Monday, May 19, 2008

I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids

It struck me recently that, considering that this is a ‘conspiraloon’’s blog, this site is far too light on UFO-related posts

...because, as we are constantly reminded, belief in UFOs and undead Elvises (Elvi?) follows disbelief in official terrorism narratives as sure as night follows day

My problem is that I've approached the subject of alien space friend visitations with as open a mind as possible in the past but have personally concluded that the evidence available to support the belief in little green/ grey/ purple visitors is on the, um, thin side

And I am amused by the fact that there are quite a few ‘rationalist’, conspiracy theory debunker types out there who are actually sympathetic to the alien UFO thing - off the back of the same Law of (apparently) Very Large Numbers which is used to make Neo-Darwinism look like it adds up.

My opinion is that the really intriguing UFO sightings which appear to have a basis in genuinely unusual events are consistent with covert testing programs and associated disinformation campaigns

The kinds of pre-historic strangeness which have been extensively, and creatively, documented by the likes of Daniken and Hancock do not require hypothetical alien intervention and are consistent with our ancestors being a lot cleverer than we have given them credit for. A misconception
possibly aided by some pre-historic wipe-out event




...all very testable/ researchable imho and not an indication of any kind of lunacy, even if subsequently disproved

What's interesting is that, until relatively recently, very little consideration has been given by UFO buffs and debunkers alike to the possibility that many genuinely unusual sightings may have been of test vehicles

The fact that many of the most interesting UFO sightings have taken place near to military test sites really should have been a bit of a give away




Scooby Doo fans will have a head start in comprehending the possibility that much UFOlogy is actually a deliberate distraction from more terrestrial considerations by simply performing the following substitutions..

Secret gold mine –> Lockheed Martin test facility

Holographic ghost projection device –> Cattle Mutilations


Suspicious looking caretaker seen at the start of every show –> National Security Agency


which is why I'm also of the firm opinion that serious consideration should be given to the possibility that the current global economic crisis might be the work
of ghost pirates and not the banking elite

-

The reason why I’m raising the subject of UFOs now is that there was some coverage in
the papers and the television last week about declassified British UFO sightings. We also learned that BBC’s Newsnight has a ‘UFO Editor’…




One of the declassified reports, in particular, caught my eye as it mentioned strange sightings over Waterloo Bridge




Years ago, back in the 80's, I used to walk across Waterloo Bridge most nights on the way to work. Occasionally, I would see a vaguely saucer-shaped grouping of coloured flashing lights hovering and moving around in a peculiar fashion over the Thames.

Because it was dark there were very few clues as to how far away or how big the collection of the lights was.

One night I spotted the source of these mysterious sightings... Some bloke standing in an alcove by the Festival Hall, working his highly-customised kite, pissing himself with glee

.

66 comments:

Anonymous said...

Robbie Williams believes, so it must be true! - http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2274878,00.html

Stef said...

...ably assisted by that heroic Truth warrior Jon Ronson no less

Anonymous said...

Off topic: interesting article, ostensibly about literary forgery but the author goes on to talk about the self-deception of the reader. (Shades of Peter Dale Scott's deep politics if you see the world in the same way as me).

Quote from halfway through, "Take James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. When this silly tale of drugs, rehab and redemption came out in 2003, I was the first reviewer to call it a tissue of lies.

It wasn't that I'm such a clever critic; it's just that I'm one of the few Americans willing to say out loud that I love drugs, have used lots of drugs and had a great time on them. So, as an outsider, I could see how cynically Frey's story was designed to reinforce the popular lie that drugs always lead to destruction. We have all known lots of successful, functioning drug users (though many are still closeted), but almost all of us have learned to blank out that knowledge when we sit in front of the TV and listen to another sermon on the evils of drug use. So a writer who invokes "drugs" as the villain of the piece ...
"

Which sparked off another thought ... how many closet drug users are there in Blighty? It should be possible to work it out. (Isn't there a passage in 'Mr Nice' where he tells us how much marijuana is smoked (at the time) in London everyweekend. Assuming consumption as a 1/16 of an ounce (fair?) per person (most probably less esp if skunk or Northern whatever) then how many people is that? The point? Well, who are these anti-drugs laws aimed at? Isn't it supposed to be a minority of people?

Anyway, two separate points for either another post, or not.

Anonymous said...

Why does the state seem to be both against drugs and in favour of them(ie they deal or help deal in them - see Afganistan)?

Anonymous said...

continuing from 15:31 comment ... the article has a conspiraloon feel to it, it begins, "Say you meet me at a party and I tell you that when I was 7 years old, I killed a full-grown military officer, then ran off and was nurtured by a pack of wolves. Would you believe me or begin edging away quietly, keeping the snack table between us at all times?"

Similarly, say I told you that an arab in a cave masterminded the downing of ...

Anonymous said...

"Why does the state seem to be both against drugs and in favour of them"

A narco-currency helps maintain or increase the value of the currency. The value of the commodity is transferred to the currency. The sheer size of the drugs industry makes this attractive if you want to prop up your currency. On the other side of the coin; making a desired commodity illegal simply drives up prices. Hence more value is transferred from the commodity to the currency.

This is explained by Catherine Austen Fitts, here.

Anonymous said...

Narco Dollars for dummies try this link.

Stef said...

CAF really is the DBs on many subjects

/ doffs cap

Anonymous said...

CAF and Aliens, I go for scenario 1

Stef said...

WTF!!?

I think I'm going to have reread that article a second time, have a cup of tea and a wee rest, reread it a third time with a view to reading it a fourth time, before going for a long walk...

Anonymous said...

Can we nominate CAF to be a Conspiraloon?

Do you think that she'd appreciate it?

Anonymous said...

I would like to suggest Karla Turners take on alien abduction.She details military involvement and was threatened shortly before she contracted some kind of rare cancer and died.
Couple of lecture videos and some of her books in pdf format.

www.karlaturner.org

I agree that the military have used ufology to hide top secret aircraft,I don't think they account for all ufo experiences.
Ufology is a deep dark subject,with an impressive pile of dead bodies.It deserves more serious attention,but theres too many liars hoaxers and spooks to get a decent grip.I guess its easier to label witnesses as loonies and laugh at them.

Stef said...

@anon 18:01

lol

probably not

Stef said...

@anon 18:45

alleged abduction is a potentially interesting subject

the widespread occurrence of folklore tales about abduction, changelings and the like demonstrates that this is a persistent belief/ experience which goes back a long way before guys in black helicopters

whether it's psychological in nature or rooted in something more tangible who knows but, honestly, and as you say, the area is now so muddied it's hard to see how any progress is ever going to be made in understanding it

Stef said...

... I'll give the karla turner stuff a spin, thx

Stef said...

but there's one thing I am 100% sure of...

Waterloo Bridge UFO sightings = bloke with electric kite

jon doy™ said...

i would've got away with posting a brief comment in reply if it wasn't for this meddling lack of brevity

i had been planning a post such as yours but was needing to gain extra DO NOTHING points and had sat on my arse and it for ages, so after your true expose of aliens posing as blokes with kites i thought i'd better pull me finger out

the short version is

i've heard a scramjet twice - afaik Aurora isn't so much a test as a sky rending operational reality

don't forget, folks, UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object and not Undoubtedly From Outerspace

no, i don't mean that, i mean THE ALIENS ! THE ALIENS !

RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN...

jon doy™ said...

^ post still under construction

sorries

Stef said...

nothing to apologise about dear chap

over-production kills True artistic exprsssion

jon doy™ said...

i prefer pictures to words, but there's a lot of words in there - and they're done except for a typo i keep on not being able to find in blogger's both superb and ample editing windowmajig

it's mostly just picatures to add

speaking of which - i've not forgotten the illustration paucity in the very wordy Conspiraloon 100% Legal Legal Services post


'tis true what you say about overproduction, but on this occasion it's more setting the old cullbot™ loose on the literary excess

but i couldn't leave the as yet not added panspermia/exogenesis out in the cold when one's talking about space aliens from other dimensions

and John Frost's silverbug is a fifties flying saucer that needs to be acknowledged

jon doy™ said...

looking for a link for the unimportant potential source-of-life panspermia on eraserpedia, i nearly missed the far more important babylon5 episode titled panspermia

jon doy™ said...

^ no, that's wrong, i meant what i said above, except that it was exogenesis and not panspermia that was an episode of babylon5

Anonymous said...

I am actually quite open to the explanation of UFO phenomena from the likes of people like Jacques Vallee and John Keel. They regard the 'real' UFO phenomena as relating to the wierdness of the universe (or 'ultraverse') and how human consciousness interacts with this ultraverse. Years of research have indicated to them that indeed people are seeing something, but it probably isn't aliens from space in metal objects. Keel refers to it basically as induced hallucinations, that may be shared by multiple witnesses. The entity being hallucinated could well have its own independent existence like an Egregore.

sorry for the waffle.

This is unrelated, but I thought maybe stef or another knowledgeable poster could enlighten me. I watched the documentary Hitler in Colour on Sunday and learned that Hitler and his national socialists had turned the german economy around and then some by the mid-late 30s, much to the gratitude of the german people. I imagine colossal propaganda played a part too.
Of course, the documentary didnt go into how this was possible. Wikipedia suggests that the German economy was healthy during a lot of the 20s post Weimar Inflation, so I gather it stalled near the end of them.

I have read about the internal foreign investments in Hitler, and that he was supposedly a bulwark against communism.
So was it simply him turning the German economy into a massive war machine which did it, thanks to business interests investing due to the fear of communism/socialism?

A similar facist/socialist battle seemed to be playing out in the US too with Smedley Butler and the Business Plot to overthrow Roosevelt.

Stef said...

@anon

hmmm, big question

Central bankers have a long and glorious history of funding both sides in many struggles/ wars/ arms races going back at least 200 years

And there's plenty of evidence to support the claim that many wealthy western industrialists were more than happy to support Stalin as well as Hitler - I always point to Armand Hammer as an example - a staunch supporter of Stalinist Russia and Richard Nixon?!!

So, personally, my take is that funding is made available to opposing regimes not because finance capitalists are afraid that one looks like it will triumph over another but because they actually want to keep them in balance...

Stef said...

on the specifics of Hitler's economic miracle...

a group of very rich, very shady guys - some of whom perversely claimed to hail from the same particular ethnic group that Hitler was busy persecuting, opened up a line of credit to his fascist regime

the specifics of utilising and masking that funding were left to people like this guy playing tricks like this

Anonymous said...

Cheers. Yeah I can appreciate thats a big question.

I hear you. Its all about the business opportunities. I always found it odd that the Bolshevik Trotsky seemed to be an agent of the West, and the Soviet regime had been heavily subsidized by both directly and indirectly by the West. I'm sure you are familiar with Antony Sutton's writings about big money and communism.
Perhaps in a way, Hitler and Stalin were really just much bigger versions of Manuel Noriega, who 'lost the plot' a bit.
Scary thought that there could be that level of oversight of world events.

Anonymous said...

cheers for the links stef. will check 'em out.

Stef said...

Perhaps in a way, Hitler and Stalin were really just much bigger versions of Manuel Noriega, who 'lost the plot' a bit.

Napoleon's another one

Putin might be too

I don't pretend to know enough about Trotsky to pass verdict on him but there are plenty of people who take the writings of Trotsky and Marx at face value and sincerely want to find a way to improve the lot of ordinary people.

I've met plenty of Russians who are very cynical about their leaders' motivations back in the 'old days' but who still miss many aspects of those 'old days'

Stef said...

ooops,

I almost missed Saddam Hussein off my list

Anonymous said...

@anon 15:31
For some bizarre reason I've never heard of Peter Dale Scott. His views and approach are much closer to mine, than say, Chomski.. Cheers for that.

@Stef
Yo blog is da bomb.
It's refreshing to read someone who uses his own wits and critical thinking rather than parotting cliche'd bollocks.

Anonymous said...

Your Armand Hammer/MEFO thicky-pedia links are funny, "The government would normally borrow extra funds on the money market by offering a higher interest rate. However, because of the limit it was unable to do so. And a large, visible government deficit would have attracted attention."

"Essentially, mefo bills enabled the German Reich to run a greater deficit than it would normally have done."

PFI PFI PFI

Anonymous said...

18:40 anon here..

Yep, perhaps Trot sky wasn't a willing agent of big capital, but Sutton does do a good job of highlighting a definite preference of big capital in supporting Trotsky's overthrow of Kerenksy's February Revolution. Again, business as usual.

----
Also found some conspiraloonacy on Dr Jacque Vallee's Wikipedia entry:

Vallee's interpretation of the UFO evidence

Vallée proposes that there is a genuine UFO phenomenon, partly associated with a form of non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time. The phenomenon has been active throughout human history, and seems to masquerade in various forms to different cultures. In his opinion, the intelligence behind the phenomenon attempts social manipulation by using deception on the humans with whom they interact.

Vallée also proposes that a secondary aspect of the UFO phenomenon involves human manipulation by humans. Witnesses of UFO phenomena undergo a manipulative and staged spectacle, meant to alter their belief system, and eventually, influence human society by suggesting alien intervention from outer space. The ultimate motivation for this deception is probably a projected major change of human society, the breaking down of old belief systems and the implementation of new ones. Vallée cannot say who or what is behind this scheme, only that the evidence, if carefully analysed, suggests an underlying plan for the deception of mankind by means of psychotronic technology. It is highly unlikely that governments actually conceal alien evidence, as the popular myth suggests. Rather, it is much more likely that that is exactly what the manipulators want us to believe. Vallée feels the entire subject of UFO's is mystified by charlatans and science fiction. He advocates a stronger and more serious involvement of science in the UFO research and debate. Only this can reveal the true nature of the UFO phenomenon.
---
Cheers for the great blog mate. The MEFO information was very informative.

@22:25 anon: The MEFO bills allowed germany to run a larger total deficit (official and unofficial mefo) than it would have been allowed without them (official only), as far as I could tell.

Anonymous said...

"It was entertaining watching various atheist scientists pontificate on the possibility of aliens creating life on earth through the use of crystals."

Anonymous said...

Drugs are great, any harm they cause is so trivial it can be discarded, Lets bring some grenery to Afghanistan, let the CIA to continue their flights, we dont need less drugs we need more...

Is this a new twist on 'Messiah Loonery?'

Anonymous said...

Surprisingly (or maybe not), I found a video of Antony C. Sutton, which sort of sums him up generally, so I'll post it here, and let more knowledgeable ppl chew on it and determine if he has an agenda or not. He apparently suffers from acute head-jutting when making points, and eye-rolling when listening.

Its a 40 minute video where he talks explicitly about the rise of Hitler and Bolshevism. At 23:50 he gets into Armand Hammer.

I'm probably not in full agreement with his world view, and he comes across a bit like another know-it-all Webster Tarpley (OOOHBAAMMMAAAA!!), but its probably worth a listen.

Boils down to: As the public is meant to fight against the 'enemy', big business deals with them.

Stef said...

Yep, perhaps Trot sky wasn't a willing agent of big capital, but Sutton does do a good job of highlighting a definite preference of big capital in supporting Trotsky's overthrow of Kerenksy's February Revolution. Again, business as usual.

Yes, you wouldn't have to be a willing/ knowing agent and could very well be pursuing what you sincerely believed to be a just cause

Chavez is another example. It's very possible that he accepted big bank funding in his election campaign but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a friend of the banks

but it does mean the banks thought he was potentially useful - and when he stops be useful, well, there's ways of dealing with that eventuality

Stef said...

re. the sutton video

something in a similar vein (and with a similar dated production style) here...

The Capitalist Conspiracy

similar caveats about not necessarily buying fully into the world view presented in that film apply

where a lot of this stuff falls on its face, as with the embryonic campaign against Common Purpose here in the UK, is when it starts dismissing Communism/ Marxism as being nothing more than a tool of the bankers

Every political movement and ideology has the potential to be infiltrated and subverted by a wealthy elite but that doesn't invalidate the grievances or aspirations of the ordinary people who follow those movements

Stef said...

cheers to all btw

Stef said...

MEFO bills = Nazi PFI

lol

Anonymous said...

As verbose and hard to read as it is, this excellent book -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conjuring-Hitler-Britain-America-Third/dp/074532181X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211364481&sr=8-1

Goes into how America and chiefly Britain helped bring the Bolsheviks and ultimetly Hitler to power.

It also contains loads of great conspiraloon asides that how the world is run by bankers and gentlemen's clubs!

Anonymous said...

Who is "testing" mile long silent black triangles?
Who is "testing" inertia-less craft that perform right angle turns and instant acceleration?

If they're "ours" why are we still burning 'fossil' fuels for power, burning more 'fossil' fuel in our cars, flying slow prop/jet aircraft that burn guess what?

jon doy™ said...

if someone is, and they're not burning geological [sic] fuels, and if there's anything to alternative sources of energy (i have a blog post i intend to eventually get round to posting on this topic), then the reason why we're still using geological fuels is a confluence of the desire to maintain control over energy resources - freely available energy is right out of the question - and the whole classified technology business - if you reveal that you don't need controlled fires to get about, you also blow a hole in one of xfilestianity's key tenets or trump cards - the "we dohne gud nunnah that" card

Anonymous said...

Terrence McKenna had an interesting take on UFOs,not unlike Vallies ideas
http://deoxy.org/watch/-3163231789026536985

I don't know if this is a hoax or not,I guess the only way to tell is to either befriend an engineering geek or build one yourself..
crop circles as engineering blueprints
http://www.cropcircleship.com/start.php

similarly,
http://www.informantnews.com/starshipgamma/crop/index.htm

If Jon reads this,I don't have a google account so I couldn't comment on his blog-apologies to stef for doing so here.
Your "satellite" you watched for 45 minutes-did it shoot off immediately after you had pidgeon-holed it?As if it was reacting to the thoughts in your head?I had a similar experience a couple of years ago.Its that mental connection which makes me feel its not our black ops hardware.If the pentagon could read minds and react to the thoughts they are reading,surely modern warfare would be entirely different..

Anonymous said...

Since membership may not be a formal matter but based rather on frequent social association, and since the frequency of such association varies from time to time and from person to person, it is not always easy to say who is in the Group and who is not. I have tried to solve this difficulty by dividing the Group into two concentric circles: an inner core of intimate associates, who unquestionably knew that they were members of a group devoted to a common purpose; and an outer circle of a larger number, on whom the inner circle acted by personal persuasion, patronage distribution, and social pressure. It is probable that most members of the outer circle were not conscious that they were being used by a secret society.
....................

The origins and the supervision power of the mandates system were thus largely a result of the activities of the Milner Group. This applied to Palestine as well as the other mandates. Palestine, however, had a peculiar position among mandates because of the
Balfour Declaration of 1917, which states that Britain would regard with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine. This declaration, which is always known as the Balfour Declaration, should rather be called "the Milner Declaration," since Milner was the actual draftsman and was, apparently, its chief supporter in the War Cabinet. This fact was not made public until 21 July 1937. At that time Ormsby-Gore, speaking for the government in Commons, said, "The draft as originally put up by Lord Balfour was not the final draft approved by the War Cabinet. The particular draft assented to by the War Cabinet and afterwards by the Allied Governments and by the United States . . . and finally embodied in the Mandate, happens to have been drafted by Lord Milner. The actual final draft had to be issued in the name of the Foreign Secretary, but the actual draftsman was Lord Milner." Milner had referred to this fact in a typically indirect and modest fashion in the House of Lords on 27 June 1923, when he said, "I was a party to the Balfour Declaration." In the War Cabinet, at the time, he received strong support from General Smuts.

....................

This brief sketch of the Royal Institute of International Affairs does not by any means indicate the very considerable influence which the organization exerts in English-speaking countries in the sphere to which it is devoted. The extent of that influence must be obvious. The purpose of this chapter has been something else: to show that the Milner Group controls the Institute. Once that is established, the picture changes. The influence of Chatham House appears in its true perspective, not as the influence of an autonomous body but as merely one of many instruments in the arsenal of another power. When the influence which the Institute wields is combined with that controlled by the Milner Group in other fields—in education, in administration, in newspapers and periodicals—a really terrifying picture begins to emerge. This picture is called terrifying not because the power of the Milner Group was used for evil ends. It was not. On the contrary, it was generally used with the best intentions in the world—even if those intentions were so idealistic as to be almost academic. The picture is terrifying because such power, whatever the goals at which it may be directed, is too much to be entrusted safely to any group. That it was too much to be safely entrusted to the Milner Group will appear quite clearly in Chapter
12. No country that values its safety should allow what the Milner Group accomplished in Britain—that is, that a small number of men should be able to wield such power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication
of the documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period.


- Carroll Quigley, "The Anglo American Establishment"

Anonymous said...

If you are going to do a conspiraloon special on alt energy,I hope you will include Nikola Tesla.I never heard his name mentioned once in ten years of state schooling.If I had been introduced to a tesla coil when I was 11 years old,I would have paid a lot more attention to physics.

jon doy™ said...

hi Anon 1845 (nice identifier btw)

i'm dreadfully embarrassed - i never realised i had the settings like that - not been paying attention

it should be possible to post as anon now

/ feeling stupid

jon doy™ said...

there is much to applaud about Terrence McKenna's spiritual take on things, but imho when it comes to specifics about aliens and DO NOTHING philosophy in particular, he is very similar to a great many others, too many vague assurances in lieu of appraisal of the scary shit going off all around us - group hugs don't unfortunately ward off DU rounds

crop circles are great PR for xfilestianity, many conveying possible fruity messages from masonic or other groups, but although many are truly impressive works of art, i see no basis to view them as anything other than made by human hands (and boards with string, laser measures, possibly infrared night vision goggles, and pre-made schematics)

that thing i saw just stayed put, dead still, twinkling like something with a lot of air between me and it same as a star does, to be honest i had stopped really thinking about it, but it was in my main field of vision when it damn well just took off and was away, then gone

in regard to mind control, i think we'll have to wait until we've all been persuaded to bluetooth up our brains, have internet wi-fi transmitters installed, to be concerned about indirect manipulation, the sea of nlp and other mind 'adjusting' techniques we are already swimming in is bad enough as it is

Tesla was an insane genius who shouldn't have mentioned some of the things that came into his head, but the thing with these alternative dealies is where the hell to begin - there's so much to cover that it'll end up like the dissertation i never wrote in college !

jon doy™ said...

...couldn't do a piece on free energy without old Nikola Tesla

Anonymous said...

18:40 anon here again lol...

Films like The Capitalist Conspiracy coming from a libertarian stance do like to trash all socialism as intrinsically bad, which is unfortunate. I'm sympathetic to some of the philosophical arguments made by people like G Edward Griffin, in theory (G. E. Griffin wrote the book which woke me up to how much I didnt know, The Creature From Jekyll Island.).
But as someone on another blog said... these libertarians will be crying out for collective civil ordinance the first time someone better armed sh*ts on their lawn.

----
About free energy, its worth noting that the US Naval Labs in San Diego have verified that Cold Fusion is indeed a reality. IMO, this is major news, which oddly enough has no traction in the media.
A site run by a nutty French inventor Jean-Louis Naudin has been demonstrating DIY cold fusion experiments for years. There are a ton of lab results, videos and photos sent in by fellow amateur CF researchers which can be scrutinised here.

a video and photos showing glow discharge plasma being emitted from one of the simplest experiments (The Asymmetrical Plasma Electrolysis experiment) can be viewed here

These experiments evidently produce over-unity output (more heat and other energy released than A.C. electric energy in). Its a basic electrolysis experiment with A.C., tungsten rods and potassium carbonate solution, except that one of the rods is placed much shallower than the other, to produce a larger current density on it, where the plasma discharge happens.
Have to say I'm very skeptical about over-unity, but at least he's given all the information required for skeptics to try for themselves.

If these experiments are producing over-unity, then maybe our understanding of physical forces is incomplete.
Perhaps the current energy-food paradigm is being used for control as Jon Doy says, since *if* there is easily accessible energy for everyone, then, Woops! there goes the Control Grid! (apologies for the Jones-ism there)
---

McKenna does indeed have a similar take on UFO phenomena as Vallee, albiet inducing them with the aid of south american tribal drugs. Reminds me of that 'spiritual' drug the south american priests used to take called Salvia divinorum, which is perfectly legal in most countries. A mate of mine swears he saw a girl speaking in tongues after taking it. Not my cup of tea to be honest, Stella is about as fancy as I get most of the time.

BTW, There is an interesting summary of John Keel at the Fortean Times. Here's an excerpt, regarding his Mothman investigations and MIB experiences:
"As Keel describes it, the whole State of Ohio suffered what can only be described as an invasion of ‘dolls’. Just one of the curious things about these figures is that, more than anything else, they remind us of the Media. Keel’s living cartoons scream, gurgle, and generally camp it up, as if a laboratory full of half-completed media ‘personalities’ had been freed by some doll-liberation society. As human imitations, his communicating entities – Indrid Cold, Klinell, Mr Apol, and Lia – are bland, floppy and androgynous, more comic than sinister. Seen as figures in a late-1960s prophetic Media allegory, Keel’s grotesques are like early Michael Jackson seedlings, stalking the borderland between the ‘factual’ Point Pleasant and the ‘fictional’ Twin Peaks."

Whitley Strieber is someone in the UFO community who has arguably created a lot of controversy and some have suggested is even potentially a victim of mind control. He wrote Communion, about his own experiences with 'visitors'. From his wiki entry: "He refers to the beings as "the visitors," a name chosen to be as neutral as possible, and leaves open the possibility that they are not extraterrestrials and even that they exist only in his mind. He has repeatedly expressed his frustration with what he feels are fantastic claims incorrectly attributed to him."
He is into the whole 2012 thing like McKenna was.

Apologies for the disjointed waffle, so much wacky and interesting stuff to talk about :P
Thats about all I have to add anyway.

Anonymous said...

google cache version of the John Keel Article, since Fortean Times can request registration.

Stef said...

Dear 18:40 anon,

No need to apologise for 'disjointed waffle'. One of the reasons why I keep this blog up is that every now and again one of these extended comment threads sparks into life and I end up harvesting all sorts of gems

My only concerns is that, for want of a better term, 'Fortean' stuff can get conflated with parapolitical stuff. No-one is (yet) using UFOs and the like as an excuse to lock people away, jam CCTV cameras in our faces or launch pre-emptive wars

Some would argue that everything is all connected but, for what I hope are obvious reasons, I feel a lot more comfortable if certain subjects are kept apart from each other...

Stef said...

re. the cold fusion thing

Whether there is anything to it or not, I remember back when the news first broke, followed shortly by the news that MIT had 'disproved' cold fusion, followed shortly by the news that MIT had fudged its results

As a general principle, if someone is caught fudging something I do find myself thinking they might be trying to hide something.

and at this point, the late Eugene Mallove's name is worth throwing in the mix

Stef said...

...and even though it's is difficult to be sure if there is anything to cold fusion, one thing I can be sure about is that hot fusion research has gone on for the better part of 50 years, cost God knows how many billions and has produced more or less fuck all in the way of useful technology

The first time I can recall hearing that hot fusion power stations were something like 20 years away I think Leo Sayer was in the charts.

As far as I can tell they're still 20 years away - along with personal jetpacks, AI and domestic robots

Anonymous said...

"Some would argue that everything is all connected but, for what I hope are obvious reasons, I feel a lot more comfortable if certain subjects are kept apart from each other..."

No problem at all, I understand. There is indeed a lot of bollox in the Fortean/UFO community (even with Keel, who could of very cleverly made it all up to sell books) and it can harm more objective discussions when it is mixed in.

jon doy™ said...

the glory that is heavily centralised hot fusion is, i understand, only just around the corner at 40 years distant

better something you cannot have in the garden shed a hundred years late than never - from the point of view of the centralist

Anonymous said...

@18:40 anon
In the book "DMT The Spirit Molecule", some of the test subjects had alien abduction experiences. DMT is the molecule of the hallucinogen salvia divinorum, aka ayahuasca, which we all have in our brains and is generally released when we die. See also the God helmet experiment of Michael Persinger.

I personally believe that some UFO and alien stories can feel as true as life, but were hallucinations or twilight states.
Many testimonies are just confabulations induced under hypnosis by repressed memories quacks.
Could also just be a bloke with a kite...

Anonymous said...

cheers 00:41 anon...

I honestly didnt know that Ayahuasca and Salvia shared the same DMT chemical, thought they were separate. And on top of that DMT is naturally produced in the brain (a bit of googling suggests yes). Thanks for destroying my hope in the spirit realm arsehole ;-)

Seriously though, good post.

Anonymous said...

anon 00:41 here..

DMT is different to other hallucinogens in that the experiences it induces feel as real as ordinary consciousness.
Also, brain function can be disrupted by magnetic waves, and induce mystical experiences as shown in Persinger's experiments. And quite recently french researchers proved that mobile phone waves cause stress in plants, and are now testing on human skin samples.(Plant, Cell & Environment, 2007)

My own little kooky theory is that one could be minding his/her own business then be bombarded with waves (from a sunspot, mobile phone relay, power line, dunno) which would release an amount of DMT in the brain, resulting in a UFO sighting, alien abduction experience, or an encounter with elves or the Virgin Mary. The person not being aware of having effectively taken a drug, and the experience feeling so real, will be convinced that it was true.

We just tend to underestimate the power of our brains while overestimating our senses.

Anonymous said...

Many's the dead bodies that have been chromatographed to reveal hallucinogens, as are the studies saying they are locked away -in cranial Xanadu- somehwere, to be released at the moment of death as opposed to being a molecule synthesised as a result of the emergence of avitalistic mechanisms. And many are the frequency of mind bending drugs trials involving natural

Nothing like a UFO seed to bring the most extreme loonery in all of us.

Anonymous said...

"induce mystical experiences as shown in Persinger's experiments." Richard Dawkins didn't feel owt.

And the experiments are crap anyway. What comes to mind is: Man in white coat, Electric shocks, Inability to escape from the authority.

Lets reverse the polarity - what does one feel then? Atheism, Satanic?

Even if a Godly feeling was induced is such a result being extrapolated to all belief in God is becasue we have magnetic flux lines passing through our brains??

Dunno about others, but my belief is overwhelmingly from a point of conceptuality and logic.

Stef said...

Even if a Godly feeling was induced is such a result being extrapolated to all belief in God is becasue we have magnetic flux lines passing through our brains??

I don't think the two experiences are mutually exclusive

I've no doubt, for instance, that some people are subject to depression due imbalances in brain chemistry which have little to do with what is going outside of their bodies

On the other hand it is equally possible to induce depression by watching an episode of The Apprentice

Whether the human brain is a product of accident or design, it is obviously wired to respond emotionally to its environment and it is reasonable to believe that wiring can be tricked by false/ deceptive inputs

Anonymous said...

Smiles string for DMT

CN(C)CCC1=CNC2=CC=CC=C12

which can be depicted by copying and pasting here.

so there ...

Anonymous said...

I'm not saying the indole tertiary amine doesn't exist, please don't get me wrong. Every organic molecule exists (just define the energy window). I'm querying the validity of its storage, synthesis and function (if any) as well as application.

Anonymous said...

Try rendering the given smiles string in something like Chemdraw for clarity. 'Depict' is depicting aromaticity rather than extra bonds.

(You could of course render it in your head?).

Also, you could try putting it in here rather than 'Depict' to give a clearer rendition.

Anonymous said...

This description of an ayahuasca experience sounds like a bold adventure.

http://matthew-delooze.blogspot.com/2007/09/only-love-can-bring-rain.html

Anonymous said...

Similar with the Salvia Experience Vault where people talk about their mind-blowing trips. Based on some of the reports, especially in the Bad Trips section, I think I'm quite happy to leave it be.