Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Far Away, So Close


Stills from Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising

It can get lonely out on the edge of convention, beyond the parameters of respectable thought. And we've tended to make it lonelier than it needs to be, and also kept ourselves less informed, by failing to speak to each other respectfully across serious disciplines which are all dismissed by the misinformed as mere fantasies.

For instance, and for the most part, the 9/11 and political conspiracy crowd haven't rubbed shoulders with the mind control/ritual abuse community; few in either camp have seen the value in studying occult, paranormal and psychochemical phenomena; and virtually no one wants to be associated with UFO research.

It's perfectly understandable why this happens. Each subject is generally considered, in its own right, "fringe," and so the advocates of each, contending for a hearing and a measure of respectability, assume a phobia of cross-contamination by other disreputable subjects.

Last Spring, at Toronto's 9/11 public inquiry, I heard an elderly woman share her difficulty in persuading others of the need to critically consider the evidence that the attacks were an inside job. She said, with sadness, that a typical response would be "Oh - and what do you think of UFOs?" Exasperated sighs of recognition filled the room. And though I knew what she meant - to gain acceptance, perhaps controversial issues need to be presented piecemeal - I also thought, Good question. Because if there is any validity at all to an inquiry it cannot be pursued in isolation. Particularly huge issues with tremendous consequences. Rather, they and their implications should help explain one other, contextually, on the Big Canvas.

We know conspirators compartmentalize, and task on a need-to-do basis. Because we need to see more, we can't mistake one portion - the one that most interests us, or the one we find most persuasive, or the one to which we actually bear witness - for the whole picture.

Sight Unseen offers interesting examples of the limits of compartmentalized analysis. Author Budd Hopkins heads the "Intruders Foundation," and has been a leading researcher in the phenomenon of UFO abductions for more than 30 years. His latest book presents some fascinating case studies that merit attention, but I find his conclusions to be handicapped by both his specialization, and his fixation upon the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Hopkins notices a "curious pattern" among abductees of "personal, cherished objects...seeming to vanish and then reappear under highly unusual circumstances." For instance, a wedding ring placed on a kitchen countertop one moment and gone the next reappeared several days later beneath the tacked-down carpet of an upstairs bedroom. Hopkins doesn't know what to make of it, though he finds the pattern repeats enough to be "intriguing" and to "deserve mention." The pattern, while mystifying to someone searching the skies for ETs, should be immediately familiar to students of the "secret commonwealth": the traditional folklore of mischevious entities who have always been with us, but inhabit another here.

Hopkins tells the story of two credible witnesses who, while driving through the wheat fields of Iowa in 1952, "came upon an eerie sight: a little old man on a bicycle, wearing lederhosen and sporting a long white beard, like something one might see rendered in wood in a Bavarian souvenir shop." About a half hour later, when they drove over a gentle rise, they encountered the same little man, "pedaling happily along in the same direction, many miles ahead of the place they had first come upon him." There were no sideroads or short cuts the cyclist could have taken, and the men had not been overtaken by a vehicle which could have given him a lift. Hopkins isn't content to let the story stand on its own strangeness. Without any justification other than his presumption of an extraterrestrial hypothesis, he posits that the figure was actually a screen memory to mask an abduction and missing time episode. After all, we can't have odd, little elfen figures bending space-time in Iowa, now can we?

Hopkins also describes a number of instances of abductees' associations, sometimes for years, with humans of extraordinary paranormal ability who appear to serve as "go-betweens," sometimes described as having a "military" bearing. Hopkins does not consider an occult explanation - to him, apparently, the paranormal is not a human functionality - nor, seemingly, that these may be genuine military figures. To him, they merely look human. They are, he concludes, most likely transgenic, alien-human hybrids.

Consider Stewart, the bizarre acquaintance of abuctee "Sally," who came in and out of her life for 25 years, usually accompanying abductions, while he never seemed to age.

One night Sally awoke, startled to find Stewart standing next to her bed. Despite the fact that her apartment was on an upper floor, the windows were locked, and the door was securely bolted from the inside, there was Stewart, next to her bed. Frightened, Sally nevertheless felt compelled to get up and go with him into the living room. There she served both Stewart and herself a drink, and the two sat together on the couch talking audibly, not telephathically, as was sometimes the case. Stewart was, as usual, interested in her daily routine and questioned her about the mundane details of her life and secretarial job.

At one point, Sally told me, she gathered her courage and decided to ask him a rather basic question: "Are you real?" she wanted to know. "Are you a human being? What are you?" Stewart smiled and ignored the question.

Sally noticed some chest hair poking out over Stewart's shirt collar, reached for it and pulled it out. "He winced and gave her an angry look, but she was pleased to realize that on some physical level he was real and not a phantasm." (Hopkins, jumping to his conclusion, writes that "chest hair [is] something never before, to my knowledge, described as an alien feature." Presumably he is discounting the many accounts of hairy, dwarfish entities, and sticking to the grays.) A few moments after Sally plucks Stewart's chest hair, "three small gray aliens approached and she was taken out the window and into a hovering UFO for a more typical abduction experience."

The next morning, Sally checked all the locks and bolts on the doors and windows and they were all in place. Stewart should not have been able to enter, let alone the "three small gray aliens," but it wasn't a dream. Their unfinished drinks were on the kitchen counter, and her roommate Hannah remembered waking up in the night to "a roaring sound in my head":

I was very scared because I didn't know what it was and then I found that I couldn't move. Something was going on. I heard voices coming from the living room. Sally was talking and there was a man's voice. It was the middle of the night and I couldn't move, and I had no idea who was out there or what was happening. I guess I just must have gone back to sleep, which doesn't make much sense when I think about it. The whole thing was very scary, because there really was a strange man in the apartment and I couldn't even move.

A few years later, in another apartment, both Sally and her new roommate Molly shared an abduction experience. Molly had never before seen or heard of Stewart, but remembered having seen a man matching his description operating inside the UFO alongside the alien entities. She drew a picture for Sally, which Sally recognized as even a better likeness of Stewart than the one she herself had once drawn for Hopkins.

Then there's the middle-aged "Mr Nelson," who walked up to a 15-year old girl named "Terry" in a pizza parlour and invited her to interview for a vaguely-described job the following day. (Her mother, in a bizarre departure from character, saw no problem with her daughter being picked up by a stranger and driven to an "undisclosed location.") En route, Nelson recounted to Terry intimate details of her life which no one, least of all a stranger, should have known. ("That was a terrible thing that your stepfather did to you," he says, and "I know all about your day yesterday. At twelve o'clock you went to Jimmy's house," and told her what her and her boyfriend did. When asked how he knew, he said only, "Oh, I just know.")

The location of the "interview" appeared like an undressed set in a virtually empty office building, and became a scene of Nelson's clumsy sexual advance. Afterwards, supposedly driving Terry home, Nelson drove into the "middle of nowhere, woods and fields everywhere." Under hypnosis, Terry remembered they "came up to a little house on the left with a dirt driveway and we pulled in":

He asked me to sit in the car... I wonder why that house was there. It 's hard to see it. It's like...field grass covers it. Higher than grass...like straw...hay.... He goes in a door. It's like an overhang over it.... I keep seeing the roof like a smooth stone roof. No peaks. And I don't look at it because I'm too scared. I don't want whoever is in the house to see me. I knew that when he went in they were probably talking about me. So I slumped down on the seat so they wouldn't see me. I feel so shaky.... I'm afraid I'm going to be killed.

When Nelson exits the house, he's accompanied by "lots of the other ones.... They're smaller. All the same. No hair.... He comes out and just stands in front of the car, but these other things come out to the side and just look at me...."

Again, Hopkins can't let the phenomena be itself. Because he can't allow bizarre, small creatures to inhabit a stone house, in another here, the house must instead be a spacecraft, and the entities extraterrestials. (Remember, the abduction of Jose Antonio de Silva by dwarfish creatures ended in a stone chamber, not an alien ship.) Because Hopkins can't conceive of someone truly human with Nelson's paranormal ability, or working in concert with non-human entities, then he must have been an alien hybrid.

To understand our own disciplines - and let's respect our studies enough to call them that, regardless of the derisive laughter from those who don't know, and those who don't want to know - we need to be interdisciplinary. We need to talk to each other in order to understand ourselves. And something which should be a great conversational aid is the latest work of Peter Levenda, author of Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement in the Occult. Now, the three-volume Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft, may become one of the most important primers for what's become of us.

Jim Hougan, in his forward to the just-released first book in the series entitled "The Nine" (the second is due in December, and the third next June), describes Sinister Forces as "parapolitics at their most bizarre and, I suspect, their most illuminating":

Like UFOs, conspiracies and assassination, serial killers, mind control and the occult, "evil" isn't something that serious people are supposed to think about. If they did, the emergency reporting system would soon be overloaded. And you know what happens when that occurs. All hell breaks loose.

You know, most of what we talk about here and on similar sites, it's not really the "fringe," or even the "edge" - it's the depth. And it truly is scary as hell down there, because what binds these subjects together is that they are all the study of evil, of one order or another. But if we want to understand where we're going, that's where we have to go first.

43 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You should really, really check out Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur.

1:52 p.m.  
Blogger Professor Pan said...

Very good post, Jeff.

I feel for Budd Hopkins, and I give him full props for all the good work he has done over the years. But he is indeed handicapped by the ETH.

But then sometimes I wonder if I'm handicapped by the UTH (ultraterrestrial hypothesis)...

In a late night, beer-fueled conversation with Chilean Ufologist Antonio Huneeus at the 2005 Fortean Conference in Baltimore, we discussed the multitude of problems with the ETH. He fully agreed that the phenomenon was complex and that the ETH was not sufficient. But he said one thing that stuck with me (paraphrased): "Just because some of the phenomeon is ultraterrestrial or intradimensional, that doesn't mean there isn't an extraterrestrial component."

It was a good point. While I most definitely lean toward the Parapolitical/Occult explanations, I always try to be careful to remain open to new evidence.

Your discussion about the need for an interdisciplinary approach is spot-on. And Levenda's book is the perfect example of that approach. I'm only 70 pages into it, but I echo your hearty recommendation. He's doing groundbreaking work.

3:40 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...few in either camp have seen the value in studying occult, paranormal and psychochemical phenomena; and virtually no one wants to be associated with UFO research.

I think what you're missing Jeff, is that those in the ra/mc camp have eyewitness testimony about the occult, and government clinical research into the paranormal and psychochemical phenomena and even ufos (what would that be, the HOH, human origins hypothesis?).

You have the luxury to be able to study and theorize about these topics, so don't be too hard on anyone in the various camps. It's different when your friends', your kids' or your life is at stake, and you think you've found rare advocacy.
When you figure out how to arrest interdimmensional travelers, please let me know. Meanwhile, there are atrocities that we know are committed by humans. We are not powerless in dealing with those.

7:09 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not all inhabitants of the other here are evil. Mischeif is not evil. The fairies trolls dwarves whathaveyou are not so bad. Aliens for that matter (hey ask P. Yahweh)- there are meddlers in all realms, no?

7:26 p.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

"When you figure out how to arrest interdimmensional travelers, please let me know. Meanwhile, there are atrocities that we know are committed by humans. We are not powerless in dealing with those."

The thing is, arresting elite human perps is proving just about as difficult. And whatever dimension perps call home, real people still suffer.

"Not all inhabitants of the other here are evil."

Absolutely.

8:55 p.m.  
Blogger Kratoklastes said...

Brilliant blog, Jeff.

I'm particularly impressed with your measured use of syncretistic principles and your refusal to descend into the hysterical ranting that characterises a lot of non-mainstream thought.

I'm a big one for the hysterical ranting - as catharsis more than anything.

Like you, I take a whole bunch of apparently-odd things to be self-evident -

* that 'we are not alone', and that this 'not-alone-ness' includes both helpful and unhelpful cohabitants;
* that there are more dimensions that the four we experience directly (we only experience time partially), and that other species probably DO experience more than R4;
* that the broader human 'herd' is deliberately 'misdirected' from investigation into a lot of interesting stuff by well-crafted ridicule; and
* others that brevity precludes.


And that's me - a 40-year-old minarcho-capitalist Freemason. Imagine what the 'non-mainstream' must contain!

Your coincidence theorist page is brilliant; I've rejected the mad conspiracy theory that "Arabs did it" on my own blog several times.

Regards,


GT
http://marketrant.blogspot.com

9:35 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

According to my husband, Dragon, who has participated in studying not only the UFO field but pretty much all these others as well since 1969, Budd Hopkins is a disinformation agent.

It's the job of said agents to keep us from uniting and finding a common thread...

The Chemtrail people have a hard time getting people to believe that it's a problem (as my grown-but-still-teenaged daughter said, "Why would our government want to hurt us like that?") RA-aware folks must fight against the popularized, Agent-promoted stigma against false memories. Even Alex Constantine, whose books we both read and love, has an explanation for why abduction memories are probably not real. He writes so well about so many other things, though, that we simply separate the wheat from the chaff as we read. Discernment...

Back in my Vietnam War protest days, it was amazing what a group of similar-minded people accomplished when we agreed on who the enemy was. These days, it's not so simple. Were we all as united as we were back then, the public outcry against Evil would be unmistakeable and powerful...

10:04 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

two things:

1) Occam's razor

2) Just because Budd Hopkins reports something (or somebody told Budd Hopkins something) don't make it so. Recommend checking out George Hansen's analysis of the Linda Napolitano incident in his "The Trickster and the Paranormal" (I believe that bit is online as well) (and I recommend this book to everyone also). Either Hopkins leg is being pulled in a coordinated way, or marykmusic is correct..

A fundamental flaw in studying UFOs, crop circles, Bigfoot, conspiracies, etc etc is an underestimation of people's capability for deception - whether it be for purposes of disinformation, hoax, practical joke, whatever - and an overestimation of people's perception and memory capabilities. (and for that, I recommend - for anybody interested in the fringe - as a starting place The Skeptic Dictionary's index page for "logic and perception" - http://skepdic.com/tilogic.html - and in particular their page on "hidden persuaders" - http://skepdic.com/hiddenpersuaders.html - very useful information there.)

11:01 p.m.  
Blogger spooked said...

Wah! You're discrediting the 9/11 movement when you talk about UFOs! Wah!

Just kidding. Great post, Jeff.

You're a talented fellow.

11:25 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

First off lemme say that I subscribe to just about every conspiracy theory out there. That said, two things regarding aliens/gremlins.

1) could it be that the explainations for many of these bizarre events has to do with human technology vastly exceeding what most people imagine to exist? Anyone familiar with this blog knows the power of hypnotism and MPD/DID programming, which could certainly be used to induce hallucinations, at LEAST in preconditioned subjects. On the mechanical side of things, think about the vast and almost instantanious leaps forward in technology that resulted from: computer processing, the mechanization of the industrial revolution and humanity's choice of a sedentary agricultrual lifestyle over a nomadic one. Could it be that such an informational explosion has taken place, but been concealed from most everyone? I would appreciate any input on this idea and its validity given that I shy away from non-human explainations.

and;

2) I highly recommend Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" for the following reasons a) he points out that there could not be a large enough conspiracy of scientists to keep the existence of aliens a secret; and b)why the aliens wouldnt bother/be able to show up anyway. I do have one big objection to the book regarding his underinformed handling of Satanic Ritual Abuse. He claims its a fairy tale, with no verified cases. I know people who have witnessed it (incidentally I know the authors of the report he cites to verify that its made up, and I wouldn't trust their powers of extrapolation very far, despite their PhD's), and we have all seen a truly depressing amount of evidence indicating its reality. But, taken as an essay on scientific conspiracy and UFO's
I trust Sagan nearly implicitly. And yes, I know that Sagan got famous working at NASA but that is too big a can of worms to open up right now.

11:36 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

One cross-connection that might be examined is that among the extreme right, the military-industrial complex, and UFO groups. I have a handful of notes on this, but altogether they tend to baffle more than thay illuminate.

For starters, here is neocon Daniel Pipes, of all people, warning about neo-Nazis infiltrating UFO groups:

Some people believe in the lost continent of Atlantis and in unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Others worry about an 18th-century secret society called the Bavarian Illuminati or a mythical Zionist-Occupied Government secretly running the United States.

What if these disparate elements shared beliefs, joined forces, won a much larger audience, broke out of their intellectual and political ghetto, and became capable of challenging the premises of public life in the United States? This is the frightening prospect, soberly presented by Michael Barkun in his important, just-published book, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (University of California Press, $24.95). . . .

Thus, the author who worries about the Secret Service taking orders from the Illuminati is old school; the one who worries about a "joint Reptilian-Bavarian Illuminati" takeover is at the cutting edge of the new synthesis. These bizarre notions constitute what the late Michael Kelly termed "fusion paranoia," a promiscuous absorption of fears from any source whatsoever.

The connection of conspiracy theorists and occultists follows from their common, crooked premises. First, "any widely accepted belief must necessarily be false." Second, rejected knowledge — what the establishment spurns — must be true.

The result is a large, self-referential network. Flying saucer advocates promote anti-Jewish phobias. Anti-Semites channel in Peru. Some anti-Semites see extraterrestrials functioning as surrogate Jews; others believe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are the joint product of "the Rothschilds and the reptile-Aryans." By the late 1980s, Mr. Barkun found that "virtually all of the radical right's ideas about the New World Order had found their way into UFO literature."

Ufology's wide appeal transmits these political ideas to a large new audience of ideological omnivores, informing them that September 11 was either an Illuminati operation or the Assassins (a medieval Muslim group) attacking Freemasons.


One has to wonder whether Pipes is genuinely worried about anti-Semites linking up with believers in alien reptilian overlords -- or whether his real agenda is to preemptively demonize the possibility of different strains of conspiracy theorists joining forces and making common cause.

Beyond that, Pipes has some interesting connections of his own. He was originally brought to Washington in the 70's by Richard Perle and set to picking the members of then-CIA director George H.W. Bush's Team B. The function of this group was to concoct evidence that, no matter what the CIA said, the Soviet Union really was a military threat to the US. (Sort of a precursor of the Office of Special Plans.) Not surprisingly, Paul Wolfowitz was one of the members. But there was also a considerable overlap between Team B and the American Security Council.

The American Security Council is a saga in itself. It was founded in 1955 by General Robert E. Wood, the head of Sears Roebuck, as a McCarthyite group staffed largely by former FBI men and dedicated to compiling blacklists of leftists for use by corporations. Wood had been a founder of America First in 1940. His daughter Mary had married the son of William Stamps Farish of Standard Oil and was extremely close to George H.W. and Barbara Bush.

The American Security Council has gone through many changes in its 50 year history. From domestic spying it turned into a mainstay of the military-industrial complex, which is why it was so heavily involved with Team B. It was in the news most recently when it and the closely related National Security Caucus Foundation
were named
as having been tangled up in some of Jack Abramoff's more dubious foreign policy adventures in the 90's. It has also had many racist and fascist connections over the years.

And throughout that entire period, its chairman has been former FBI agent John Fisher.

When I set out last winter to learn more about Fisher, I was bewildered to find his name at a page discussing NICAP and an attempt to revive that organization in 1978:

For about five months, off and on, we negotiated with Hartranft, Richardson, and Charles Lombard, an acknowledged former CIA employee and aide to Senator Barry Goldwater. Also involved in the negotiations was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Scientific Director of the Center for UFO Studies. Richardson and Lombard at first seemed interested in reviving NICAP. . . . But the negotiations dragged on without anything being resolved. The main thing that struck all of us at this time was the complete ignorance of UFO history, UFO groups, and prominent UFOlogists displayed by these Board Members. We wondered if there were some hidden agenda behind their machinations.

In October 1978, Acuff was forced to resign as president, but was allowed to remain on the Board and retain custody of the files. Two new Board Members were voted in at the same time: Charles Lombard and John Fisher, head of the American Security Council and Communication Corporation of America, a conservative fund-raising organization. . . . In December 1978, Alan N. Hall, a retired CIA employee, became President.


And then there's this page, which starts off by asserting that Werner von Braun and Douglas McArthur were warning us about alien invaders. It goes on to say:

The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) was founded in 1956 by Navy physicist Thomas Townsend Brown. Brown is known as the discoverer of the electrogravitic capacitance effect. He was former Vice President of Douglas Aircraft (one of the founding groups of the RAND Corporation). NICAP gained a reputation as being a CIA front operation. For many years it was headed by Marine Major Donald Keyhoe. ...

Karl Pflock was chairman of NICAP's Washington sub-committee. John Acuff "who was alleged to have CIA affiliations" per the *UFO Encyclopedia* by John Spencer, took over as head of NICAP. Then Acuff did a curious thing, according to *Cosmic Patriot Files, Vol. 2,* by the "Committed of 12 to Save the Earth,"* edited by Commander X, p. 137, Acuff sold classified CIA documents to a Nazi organization in Canada called Samisdat. . . .

Anyway, Acuff had to go and was forced out. A new board was voted in which included two new board members: one was Senator Goldwater's aide, Charles Lombard, and the other was John Fisher. If you recall, in the early *Fire From The Sky* writings, I said that General George Keegan, head of Air Force Intelligence, inspired the founding of the American Security Council to try to warn the American public of what was happening. The President of the American Security Council was - did you guess it? - John Fisher.


None of this exactly makes a lot of sense -- except that 1978 seems like a significant year. It was just after Bush's 1975-76 tenure at the CIA, marked the climax of the (successful) attempts by the military-industrial complex to get the Cold War revved up again, and, as I recall, was also around the time of a major peak in UFO sightings.

I frankly don't know what to make of this mess of FBI, CIA, UFOs, neo-Nazis, Neocons, Bush friends, and the "Committed of 12 to Save the Earth." But I suspect that if you could only figure out which end to grab it by, it might provide some useful clues.

12:27 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I appreciate your posts, Jeff. You
manage to integrate a lot of different aspects, or should I say some of the
more inner or psychological aspects of the Problem of Evil - the regime we are living under.
Thanks for the reference to "Sinister Forces." This really looks like a pack of reading! I went to Levenda's website and read the introduction to vol. I of Sinister Forces. I found his anti-Catholicism very offensive. To me this would call into question the validity of his research and lead me to ask whether he has an agenda. I am not saying that Catholicism is not without faults or that there are not problems in the Church - God knows there are! But in the night all cats
are grey. The moral teaching of the Church seems to me sound at its core, and the 'esoteric' or spiritual content of the Christian teaching is not at all to be compared to the esotericism or occultism of the 'black path.' I mean there is a White Magic and a Black Magic, and here more than ever a sound moral sense is called for. I don't think anyone should embark on occult investigation without a solid grounding in moral reason, philosophy, humanities, and the philosophy of Aristotle,Thomas Aquinas, and Rudolf Steiner, and a study of the works of Owen Barfield on the evolution of consciousness. Otherwise the work just becomes more fishing expeditions in the dark and it is without grounding.
A study of American history contains many clues about the evil locked on this continent. Start with the Puritans and study the evolution of our literature from Hawthorne to Melville - "Moby Dick" itself offers a great insight into the obsessionalism that rules our State! And aren't the human-sacrific cults of the Aztecs and Mayans an additional clue to the dark forces of the Americas?
I should probably read Levenda's books and I probably will. But I
think such studies should be cautionary. After all, what is the purpose of learning about Evil unless we are thereby enabled to resist it. "Put on the whole armor of God," St. Paul teaches us. I think we ought to clarify the nature of Reason and of standing in the world truthfully, before we go chasing after Evil. And Santayana clarifies the nature of this Reason when he says that the Life of Reason is "a mind in love with the Good." I think we should all increase our knowledge of and devotion to the Good before we go down the pathways of the Darkness. I don't think that Levenda understands this.

8:21 a.m.  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

starroute, the breadth and depth of your knowledge and the scope of your research always amazes. Thanks for that contribution.

8:42 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, a little while ago I wrote a short comment in the forum, wherein I described Levenda's work as 'cornflakes for wingnuts'. shortly after I was reading
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs.htm
June 22nd,2005
where there's a lengthy discussion on 'wingnuts', which prompted me to ask 'what on earth IS a wingnut?' are they the nuts that hold the bolts/screws tight on the wings of a plane? well, I think I comprehend the intentionally derisive and dismissive use of the term. but, if a 'wingnut' is anyone giving serious attention to 9/11, 'political conspiracy', mind control, ritual abuse, 'paranormal', UFO and abduction research, etc., well, hey, I'll put my hand up. in a situation here on in-flight space-ship earth, when the bullshit meter reading gets way too high, perhaps long before others are aware of the ominous vibrations, out on the 'fringes', it's the 'wingnuts that'll be feeling like they've got a screw loose. the functional integrity of 'wingnuts' can be seen as a measure of the functional integrity of the whole flight. for those who choose to remain in denial or ignorance - I hope you packed a parachute. of course, this doesn't mean I approve of cornflakes.
ps: some really good posts happening here.

9:13 a.m.  
Blogger Professor Pan said...

starroute - thanks for the introduction to the term "fusion paranoia." I love it. And like Pipes, I worry about the linkage between Ufology and anti-Semitism -- just take a look through Jeff Rense's website to get a taste of how that particular fusion manifests in the popular mind.

An interesting character, that Pipes.

And numbersix, I'm glad you brought up the Linda Cortile/Napolitano case. I don't think Budd Hopkins is a disinfo agent (a term thrown about too loosely for my taste). I've followed his work for years and I think he's sincere. But like many sincere people, he failed to exercise proper skepticism in that case.

I was aware of the case before it hit the mainstream (through some friends of Hopkins), and my BS detector jumped into the red zone very early on. Once the mention of Perez de Quellar and his bodyguards entered the scenario, I knew there were some serious problems, and that Budd was being suckered.

Just another example of why we need to remain vigilant while searching through these murky waters.

10:27 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK. This is getting too weird, even weirder is that you're not losing me, because your posts are thoughtful and filled with verifiable facts, despite the more nebulous conclusions. But how urgent is it to look into possible occult aspects of the conspiracy that clearly exists? And it does.

ALL the mainstream corporate media's refusal to examine the obvious inconsistencies in the official, nonsensical story of 9-11 is one clue that something's up.

The mind-boggling sums of money that have been siphoned out of public treasuries and into private hands, whether in the US by the sinister men and women who control that country or their "allies" around the globe, is another.

Especially that, at a time when people are feeling the pinch, you'd think there'd be some interest in the fact that billions, if not trillions, of dollars are simply vanishing.

Or that, while ordinary people are losing their children to the living hell of Iraq and Afghanistan, those who are sending them there to commit war crimes are raking in the bucks, profiting from the lies they told and the crimes against humanity they schemed and plotted to commit.

Or that the revolving door shuffling elected representatives back and forth to cushy corporate jobs and vice versa ensures that the US government represents big corporations, not the public, even though their interests are often diametrically opposed.

Or that the illicit drugs that have devastated families and entire economies have, at least partly, been brought in with the knowledge and complicity of respected and trusted officials.

Or that America has become feared and hated among millions of people around the world, associated with torture, blood-crazed soldiers, untrammeled greed for other people's property, profound, shameless hypocrisy, wild-eyed evangelicals and sexual sadism.

ISN'T THAT ENOUGH? The same cast of characters keeps turning up in all these catastrophes. Sounds to me like maybe there's a conspiracy? In any case, shouldn't this be properly and INDEPENDENTLY investigated? Why hasn't it been?

I remember reading somewhere that Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in Charles Manson's murder trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders knew about a much wider satanic network of which Manson was just a part. But Bugliosi made a strategic decision to ignore those connections, fearing they would dilute and undermine his murder case.

Demons? Extra-terrestrials? Black magick? I agree that there are intriguing connections and patterns. But are they a cause or effect? Is it merely a case of individuals driven insane by too much power, compelled to keep breaking taboos to see how far they can go?

Or are these occult/ufo aspects built-in to the most top-secret research, whether technological or on human subjects, as a sort of alarm system, scaring away most serious investigators? Even those who are thoughtful and well-informed are likely to be drowned out by the true crackpots (not to mention disinformation agents) who will happily swarm to that no-man's-land.

So, maybe we can learn something from Bugliosi's successful prosecution of Manson and his followers, and just stick to the verifiable crimes and those who are responsible for them. Once we've gotten rid of those murdering, thieving scum, and they're either dead or in jail, it will be so much easier and less risky to dig up that weird stuff.

10:53 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff,
I don't know a lot about the paranormal, and I try to avoid speculation and "theorizing" as much as possible...but I will say one thing.

Your writing style is really developing, even over just the past year and a half that I've been reading your weblog. You've found an original voice, and you have an incredibly artful precision and coherence in relating complex ideas and arguments.

Plus you don't use big words and stuff...which really helps us who ain't got so much book-larnin'....

11:34 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another meaning for "Apocalypse" is.."Awakening" ....
"connecting the dots"
We are in the middle of it!
Keep your eyes open as you take the the "RED" pill because as "In your face" reality is stranger than fiction.
Not many see it, but then again we come back to this: "As a thief in the night"
I am glad you do!!
Jeff, keep up the good work!
Thank you!!!

1:48 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's Jeff's wife I worry about.
"Jeff - we need milk!"
"The chemtrails! The chemtrails!"
Me, I'm realphabetising my album collection while Jeff is grappling with Satan. I'm glad. This is the only website I visit every day and read everything new. So respect, too, for all the great people who come here and post such lengthy and thoughtful and provocative responses worthy of the blog itself. I'd love to see a synthesis of RI in print. But then, I'd love to see the Preznit's head on a pole. I'm not holding my breath for either.

1:55 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well said, Anonymous 1:55pm.

The Mrs. Wells deserves all our thanks and gratitude.

How does the saying go...? "Behind every great man stands a woman who knows full well just how immature, selfish and lazy he really is...".

3:29 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sagan tells us Satanic Ritual Abuse is a 'fairytale'. As he worked for NASA for years, he must have thought that JPL Founding Father Jack Parsons and his guiding light Mr. Crowley were simply fairytale enthusiasts.

4:05 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Daniel said...

...Could it be that such an informational explosion has taken place, but been concealed from most everyone? I would appreciate any input on this idea and its validity given that I shy away from non-human explainations.

Yes. The state of brain science within the classified community immeasurably outstrips civilian science. Civilian science is hamstrung both by ethical standards (in most cases) and by an aversion to studying trauma. I would not be surprised if this were the case for other areas of technology as well.

When it comes to non-human explanations, there's the problem of questioning the basis/reality of other people's experiences, which puts those of us needing similar sensitivity in a peculiar position.
I don't have a solution for that dilemma.

4:38 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pan - "I don't think Budd Hopkins is a disinfo agent". No I don't either (well, 99.9% of the time), but my writing would be unreadable if I put little emoticons everywhere to match my facial expressions :)

However, the simple (and documented by Jeff above) issue that he twists everything as *proof* of ETs, makes me doubt his rigor. I suspect confirmation bias (amongst others) that keeps him from following up and investigating anything that might become a HOLE in his theory...

10:11 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Re: the linking of anti-semitism and the shapeshifting reptillians: David Icke (who I beleive was the first to talk about the lizards) adamantly denies that the lizerds are not jews in either fact or metaphor. However, on his website, he links to a copy of The International Jew, so...

Rising anti-semetism actually doesn't worry me in the least, largely as I don't actually see that happening. As a disclaimer I'll point out that I'm half Jewish by blood, and growing up, as many of my friends were fully Jewish as not. The current hypersensitivity about anti-semitism can be used as a smokescreen for "them" (almost all of whom are Christians or Jews), allowing them to characterize real, unbigoted inquiry as anti-semitism. This protects "them" and strengthens their perceived moral authority regarding Israel, as well as deflects criticism of exposed espionage. Yes, the Jews as a people have suffered greatly over history, but they are hardly alone or supreme in that respect (look at ALL of Russian history), but Jews are the only people who enjoy a free pass on many occasions based only on their racial suffering (the ~25 million Ukranians and Belorussians Hitler killed were also killed with genocidal intent and on a racial basis). I think we should wonder about the origins of this extreme immunity (which doesn't extend outside the Western World).

7:18 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You are reading my mind Jeff. The synchronicity.

1:38 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

if a 'wingnut' is anyone giving serious attention to 9/11, 'political conspiracy', mind control, ritual abuse, 'paranormal', UFO and abduction research, etc., well, hey, I'll put my hand up

rain --

That's certainly not my understanding of the meaning of "wingnut." In the parlance I've encountered around the net and in non-virtual "real" life, a wingnut is one of the demented and extraordinarily devoted followers of Dear Leader Dubya. A right-wing frother-at-the-mouth type who hangs on every pearl of "wisdom" dripping from the tongues of Limbaugh and Coulter and the like.

Wingnuts are the 15% or so (no one really knows the exact count) who are impervious to facts and reason, and who would continue to swear fealty to the Bush administration even if they saw Dubya barbecue a baby on the front lawn of the White House. You know, the brown shirts of the 21st century.

That's a wingnut. I wouldn't sign up for membership in that group if I still had a grasp on reality.

5:01 p.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Whatever you want to call it, his piece used the slur 'wingnuts' to describe people calling for coverage of a patently newsworthy controversy that was largely ignored by mainstream media - in other words, people calling for the media to do their jobs."
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2561

11:06 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

fair.org - too bad they joined the left/liberal gatekeepers in attacking Mike Ruppert for daring to connect dots about 9/11 complicity

something VERY strange is going on in the collective consciousness for the "opposition" to give tacit consent to the crimes of empire against its own citizens

http://www.oilempire.us/gatekeepers.html

5:25 a.m.  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I attended a private "UFO Seance" orchestrated by Budd Hopkins back in the mid-1970s, before he had become famous. A channeller had promised to cause UFOs to manifest over North Hudson Park in New Jersey (an actual sighting had taken place near there a few days earlier). Our small party of UFO investigators, plus Hopkins and his channeller, arrived at the park in the middle of the night, only to discover that someone (who could it have been?) had sent out a press release about the event! We found a small UFO carnival in progress, complete with hotdogs venders and people in costume! There was no quiet spot to use for a seance. After the mob turned their attention to our car and started rocking it from side to side, we made our escape without opening the doors. We went back to a private apartment, where the channeller gamely allowed Hopkins to put him into trance (or pretend to). But he was unable to put on a convincing performance - though, God knows, he tried!

I came away from that single encounter with the impression that Hopkins was a publicity hound and a fraud. Certainly, Whitley Strieber was not the first UFO case Hopkins had handled as a hypnotist.

As for Strieber, people close to him say that *he* believes in what he writes, but that they feel he may have misinterpreted the experience. (But people *would* say that, wouldn't they?)

12:56 a.m.  
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