A few good mind-controlled men?

Prophet Yahweh, Marine


Thanks to "human" on the forum for this possible puzzle piece.

"Prophet Yahweh" maintains a Yahoo personals page, on which he's posted a photo of his younger self as a Marine.

Yahweh, born Ramon Watkins, writes on his website that "it has been over a quarter century since UFOs and spaceships have been appearing to me." That would probably take us back to his career in the corp. It's interesting that he says initially they appeared by "accident," before he claims to have taught himself the Biblical technique of summoning. Perhaps he developed the method in order to make sense of the madness.

Not all Marines, thank God, are mind-control subjects. But by God, too many sure seem to have been. So when a former Marine claims that, since his time in the corp, he's been in communication with an angelic host of flying saucers, has demonstrated that he can deliver something for the camera, and has heard a voice in his head telling him now's the time, I think it's prudent that we pay attention.


By the way, there's a glitch in the RI matrix: the forum is buggy this morning, and you may not be able to post to it. I've alerted on the problem, and hope it corrects itself soon. (Update from ezboard: "There is currently a wide spread issue affecting the entire ezboard.com network. Our techs have been notified of the situation and we will update you as soon as we have more information available. Note: At this time there does not appear to be any information loss despite what the error messages say.")

Further update: forum's debugged. Post away.

Furtherest update: er, not quite. There are network-wide problem, so hold those posts. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

No time to think

Gendarmes search for clues in the abduction of Frank Fontaine, 1979

"The magician is quicker and his game is much thicker than blood,
and blacker than ink.
And there's no time to think." - Bob Dylan

Most people who give any thought to UFOs won't - and even self-described "Ufologists" can't - devote the kind of energy and attention to the study of the phenomenon that it actually merits. As in many pursuits, there really isn't much money to be made on the serious end of things. (If you want to perpetrate hoaxes, create a new religion or dumb down the data for mass consumption, that's another matter.) There's no "Ufology" career path; it's an all-amateur effort, squeezed in around the edges of peoples' ordinary lives.

This puts the public at a huge disadvantage, because powerful forces have been at work for a long time to confuse and deceive us by manipulating the phenomenon. And some of these forces are even human.

As ever, the disinformation itself makes an important study, because it's as worthwhile to know what they want us to think as it is to know the truth. And there, beneath the official denials, are several layers of deception that mean to direct the public towards the presumption of extraterrestrial origin. I've written much on why I believe this is as unsatisfying to the data as swamp gas, and that we should be highly suspicious of the silence of the military-occult complex to the occultic characteristics of the phenomenon. Those who suggest occultic provenance are marginalized, even on the margins, as was Lord Hill-Norton, former UK Chief of Defense and a UFOlogist of high repute, who formed an organization in 1997 called UFO Concern to warn of their "satanic nature."

The disinformation is chiefly divided between two main narratives. In one, the government is suppressing the healing technologies and spiritual teachings of benevolent space brothers, who mean only to save us. In the other, they mean to eat us. Elaborate castles in the air - or rather, enormous bases underground - have been constructed, in which humans and their Reptillian allies are said to sometimes conduct horrible genetic experiments, and other times battle each other in Starship Trooper-like shoot outs. For instance, the legend of the joint US-alien Dulce base appears to have had its origin in the disinformation campaign waged against researcher Paul Bennewitz, and then - the hallmark of brilliant disinfo - to have taken on a life of its own, perpetuated by hoaxers and the credulous.

Ufologist Bill Moore, author of the first books on Roswell and the "Philadephia Experiment," admitted to having been part of a US Air Force disinformation campaign against Bennewitz, in return for access to classified material. Moore's main contact Richard Doty, who also "befriended" Bennewitz, was trained in disinfo and psychological warfare. The campaign was successful: it drove Bennewitz so paranoid that he had to be institutionalized for a time, and the disinfo which nearly drove him out of his mind is alive and well on the Internet. (The sad episode is well told in Greg Bishop's Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth.)

And note: that there is no US-alien base under Dulce doesn't mean there is nothing weird going on out there. In fact, the legend arose and took hold to explain the weirdness that remains unexplained. The cattle mutiliations, for instance, which according to the disinformation were for genetic experiments.Yet one would think an advanced race of space travellers would have genetic technologies at least as advanced as ours, that would not require such gruesome and wasteful methods. Rather than for science, the mutilations appear to be more for ritual. And for another instance, there's the matter of many sightings of UFOs around Dulce, some seen to actually penetrate the surface. Though no opening into the Earth was seen, one was presumed, and then an underground base is just one assumption away. But if UFOs are hyperdimensional, rather than extraterrestrial, we should expect them sometimes to pass unobstructed through solid matter, and there are many other examples of similar observations from around the world. (In It's all in the egg" I wrote how Jane Chapin had initially lied to investigators, and told them that the object flew over the trees though she had seen it pass through them as though they didn't exist, because "I could see they wouldn't believe me if I told them the truth.") If the genuine phenomenon is hyperdimensional, there's no need to presume the objects need to access hidden doors and underground garages.

Also, there is a kind of disinformation which actually creates the events, and suggests we ain't seen nothin' yet. (Here's some earlier speculation about what we may have yet to see. And let's keep an eye on"Prophet Yahweh.")

About four in the morning on November 26, 1979, in the French town of Pontoise, three friends in their mid-twenties named Franck Fontaine, Salomon N'Diaye El Mama and Jean-Pierre Prevost were loading up an old station wagon with jeans and sweaters to sell at a market. Fontaine was startled by a luminous object, larger than the full moon, descending behind a nearby building. He pointed it out to his companions, and decided to get a closer look in his car.

Jacques Vallee, in Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception, tells what happened when Saloman and Jean-Pierre, who saw a large ball of fog engulf the car, approached it:

The found the car on the right side of the road with its parking lights on. It was indeed surrounded with a large ball of whitish fog around which three or four smaller spheres were moving. These spheres entered the large ball, which itself was absorbed into a cylinder that flew off into the sky at a very high speed.

Dumfounded in the face of the phenomenon, they were unable to react while the manifestations were taking place. Eventually they rushed toward the car. Franck had vanished.

The two, frantic, called the police, who arrived about 30 minutes later. (The first officer on the scene reported that Franck's car was surrounded with very thick fog, and a witness in a nearby apartment, suffering from insomnia, corroborated the story of bizarre luminescent displays at the time of Fontaine's disappearance.) Unsurprisingly, their story was not taken seriously, and under harsh interrogation were accused of perpetrating a hoax, and even of killing their friend. That is until exactly one week later, on December 3 at 4:20 am, when Saloman's doorbell rang.

Vallee again:

When the bell rang in the apartment, Salomon got up in his pajamas, opened the door and confronted the man every cop in France had been hunting for the last seven days. Franck Fontaine was confused and angry. Why did Salomon go back to bed when they should already be on their way to the market? Where was Prevost? And what would they do about the car, which was missing? Obviously it had been stolen with everything it contained.

Salomon started crying, hugged his friend, and told him everything was all right: the station wagon was in the parking lot, and a whole week had elapsed! Confused, Franck had to acknowledge that he had a beard of several days' growth.... He stared wordlessly out of the window while Salomon sprinted down the road to get Prevost.... They showed him the front-page headlines, which were printed about him in every newspaper in France.

Franck Fontaine, "alien abductee"


Fontaine had no idea what had happened to him, though he began to remember drifting in and out of consciousness for a long time, lying in a laboratory on top of a machine. Along the walls were tall cabinets and blinking lights and dials, and signs in a language he couldn't read. Often, floating above him, were small luminous spheres, and he heard soft voices which seemed to eminate from the spheres, speaking to him about the perils of the Earth, and the projected date of their official contact with humanity.

Fontaine wanted to forget the whole affair and resume a normal life. He refused hypnosis, saying enough people already thought he was crazy. A hypnotist named Daniel Huguet, who may have been contracted by French intelligence, turned his attention to Prevost. Under hypnosis Prevost recalled having been contacted by an entity named Haurrio during Fontaine's absence, who told him that he should start a cult of UFO believers, to trust the extraterrestrials and save their own lives and spare the world. Haurrio said the group would be used as the kernel of a new civilization.

Prevost claimed to have been given a date, of August 15, 1980, when the extraterrestrials would being revealing themselves. Hundreds gathered near the site of Fontaine's abduction, and left disappointed. Three years later he was given another date, and still the aliens stood him up.

What was going on?

In Revelations, Vallee writes that the investigation led to the French military and technological establishment. An associate researcher of Vallee's got the story in a Parisian safe house on Novemeber 14, 1980, from a "Mr D," whose full name Vallee knows, who was on the staff of the Service Technique des Engines Tactiques at the French Ministry of Defense.

From the exchange:

"Will you tell me what the disappearance of Franck Fontaine was all about?"

"We refer to the operation as an Exercise of General Synthesis. A highly-placed personality has done detailed planning for it." [ He mentioned the name of a cabinet member with vast connections to the world of high technology.]

"How many people were in the know?"

"No more than ten to fifteen, all at a high enough level to establish what sort of manipulation was justified under the state secrets rule."

"What were your objectives?"

"The operation was structured around military, scientific, and political goals. It was purely national and had no impact beyond our borders."

"What happened to Fontaine?"

"We put him to sleep and he was kept under an altered state of high suggestibility."

"Were you also using the media? Did you have wider objectives?"

"I cannot answer your question. But if this operation had been completed, the next phase would have been far worse."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I have my own reasons."

"Aren't you afraid I will publish this interview?"

"Anything you publish will simply be denied."

Vallee adds:

Franck's recollection of being inside some sort of laboratory, lying on top of a machine, and going in and out of consciousness for a week, is consistent with the idea that he spent that time in some secret service facility such as the "hospitals" where defectors and suspected spies are interrogated.... All the events that happened to Franck are well within the state of the art.

And I would add that Fontaine's laboratory is evocative of that described by survivors of trauma-based mind control.

This kind of disinformation is a very lengthy strip tease of dry runs and beta testing. But for what purpose? What information was gleaned by the abduction of Fontaine, and Prevost's inducement to create a UFO cult? What would have been the "next phase," which would have been "far worse"?

Whatever the answer, someday the beta testing will be completed, and the real show will begin.

Take time to think. And don't take your eyes off the magician.

UFO cultists awaiting contact in the field of Fontaine's disappearance.

"Prophet Yahweh" stands and delivers?

"When Spirits begin to speak with a man, he must beware that he believes nothing they say" - Emmanuel Swedenborg

Here's an interesting addition, if nothing else, to the military-occult-UFO nexus. And given the ratcheting up of the weird, who knows what else. (Yahweh's proximity to Nellis AFB should not go unnoticed.)

On May 25 Ramon Watkins, aka "the Prophet Yahweh," issued a press release with the irresistable title "Spaceships Will Appear Over Las Vegas On My Signal":

...starting June 1st until July 15th (45 days) Prophet is going public by opening up to the news media. He will demonstrate his ability to call down UFOs and spaceships, on-demand, for them to film and photograph.

Prophet is in direct telephatic contact with his space being friends. They have revealed that they will send UFOs as soon as Prophet starts asking for them to appear.

Also, before the 45 day summoning period has ended, a spaceship will descend and sit in the skies over Las Vegas on Prophet's signal. The spaceship will hover in the sky, not far from Nellis Air Force base, for almost two days. All Las Vegans will be able to see it, day and night, before it goes back up into space.

Apparently now, before a television news crew, he's demonstrated his ability to summon a UFO.

You can read more onthis thread, on the always credulous GLP, and watch this video.

I've been unable to view it myself, but "Pants Elk" has, and posted this on the Rigorous Intuition discussion board:

Don't know what to say, except that: it looks like he did it. It's not so much the glowing orb in the sky (disappointingly featureless, white from a distance, orange when zoomed in on) but the total plain-ness of Yahweh, an ordinary-looking slob in a white tee who prayed that people wouldn't think he was mentally ill, and the genuinely baffled response of the reporter. that and the simpering idiocy of the anchors in the studio, all teeth and paper-shuffling.

Considering they sent a TV camera crew out there (actually the TV station determined the time and the place), it's quite hard to see the movement of the orb in relation to the ground, but there's enough frames to make this a genuine WTF Kodak moment.

Check it out.

According to Newshounds, The Prophet Yahweh was a guest last week on Alan Colmes' Fox radio show, and writes:

If I understood Yahweh correctly, the arrival of the aliens is Phase One and they won't get off the ship until Phase Two whose date wasn't specified. At that time, Yahweh claimed, they will get off the ship and go to the podium and tell the public what they want done on this planet - to set up an eternal kingdom on this planet. This is the start of their domination.

Colmes promised to follow up on the story.

Before the summoning period has ended, Yahweh promises a huge UFO to hover over Las Vegas.

Does everyone remember what the Merlin Project, another favourite of Fox and the Pentagon, futurist brainchild of an SDI physicist, which actually counts Colmes as a client, predicted for this year, and on Colmes' show even? As also reported by Newshounds: "At the end of 2005, something profound will happen. They're not sure what, exactly, it may be but it could be an asteroid strike or a massive UFO invasion."

To complete the Swedenborg quote:

When Spirits begin to speak with a man, he must beware that he believes nothing they say. For nearly everything they say is fabricated by them, and they lie: for they are permitted to narrate anything, as what heaven is and how things in the heavens are to be understood, they would tell so many lies that a man would be astonished.

Whatever happens, and however weird it gets, don't let yourself be too astonished.

Cynical, sophisticated and subtle

Sometimes nonsense is just nonsense. Sometimes, like when Marshall Applewhite hollered "All aboard!" for the Hale-Bopp Express, it's dangerous nonsense. Sometimes the nonsense is also disinformation. And sometimes, disinformation is not nonsense at all. And for the truth, that's the most dangerous.

First, some nonsense. I don't know what Phil Jayhan and letsroll911's story is, but I'll bet it doesn't have a happy ending. The two are responsible for the aggressive dissemination of the ludicrous pod-and-missile theory. (That is, a moment before impacting the towers, the aircraft fired missiles from pods on their bellies. Why would they? A good question. One which, as usual with such fantasies, is never really addressed.) I see Jayhan posted on Thursday a bizarre ramble about how letsroll911 has changed history, and even lapses into the third person to talk about himself. As a rule, not a good sign:

When I decided to then publish my findings, I thought I would end up within a week, with either a bullet in my head or CNN trucks in my driveway. It was kind of a hard decision, as I really desired neither. But I chose to publish. So on April 15th, 2004, I released a press release that literally changed the face of the world and its politics.

...

Had Phil Jayhan never existed, and never taken out this website, all of you would be experiencing an alternate reality, quite different than the one which you now enjoy...Not sure what that would be, but am sure it wouldn't be better than what we now have.

I won't judge Jayhan's intentions. But I hope, for his sake, that he's insincere.

Staying with 9/11 for the moment, consider the Pentagon crash, and the confiscation of the video from the service station security camera. That the video has never been released is regarded by many as damning evidence that authorities are trying to hide the true nature of the crash: that the video must reveal that it wasn't Flight 77 but a missile, or a fighter jet. But think: perhaps the video remains hidden because some people are quite happy to mindfuck the conspiracists and perpetuate an erroneous line of inquiry. Would they want to lay to rest a mistaken hypothesis, when it misdirects the efforts of so many? It may be that the question is not What have they got to hide? but rather, Why do they want us to think that they're hiding something?

Yesterday's news regarding developments in the Johnny Gosch case was encouraging, but we need to keep our wits about us, about them. The story is that investigator James Rothstein has a former CIA agent on tape admitting the agency's hand in the abduction. Now sometimes, former CIA agents tell the truth. But quite often, particularly about such dark and sensitive subjects, they don't. Reasonable skepticism about whatever they tell us is a good idea, not least when they tell us what we want to hear. So while I hope Rothstein is onto a strong lead, I have to also ask, could there be a reason why the Agency would intend, at this time, to sow disinformation about this crime?

After all, the best disinformation is that which most closely resembles the truth as we know it. It may look just like what we're expecting to find. But within it, is a time bomb meant to blow up in our faces.

Jim Garrison knew the feeling. He had his case against Clay Shaw blow up because of the cross-examination of Charles Spiesel, a New York accountant he'd belatedly added to his witness list. Spiesel testified he had heard Shaw and David Ferrie discuss the possible assassination of John F Kennedy. When the Chief Defense Counsel rose, he "uncannily" knew to destroy Spiesel's credibility, and Garrison's, by probing him about mind control. Spiesel complained that "hypnosis and psychological warfare" had been used on him, and he had been mentally tortured by the NYPD. And who knows: Spiesel could have been a mind control subject, but it wouldn't have mattered. (This was still years before the declassification, such as it was, of MK-ULTRA.) In the eyes of the jury his testimony was rendered worthless.

In On the Trail of the Assassins, Garrison writes:

For one very long moment, while I am sure that my face revealed no concern, I was swept by a feeling of nausea. I realized that the clandestine operation of the opposition was so cynical, so sophisticated, and, at the same time, so subtle, that destroying an old-fashioned state jury trial was very much like shooting a fish in a barrel with a shotgun.

Most of us, I think, are good-hearted people who are alive to this material because we recognize injustice and mean for it to end. That can be our strength, but it can also find hobbling expression in naive thinking. I believe on this side we could do with some healthy cynicism, sophistication and subtly of our own. Maybe it could rescue some credibility. Save lives, even.

I think of Gary Caradori, Chief Investigator for the Nebraska Legislature's Franklin committee, calling Senator Loran Schmit and exclaiming "We've got them! There's no way they can get out of it now!" He was returning from Chicago with photographic evidence of Lawrence King's elite paedophile ring. Schmit took another phone call a short while later, which informed him that Caradori had died in the crash of his small plane. His evidence was never recovered.

We want to get them, but let's never again say "There's no way they can get out of it now." Let's think several steps ahead, because they do. And when the bad guys shoot fish in a barrel, usually we're the fish. So we'd better be thinking outside the barrel.

Gosch case implicates CIA, US officials: Iowa TV

You who build these altars now
to sacrifice these children,
you must not do it anymore. - Leonard Cohen

We'll see what comes of this report by KWWL, but it's at least encouraging to see a mainstream broadcaster play this material as straight news, and not "Now, here's what some crazy people are saying." Perhaps, as I suggested in yesterday's post, the weirdness to the world that many people are now perceiving is catching up to the weird reality that's been there all along. So maybe, at last, it doesn't sound so crazy to talk about the CIA's hand in the abduction of children for prostitution. Maybe it's just about staring down the facts.

And I have to say, the absence of Ted Gunderson in all of this is also an encouraging sign.

New Leads In The Johnny Gosch Case

A cold case is heating up. Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch vanished without a trace in 1982. But, now, after KWWL's story last month on Johnny's disappearance, there is new information on the case.

A private investigator working Johnny's disappearance believe his kidnapping was part of a government conspiracy. The investigator shared new evidence with KWWL and it could be the break needed to solve this case. That evidence includes a recorded phone call that has never been heard publicly, until now.

During the early morning of September 5, 1982, Johnny Gosch was kidnapped from a West Des Moines neighborhood while delivering newspapers. It was silent, quick and professional. "This man has told us that at the end of their investigation that there were 834 kids involved that were kidnapped," says James Rothstein. He's talking about a former CIA agent who must remain anonymous.

Rothstein is a former New York City police detective, now a private investigator working the case for Johnny's mother, Noreen. And within the last couple weeks, Rothstein has uncovered new evidence linking Johnny's kidnapping to child prostitution. "It basically came down to one thing and one thing only. You know, it was money. These kids were being grabbed to satisfy the malignant, twisted, you know, evil depravity of very powerful individuals who have the money," he says.

Rothstein is talking about individuals who would spend as much as $10,000 to have sex with young boys and girls. And this new evidence points to the involvement of U.S. government officials. "They were using kids to compromise people. And what better way to compromise somebody than get a young boy with a politician or some powerful person that may be in the military or whatever and then you can compromise them and get what ever you want."

Rothstein's former-CIA contact told him the agency was involved in the abductions and tried to cover it up: "We were specifically ordered to clear our name. This would make the American agency look pretty shitty, like we're all a bunch of fucking child molesters."

The report adds that "while Gannon's true identity still can't be confirmed, Rothstein says the more clues he uncovers, the possibility Gannon may be Gosch increases." So maybe that book's not closed yet, either.

This is what kicking at the darkness feels like. One of these days, it can't help but bleed daylight.

That which survives

"Have you been hallucinating lately?"
"No. Should I be?"
"Yes, you should be." - Videodrome

Undoubtedly it's a great consolation for those who presume there's nothing up there, to believe there's nothing down there, either. If it's just a material world, then occult crimes are mere crimes with a bizarre gloss of ritual to kink things up. Even when, as with the Hosanna Church cult, imprints of pentagrams are found on the floor of the "youth hall," and victims and perpetrators alike speak of sex magick and bloody devil worship in black robes, those whose philosophies are not big enough to admit such things happen will still deny them, because they must. Even if they admit that something like these crimes occurred - and that's a big concession for such people - they will strip them of their metaphysical content. It will be said - and I know it, because it's been said many times - that the devil worship of the paedophile ring was nothing but play acting, because there is no such thing as Satanic Ritual Abuse. The reasoning goes round and round like a magician's protective circle.

Still, it's increasingly difficult to tred softly upon the thin crust of modernity with so many eruptions all around us. It's been a hard few months for those who think the world isn't this weird. Maybe harder, even, for those of us who've suspected as much, but have hoped we were wrong. At least that's been my hope.

But one of the implications of the Hosanna Church is that however weird we thought the world, we ought to think again. As the owner of a local Christian bookstore told The New York Times, "if anything like this can happen in a place like Ponchatoula, with all the churches we have, it can happen anywhere." The case of Toledo's Reverend Gerald Robinson, charged in the ritual slaying of a nun and accused of participating in a paedophilic cult of Roman Catholic priests, is another. (I'm sure someone has said, "if it can happen in Toledo, it can happen anywhere.") Then there's yesterday's report of the Italian investigation into a child torture site which counted as patrons three priests; fresh allegations against Spokane's conservative mayor James West ("I want to do to your son what no mother would want to know"); James Guckert who, even if he's not Johnny Gosch, lent credibility to the case for covert paedophile rings by virtue of his own incredible journey to the White House - all of these stories and more are not suggestive of something new happening, but of something that has been going on for a long while right alongside us, which we are only now able to see. Or maybe, able to see again.

There's an interesting recent book by Toyne Newton titled The Dark Worship, that studies the persistence of a Hekate cult in Britain. (Hekate was a wild goddess of the hunt, noted for her strong sorcery, who inspired ecstatic episodes in devotees and typically received sacrifices of dogs.) Newton's investigations led him to Clapham Wood which, interestingly, has been a locus of both occult activity and UFO sightings. (Here, for instance, is an interesting recent account of "black boomerang-shaped objects" over Clapham.)

There's another account here of goings on in the wood by Charles Walker (who makes the mistake of presuming the extraterrestrial hyphothesis of UFOs, and so fails to see their potential occult significance):

Peace was not about to return to the village [following a UFO flap] however, as a new mystery began to unfold. Reports of dogs disappearing in certain parts of Clapham Wood attracted new interest. Dog owners reported that their dogs had wandered off in to the woods and were never seen again. In other cases dogs appeared to go mad in certain parts of the wood, running round in circles and foaming at the mouth. When they were taken out of that particular area they recovered fully.

...

What I became very interested in whilst looking through the various notes relating to Clapham Wood was the reports of the dog disappearances and the fact that a number of people had reported strange feelings whilst walking through certain parts of the wood. Such cases had, although I was not aware of it before, been reported some time prior to the first ufo sightings. Many people had always felt that there was something strange about the wood but they were not quite able to explain it. However having established myself within the group I was able to extract information from the files and visit one or two of the people who had reported their experiences. What I was particularly interested in of course were the experiences which had been reported before the publicity began, and there were quite a few cases.

After taking a call from an anonymous tipster, Walker arranged a meeting in the woods:

Just as I was about to give the whole thing up a voice coming from behind some bushes on my left told me not to attempt to look round. ‘Just listen to what I have to say’, he said. Hearing this voice so suddenly coming from the darkness and silence I had experienced for the past twenty minutes or so made me feel fear again. I was frozen to the spot yet felt like running as fast as I could. What was going to happen? ‘What an idiot’, I said to myself. ‘Why on earth had I let myself in for this?’ After a few seconds of silence the mystery person began to relate information regarding the activities of an occult group in the area. He also indicated that they used a sacrifice regularly at their rituals.

The group was called the Friends of Hekate and they were devoted to the Goddess Hekate whose close association with dogs meant that such creatures were being sacrificed in her honour. He went on to tell how the group, whose activities he said were of a satanic nature, was formed in Sussex and had been using Clapham and the surrounding area for some time. They had been responsible for taking the dogs and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The dogs, and occasionally other domestic and farm animals, were sacrificed at their monthly meetings. He also added that they would stop at nothing to protect the identity of their members and the activities of the group.

Continuing his investigations, Walker discovered a huge, crude mural in an unoccupied building abutting the woods, that depicted a devilish, horned figure with sharp talons and forked tail on a background of flames. It appeared to be clutching a religious orb bearing an eight-armed cross and circle. Newton's own research revealed that the Clapham Woods' Friends of Hekate was just a single cell of a network including Winchester, Avebury and London, which used a typically occultic system of grades of initiation to protect the identities and intentions of those in London's inner circle. Also typically, elite figures are counted among its members.

Hekate worship would seem to be both archaic and irrelevant, but ask the dog owners. And if he could be reached, the late Clapham vicar Harry Neal Snelling, whose murder remains unsolved, might have something interesting to add.

We're really talking here about the persistance of archetypes, and those do have power, and have been known to us by many guises. For example, in China Galland's Longing for Darkness, she writes how ancient goddess worship has been transmitted in part through the adoration of Mary, particularly the "Black Madonna." In other words, devotion to Mary may be merely apparent; the Queen of Heaven may have another face. After all, Hekate was said to have three of them.

Similarly, perhaps Marian appearences could be manifestations of something quite apart from the mother of Jesus. It's interesting to read accounts of the first appearance of Mary to four girls in Garabandal, Spain in 1961:

The next night around 6:00 pm, the girls went into ecstacy, or a trance while seeing the Virgin Mary. She appeared to them with two angels, both of which looked exactly like St Michael, and over her right shoulder the children saw a flaming red square with a triangle and an eye in it, and some Oriental writing in it.

A manifestation such as that - yes, that's right: a triangle with a freakin' eye in it - reminds me, I'm embarassed to admit, of Star Trek V, and James Kirk's staring down the supposed deity with the question, "Excuse me - why does God need a spaceship?"

Clapham Woods (copyright Charles Walker) and Garabandal


Hekate was identified with the folklore of the Wild Hunt, which "was a historical phenomenon among all Indo-European peoples." She was often held to lead the charge:

The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal group of huntsmen...in mad pursuit across the skies. Seeing the Wild Hunt was thought to presage some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. Mortals getting in the path of or following the Hunt could be kidnapped and brought to the land of the dead.

Naturally, today's "Wild Hunt" across the skies conjures, perhaps literally, UFOs. Instead of gods hunting prey, they are thought to be extraterrestrials seeking subjects to "probe." As then, mortals who get in the path of the Hunt risk abduction, and as then, the Hunt is held to prefigure a looming apocalypse.

If we are fast approaching an end of things - not the end of the world, but a catastrophic break in global civilization - perhaps it's not so strange that we should see our culture assume again the characteristics of the beginning of things. Something long hidden revealing its true face. So the Dark Worship reasserts itself, and we're carried again to the land of the dead.

Leonard Cohen called it The Future.

There'll be a breaking of the ancient Western Code.
Your private life will suddenly explode.
There'll be fires, there'll be phantoms on the road,
And the white man dancing.

Who shall I say is calling?

who in your merry merry month of May,
who by very slow decay
and who shall I say is calling? - Leonard Cohen

I've always been a little worried for California. For one thing, there's its propensity for both natural disasters and the other kind, too, like Enron and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And there's the big, black bullseye taped to its back by the hypocritical right, which absurdly demonizes the state for harbouring pockets of some of America's last ghettos of liberalism. But ever since Jeb Bush joked during a cabinet meeting, one month after Schwarzenegger's bizarre ascension, that the people of San Francisco may be endangered and "That's probably good news for the country" (adding, over the laughter, "Did I just say that out loud?") I've been more worried than usual. California is just too inviting a stage for a synthetic terror event for us not to witness a Ground Zero West.

Before 9/11, I never gave much thought to the health and welfare of prominent scientists. I would have, if I had known the string of mysterious deaths which struck Britain's "star wars" physicists in the 1980s. (See "Did 22 British SDI Researchers really ALL Commit Suicide?") But I didn't know that, as most people still don't know, because as I said, that was before 9/11, and the world still made a naive kind of sense to me. Now, after so many microbiologists have gone to early graves, I know different. I may still be wrong about a lot of things, but at least I know enough now to say that I was certainly wrong then.

So the murder of San Francisco radiologist Robert Lull should raise the threat level on both counts.

I see a reward is now on offer, which must mean the investigation is not going well and the trail may already have gone cold. A reward was also offered in the January murder of Dr Jeong Im, and the only recent development in that case is the promise of security lights in the parking garage in which the microbiologist was stabbed to death, where he was found stuffed in the trunk of his burning car.

As for the motive to the Lull's murder, "gisgaia" has already posted some important dots suitable for connecting on the RI discussion board here. And I agree: "the fact that he was working on hemorrhagic intestinal disorders may be a very big dot," especially when considering the work of others on the death list, and that "most of the now, 44 [and counting] scientists who met their demise since 9/11/01...is [that] all were expert in emerging infectious diseases especially Ebola, Mad Cow, HIV.” Lull had been set to present his latest findings on the effects of altered flu viruses in the treatment of cancers at next month's Society of Nuclear Medicine's Annual Meeting in Toronto.

Speaking of 9/11, on its third anniversary Lull spoke on the subject "Is Nuclear Terrorism Possible?" This is from the newsletter account of the event, published in the UCSF's Department of Radiology newsletter:

Lull also brought a different level of insight, having served in the military and as medical consultant at Inter- service Nuclear Weapons School at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. Attempts to smuggle nuclear weapons and materials have occurred, Lull said, citing incidents in Munich and Prague. More frighteningly, the now deceased General Alex Lebed said in a 2000 "60 Minutes" interview that Russia "can't account for or locate approximately 135 suitcase size' 1 KT fission nuclear weapons of the munitions type." These misplaced weapons fueled Lull's imagination.

Reading Lebed's name brought a lot back. (Here, by the way, is an archive of his claims re suitcase nukes.) The "now deceased General" was instrumental in ending, at least for a while, the War in Chechnya, and for a time was the figure to watch jockeying for power in the post-Yeltsin era. (He finished third in the 1996 presidential election, and was likely to run again.) He'd been elected governor of Russia's Krasnoyarsk region in 1998 and made enemies of its mafia. After Lebed died in a helicopter crash, parliamentarian Alexei Arbatov said it might have been orchestrated by his foes.

And remembering Lebed's death recalled another helicopter crash which received even less press. Here's the story, from last August 7:

Death threats before crash

A lawyer for a Russian oil giant who died in a mystery helicopter crash had told friends he had received death threats, The Western Mail can reveal.

It is believed Stephen Curtis, a former Welsh university student, had been targeted by the Russian secret service shortly before his death earlier this year.

Mr Curtis, who was left in control of crisis-hit Russian oil firm Yukos after the jailing of its boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is also thought to have contacted British intelligence agencies before he died.... Reports in the Russian media say he offered information in return for protection from the Russian investigation.

...

Lawyer Robert Amsterdam, who is representing Yukos shareholders under arrest in Russia, said, "The timing of the crash could not have been worse for the company.

"If someone had planned to do something, this would have been the time that would have been chosen."

Stephen Curtis has nothing to do with Robert Lull, except both may have died on account of the above-the-law headhunting practiced by global Intelligence agencies. Most people who read the newspaper and consider themselves informed would say this only happens in the movies, or maybe only in other countries, or perhaps only to bad guys who have it coming. But it happens, and here - wherever "here" is - and to good people and innocents whose deaths are worth more than their lives.

I don't know who killed Robert Lull, or Jeong Im, or what drove Philip Shue to his death. I don't know if Lebed was murdered, or Curtis, or why John Kokal had a great fall. I know there is such a thing as random violence, and that suicides and accidents do happen. But I also know that the hidden hand of earthly power is that of a serial killer who never weighs the consequence of getting caught, because he never is.

Remember the film noir DOA? A man's been poisoned, and with his last hours he tries to solve his own murder. I feel sometimes that's what we're doing. We might not have been literally been poisoned, although we might have been, but I have a growing sense, one I think is broadly shared, that time is running out for us to catch our killers. Whether it's by radiation, or a helicopter crash, or an emerging virus, or a knife in a doorway or parking garage, justice makes demands of us, even if it can't spare us.

If the blog's daily visitor from the Centers for Disease Control has a strong lead, please consider sharing with the group.


And who by brave assent,
who by accident,
who in mortal chains,
who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?

a "moment of weakness and temporary insanity"

Camping out with the Hosanna Church kids


This is an interesting find: a once seemingly heartwarming, now decidedly creepy historical artifact, courtesty of the Internet, depicting life in Louis Lamonica's Hosanna Church of Hammond Louisiana - you know, the Satanic Ritual Abuse cult of paedophelia and bestiality and cat blood - discussed in today's earlier post.

Of Wet and Muddy Faces

Somehow, in moment of weakness and temporary insanity, I agreed to tent camp with 14 pre-teen boys from our church.


"Boy, these camping trips wear me out," I remarked, stumbling into the house.

"Tired! You haven't left yet. You haven't even finished loading the truck," my ever-understanding wife replied.

Somehow, in a moment of weakness and temporary insanity, I agreed to tent camp with 14 pre-teen and younger boys from Hosanna Assembly of God church in Hammond, La.

...

At the campground, a frightening sight met us; muddy, drenched boys with giant water guns surrounded the truck. Already wet from the brief, yet torrential rain, they didn't care who else might get caught in the crossfire. The boys discovered, or created, a muddy super slide after repeatedly accidentally felling in the wallow.

...

Unintentionally, I started a survival-of-the-fittest contest when I brought out four weenie-roasting forks for 14 boys. The adults lost. Laws probably prohibit combining slippery mud, overcharged boys, sharp objects and a fire -- and for good reason. God watched over us, though, because no one, not even the fathers, suffered any serious injuries, discounting numerous scrapes, scratches, bruises and an occasional burn from an overzealous fire keeper.

Rev. Louis LaMonica, pastor of the church, joined us later that evening. He said something about being late because of a church function. I suspect he just waited as long as he could, thinking the boys would finally be asleep. He didn't wait long enough....

I didn't think the boys would ever run out of energy. Some didn't until after they returned home. They never walked anywhere, preferring to run. If only I could bottle that and sell it!

Pastor LaMonica also left early the next day, saying something about having a lot of praying to do for us. He was probably correct about that.

"No way!" and "Yeah - so what?"

"Facts are stupid things." - Ronald Reagan

One of the most surprising lessons I've learned in recent years has to do with the resilience of denial: the stubborn "No way!" that just won't see. And when I say "recent years," I'm talking about the quickened time since the theft of the 2000 election. That anyone, even and especially Americans, could carry on after that as though the world were still something like normal - let alone after everything that's followed - must take a fearsome act of will. That is, if they are paying the slightest attention.

Because denial requires a certain amount of reflection in order to soften the edges of hard facts to bring them in line with comforting mythologies, and a lot of people never get that far. That's why, if it's true that the High Cabal has been spending years secretly building the infrastructure of mass mind control - whether that truth be found in HAARP, chemtrails or some other exotic psychotronic weapon - it may be in for a surprise when it finally flips the switch and sees no effect. Maybe it will be redundant. Perhaps decades of dumbing down have been so spectacularly successful that the public mind has become an irrelevance, as has its control. Or perhaps people just don't give a shit.

Indifference - the "Yeah - so what?" - may be a greater challenge for us out here on the fringe than denial. Because truth, even hidden truth, can be extremely taxing to follow. Think of Mark Lombardi's spidery conspiracy art, and consider for example the lodestone scandal of BCCI. When the story blew up it should have taken the intelligence-terror nexus with it, but it didn't, and for a number of reasons. But one big reason was that BCCI is a complicated scandal, and its depths are not easily conveyed, so even where the story was reported I doubt that most people would have read very far, because they would have no idea why the scandal should matter to them, even though it is concerned with a good deal of the machinery that gave us 9/11.

And about 9/11, I think there's a grave problem of "sexing up" the truth with spectacular yet specious arguments. For instance, some of the splashiest and attractive 9/11 material is devoted to supporting the "Pentagon Missile." Sure, it gets people's attention - in fact, it dominates the public perception of alternative theories of the attacks - but is it right? Well, no; as I've said, I don't think so. And truth will suffer again and again when those who fell for the missile "hook" come to the same conclusion and chuck the whole thing, and those who were turned off the "missile" refuse to look any further.

Here's a perfect, appalling story to illustrate both the "No way!" and the "Yeah - so what?"

I mentioned in Thursday's post the Louisiana ritual sex cult fronted by a fundamentalist church. From one update, "the child sex investigation of a small town church continues to grow. From the pastor to the piano player, detectives have now arrested eight people. Charges range from sex with children to sex with animals."

If it's not clear yet what was going on, read here:

Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Daniel Edwards said Friday that members of a Ponchatoula church cult accused of sexually abusing children and animals told detectives they carried out the practices for years as part of a devil-worshipping ritual involving cat blood.

"This is hard to talk about and harder to believe, but some of the suspects have told us their intention in all of this was devil worshipping," Edwards said.

...

"It's mind-boggling to us that nobody came forward before this," Edwards said, "that it wasn't somehow common knowledge in Ponchatoula."

I find it as appalling as ever to read the denial a story like this provokes, and how often and how easy "McMartin" gets namechecked. Here are some examples:

"kind of unlikely. another McMartin Preschool-type case, maybe?"

"I quite honestly believe it's possible the pastor was abusing children, but that's about it. This has McMartin-Little Rascals, etc. written all over it. Too many fantastic details."

"I'm betting some innocent people were arrested today."

And so it goes, as always. That's denial for you. What about indifference? The story, on the surface, isn't that complicated. But that's just it: the story is not just surface; the story is also an eruption from far below the surface. The complications arise in the suggestive implication for what remains hidden in America. It's in how we answer the reasonable question, What does this have to do with anything?

Minds are boggled that no one came forward. The Sheriff finds it inconceivable that with dozens of victims, this wasn't common knowledge in a small community. Yet there are victims, and there are confessions. What should we think? Just an isolated case, like the Pentagon's "bad apples"? Then why isn't this case a surprise to us? Why have we seen so many other "isolated cases"? Why does it fit a pattern so well, if the pattern is just our delusion?

Last month, Ran Prieur made a brilliant observation regarding the general incredulity at obvious conclusions with respect to Guckert's privileged White House access, and I think it's fitting here as well:

The deeper issue here is the elitism in our culture. If a known prostitute was making many unexplained visits to some slum house, nobody would have any trouble figuring it out. We are trained to think that people below us in the hierarchy are selfish, dangerous, and untrustworthy, and that people above us have good intentions and are the same in private as they appear in public. It's almost exactly the opposite! But as long as we're under hypnosis, the rulers will take advantage of it by doing stuff we don't think they would do.

I like Noam Chomsky as much as the next blogger, but his thought doesn't admit certain things about the world I've come to regard as true. Manufacturing Consent is good, but it's no Golden Bough.


By the way, another one for the "Yeah - so what?" crowd: Calvi was murdered. And faster than you can say "No Way!" comes the report of the murder of another scientist with military ties. Dr Robert Lull, who lectured in San Francisco about the threat of nuclear terrorism and was a passionate opponent of "bunker buster" weapons, was found stabbed to death inside the doorway of his house Thursday.

Posada again

Remember Luis Posada Carriles?

Here's a Miami Herald interview with the relaxed terrorist and former CIA operative in a luxury condo, published yesterday. ("At first I hid a lot. I thought the US government was looking for me. Now I hide a lot less.") Because of such talk, Posada has been taken into custody by Immigration officials.

I can't imagine they wanted to do this. Authorities would likely have been happy answering questions about Posada's whereabouts with an indefinite shrug. As recently as last week the official line stated they had no knowledge he had entered the country. But comfortable among the thugs, Posada overplayed his hand and embarrassed his old patron, the US government. And though he'd been a faithful servant, he was not such a player that he could get away with that.

He should have taken a cue from another bomber some pesky dark-skinned foreigners want extradited, CIA operative Michael Meiring. Posada should have told any inquisitive journalist at his doorstep something like Meiring told the single American reporter who bothered following his bloody trail from the Philippines, that "If this harms me in any way, you will find my power then, and you'll find out who I am." But then, maybe that wouldn't have saved him either, because Posada is not Meiring.

Posada can be given up, but Meiring can't. Meiring's crimes are fresh, and wave the false flag which is the "War on Terror." They happened in the Philippines which, like Pakistan, is an important and vulnerable node for the business which intelligence agencies and terrorist organizations conduct with each other. (Ask Terry Nichols about the Philippines.) The bombings implicated Muslims, and exacerbated regional tensions which the Bush regime and its friends wearing the brass in the Philippine military sought to exploit.

Posada's crimes, on the other hand, must seem like ancient history, especially to a people who don't know their history. And to those who don't even know their crimes, not even that.

But will Posada be given up? I doubt he will be extradited to Venezuela, which is the only way that question could be answered with a Yes. I expect it will be determined that, under "Strong Man" Hugo Chavez, Posada could not be guaranteed a fair trial. The hope may be that Posada can soon be offered to a post-Chavez Allawi-like puppet in Caracas. Whether such an offer were accepted or declined would make no difference; justice would not be served then. But Posada's nearly 80 years old, and the Venezuelan people will ensure that's a vain hope. So instead Posada may be held indefinitely, in comfortable custody. An embarrassment to the US still, just not as embarrassing as having the old killer strut about Miami, gloating in his freedom.

Meiring is more than an embarrassment. His case threatens the consensus fiction of the "War on Terror." So his name will remain unspoken.

Dark horse and dead cattle

We live in a political world, love don't have any place
We're living in times when men commit crimes
And crime don't have a face

I never like to disagree with Bob Dylan, but I will here, about a couple of things.

It's not a political world, it just looks that way. Politics merely dresses the set. Like the curtains, tables and chairs promoting the illusion of freedom, which Frank Zappa said hid the brick wall at the back of the theatre. And that reminds me of another set, from the film Dark City. The hero has spent half the movie searching for "Shell Beach," which he believes will solve the mystery in which he finds himself. Shell Beach proves an illusion; nothing but a fading poster on a brick wall.

If you've seen the film, you know the solution to the mystery is found behind the wall.



And Dylan got it wrong here, too: crime does have a face. High Crimes, even. We know the faces of the perpetrators; they're well known. That they are rewarded rather than punished does not render them anonymous.

Here's a story from Sunday night that makes Dylan's mistakes several times over:

Woodward Calls Cheney a "Serious" Dark Horse for 2008 Run for White House

A trial balloon for a Cheney for President run in 2008 is being launched by a surprising source, Washington Post star reporter (and White House insider) Bob Woodward.

Appearing on Chris Matthews' NBC talk show on Sunday, Woodward labeled Vice President Cheney "a serious dark horse candidate." He said that with "a number of people" going for the GOP nomination, "a guy named George Bush might come out and say 'What about Dick?'"

Woodward observed that "there's a serious vacuum right now," with Senators Frist, Brownback, and Allen leading the field, some say.

There may be a precedent for this. Cheney, who was put in charge of finding a suitable VP candidate in 2000, ended up getting the nod himself.

Why, after all this time, should Woodward be considered a "surprising source"? Woodward has been an insider all his life. A conservative insider, even; hardwired into military intelligence. He adapted his Wheaton commencement address from Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative. After hearing Woodward speak in class, his Yale political science professor called him a "crypto-fascist." Woodward went to work as a Pentagon briefing officer. (In The Secret Team, Fletcher Prouty - who himself had been a briefer - writes that "one of the most interesting and effective roles is that played by the behind-the-scenes, faceless, ubiquitous briefing officer," who has "almost daily" access to executive power.) One of Woodward's tasks, which he denies, was to brief Alexander Haig.

Watergate is regarded as a conspiracy that failed, and which established, for all time - his record of the past 30 years notwithstanding - Woodward's credentials as a hardnosed and even liberal journalist. But the public story contains a good deal of spin, which spins away from Washington's intelligence community. And that seems to have been the intention of Woodward, the Spook. (This takes us beyond the scope of this post; I'll refer you to Jim Hougan's Secret Agenda and Colodny and Gettlin's Silent Coup for more on Watergate's - and Bob Woodward's - hidden history.)

Cheney, the "Dark Horse." If politics mattered in America - hell, if American politics were real - this would be laughable. But Democrats were laughing last Fall, too, as George W Bush stammered and chicken-danced and melted through three debates with a mystery box strapped to his back, and still won. He has the lowest approval of any second term president. Homer, on last Sunday's Simpsons, called him "Commander Cuckoobananas." The exit polls - well, you know where I'm going.

The Bush/Cheney election, and its re-election, were massive and in-your-face frauds. The Emperor has no votes. And even those who can see it generally behave as though they can't. Will they act differently when "Dark Horse" Dick Cheney assumes executive power in his own right? That's a campaign poster on the brick wall. Take a pick axe to the wall, and see what's behind it.

Here's something I didn't know until recently: Dick Cheney visited Roswell, New Mexico on October 24, 2000. A few days before, there was this local story:

Mysterious Mass Death of Cattle in New Mexico

Twenty-four cattle were found dead under mysterious circumstances in Roswell, New Mexico on Thursday morning, October 19, 2000.

"Rancher Marcelo Macias doesn't know what happened to his herd of cows, but he knows he's out of a lot of money."

"Macias said 24 cows died mysteriously last week at his farm."

"The cattle were all healthy when he checked them at midnight Wednesday (October 19, 2000) but by early Thursday morning (October 19, 2000) nearly half of his herd lay dead."

Maybe our politics are not very well informed by literary devices like pathetic fallacies. Maybe dead cattle are just dead cattle. (Dead squid, too, like those noted in a comment yesterday, that "hundreds of dead large squid" had washed up in Orange County, California, as Bush made his likely unconscious allusion to the cephalopodic Cthulhu.) But mysterious cattle deaths and mutilations appear to be one of those junctions where black magick and UFO phenomenon meet. They seem, in part, to be ritually prefiguring. (Remember that the night before the murder of Father Alfred Kunz, who threatened to expose a Satanic cult of paedophiles in the Catholic Church of Wisconsin, a cow on a nearby farm had its throat slashed and blood drained into a pail, its hind legs cut through, and its genitals removed.)

I don't know about Roswell. But Dick Cheney carries about him the frisson of High Weirdness and cultic bruatality. In April 2001 Cheney was asked if he had been briefed on UFOs. He replied "Well if I had been briefed on it, I'm sure it was probably classified, and I couldn't talk about it." Rather than lie he prevaricates, and sends the message that he's an insider. And, of course, much deeper than Woodward.

If Cheney becomes president in name, and if he lives so long, he will see in, and see out, 2012. Are you prepared for that?

Linda Moulton Howe reports an interesting abduction case from Colorado in An Alien Harvest, her study of mutilation and UFO phenomenon. A couple were driving north of Denver the week before Thanksgiving in 1980. The husband, who had worked as an Air Force launch control officer, reported a "cerulean blue light" surrounded the car, and they lost track of time. Under hypnosis, husband and wife both recounted how they were then beckoned aboard something by a tall figure in a blue robe with high collar. They felt unable to resist. Once on board they were separated: the woman had a vaginal exam (she was, though she didn't know it at the time, a month pregnant), and the man had his mind probed. He felt his thoughts stripped out his head: "I've got it, but they've got it, too. Got the whole thing. They've just pulled everything right out of me!"

He fell silent for several minutes, and then began to speak in a whisper, saying his mind was being put back. But something had been added:

There's more to it than anybody knows. There's more to life, more to the world. There's more to everything than anybody knows. More dimensions, things co-existing. There are other dimensions...more than three dimensions. Everywhere, it all works together. Everything co-exists. There's different dimensions we can't go into.

Welcome to Shell Beach.

"From beyond the stars"

"I hear the Crawling Chaos that calls from beyond the stars" - The Necronomicon
"We have a calling from beyond the stars" - George W. Bush, January 19, 2005

The Bush Mythos

HP Lovecraft wrote that "the most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." Increasingly, it seems to me that mercy is being withheld from us.

Perhaps it's an Internet thing: the digitization of data has enhanced our own Random Access Memory. That isn't to say we're necessarily correlating correctly - even if everything's connected, that doesn't mean our model of how they connect is accurate - but more than ever, we're seeing dots. What we do with them is becoming the question of our time. And it's on the meta-level of myth that some of the most significant connections can be made.

I doubt that George W Bush knew, as he delivered his speech at the "Celebration of Freedom" concert on the eve of his second inaugural, that its most memorable line was straight out of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. His speech writers also were likely unaware that their prose evoked nothing so much as the "Great Old Ones" from beyond space and time. But that's the thing about a myth, even one created by a pulp fiction writer: you needn't even know it exists to become a part of it.

Intentional or not, the nod to Cthulhu was apt. Lovecraft's apocalypse is of awakened Elder Gods who resume their rule of Earth when humanity becomes sufficiently like them: "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the Earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." Now that sounds like a crusader religion fit for the Pentagon. (I could see the promise of "new ways to kill" being the subject of a flurry of memos.) And Bush seems to be doing as much to hasten this End of the World as he is that of his supposed Christian faith.

Of course Lovecraft was writing fiction. Though as we noted here, Michael Aquino has written several Cthulhu-derived ritual ceremonies, and Kenneth Grant of the Typhonian OTO and the Cult of Lam regards Lovecraft as an unwitting prophet of the Left Hand Path. (Consider the gravity with which some hold Lovecraft's "prophetic fiction" here, in a treatise on the "Aeon of Cthulhu Rising.") Still, it's likely not Cthulhu calling. Though something seems to be.

"A Special Evil"

So I''ll give Bush the benefit of the doubt on Cthulhu, and believe he didn't know what he was saying. But there was another speech. And I'm afraid he knew exactly what he was saying, and also what he wasn't.

Do you remember his address to the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2003? It was his chance to win back the world on Iraq after the debacle of invasion and during the atrocity of occupation. The speech was consumed with the "War on Terrror," until this strangely discordant note was struck:

There's another humanitarian crisis spreading, yet hidden from view. Each year, an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are bought, sold or forced across the world's borders. Among them are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, and others as young as five, who fall victim to the sex trade. This commerce in human life generates billions of dollars each year -- much of which is used to finance organized crime.

There's a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable. The victims of sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life -- an underground of brutality and lonely fear. Those who create these victims and profit from their suffering must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.

I watched the speech, and I remember how my jaw dropped when he suddenly segued from the virtues of the invasion of Iraq to the scourge of international paedophile rings. Most of his audience may have thought it an odd transition, if they thought anything at all, but I thought it something more. I knew the story of the Franklin Cover-Up. I knew this man's father, the former president, had been implicated by several minors in Lawrence King's service. I understood that paedophile rings were utilized by intelligence services to blackmail foreign dignitaries. And all this helped me process the subtext of Bush's digression: blackmail.

I thought of this again because of last week's story out of Britain, which made such an awful, appropriate follow-up to the reopening of the Atlanta Child murders investigation, that hundreds, maybe thousands of African boys are disappearing in London. Some like "Adam," to ritual sacrifice.

It's unlikely we would be able to correlate these stories without the Internet. Without the contextualizing web, it's unlikely I would have thought one might have anything to do with another. And if they actually do, how much longer will we be permitted such a processing tool?

Lovecraft went on to write: "some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

Perhaps that's it. Maybe they won't need to take the Internet from us after all. Maybe we'll hand it back, begging "Take it, please, I can't bear anymore."

The Sheep Look Up

Fatima, Oct 13, 1917


Last week I suggested that UFO encounters may be a subset of religious phenomenon. I thought that begged an exploration of how religious manifestations can mirror those of UFOs, and how both may be mechanisms of control for non-human agents.

But first, if anyone's missed it, I'll say again: the assumption that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft does not explain the data. The phenomenon is too weird and too diverse, and even too common, to be accounted for by survey teams from Zeta Reticuli, the Pleiades, the planet "Ummo," or any other home the "aliens" have identified. (And I find it a fascinating frustration that many of those convinced of a massive government cover-up fall over themselves to accept the words of non-human entities.) So before I bring in the religious material, let me be clear that I consider the "God rides a spaceship" hypothesis popularized by Erich von Daniken to be a crude, backwards misapprehension of what's going on. It is simply not strange enough to account for the hyperreality of both the God Event and the UFO phenomenon, which may be virtually identical.

As today is May 13 let's start with Fatima, since it was on this day in 1917 that the "Lady from Heaven" first appeared to the young cousins Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. (Though manifestations began two years earlier, when the then-eight year old Lucia first saw a transparent white cloud in human form. In 1916, the three were visited by a beautiful boy who identified himself as the "Angel of Peace." His appearance followed a loud rumble and a white light which glided over the tree tops. The appearences left the children momentarily paralyzed, confused and physically drained - all symptoms familiar to students of close encounters.)

In broad strokes, this is the story: on the 13th day of the month, for six successive months, three young Portuguese children received visions of a small, brightly glowing figure of a woman, who appeared with attendant aerial manifestations of globes and rays of light. The events increased in intensity until the promised miracle of the final appearance, on Octorber 13, which drew a crowd of some 70,000.

Avelino de Almeida, editor of the Lisbon newspaper O Seculo, had written dismissively of the growing legend of Fatima on the morning of the predicted miracle. A few hours later, he became a witness to the event:

From the road, where the vehicles were parked and where hundred of people who had not dared to brave the mud were congregated, one could see the immense multitude turn toward the sun, which appeared free from clouds and in its zenith. It looked like a plaque of dull silver and it was possible to look at it without the least discomfort. It might have been an eclipse which was taking place. But at that moment a great shout went up and one could hear the spectators nearest at hand shouting:

"A miracle! A miracle!" Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was Biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside any cosmic laws - the sun "danced" according to the typical expression of the people.

Another witness was natural science professor Joseph Garrett:

This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmamant and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during these moments was terrible.

Nine miles away Joaquim Lourenco was so impressed by what he saw that he became a priest:

I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth.... There was an unbeliever there who had spent the morning mocking the "simpletons" who had gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed paralyzed, his eyes fixed on the sun. He began to tremble from head to foot, and lifting up his arms, fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to God.

Poet Alfonso Lopes Viera witnessed the phenomenon from the oceanside town of San Pedro der Muel, though it is 30 miles from Fatima. It was also viewed in Pombal, 32 miles north. "The total land-area of visibility, based on witness interview, was approximately 32 by 20 miles." Yet no observatory recorded it.

A final witness, Maria Teresa of Chainca:

The sky was covered with clouds and it rained much. We could not see the sun. Then suddenly, at noon, the clouds drew away and the sun appeared as if it were trembling. It seemed to come down. It began spinning like a fire-wheel in the pagan feasts. It stopped for a few minutes and again started rolling, perhaps in a diameter of more than a meter while we could look at it as though it were the moon. Things all around turned into different colors.

Let's pay close attention to this: before the miracle, the sky was overcast. "We could not see the sun." Then, at the appointed time, the clouds parted as though they were curtains, and where the sun should be, now was a dull silver disc, revolving on itself, that could be observed directly without harming the eyes. Then it was seen to descend in a zig-zag pattern, spinning and flashing lights to psychotronic effect. Sound familiar?

(Also worth noting is that the heavy rains had soaked the ground and the thousands of spectators. Yet it was reported that the phenomenon quickly dried the earth, as well as the clothes of those in attendance. Microwave heat effects are also quite common to UFO encounters.)

The 1930 decision of the Roman Catholic Church on the validity of the Fatima miracle, arrived at after 13 years of investigations, states that though no astronomical observatory reported the phenomenon, it was nevertheless "witnessed by persons of all categories...believers and unbelievers, journalists of the principal Portuguese newspapers and even by persons some miles away. Facts which annul any explanation of collective illusion."

It was not a collective illusion, for the reasons mentioned. But neither was it the sun, for the same reasons.

In Dimensions, Jacques Vallee has this to say about Fatima's phenomena:

Not only was a flying disc or globe consistently involved, but its motion, its falling-leaf trajectory, its light effects, the thunder-claps, the buzzing sounds, the strange fragrance, the fall of "angel hair" that dissolves upon reaching the ground, the heat wave associated with the close approach of the disk - all of these are frequent parameters of UFO sightings everywhere. And so are the paralysis, the amnesia, the conversions, and the healings.

Many UFO researchers, particularly those who regard themselves as "serious," likely recoil at this material, and either dismiss it without consideration as pre-modern superstition which threatens to "contaminate" the hard data, or worse, attempt to divest the experience of its religious content. But wait: the religious effect is the point of the contact event.

As would seem to be the case with UFO encounters, the point of the manifestation is self-evidently the effect upon the witnesses. Whether to induce terror, or wonder, or worship, the effect is socio-religious. And if we can say this about Fatima, then it would be fair to admit that this has probably been going on for some time. Say, maybe, for all of human existence.

UFO contactees are generally inclined to accept that non-human entities are telling them the truth. So also religious visionaries tend to accept without question the integrity of their visions. But regardless of her bag of tricks, just because a Lady says she came from Heaven, doesn't mean she came from Heaven. As UFO encounters are often self-contradictory, so too are alleged appearences of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or "BVM," as Vallee coins them. For instance, the recent apparitions of the Virgin at Medjugorje deliver a message of feel-good ecumenism quite foreign to the Lady of Fatima. (Malachi Martin judged the Medjugorje manfestations "clearly demonic.")

Yet there is a recurrent theme, common to both UFOs and BVMs : a warning of apocalypse soon. Why would that be?

Sister Lucia, the last survivor of the three children of Fatima (as prophesied, the other two died in their youth), passed away on February 13. (Yes, the 13th: the same day of the month on which the Fatima visions occured.) Her convent cell was ordered sealed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI (And yes; Benedict XV was Pope at the time of Lucia's childhood visions.) It was Ratzinger who disseminated the story that Fatima's Third Secret was no biggie; it had been fulfilled in the assassination attempt on John Paul II.

Now, why would he do a thing like that?

Welcome back to Atlanta

Well, let's see where this goes: DeKalb County Police Chief Louis Graham has reopened the investigation of the six Atlanta Child Murders that occured in his jurisdiction.

Graham investigated four of the child murders while serving as the assistant police chief in Fulton County at the time of the killings. Now, as police chief in a neighboring county, he has vowed to probe the DeKalb County cases at any price.

"This is not a matter of cost. This is the matter of the right thing to do," Graham said. He has appointed four detectives and one sergeant to review the cases and has given them no timeline to complete the task.
"They will take as long as necessary and if we come up with a conclusion, so be it. If not, so be it," said Graham.

Between July,1979 and May, 1981, 29 black youths, almost all boys, were murdered, mostly by asphyxiation, and possibly while being sexually assaulted. (Though Chet Dettlinger, a former assistant to Atlanta's Police Chief, claims 63 other "pattern" victims were left off the official list attributed to convicted Wayne Williams, 25 of whom were killed after Williams' arrest.) Judging by analysis of stomach contents, many children had spent enough time with their captors to be fed, and a number of their bodies were found dressed in a change of clothes. The sexual organs of many were missing. According to a medical examiner, around one boy's stab wound to the belly were five ceremonial cuts. A number of parents contended that when they identified their children's remains, they saw crosses carved into their foreheads and chests. (From the "Atlanta" excerpt of EIR's report on Satanism.)

Vice President George HW Bush "took an active role in the investigation," even visiting Atlanta to demand that "some action be taken." (In Programmed to Kill, David McGowan writes that Bush's visit was "ostensibly to coordinate federal and local efforts and to make sure the investigation stayed on track.") Soon after, the cases were closed when freelance photographer Williams was convicted of just two of them, on the strength of fibre evidence, found chiefly in his car. ( "My issue with the fiber evidence was and still is it is not conclusive, never has been and never will be," says Chief Graham.)

It's interesting to consider that Williams was a photographer. If the murders were the ritual sex slayings of a Satanic cult, it might be expected that a photographer would be somehow implicated, à la Rusty Nelson of the Franklin Cover-Up, for the production of child pornography. Also, the nature of the evidence against Williams, and the fact that he was a black homosexual, suggests he may have played a role in luring some of the victims to their deaths. Additionally, the EIR report claims that "information was made available to the defense team naming two police officers who were reportedly in Williams's Satanic group," though Satanism was not raised by either the defense or the prosecution.

One of the victims, Earl Terrell, disappeared after leaving a public swimming pool across from a house which was the headquarters of a child pornography ring. The owner of the house, John Wilcoxen, was later convicted for his part in the ring, though he was never considered a suspect in Terell's abduction, despite a witness having claimed to have seen Terrell at the house on several occasions. Lubie Geter, another victim, was also connected to Wilcoxen, as well as to another known paedophile who was in turn connected to later victim William Barrett. Three weeks after Geter's abduction his friend, Terry Pue, disappeared. When Pue's remains were recovered, police found what should have been a break in the case: fingerprints were found on his body. They did not belong to Williams. The prints remain unidentified.

But Clifford Jones would be the next to die after Terrell. His body was found beside a dumpster behind a laundromat. McGowan tells the story, in Programmed to Kill:

No fewer than three young witnesses reported seeing the laundromat manager, James Brooks, go into the backroom accompanied by a black male youth. One of them even saw the boy beaten, anally raped and strangled to death by Brooks and another man, Calvin Smith. Other witnesses saw Brooks, wearing a hooded ceremonial robe, carry a large object out to the trash where the body was later discovered. Brooks candidly admitted to police that the boy had been in the laundromat around the time of his death, but he steadfastly denied any involvement in the murder. Notably though, he failed two polygraph examinations. The police nevertheless cleared him as a suspect, claiming that the eyewitness to the killing was "retarded." They did not bother to explain all the other witness accounts or the failed polygraphs.

A number of independent investigations, such as those pursued by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), journalist Ira Liebowitz and author James Baldwin, uncovered many occult aspects to the crimes. A principal informant was a Miami cocktail waitress named Shirley McGill, whose story is eerily evocative of both the Matamoros Santeria drug cult and Henry Lee Lucas's tales of the Florida-based "Hand of Death".

In 1977, claims McGill, she became involved with a Miami cab driver named Parnell Traham, a Vietnam vet who was also an occultist and drug trafficker, whose trade included hubs in Georgia and Texas. (Witnesses to one child's abduction identified Traham as the driver of the car.) He recruited McGill to keep the books, and she moved to Atlanta.

The drug operation took cellular form: members of one cell would not know the identities of those in another. McGill says that, in Atlanta, she was introduced to an inner, controlling circle of Satanists.

More from the EIR report:

In March of 1980, she was invited to a ceremonial ground in Atlanta. She was instructed to wear a long dress, with a scarf covering her head, but not to wear undergarments. An initiation ceremony took place, in which dope was smoked and there was some sexual activity. According to her account, McGill sought to keep her distance from the cult activities. When she did attend ritual ceremonies, she would volunteer to act as a guard on the perimeter of the area.

While the members of the drug network with which she was involved were black, the high priest during the occult ceremonies was a white man, and white and black would participate in the rituals. The high priest would appear naked, wearing goat horns on his head, and would seem to appear from a cloud of smoke. A ring of candles would create a kind of altar, and these were placed surrounding the statute of a short, fat, seated man. The ceremonies which she witnessed included animal and human sacrifice, which included slitting the victim's throat and then drinking his or her blood from a chalice. The sexual orgy which would follow, included having sexual relations with animals. After this, people would bathe in a body of water adjacent to the ceremonial grounds.

McGill identified several outdoor sites where rituals were held. Funeral homes were frequently used to dispose of bodies, which were placed in the closed coffins of people who were being buried from the funeral home. McGill also pointed out places from which the drug operations were run. One was a machine shop, another a barn or warehouse, and there was also a house.

McGill related three incidents which occurred apart from these ceremonies, one of them in a barn. A black man dragged what appeared to be a dead black child into the barn by a rope tied around the child's neck. Various individuals tried to get McGill to pull the rope but she refused. The child's body was then placed in the trunk of a car. On another occasion, McGill was working in the machine shop, when two men brought in a young black child who was bound. The boy knew McGill and appealed to her for help. He told her that he would be killed because he had withheld money from the sale of drugs. Later she witnessed his murder, when a plastic bag was placed over his head. On another occasion she saw on the floor of the barn a naked child, who appeared to be dead.

When CORE presented McGill's story to the press in April, 1981 it was roundly derided as absurdly sensationalist. This rush to judgement didn't change after she passed two polygraphs, repeated her story under hypnosis and was declared sane by psychiatrists. McGowan adds that McGill was also able to lead investigators to remote sites that displayed evidence they had been used for ritual ceremonies.

There was little serious interest in pursuing McGill's allegations. It was simply too much to believe. Never mind that a few months before, an anonymous call led police to an abandoned home in Atlanta's southwest.

Here's McGowan again:

Neighbors that were questioned reported strange comings and goings at odd hours. Investigators reported being sickened by an odor "like decaying flesh," though no bodies were found. Detectives did find children's clothing, along with an ax, a hatchet, and two bibles nailed to the wall - both opened to passages on human sacrifice. Professor Carl Raschke has written that, in the neighborhoods where the killings occurred, "a number of children have told police about satanic sex abuse in which, they insist, they were compelled to drink both animal and human blood." Some months after McGill came foward, searchers stumbled upon a ritual site littered with the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Prominent features of the site included a stone altar stained with blood and a twelve-foot-high charred cross.

What seemed incredible 25 years ago may not seem so today. After all, in the meantime, we've had 25 years of unbelievable truths to digest. An occult underground of paedophiles and drug traffickers, operating with the apparent protection of elements of the state, plus a special appearance by George Herbert Walker Bush? Well, knock me over with a feather.

The anti-gay rights Republican mayor of Spokane would appear to be a serial homosexual pederast. John Bolton reportedly forced group sex upon his first wife, who eventually fled him in terror. And whatever, and whoever, else he has been, "Jeff Gannon" was a male prostitute who enjoyed unrivalled White House access. And this is the mainstream news. Is it weird enough for you yet?

There's no reason anymore why our incredulity should be an arbiter of the truth. Most of us, I expect, lead what could be called normal lives. There are things outside our experience of which we cannot conceive. And yet they happen. If we can't conceive of them now, that's simply a failure of imagination.

"This is the matter of the right thing to do," says DeKalb County Police Chief Louis Graham. And good luck to him.

More on the RI message board here.