, there may be early life forms on the moon.
He says past eruptions provided the ingredients needed for life and the subsequent deep-freeze will have preserved them.
Professor Green says early life forms could have been produced from the methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, water and sulphur provided during eruptions.
The best chances of finding life will be in the ice which is expected to be found in permanently shadowed areas of the moon, he says.
Professor Green told Space.com: "Those ices would last forever, it's so cold. I'm very careful and not saying Godzilla is going to jump out of a crater. I'm dealing with the most conservative protolife, the beginnings of life."
He was speaking at the US National Space Society's 20th Annual International Space Development conference in New Mexico.
See this story on the web at
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_309469.html
The European Space Agency is planning a major search for extraterrestrial life.
The initial research targets will be Mars, the Moon, Jupiter's moon Europa and a number of asteroids.
Its Aurora programme will search for evidence of life on Mars and prepare for future human space exploration there.
A mission to bring back samples from Mars will be one of the highest priorities.
The plan was announced at the first meeting of the European Exo and Astrobiology Network in Italy.
But if Aurora does become a full programme, the ESA will need up to $130 million (£90 million) a year to fund it.
See this story on the web at
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_309586.html
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. . . RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #724 . . ---May 10, 2001--- . . HEADLINES: . . FLUORIDATION: TIME FOR A SECOND LOOK? . . ========== . . Environmental Research Foundation . . P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 . . Fax (410) 263-8944; E-mail: erf@rachel.org . . ========== . . All back issues are available by E-mail: send E-mail to . . info@rachel.org with the single word HELP in the message. . . Back issues are also available from http://www.rachel.org. . . To start your own free subscription, send E-mail to . . listserv@lists.rachel.org with the words . . SUBSCRIBE RACHEL-NEWS YOUR FULL NAME in the message. . . The Rachel newsletter is now also available in Spanish; . . to learn how to subscribe in Spanish, send the word . . AYUDA in an E-mail message to info@rachel.org. .
FLUORIDATION: TIME FOR A SECOND LOOK?
by Paul, Ellen and Michael Connett*
In 1997 the union representing scientists, engineers and lawyers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., voted to support a California citizen initiative to stop fluoridation of public drinking water. In 1999 the union's vice-president released a paper explaining the union's opposition to fluoridation.[1]
Fluoridation is the practice of adding fluoride to the public water supply to reduce dental decay. U.S. fluoridation trials began in 1945 and by 1992 approximately 56% of the U.S. public received its water from fluoridated systems.[2]
Typically, fluoride-containing (or -generating) compounds are added to water to bring the level up to 1 milligram of fluoride ion per liter (1 part per million). In 1986 EPA set a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for fluoride in drinking water at 4 ppm.[3] The MCL was based on only one adverse health effect: skeletal fluorosis, a crippling bone disease.
Fluoridation of public water supplies has stirred passionate debate for over 50 years. Now new data is refining the debate. It appears that some of the early claims for fluoridation's benefits were inflated. In recent years tooth decay has declined in both fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities. In fact, the largest U.S. survey indicates that the benefit to fluoridated communities amounts to 0.6 fewer decayed tooth surfaces per child, which is less than one percent of the tooth surfaces in a child's mouth.[4]
The public health community justified medicating whole communities via public drinking water using certain arguments that recent research has now shown to be false. For example, in 1945 scientists believed that fluoride had to be swallowed to be effective. However, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has recently acknowledged that fluoride's mechanism of action is primarily topical, not systemic.[5] This means that you don't need to swallow fluoride to reap its tiny benefits.
A second early belief, now known to be false, is that fluoride is an essential nutrient. There is no evidence of any disease related to fluoride deficiency. Natural levels of fluoride in human milk (0.01 ppm) are approximately a hundred times less than baby formula reconstituted with fluoridated water.[6]
A third early belief was that dental fluorosis (a defect of the tooth enamel caused by fluoride's interference with the growing tooth) would occur in only about 10% of the children drinking water fluoridated at 1 ppm and would occur only in its mildest form. Today fluorosis occurs on two or more teeth in 30% of children in areas where the water is fluoridated, and not all in its mildest form.[7]
A fourth early belief was that 1 ppm fluoride in drinking water provided an ample margin of safety against toxic effects. Not only is there no safety margin for dental fluorosis but there is growing evidence that there may be no safety margin for changes to bone structure and impacts on the brain, thyroid, and other soft tissues, especially when it is coupled with nutrient deficiencies, particularly iodide.
THE EVIDENCE
1) In 1998 the results of a long-term, low-dose rat study were published.[8] Two groups of rats were exposed to two different kinds of fluoride at 1 ppm in distilled water. A third group received only distilled water. Amyloid deposits (associated with Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of dementia) were elevated in the brains of both fluoridated groups compared to the control group. The authors speculate that fluoride enables aluminum to cross the blood-brain barrier.
2) Millions of people in India and China suffer a crippling bone disease called skeletal fluorosis, caused by moderate to high natural levels of fluoride (1.5 to 9 ppm) in their water.[9] Skeletal fluorosis has several stages of severity, with the less severe being chronic joint pain. "Because some of the clinical symptoms mimic arthritis, the first two clinical phases of skeletal fluorosis could be easily misdiagnosed."[3] Arthritis is now at epidemic levels in the U.S. Fluoride's plausible contribution has been ignored, but needs to be taken seriously.
3) Since fluoridation began in 1945 our exposure to other sources of fluoride has increased substantially. These include processing food and beverages with fluoridated water; air pollution from fluoride emitting industries; pesticide residues; vitamins; and dental products. If 1 ppm in drinking water were the only source of fluoride, the average person would ingest 2 milligrams (mg) of fluoride each day, though some may get less because they use bottled water, or they drink less water than the average adult. In 1991, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) estimated that the range of exposure in communities with approximately 1 ppm fluoride in the water was 1.58 to 6.6 mg per day.[10]
4) The dose of 1.58 to 6.6 mg per day overlaps the dose found to depress the functioning of the human thyroid gland. At 2.27 to 4.54 mg/day, fluoride has been found to "completely relieve" the symptoms of hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid).[11] With fluoride's known capacity to depress thyroid activity, it seems that there may be a link between current fluoride consumption and the prevalence of hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid). More than twenty million people in the U.S. receive treatment for thyroid problems and many others are thought to go undiagnosed.[12]
5) Fluoride is a hormone disrupter. It mimics the action of many water-soluble hormones by interacting with G proteins, which transmit hormonal messages across cell membranes.[13] Additionally, fluoride accumulates in the pineal gland and may reduce melatonin production.[14]
6) Fluoride (50-75 mg per day) given to osteoporosis patients to strengthen bones has actually increased their rate of hip fractures.[15,16] Of 18 studies conducted since 1990, 10 have found an association between water fluoridation and hip fractures in the elderly.[17] According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR): "If this effect is confirmed, it would mean that hip fracture in the elderly replaces dental fluorosis in children as the most sensitive endpoint of fluoride exposure."[18] Hip fracture is not a minor problem: in the U.S. up to 50,000 people die each year of osteoporosis-related hip fractures.[19]
7) Some evidence suggests that fluoride causes bone cancer in male rats and perhaps in young men.[20, 21]
8) A recent report by the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility reviews studies showing that fluoride interferes with brain function in young animals and in children, reducing IQ.[22]
Most European countries have rejected fluoridation. Recognizing that there are simple and effective alternatives, they have applied the precautionary principle. Their children's teeth have not suffered as a consequence. Parents willing to expose their children to fluoride can simply purchase fluoridated toothpaste (which contains 1000 to 1500 ppm fluoride -- read the warning label on the package).[23] The American policy of giving fluoride to children by medicating whole communities with a potent drug that may harm some people seems a dubious practice at best. At worst it violates the primary principle of medical ethics: First do no harm. Furthermore, it violates the ethical principle of informed consent.
In May 2000 the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) was formed by a coalition of activists and scientists from 12 countries (see: http://www.fluoridealert.org). FAN's goal is to end fluoridation and minimize exposure to fluoride. FAN's founding members include the late David Brower; Teddy Goldsmith; Michael Colby; Gar Smith; Terri Swearingen; the union representing professional employees at EPA headquarters; and Dr. Hardy Limeback, Canada's leading dental authority on fluoridation who in 1999 apologized for having promoted fluoridation for 15 years.
We urge our colleagues working on public health and environmental issues to become involved and take a second look at fluoridation.
===================
* Paul Connett is professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence
University in Canton N.Y.; Ellen Connett is editor of WASTE NOT ,
82 Judson, Canton N.Y. 13617; Michael Connett is FAN's webmaster
http://www.fluoridealert.org
[1] J. William Hirzy, "Why the union representing U.S. EPA's professionals in Washington D.C. opposes fluoridation," WASTE NOT #448 ( May 1, 1999), pgs. 1-4. And see http://www.fluoridation.com/epa2.htm.
[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Prevention Services, Division of Oral Health, "Water Supply Statistics" (Atlanta, Georgia: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1993). Available at http://www.cdc.gov/nohss/FSSupplyStats.htm.
[3] Bette Hileman, "Fluoridation of water. Questions about health risks and benefits remain after more than 40 years," CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS Vol. 66 (August 1, 1988), pgs. 26-42. Available at http://www.fluoridealert.org/hileman.htm.
[4] J.A. Brunelle and J.P. Carlos, "Recent Trends in Dental Caries in U.S. Children and the Effect of Water Fluoridation," JOURNAL OF DENTAL RESEARCH Vol. 69, Special Issue (February 1990), pgs. 723-727 and discussion pgs. 820-823.
[5] Centers for Disease Control, "Achievements in Public Health, 1900-1999: Fluoridation of Drinking Water to Prevent Dental Caries," MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY WEEKLY REPORT Vol. 48, No. 41 (October 22, 1999), pgs. 933-940.
[6] C.J. Spak and others, "Fluoride in Human Milk," ACTA PAEDIATRICA SCANDINAVICA Vol. 72, No. 5 (September 1983), pgs. 699-701.
[7] Keith E. Heller and others, "Dental Caries and Dental Fluorosis at Varying Water Fluoride Concentrations," JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH DENTISTRY Vol. 57, No. 3 (Summer 1997), pgs. 136-143.
[8] Julie A. Varner and others, "Chronic administration of aluminum-fluoride and sodium-fluoride to rats in drinking water: alterations in neuronal and cerebrovascular integrity," BRAIN RESEARCH Vol. 784, No. 1-2 (February 1998), pgs. 284-298.
[9] S.S. Jolly and others, "Human Fluoride Intoxication in Punjab," Fluoride Vol, 4, No. 2 (1971), pgs. 64-79.
[10] Ad Hoc Subcommitttee on Fluoride of the Committee to Coordinate Environmental Health and Related Programs, Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services. REVIEW OF FLUORIDE: BENEFITS AND RISKS, REPORT OF THE AD HOC COMMITTEE ON FLUORIDE OF THE COMMITTEE TO COORDINATE ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH AND RELATED PROGRAMS (February 1991), pg. 17.
[11] Pierre-M. Galletti and Gustave Joyet, "Effect of fluorine on thyroidal iodine metabolism in hyperthyroidism," JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ENDOCRINOLOGY Vol. 18 (October 1958), pgs. 1102-1110.
[12] Beth Ann Ditkoff and Paul Lo Gerfo, THE THYROID GUIDE [ISBN 0060952601] (New York: Harper, 2000), cover notes.
[13] Anna Strunecka and J. Patocka, "Pharmacological and toxicological effects of aluminofluoride complexes." FLUORIDE Vol. 32, No. 4 (November 1999), pgs. 230-242.
[14] Jennifer Anne Luke, THE EFFECT OF FLUORIDE ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE PINEAL GLAND , Ph.D Thesis, University of Surrey, United Kingdom (1997). See also Jennifer Luke, "Fluoride Deposition in the Aged Human Pineal Gland," CARIES RESEARCH Vol. 35 (2001), pgs. 125-128.
[15] L.R. Hedlund and J.C. Gallagher, "Increased incidence of hip fracture in osteoporotic women treated with sodium fluoride," JOURNAL OF BONE MINERAL RESEARCH Vol. 4, No. 2 (April 1989), pgs. 223-225.
[16] B.L. Riggs and others, "Effect of fluoride treatment on the fracture rates in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis," NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE Vol. 322, No. 12 (March 22 1990), pgs. 802-809.
[17] Paul Connett and Michael Connett, "The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Critique of the CDC's Promotion of Fluoridation," WASTE NOT #468 (October 2000), pgs. 27-28. Available at http://- www.fluoridealert.org/cdc.htm.
[18] Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR FLUORIDES, HYDROGEN FLUORIDE, AND FLUORINE (F) [ATSDR/TP-91/17]. (Atlanta, Ga.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 1993), pg. 57.
[19] K. Phipps, "Fluoride and bone health," JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH DENTISTRY Vol. 55, No. 1 (Winter 1995), pgs. 53-56.
[20] National Toxicology Program, TOXICOLOGY AND CARCINOGENESIS (December 1990). This NTP study is summarized in reference 10, pgs. 71-73.
[21] Perry D. Cohn, A BRIEF REPORT ON THE ASSOCIATION OF DRINKING WATER FLUORIDATION AND THE INCIDENCE OF OSTEOSARCOMA AMONG YOUNG MALES. (Trenton, N.J.: New Jersey Department of Health, November 8, 1992).
[22] Ted Schettler and others, IN HARM'S WAY: TOXIC THREATS TO CHILD DEVELOPMENT (Cambridge, Mass.: Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility [GBPSR] , May 2000). Available at http://www.igc.org/psr/ or from GBPSR in Cambridge, Mass.; telephone (617) 497-7440.
[23] Paul Connett and Ellen Connett, "The Fluoridation of Drinking Water: a house of cards waiting to fall. Part 1: The Science," WASTE NOT #373 (November 1996). See Table 2 pgs. 6-7.
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They're going to interview Alex Chiu on Slashdot. He's the guy selling magnetic bracelets that will allow you to live forever (his URL is http://www.alexchiu.com/). Unfortunately it's probably way too late to receive enough moderation points so that any new questions will actually end up being asked, though perhaps his responses (whenever they come) would be of interest, nevertheless.
Almost forgot, the URL for the story is:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/01/1250257
August Pamplona
(Behind the metallic ships of the reptoids. Underneath the futuristic space suits of the greys. At the very core of the high tech machineries of the Dracos lie the occult paranormal entities which all UFOlogists and researchers must be aware of and protect themselves from. We can lose ourselves if we are not careful and don't have adequite protection. The following will introduce people to what we are dealing with underneath the so called UFO Phenomenon in which the nuts-and-bolts may only be the outer manifestation of a very malevolent and insidious nature. At the end of the article. You will surely ask, "What the hell are we really dealing with??". That's right. We ought to know what on earth we are dealing with. -Albert)
Intelligence Briefings:
Demons and Occult Entities
"John Keel Operation Trojan Horse"
"Within a year after I had launched my full-time UFO investigating effort in 1966, the phenomenon had zeroed in on me, just as it had done with the British newspaper editor Arthur Shuttlewood and so many others. My telephone ran amok first, with mysterious strangers calling day and night to deliver bizarre messages "from the space people." Then I was catapulted into the dreamlike fantasy world of demonology. I kept rendezvous with black Cadillacs on Long Island, and when I tried to pursue them, they would disappear impossibly on dead-end roads. Throughout 1967, 1 was called out in the middle of the night to go on silly wild-goose chases and try to affect "rescues" of troubled contactees. Luminous aerial objects seemed to follow me around like faithful dogs. The objects seemed to know where I was going and where I had been. I would check into a motel chosen at random only to find that someone had made a reservation in my name and had even left a string of nonsensical telephon e messages for me. I was plagued by impossible coincidences, and some of my closest friends in New York, none of whom was conversant with the phenomenon, began to report strange experiences of their own poltergeists erupted in their apartments, ugly smells of hydrogen sulfide haunted them. One girl of my acquaintance suffered an inexplicable two-hour mental blackout while she was sitting under a hair dryer alone in her own apartment. More than once I woke up in the middle of t he night to find myself unable to move, with a huge dark apparition standing over me.
For a time I questioned my own sanity. I kept profusive notes-a daily journal which now reads like something from the pen of Edgar Allen Poe or H. P. Lovecraft.
Previous to all this I was a typical hard-boiled skeptic. I sneered at the occult. I had once published a book, Jadoo, which denigrated the mystical legends of the Orient. I tried to adopt a very scientific apprto ufology, and this meant that I scoffed at the many contactee reports. But as my experiences mounted and investigations broadened, I rapidly changed my views.
While traveling through some twenty states to check firsthand the innumerable UFO reports, I was astonished to find many silent contactees, and while the physical descriptions they offered were varied, it quickly became obvious that they were all suffering the same physiological and psychological symptoms. Through these silent contactees (people whose stories have never been published) I actually entered into communication with the entities themselves. When a UFO would land on an isolated farm and the ufona ut would visit a contactee, he or she would call me immediately and I would actually converse with the entity by telephone, sometimes for hours. It all sounds ridiculous now, but it happened. My notes, tapes, and other materials testify to the fact.
I developed an elaborate system of checks and balances to preclude hoaxes. Unrelated people in several states became a part of my secret network to that mysterious "other world." I wasted months playing the mischievous games of the elementals, searching for nonexistent UFO bases, trying to find ways to protect witnesses from the "men in black." Poltergeist manifestations seemed to break out wherever I went. It was difficult to judge whether I was unwittingly creating these situations in some manner, or whet her they were entirely independent of my mind.
Now, in retrospect, I can see what was actually taking place. The phenomenon was slowly introducing me to aspects I had never even considered before. I was being led step by step from skepticism to belief to-incredibly-disbelief. When my thinking went awry and my concepts were wrong, the phenomenon actually led me back onto the right path. It was all an educational process, and my teachers were very, very patient. Other people who have become involved in this situation have not been so lucky. They settled u pon and accepted a single frame of reference and were quickly engulfed in disaster. Several examples will be cited in this chapter.
But let's review some of the game playing first. In May 1967, the entities promised the silent contactees that a big power failure could be expected. On June 4, 1967, the Arab-Israeli six-day war broke out in the Middle East. Early the next morning, June 5, a massive power failure occurred in four states in the northeastern United States. Throughout that month the contactees were warned that an even bigger power failure was due. It would be nationwide in scope and would last for three days, the entities pro mised, and would be followed by natural catastrophes in July. New York City was scheduled to slide into the ocean on July 2. The contactees did not broadcast these dire predictions, yet the rumors snowballed. By mid-June nearly all of the hardware stores in the flap areas had sold out their supplies of candles and flashlights. Late that May, the UFO entities had also declared that Pope Paul would visit Turkey in the coming months and would be bloodily assassinated and that this would precipitate the blackout and the disasters. Weeks later the Vatican suddenly announce d that the Pope was, indeed, planning to visit Turkey in July. Panic prevailed in the secret contactee circles.
I was astonished when I discovered that these same rumors were also sweeping New York's hippie community. People began phoning me late in June to ask me where I was going on July 2. I was not going anywhere. I refused to join the exodus, and Manhattan did not sink into the sea.
Other predictions received that month began to come true right on the nose, however. There were predicted plane crashes; a jet airliner collided with a private plane over Henderson, North Carolina, killing, among others, J. T. McNaughton who had just been appointed U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and the next day, July 20, an identical accident occurred in Brazil, killing some leading Brazilian politicos.
I started to get nervous.
What astonished me most was that these predictions were coming in from a wide variety of sources. Trance mediums and automatic writers in touch with the spirit world were coming up with the same things as the UFO contactees. Often the prophecies were phrased identically in different sections of the country. Even when they failed to come off, we still could not overlook this peculiar set of correlative factors.
So convincing were these demonstrations that I finally packed up my equipment, rented a car, and drove out to the flap area near Melville, Long Island, to await the assassination and the blackout.
Just before I left Manhattan, I stopped in a local delicatessen and bought three quarts of distilled water. I figured that a three-day power failure would certainly be accompanied by a water shortage. On my way out to Long Island I stopped in on a silent contactee, and he told me he had received a brief visit from a UFO entity a short time before. This entity had mentioned me, he said, and had given him a message to relay to me. The message didn't make sense to the contactee. It was, "Tell John we'll meet w ith him and help him drink all that water." (The water was in the trunk of the car, and the contactee had no way of knowing I had it.)
The Pope was not assassinated that weekend, happily, but I saw several UFOs. They seemed to follow me around, as usual. And I was stuck with all that distilled water.
Throughout the fall the predictions continued to come in, and a surprisingly high percentage of them came true. Later in October I had a lengthy long-distance call from a being who was allegedly a UFO entity. He warned me that there would soon be a major disaster on the Ohio River and that many people would drown. He also told me to expect a startling development when President Johnson turned on the lights on the White House Christmas tree in December, implying that a huge blackout would take place as soon as the President pulled the switch. The warning about the Ohio disaster disturbed me enough so that I broke my own silence, and on November 3, I wrote to Mrs. Mary Hyre, a reporter in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and warned her that we might expect some sort of calamity in the coming weeks. She still has that letter.
Around Thanksgiving I returned to West Virginia for a few days and discovered that a number of people, none of whom knew about my prophecy, had been having horrible dreams of a river disaster. Mrs. Virginia Thomas, who lived in the heart of the TNT area, an abandoned World War II ammunition dump, was one who told me in some detail about her nightmares of people drowning in the river. Mrs. Hyre told me that she had also been having disturbing dreams; dreams of pleading faces and brightly wrapped Christmas pa ckages floating on the dark water of the Ohio.
During my visit I saw more of those puzzling lights in the sky and listened to more eerie tales of monsters and poltergeists. As usual, I stayed in a motel across the river on the outskirts of Gallipolis, Ohio, and every day I drove my rented car across the rickety 700-foot span of the Silver Bridge which joined Point Pleasant with the Ohio side.
There seemed to be an air of foreboding in Point Pleasant that November-something that no one could quite put his finger on. When I caught a plane for Washington, D.C., later I felt decidedly uneasy. I remembered that all of the UFO predictions for July 1967 had come true except the big one. There had been the plane crashes, and an earthquake had taken place in Turkey just before the Pope flew there. Several minor prophecies had also come true. Now, in December, I had a long list to check off. In October, I had been told that "the Hopi and Navajo Indians will make headlines shortly before Christmas." Sure enough, early in December a blizzard struck the Indian reservations in the Southwest, and they did make the headlines as rescue efforts were launched to rush them supplies and medicine.
On the morning of December 11, I was awakened by a mysterious caller who informed me that there would be an airplane disaster in Tucson, Arizona. The next day an Air Force jet plowed into a shopping center in Tucson.
On December 15, President Johnson held the usual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the White House. Because I was expecting a major blackout, I warned a few close friends (who by now must have thought that I was quite balmy) and was joined in my New York apartment by Dan Drasin, the movie-TV producer, and another friend who is a police official. We nervously watched the tree-lighting ceremony on television. The President pushed the switch. The tree lit up, and the assembled crowd oooed and ahhhed. Everyth ing went off as scheduled. The nation's power systems did not blow a fuse.
But thirty seconds after the tree was turned on, an announcer interrupted the news special with a sudden flash.
"A bridge between Gallipolis, Ohio, and West Virginia has just collapsed," he intoned soberly. "It was heavily laden with rush-hour traffic. There are no further details as yet. "
I was stunned. There was only one bridge on that section of the river. The Silver Bridge between Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Ohio. Christmas packages were floating in the dark waters of the Ohio.
The World Ended Last Night...
A few hours after the collapse of the Silver Bridge, on the other side of the world the Prime Minister of Australia decided to go for a swim on his favorite beach. He vanished. His body was never washed ashore. The elementals had predicted this.
In the Soviet Union, a series of explosions rocked Moscow that weekend. An apartment house blew up. A few blocks away, an automobile belonging to an American newspaperman also exploded into small pieces. There was no one near it at the time. Another prediction come true.
This is the tiger behind the door of prophecy. Some of the predictions are unerringly accurate; so precise that there are no factors of coincidence or lucky guesswork. The ultraterrestrials or elementals are able to convince their friends (who sometimes also become victims) that they have complete foreknowledge of all human events. Then, when these people are totally sold, the ultraterrestrials introduce a joker into the deck. They had me buying distilled water and fleeing to Long Island in the summer of 19 67, fully convinced that Pope Paul was going to be assassinated and that a worldwide blackout was going to punish the world for three terrible days.
I was lucky. I didn't cry their warning from the housetops. I didn't surround myself with a wild-eyed cult impressed with the accuracy of the previous predictions.
Others haven't been so lucky.
Dr. Charles A. Laughead, an MD on the staff of Michigan State
University in East Lansing, Michigan, started communicating with
assorted entities "from outer space" in 1954, largely through trance
mediums who served as instruments for Ashtar and his cronies from that
great intergalactic council in the sky. A number of minor prophecies
were passed along, and as usual, they all came true on the nose. Then
Ashtar tossed in his bombshell. The world was going to end on December
21, 1954, he announced convincingly . He spelled out the exact nature
of the cataclysm: North America was going to split in two, and the
Atlantic coast would sink into the sea. France, England and Russia
were also slated for a watery grave. However, all was not lost. A few
chosen people would be rescued by spaceships. Naturally, Dr. Laughead
and his friends were among that select group. Having been impressed by
the validity of the earlier predictions of the entities, Dr. Laughead
took this one most seriousl y, made sober declarations to the pr ess,
and on December 21, 1954, he and a group of his fellow believers
clustered together in a garden to await rescue. They had been
instructed to wear no metal, and they therefore discarded belt
buckles, pens, clasps, cigarette lighters, and shoes with metal
eyelets. Then they waited.
And waited.
And waited.
That same year, another doctor named Wilhelm Reich was watching glittering starlike objects maneuver over his home in Rangeley, Maine. The "space people" had a little gift for him, too: a strange theory about cosmic energies called Orgone. Dr. Reich had studied and worked under Freud in Vienna and later held posts at several important educational institutions. He was a brilliant, highly educated man. But somehow he became convinced that Orgone was the vital life force of the universe and that it even powere d the UFOs that were flooding the world's skies in 1954. His colleagues and the Food and Drug Administration viewed his theories with some dismay. He was drummed out of the medical ranks, hauled into court, tried, and jailed. He died in prison eight months later, a broken man still convinced that he had unlocked a great cosmic secret.
Two years earlier, in that grand UFO year of 1952, two men were driving through the mountains near Parana, Brazil, in the state of Sao Paulo, when they encountered five saucer-shaped objects hovering in the air. Later one of these men, Aladino Felix, revisited the spot, and this time a UFO landed and he was invited aboard. He had a pleasant chat with the saucer captain, a being who looked very human and very ordinary, and he went away convinced that the Venusians were paying us a friendly visit.
Then in March 1953, there was a knock at the door of Felix's home, and his wife answered. She reported that there was "a priest" asking for him. Because Felix was an atheist at the time, he was a bit surprised. He was even more surprised when he walked out to meet the man. It was his old friend, the flying saucer pilot, now turned out in a cashmere suit, a white shirt with a stiff collar, and a neat blue tie.
This was the first of along series of visits during which the two men discussed flying saucers and their mechanics and the state of the universe at large. Mr. Felix kept careful notes of these conversations and later put them into an interesting little book titled My Contact with Flying Saucers, under the pseudonym of Dino Kraspedon. It was first published in 1959 and was largely dismissed as just another piece of crackpot literature. However, a careful reading reveals a thorough knowledge of both theology and science, and many of the ideas and phrases found only in most obscure occult and contactee literature appear here. Among other things, the book also discusses an impending cosmic disaster in lucid, almost convincing terms: the same kind of warning that is passed on to every contactee in one way or another.
Dino Kraspedon's real identity remained a mystery for years. The book ended up on shelves next to George Adamski's works. (Like Adamski, Kraspedon claimed that he sometimes met the Venusians in the heart of cities, one such meeting taking place at a railroad station in Sao Paulo.) Then, in 1965, Dino Kraspedon surfaced as a self-styled prophet named Aladino Felix. He warned of a disaster about to take place in Rio de Janeiro. Sure enough, floods and landslides struck a month later, killing 600. In 1966, he warned that a Russian cosmonaut would soon die,* and in the fall of 1967 he appeared on television in Brazil to soberly discuss the forthcoming assassinations in the United States, naming Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy.
The startling accuracy of his major and minor predictions impressed many people, of course. When he started predicting an outbreak of violence, bombings and murders in Brazil in 1968, no one was too surprised when a wave of strange terrorist attacks actually began.
Police stations and public buildings in Sao Paulo were dynamited.
There was a wave of bank robberies, and an armored payroll train was heisted. The Brazilian police worked overtime and soon rounded up eighteen members of the gang. A twenty-five-year-old policeman named Jesse Morais proved to be the gang's bomb expert. They had blown up Second Army Headquarters, a major newspaper, and even the American consulate. When the gang members started to sing, it was learned that they planned to assassinate top gover nment officials and eventually take over the entire country of Brazil. Jesse Morais had been promised the job of police chief in the new government.
The leader of this ring was... Aladino Felix!
continued in [2/2] Occult Entities relations to UFOnauts
When he was arrested on August 22, 1968, the flying saucer prophet declared, "I was sent here as an ambassador to the Earth from Venus. My friends from space will come here and free me and avenge my arrest. You can look for tragic consequences to humanity when the flying saucers invade this planet."
Once again the classic, proven pattern had occurred. Another human being had been engulfed by the ultraterrestrials and led down the road to ruin. There is no clinical psychiatric explanation for these cases. These men (it has happened to women, too) experienced a succession of convincing events with flying saucers and the UTs. Then they were smothered with promises or ideas that destroyed them.
In the fall of 1967, when Dino Kraspedon was publicly issuing his uncanny predictions in Brazil, another group was battening down the hatches in Denmark, preparing for the end of the world. A man named Knud Weiking began receiving telepathic flashes in May 1967, including a number of impressive prophecies that came true. (Just prior to the capture of the U.S. "spy" ship Pueblo off Korea in January 1968, Weiking warned, "Watch Korea. ") He was then instructed to build a lead-lined bomb shelter and prepare fo r a holocaust on December 24, 1967. This seemed like an impossible task because twenty-five tons of lead were needed and the total costs exceeded $30,000. But donations poured in, and voluntary labor materialized. The shelter was built in about three weeks. On December 22, Weiking and his friends were "told" to leave the shelter and lock it up. A telephone blackout next occurred, lasting throughout the Christmas holidays and cutting off all of the participants from one another.
Meanwhile, mediums, telepaths, sensitives and UFO contactees throughout the world were all reporting identical messages. There was definitely going to be an unprecedented event on December 24, 1967. Ashtar was talking through Ouija boards to people who had never before heard the name. Another busy entity named Orlon was spreading the word. The curious thing about these messages was that they were all phrased in the same manner, no matter what language was being used. They all carried the same warning. Peopl e were reporting strange dreams that December, dreams involving symbols of Christmas (such as Christmas cards scattered through a room). There were also reports of dead telephones and glowing entities prowling through bedrooms and homes. Many of these messages, dreams and prophecies were collected together by a British organization calling itself Universal Links. The stage was set for doomsday. Thousands, perhaps even millions, of people had been warned. At that time I didn't know about Universal Links or m any of these predictions. But that Christmas week I received one of those strange phone calls that had become part of my life. At midnight on December 24, I was told, a great light would appear in the sky, and then...
Various contactees began to report in to me from all over the country, all with the same message. Christmas Eve was going to be it! The Danish cult locked themselves up in their bomb shelter that night while I sat by my phone, watching out the window of my apartment on Thirty-third Street in New York City. (I had a good view of the sky.)
After the imaginary crisis had passed, the American wire services finally carried stories about the cowering Danes, ridiculing them, of course. But Mr. Weiking came up with a message that explained it all: "I told you two thousand years ago that a time would be given and even so I would not come. If you had read your Bible a little more carefully, you would have borne in mind the story of the bridegroom who did not come at the time he was expected. Be watchful so that you are not found without oil in your l amps. I have told you I will come with suddenness, and I shall be coming soon!"
It was all a dry run! Actually, it was a rather impressive sequence of events, and it really proved something very important. Many predictions of the December 24 disaster had been documented well in advance of that date. These messages came through in many different countries, from people who had no knowledge of or communication with one another. The UFO contactees received the same identical messages as the trance mediums communing with spirits. A link had been established. It was now clear (to me anyway) that all of these people were tuned into a central source. My earlier speculations seemed true-the UFO entities and the spirit entities were part of the same gigantic system. So more pieces of this tremendous puzzle were falling into place. A long series of events had apparently been staged to warn us of that tiger behind the door. Some of the entities were evil liars. They had ruined the lives of many by producing "proof' which led to false beliefs and irrespons ible actions. Kraspedon, Dr. Laughead and Knu d Weiking had been victims in this enormous game.
There were so many others.
One night in the early 1960s (exact date undetermined) a young man named Fred Evans was out driving with his girlfriend when a glowing, saucer-shaped object silently soared out of the night sky and buzzed their car. This marked the beginning of Mr. Evans' research into UFOs and astrology. By 1967, he had installed himself as a prophet and was predicting major black uprisings.
In the spring of 1968, Fred Ahmed Evans moved into Cleveland, Ohio, and opened a storefront with a sign over the door declaring it to be "The New Libya." Then, on the night of July 23, 1968, rioting broke out in Cleveland. Snipers dressed in African clothing killed ten and wounded nineteen before the police brought the situation under control. The leader of the ring of well-equipped, well-organized snipers was Fred Ahmed Evans.
Another UFO prophet had gone wrong.
In California, a man named Allen Noonan claims to have experienced still another variation of this peculiar mindwarping phenomenon. Soon after his discharge from the Army following World War II, Noonan went to work for a company handling outdoor billboards. One day, he says, he was working on a billboard when suddenly he was taken in astral form to a strange place. He found himself in a huge white building filled with light. A group of "elders" were situated around a glowing throne, and a great voice boomed from that throne and asked, "Will you agree to be the Savior of the World?"
Noonan quickly agreed to this role. Then he was told, "You may die in the hands of your fellowmen. Their sin shall remain with you until the Mother Comforter comes to deliver them."
The next thing he knew, he was back in his body working on the signboard. In later experiences, he allegedly visited various planets such as Venus, and he frequently received telepathic messages and instructions from our old friend Ashtar. In this case, he knew it as "the Ashtar Command and the United Planets Organization."
When Noonan was interviewed by Lloyd Mallan for True magazine, he revealed, "I believe that I am the Cosmic Master as well as the New Messiah. I believe that a million years ago when this planet was young I was chosen to come to the earth and bring with me a Space Command.
"The Space Command flies in and out of the earth. The earth is hollow and the Higher Command, the Galactic Command, already has bases inside the earth. There are great openings at each pole of the earth, and what we call the northern lights is only the Great Central Sun shining out of these openings. Many people coming from the polar regions have reported seeing flying saucers there which disappeared into the ocean."
The hollow-earth theory is a very old one. In fact, it is one of the oldest and most widely believed UFO explanations around. A great many books were published about it in the nineteenth century, including a strange little novel called The Smoky God which was supposed to be the true experiences of two Scandinavian fishermen who accidentally sailed through the hole at the North Pole and spent a year living among the gentle giants who inhabited the beautiful inside of our planet.
During his interview with Mallan, Mr. Noonan demonstrated his abilities by causing two peculiar UFO-shaped "clouds" to materialize outside his window. Mallan photographed the phenomenon and was hard pressed to explain it. We might point out that many other contactee claimants were able to provide equally convincing demonstrations. Brilliantly glowing UFOs frequently appeared and maneuvered directly over the auditoriums where they were lecturing, waltzing around the skies in front of dozens and even hundreds of fascinated witnesses.
Allen Noonan is not the only Space Age messiah appointed by the Ashtar command. Dozens of humble, ordinary people suddenly turn into UFO evangelists after a flying saucer enters their lives. Dino Kraspedon did a lot of preaching and wrote a "new Bible" before he finally turned terrorist. Lifelong atheists have become religious fanatics almost over night after their UFO encounters. Such people are now becoming regulars on radio and TV talk shows all across the country.
One night in November 1958, an Arkansas truck driver was unexpectedly introduced into the shadowy half world of the ultraterrestrials. R. D. Smallridge was making a routine trip to deliver a truckload of eggs from Hardy, Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee. He stopped for a cup of coffee, as was his habit, at an all-night truck stop near Black Rock, Arkansas. When he left the eatery, he checked his watch with the wall clock. It was exactly 2 A.M. After looking over his tires and truck routinely, he started his engine and headed for the highway again. The next lap of the trip covered 60 miles to Trumann, Arkansas, where he usually stopped for another cup of coffee.
But, according to his story, he never remembers reaching the highway.
The next thing he knew he was pulling up in front of the luncheonette in Trumann. When he walked into the restaurant and looked at its clock, he was astounded. It was 2:15 A.M. "I had traveled sixty miles in eight minutes," he declared.
This trip normally required changing highways (from Route 63 to Route 67) and passing over a state weight scale near Jonesboro. He could not remember doing any of this. Somehow he had traveled 450 miles per hour between Black Rock and Trumann!
A wide variety of strange, inexplicable events engulfed Mr. Smallridge after this. Eventually he gave up truck driving and became a minister, traveling about the country and preaching. December 1967 found him in California. Late one night he put aside the book he was reading and strolled over to the clock on the mantel in the home where he was staying. It was exactly 12:05 A.M. Suddenly, he swears, a bright blue light materialized and drifted toward him. Just as it touched him the room faded away, and he di scovered himself standing in another room surrounded by a group of strange humanlike beings. He claims that these people were conversing in an odd language he had never heard beforeyet he was able to understand every word and could communicate with them. They told him, among other things, that Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy would die suddenly in 1968 and that there would be widespread rioting and civil unrest. After about two hours of this, Smallridge was instantly transfer red back to the California living room. He was still standing in front of the clock. It was still 12:05 A.M.!
Here, once again, we have a case that can be easily dismissed as too absurd for consideration. But, believe it or not, there is nothing exceptional about Mr. Smallridge's claims. Similar incidents are being reported from all over the world. Because they are so outlandish, they are rarely well publicized.
The strange language mentioned by Smallridge turns up again and again in these stories. It seems to be directly related to the well-known religious phenomenon of speaking in tongues. Sometimes whole congregations enter a trancelike state and begin to babble in this language which is part baby talk, part Greek, part Indian and part unknown. Many mediums have laboriously copied down whole vocabularies for this unknown tongue. In the 1890s one Helene Smith in Geneva, Switzerland, a psychic who had UFO-type exp eriences, produced a veritable dictionary of a "Martian" language. In my first visits with a West Virginia contactee, Woodrow Derenberger, he rattled off the language of UFO entity Indrid Cold, speaking the strange jargon as easily as he spoke English. (It did not seem to be a made-up language or a hoax. It had structure and grammar.) Numerous cases already cited in this book have mentioned how the UFO occupants spoke in a language that the witnesses couldn't unde rstand. But some contactees claim that they were able to understand this language instantly, as if it were a second tongue lying dormant in some recess of their brains. Brazil's Aladino Felix often spoke in what he called "the universal language," described by reporters as "a hodgepodge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin." This could also describe the language I have heard the other contactees speak. Greek is frequently employed by entities in UFO contacts. A large section of the "inspired" book Oahspe is devoted to a complete explanation of a sup posedly an cient language known as Panic (language of Pan, a lost continent), complete with vocabulary and written symbols. It appears to be a combination of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, American Indian, and Chinese. To compose such a language as a hoax, Dr. Newbrough, the medium who wrote Oahspe, would have had to have been a brilliant linguist, and it would have taken many years for one man to assemble such a complex vocabulary. Buried within the fine print of Oahspe there are many words which I have heard UFO contactees u se! Not many people have the patience and scholarship to read Oahspe, and I've yet to meet a contactee who had even heard of it!
So here we have another piece of neglected evidence: the actual language of the ufonauts. It is not a secret. It is known and spoken by many.
Time Distortion and Distention
Smallridge's sudden transfer across sixty miles of earthly space might have been caused by a phenomenon known as apporting in occult lore and teleportation in science fiction. There are many documented instances in which objects and human beings have been transported instantaneously over great distances by some unnatural force that defies explanation. This force seems to operate outside the man-made boundaries of time and space. In theory, such events could be caused by converting the energy of atoms into a transmissible beam, projecting that beam to a distant point with the speed of light, and then reconstructing the original atoms. Some scientists think this may eventually be a feasible process for our advancing technology.
But somebody else has been doing it for centuries.
Early in May 1968, Dr. Gerardo Vidal and his wife got into their car, a Peugeot 403, at Chascomus, Argentina, to drive to the town of Maipu some 150 kilometers to the south. They traveled along National Route 2, following a car carrying two friends who were heading for Maipu, to visit relatives. When they reached Maipu, they found the Vidals were not behind them. They turned around and retraced their route, expecting to find the Vidals changing a tire or laboring over the motor. But Dr. and Mrs. Vidal were gone.
Two days later the Rapallini family in Maipu received a phone call from the Argentine consulate in Mexico City-6,400 kilometers away. It was Dr. Vidal, and his incredible story later made headlines in the newspapers in Buenos Aires and Cordoba.
He and his wife had just left the suburbs of Chascomus, he reported later, when a dense fog suddenly appeared in front of them and enveloped their car. The next forty-eight hours were a total blank. They woke up, still in the car, parked on an unfamiliar side road. Both had a pain at the back of their heads but were otherwise unhurt. Dr. Vidal got out of his car and inspected it, finding that it was badly scorched, as if a blowtorch had been applied to its surface. He started driving through the strange sce nery, searching for a sign or landmark. When they saw people by the road, they stopped and asked for directions and were dumbfounded to learn that they were in Mexico! Their watches had stopped, but they quickly learned that two days had somehow passed since they first started out from Chascomus.
They drove to the Argentine consulate in Mexico City and told their story to amazed officials. Consul Senor Rafael Lopez Pellegrini advised them to keep quiet while an investigation was held. Their car was shipped off to the United States for examination (no information on whom it was sent to), and later they were given a replacement of the same make.
Dr. and Senora Vidal flew back to Argentina and went into seclusion, hiding from the press. The lid came down on the whole story. But reporters discovered that on the same night they vanished a man had checked into the Maipu Hospital for medical treatment, claiming that he, too, had encountered a strange fog which had left him badly shaken and nauseated.
All these incidents took place in the vicinity of Bahia Blanca, where an Argentine businessman had undergone a similar experience in 1959.
Several of the better UFO books of the 1950s recount other cases in which human beings were suddenly transported through space and time involuntarily. Time lapses and inexplicable periods of total amnesia are a key aspect in the UFO phenomenon, I have now received well over 100 reports in which witnesses have lost from five minutes to several hours immediately after sighting an unidentified flying object. In nearly every case, these people were riding in vehicles at the time. Almost all contactee claimants experience blackouts. Some suffer one or more such blackouts or fainting spells months or even years before they finally seem to undergo direct contact with a grounded UFO. There does not appear to be a verifiable medical cause for this unusual effect, nor does it seem to have a psychological foundation.
In Noonan and Smallridge we have astral projection or classic examples of "instantaneous experience." The body remains apparently in a fixed position (in front of the billboard or the California clock) while the mind takes a trip of sorts. Based upon what we now know of the phenomenon, it is possible that these two men were actually experiencing the reliving of a hidden memory. In other words, we must consider the possibility that Smallridge had held his two-hour conversation with the entities weeks, months , or even years before he finally remembered it. The memory of this conversation was then suppressed in the same way that the Hills were made to forget their experiences. Then, at a time chosen by the entities, a ray of some sort was directed at Smallridge (the blue light), and his memory was triggered. He was made to remember the earlier conversation as if it had just happened.
There is another type of experience, which I call time compression. Here the witness undergoes a sequence of events that seem to consume a specific period of time. Later he or she discovers that only a few minutes had actually passed, even though the whole sequence seemed to consume hours. Time compression is common among contactees who think they have been taken on visits to other planets.
I do not believe that any of these people are suffering directly from clinical insanity. Rather, the evidence seems to indicate that their minds are manipulated by an exterior influence and that sometimes their intellects are unable to digest the information they are given, and their emotional structure is unable to retain its stability in the face of these experiences. So some of these people crack up under the strain, or at best, they greatly misinterpret these events. Induced confabulation produces memor ies of experiences that are convincingly real, and a chain reaction of emotional responses creates irrational fanaticism. These people abandon their jobs and devote all of their time and thought to spreading the gospel of the space people. Their family relationships disintegrate because all of their energies are channeled into one direction. They become martyrs to their cause, be it the eminent arrival of the Big Brothers or the Second Coming of Christ; or, as in the case of the run-of-the-mill hard-core UFO enthusiasts, trying to convince the world that flying saucers are real and are extraterrestrial.
What all this really means is that someone or something actually has the power to completely possess and control the human mind. Human beings can be manipulated through this power and used for both good and evil purposes.
We have no way of knowing how many human beings throughout the world may have been processed in this manner, because they would have absolutely no memory of undergoing the experience, and so we have no way of determining who among us has strange and sinister "programs" lying dormant in the dark corners of his mind.
Suppose the plan is to process millions of people and then at some
future date trigger all of those minds at one time? Would we suddenly
have a world of saints? Or would we have a world of armed maniacs
shooting at one another from bell towers?
John Edward Chat Session Tomorrow, Thursday, May 31, 2001
Ever thought to ask John Edward what he knows about the cold reading technique? Or what he has to say about the November 17, 2000 "Dateline NBC" with Joe Nickell where he was caught doing a hot reading of an NBC camera man? Or whether he thinks Gary Schwartz really does believe in the tooth fairy? (sources tell us he doesn't)
Now's your chance: ask John Edward anything you want tomorrow night at 9:00 pm ET (2:00 am GMT). The self-proclaimed medium and host of the popular Sci Fi Channel program "Crossing Over with John Edward will be chatting on the Sci-Fi Chat Room. Go to http://www.scifi.com/chat/ to find out more about how to log on tomorrow night.
Edward, who claims to communicate messages from the spirit world to members of his show's audience, has also been channeling criticism from skeptics ever since Time published an article by Leon Jaroff in March of this year. The article cites claims by an audience member that readings on "Crossing Over" are doctored with misleading editing and possible eavesdropping. This article prompted the March 6, 2001 "Larry King Live" with Jaroff and Paul Kurtz. The show's producers vehemently denied these allegations in a letter to Time's editors last month. Edward continues to stand by the policy that he "does not respond to criticism," but this vow of silence does not satisfy his critics.
While fans of John Edward's show and live appearances are amazed by his seemingly inexplicable performances, Nickell says that skeptics are not at all baffled by his demonstrations. "Mediumship has been around since the beginnings of the Spiritualist religious movement in the mid-1800s. Magicians and skeptics have understood their techniques since the days when Houdini exposed many of them as frauds. With the exception of its slick, made-for-television packaging, Edward's feats are nothing more than age-old techniques of subtly eliciting information from people who are not aware that they-not the dead-are providing it."
For More Info:
John Edward on SCIFI.COM http://www.scifi.com/johnedward - Official
John
Edward site http://www.johnedward.net
Thursday, May 31 at 9:00PM ET US (2:00 AM GMT)
Thriller Cut After Subway Company Spooked
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010530/od/censorship_dc_1.html
"A Hong Kong movie maker has yielded to demands from rail operator MTR Corp to censor a ghost scene from her new thriller for fear it would scare away passengers."
Mars Samples Preparations Urged
Associated Press
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010530/sc/mars_preparations_1.html
"While the first samples from Mars aren't expected to be returned to Earth for more than a decade, a panel of scientists urged that work begin soon on a quarantine facility for those materials."
Cancer Drug Getting New Attention
WCVB
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/wcvb/20010529/lo/816322_1.html
"A controversial cancer treatment is now getting some new attention. The National Cancer Institute has agreed to review stories from patients who say they've been helped by 714-X, a drug that is not sold in the United States."
Descendants of Hanged Salem 'Witches' Seek Exoneration
BY STEVE LeBLANC
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com:80/05282001/nation_w/101135.htm
"It was a time when trembling witnesses and "spectral evidence" could lead to the gallows."
Mutilation of cattle leaves ranchers puzzled
Associated Press
http://www.reporternews.com/2001/texas/cattle0528.html
"Ranchers in Burleson County aren't quite sure who or what is responsible for a string of mysterious cattle deaths over much of the last decade, but they suspect it's some sort of cult."
Hollywood Urban Legends Debunked
By Buck Wolf
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffiles.html
"Did Tom Green really crash a Bar Mitzvah dressed as Adolph Hitler? Was Humphrey Bogart the Gerber baby? Are Bert and Ernie gay?"
WASHINGTON - President Bush's team has dumped an $860,000 federal program that taught public-housing tenants to burn incense, carry lucky gemstones and wear feel-good colors like apricot to reduce stress.
Along with the recent release of a new, high-resolution picture of the Cydonia 'face' formation came a flurry of press reports directly based on NASA statements that the matter has now been resolved once and for all: the face is natural formation, just one average Martian mesa out of many. The MGS science team, we are informed, has studied the matter carefully, using the Mars Global Surveyor's laser altimeter. A space.com article informs us that
The laser altimetry data are perhaps even more convincing than overhead photos that the Face is natural. 3-D elevation maps reveal the formation from any angle, unaltered by lights and shadow. There are no eyes, no nose and no mouth!
UFOs in the land of the rising sun
By Steve Burgess
Salon
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/05/31/noto/index.html
"My girlfriend, Kaori, and I are preparing for a day trip to the Noto Peninsula on the northern coast of Japan when the man we are traveling to see calls with a friendly piece of advice about our visit. "Don't stay out too late tonight," says Johsen Takano. "Aliens will abduct you." He's only half joking."
Demise of Aryan Nations is chapter in a bigger story
By Larry Fish
PHILIDELPHIA INQUIRER
http://inq.philly.com:80/content/inquirer/2001/05/31/front_page/MILITIA31.htm
"A handful of ramshackle buildings on a wooded parcel in northern Idaho will be put to the torch soon. And when they go up in smoke, Greg Carr hopes some perceptions of Idaho will vanish as well."
Mars loses face, gains nature trail
By Richard Stenger
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/25/mars.faces/index.html
"The legendary face of Mars has graced tabloid newspaper covers,
inspired
theories of alien civilizations and starred in a Hollywood film. But
new
high-resolution satellite images unmask the truth underneath the
peculiar
rock formation."
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Bigfoot
Hot pursuit Who knows what our vast forests are bearing silent witness to at this moment? If Thom Powell and the other curators of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization have their way, Bigfoot's days of stealth are numbered... From - Date - Author Red Herring - December 18, 2000 - Samantha Martin-Evans
LOCATED AT:
http://www.redherring.com/index.asp?layout=story&doc_id=440014044&channel=70000007
---------------------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Bigfoot
The Flawed Guide to Bigfoot Book: The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe. From - Date - Author Skeptical Inquirer - January 2000 - Benjamin Radford
LOCATED AT:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-01/bigfoot.html
---------------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - (see page two for the Cryptozoology material)
Outdoors in the Caribbean Exploring the oldest protected rainforest, the soft coral reefs, and the all-night fetes of the Caribbean's farthest reaches
From - Date - Author
Outside - February 2000 - Bucky McMahon
LOCATED AT:
http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/200002/200002dest1.html
http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/200002/200002dest2.html
---------------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Yeti
The Yeti Lives Online Links to web resources and pages dedicated to the legendary yeti
From - Date
TIME Europe - September 1, 2000
LOCATED AT:
http://www.time.com/time/europe/webonly/europe/2000/09/yetilinks.html
--------------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Yeti - Abominable Snowman
Who Are You Calling Abominable? A veteran explorer tells of his 12-year search for the elusive yeti
From - Date - Author
TIME Europe - September 6, 2000 - Charlotte Greensit
LOCATED AT:
http://www.time.com/time/europe/webonly/europe/2000/09/yeti.html
-------------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Yeti
Books In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex... Patrick O'Brian: A Life Revealed... My Quest for the Yeti:
Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery... Anil's Ghost...
From - Date
Outside - May 2000
Located At:
http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/200005/200005books.html
-------------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Cryptid - Yowie - Bunyip - Thylacine
Investigative Files Mysterious Australia... Convicts' Ghosts... Cryptids... Spiritualist's Grave...
From - Date - Author
Skeptical Inquirer - March/April 2001 - Joe Nickell
Located At:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2001-03/i-files.html
------------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Thylacinus cynocephalus - Tasmanian tiger/Tasmanian wolf
Rough justice Thylacinus cynocephalus--confusingly known as both the Tasmanian tiger and Tasmanian wolf--developed a bad
reputation. What is the truth? Surprisingly, modern experts can only guess. They have no tigers to study...
From - Date - Author
NewScientist - May 19, 2001 - Leigh Dayton
Located At:
http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinion.jsp?id=ns22917
-----------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Thylacine
Cloning Noah's Ark In late November a humble Iowa cow is slated to give birth to the world's first cloned endangered species, a baby bull to be named Noah. Noah will be just the first creature up the ramp of the ark of endangered species that we and other scientists are currently attempting to clone...
EXCERPT - "... A similar difficulty has hobbled efforts by Australian scientists to clone a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, ..."
From - Date - Author
Scientific American - November 2000 - Robert P. Lanza, Betsy L. Dresser & Philip Damiani
Located At;
http://www.sciam.com/2000/1100issue/1100lanza.html
---------------------------------
CRYPTOZOOLOGY - Steller's sea cow, bluebuck, Falkland Islands dog, and Tasmanian ³wolf,² or thylacine
Learning from the Lost Can Recent Extinctions Solve the Pleistocene Murder Mystery?
From - Date - Author
Discovering Archaeology - Sep/Oct 1999 - Clare Flemming
Located At:
http://www.discoveringarchaeology.com/0599toc/5cover5-mammoth.shtml
___________________________
Thanks to:
MagPortal.com or Hot Neuron LLC.
http://www.magportal.com/
For the source of the above articles
The "silence" about abortion and it's link to increased breast cancer is due to the fact that there simply isn't any connection.
From: http://medhlp.netusa.net/lib/cancernet/600353.htm "A large-scale epidemiologic study of this question, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997, determined that the risk of developing breast cancer for women with a history of induced abortion was not different from the risk for women without such a history."
Women who have an abortion are no more likely to develop breast cancer than their counterparts who do not have an abortion.
I'm not saying that there aren't health risks associated with having an abortion. As with any invasive surgery there is always the chance of infection and other complications. Indeed, when abortion was relegated to back alley clinics, prior to Roe v. Wade, complications were quite frequent. From a common sense stand point one has to wonder how surgery performed on one part of the body would cause cancer in another part. In all the annals of empirical medical data there are simply no president for this claim. Surgery simply does not CAUSE cancer.
I'm curious as the source of your "12 times greater" figure - even in the conservative pro-life literature (none of it sitting data or research) I found on the net only mentioned a 1 to 2 times increased risk.
There are many, many good reasons not to have an abortion - but this breast cancer/abortion link is simply an urban ledged and citing it as fact damages the credibility of pro-life advocates.
Original message:
This article doesn't tell ANYTHING about the problems created by abortion. The increase in a woman's probability of dying from breast cancer due solely to an abortion is 12 times greater than the amount by which wearing a seatbelt reduces her probability of death in a traffic accident. For a woman who has an abortion to put on a seatbelt is about like using a sock to stop bleeding from the carotid artery, or putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound.
http://fathersmanifesto.com/abortion.htm
John Knight