It's the Paola Harris Show! Harris Speaks at McMinnville UFO Fest

It's The Paola Harris Show!

Paola Harris at McMinnville, OR UFO Fest 2011

I debated posting what I thought of Paola Harris’s presentation at the McMinnville UFO Festival this past May because I have nothing nice to say. This is what I emailed Deirdre O’Lavery when trying to come up with something about the presentation:

All right, well, I can't seem to write anything worthwhile about old Paola. Except that it was the worst thing ever ... but [I have] nothing articulate or insightful [to add]. I thought I had taken better notes but apparently I was so amazed I had doodled numerous semi-psychotic renderings. Hey, maybe that's what I'll say.

While I don’t agree with the exo-politics movement in UFOlogy, I don’t have anything against it. My issues with Ms. Harris’s presentation isn’t with her views on exo-politics (whatever those are; it was difficult to tell) but with her lack of coherency and her immense ego.

Harris was introduced as “the Barbara Walters of UFOlogy,” and that title was reiterated by Ms. Harris herself, but it became clear to me she isn’t that, but I will say she’s clearly the Sarah Palin of UFOlogy.

So the talk begins, and I am telling you, it was the craziest, most disjointed, manic, ego-fueled thing I've been to. It was so bizarre and surreal that it was funny.

While I’m not much for the exo-politics aspect of UFOlogy, which is what Ms. Harris is all about,  I was interested in Harris’s presentation for a couple of reasons. One, anything to do with UFOs (excluding the uber-psycho skeptics) I’m up for, and two, I was curious to hear about the San Antonio, New Mexico 1945 crash Harris promised to discuss.

The presentation began with  a montage of UFO images -- “sixty-one years of UFOs” Harris told us -- accompanied by Buffalo Springfield's Something's Happening Here. Instead of ending the introduction at that point, it continued with another slew of slides, this time accompanied by some kind of screechy space age music. Harris introduced the images by telling us it’s “sixty-one years” of UFOs but it appeared to be 108 years, since the intro slide read “1870 to 2008.”  It would have been nice to have captions of the photographs; when and where the UFO image was taken, or how the illustration related to what sighting, but all we got were slides. After slides. After. Slides. And then there were the slides.

After that overly long intro, Harris literally spent forty minutes talking about herself while showing several images of the book and magazine covers where she’s appeared in print, as well as photo after photo of her with various UFO bigwigs. “Here I am with so and so...” she announced. Over and over. Forty minutes! Literally. I timed it.

I detected an undercurrent of, not racism exactly, but a cultural ignorance or maybe it was cultural superiority. (Surprising since she has dual citizenship and  lived in Italy for many years.) She showed a slide of Israel, referencing that country’s UFO sightings, informing us that  “They talk Jewish over there.” She showed slides of  UFO researchers --  Jacques Vallee among them --  meeting with politicians in the Middle East and slides of the Muslim Brotherhood, and insinuated there is something insidious afoot about their interest in UFOs. We're  not told why this might be so. This was one of the problems with her presentations: lack of support for her case. (The other problem: her huge ego.)  Harris mentioned several times that she was a retired teacher, something I found simply astounding given her consistent rambling, incoherent, point jumping circus act. But, she did teach in an Italian private school and among her students were “Mel Gibson’s kids,” and other VIPS which Harris felt was a relevant bit of information to share with us.

After more than forty minutes of  It’s The Paola Harris Show, she gets to the 1945 San Antonio, New Mexico (not Texas,) crash. More slides of places and people but with little context.  It was such a rambling and nonlinear WTF mishmash I had no idea what she was talking about and  I didn’t learn anything about this case after her presentation. It was extremely disappointing.

There was also a video of Philip Corso; the video got stuck and there we sat, listening to audio of Corso while Harris looked adoringly on; again, how it connected to what Harris was talking about wasn’t made clear.  (I noticed that Harris conspicuously did not mention Bill Birnes.)

Harris finished with her “12 Protocols” of exo-politics which, it turned out, was really 9 protocols. Or maybe it was 7.  At that point however I didn’t give a damn how may there were. Besides, they weren’t exactly “protocols” as in: don’t use your salad fork when eating fish, but assumptions about the coming of the Space Brothers. The slide got stuck on number 1 and remained there; she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and at one point said “It says there are 12 protocols but there’s really only 9” which is where I was afraid to look at Deirdre O’Lavery who was sitting next to me, because I knew we’d both lose it.

Glitches happen, but there were so many in Harris’ presentation I had the impression there was no care taken; just a thrown up mess of stuff at the last minute. Even those technical errors could be forgiven if Harris herself hadn't been so inept. Take your pick: her massive ego, her incoherent presentation, her rambling, her lack of cohesiveness, the lack of support for her case, the lack of editing: put it all together and it was one bad, very bad, UFO lecture. I was entertained  but that was inadvertent. It was a completely pointless presentation and absolutely embarrassing. And I’ve seen Stephen Greer speak, so that’s saying something.

Richard Dolan at X-Conference 2010 (A.D. Disclosure)

UFO Mania!

Trickster's Realm
I got my dates mixed up and didn't realize my Trickster's Realm column wasn't due 'til next week, so no new TR today.

UFO Magazine's The Green Room: Stephenville Lights and the Creepy Beam
I do have something up at UFO Magazine's blog The Green Room: Stephenville's Creepy Beam: The Return of the Stephenville Lights and a Creepy Beam of Light

UFO News: They're Here!

"You sure don't look like an iguana." ~ V, 1983

Some amazing UFO news from a variety of places that seems to be just . . . there, here, on the Internet and in small places. UFO Magazine's blog has some interesting items on UFO news. We're in a UFO flap and have been for at least a year now. MOD and others are releasing their UFO files and basically are saying "Well, UFOs are real, and we don't know much what to do about it." It's exciting to those of us who are immersed in this world, but outside it's business as usual, and yet, "they're here!" and it all seems so . . . casual. And I think if the Big D (disclosure) would ever to take place, it would be in this way: just a plethora of quiet little items, casually dropped about but without any mainstream big time fanfare, until . . . "oh, yeah. the alien dudes. kinda freaky, huh?' and then back to work on Monday. We'll be going fucking nuts over this of course, including "told yas!" but the uber-skeptics would still be fighting with each other, with us, with anything that they even think gives off the faintest whiff of woo. Now and then there'll be something about "alien rights" akin to animal rights, or like something out of the television series V.

UFO Hunters New Season This Wednesday
UFO Hunters new season starts this Wednesday on The History Channel. 10:00 pm Eastern time.

The Clowns in the "Sorry" State

A recent piece by Frank Warren inspired me to go off on one of my own favorite rants; that of the so-called “sorry state” of UFOlogy. As Warren says, underscoring Richard Dolan's point, the idea that there's a "state" of UFOlogy is inaccurate and misses the point. You can read Warren's piece here: What is The State of Ufology? Wrong Question!


I often rant against those who call for a “new UFOlogy.” What’s wrong with the old one? More to the point, what in the world makes those who want a “new” UFOlogy, a better or a different or a cleaner or a neater or a “more scientific” (oy) UFOlogy that anyone outside of UFOlogy cares?

Who says it’s “sorry?” Because we have the expected jokers around? The Raelians make the mainstream news, not the serious, interesting UFO cases that may also contain some evidence. (Other than anecdotal.) So?

What else do you expect from the mainstream media? They’ve always been cheesy, sleazy and exploitive, that’s what they do. I promise you, if we all got up some kind of serious, somber, clinical “New UFOlogical” whatever, no one would give a damn. We would, (some of us) but no one listens to us. And then there’s this: after a short time, it isn’t too long before this “new” UFOlogy will be perceived -- and possibly turn into -- a stodgy, rigid, snooty mini-infrastructure of scientism in its own right. Before that point thought, this "new" UFOlogy will be scrambling to be accepted by those they've decided long ago they need: mainstream science, academia, the media, politics. Wow, talk about idealism! But those institutions have turned their noses up at UFOlogy; a "new" UFOlogy will have to dance real fast and real well in order to be accepted. Which means, much of what makes UFOflogy the thing that it is will have to be discarded before this "new" state gets in the door. And at that point, of course, you don't have a real (authentic) UFOlogy, but you still have a very "sorry" state indeed. Irony!

Don't you find it ironic that a diverse,individual, subjective, elusive and contradictory phenomenon such as UFOs is persistenlty being forced into some kind of stable state where everyone agrees (pretty much) and the personal is silenced, or at least told to shush?

One thing wrong about screaming for a new UFOlogy or repairing its “state” is the belief we would do better without the clowns. First, we have to acknowledge that there is a clown like atmosphere to much of UFO and Fortean events, and it’s a natural part of the anomalous. There are many ways to deal with this, depending on the situation and where the clown antics fall on the UFOlogical clown scale. (New Age clowns, Contactee clowns, Bigfoot-UFO clowns, Abduction clowns, My Lizard Lover clowns, etc.)

We can ignore them. Call them on their stuff. Expose them for the lying clowns they are. But what if they’re not lying clowns? They could be clowns for a number of reasons, but not liars. At some point, it’s subjective. Trust comes in. Intuition. Meanwhile, we’re all distracted by trying to shove out these clowns, argue over who’s a clown and who isn’t, and the actual work isn’t getting done. We’ve been too busy chasing after those we’ve decided are clowns. Talk about a circus.

Then we get back to work, feeling smug and justified that we cleaned up the mess, only to realize more clowns have sneaked in. That’s the nature of the anomalous clown beast. You just can’t get rid of them. In fact, the harder you try, the more return. Like Sisyphus, once you roll that rock uphill, it just comes back.

The mainstream media and the pathological skeptics will never avert their attention from the clown side of things, for that would mean they have to admit there is something of value and truth to all this.

(Actually, the mainstream media at times slowly turns to the light; little bits of UFO reality get by and we experience a respite from little green men jokes by talking heads.)

We can learn from the clowns. Instead of chasing after them with brooms we can stop and just watch them for awhile. What are they up to, and why? Might turn out it was a waste of time, so what? Might turn out you learned something. Maybe that clown wasn’t just a lampshade on its head bore, but a true Fool leading you down a much neglected and magickical path. You could return from that journey with something of value to share with the “sorry state” of UFOlogy.


cut and paste if link doesn't work: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=46054

More from Ed Komarek

I sent Ed my post about his email, he's responded with a link I might find of interest, or, as he put it: "This ought to get you fired up." lol. What he sent me was something from Michael Salla, who I know is one of the exopolitics "kings." Other than that, I admit I don't follow this much or know more than that. Since there's a note at the end of the piece to freely distribute this, I'll repost it here:

Sources: http://exopolitics.org/Exo-Comment-62.htm & http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1107/publicpolicy.html
Exopolitics: Discipline of Choice for Public Policy Issues Concerning Extraterrestrial Life

There is growing debate concerning 'exopolitics', which is oriented towards public policy issues concerning extraterrestrial life; and its relationship to UFOlogy, which primarily focuses on evidence concerning unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Supporters of exopolitics largely accept that the existence of extraterrestrial life has been abundantly demonstrated by a vast pool of evidence over the last sixty years provided by eyewitnesses, whistleblowers, scientists, 'experiencers' and leaked government documents. Supporters of exopolitics claim it is now time to focus on public policy aspects of this evidence, rather than maintain a myopic focus on proving to perennial skeptics that UFOs are real and a legitimate focus on scientific study. Indeed, exopolitics supporters believe that much of this skepticism is unwarranted and can be traced to the debunking recommended by the CIA appointed Robertson Panel in 1953. The panel delivered a report, the Durant
Report, that recommended debunking the 'flying saucer' phenomenon and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, for national security reasons. The Report stated: "The "debunking" aim would result in reduction in public interest in "flying saucers" which today evokes a strong psychological reaction."

Many individuals are still trying to grasp what exopolitics is all about, and many 'UFOlogists' remain highly critical of exopolitics as an emerging disciplinary approach to public policy issues concerning extraterrestrial life. UFOlogists still have difficulty grasping that exopolitics is the forerunner to a legitimate academic discipline that will soon be established in every major university. Critics of exopolitics often tend to focus on some of the pioneers of exopolitical thought in terms of their methods and ideas, rather than the identifying the merits of a scholarly approach to public policy issues concerning extraterrestrial life.
The present situation is some ways analogous to the 19th century where there was much debate on how to prepare individuals for studying public policy issues for careers in international diplomacy and public office. Historians at the time argued that efforts to establish the discipline of 'political science' was ill founded, since the best preparation for a life dealing with public policy issues was to read historical works by Arnold Toynbee, Herodotus, Thucydides, etc.

Well, political science developed anyway as an academic discipline out of the department of history since it fulfilled a functional need. The functional need was to better understand public policy issues and how individuals could be trained to professionally deal with these.
Political science is now the discipline of choice for those wanting to study public policy issues and to be professionally trained to work with these. During the 1860's, political science departments began to emerge in many universities. Similarly, exopolitics will be the discipline of choice for those desiring to study public policy issues associated with extraterrestrial life since it fulfills a functional need. The functional need is to understand how extraterrestrial life impacts on public policy issues, and to professionally train to deal with these. Exopolitics will be first established in departments of political science as a legitimate sub-field as is currently the case with 'international politics', 'foreign policy', 'comparative politics', 'political economy', etc., in many political science departments. Eventually, exopolitics will emerge as a distinct department with an interdisciplinary focus spanning public policy issues relating not only to
political science, but to exoscience, exoreligion, exodiplomacy, etc.

Debunkers and Ufologists in general are poor students of history not to have observed how academic disciplines and sub-fields develop to fulfill functional needs. They are remiss in not observing how exopolitics will fill the functional need for the systematic study of public policy issues concerning evidence of extraterrestrial life. The choice of the word 'exopolitics' to represent this nascent academic discipline has long term strategic value due to the functional need it fills. Furthermore, exopolitics is the term of choice to deal with public policy issues like the national security cover up of extraterrestrial life and technologies.
UFOlogy as a field has little academic future since the functional need it serves will quickly be settled once the existence of extraterrestrial life is accepted. The reality of UFOs will be moot once they have been publicly identified as 'extraterrestrial', 'interdimensional' or 'intertemporal' in origin. Those devoted to UFOlogy are missing a great opportunity to contribute to establishing legitimate social science parameters for exopolitical study. Exopolitics is here to stay as the discipline of choice for a new branch of knowledge that will revolutionize academic studies and the world as we know it.

***



Michael E. Salla, Ph.D
Kona, Hawaii
11/24/07
www.Exopolitics.Org

***
Forward as you wish. Permission is granted to circulate among private individuals and groups, post on all Internet sites and publish in full in all not-for-profit publications. Contact author for all other rights, which are reserved.

I agree actually with much of what is said here. I admit some of the academic stuff goes over my head; mainly because I'm tired and still reeling from eating too much dairy over the holiday, when I don't usually. More on that later. (the academics, not the dairy.)

Interesting it says this:

There is growing debate concerning 'exopolitics', which is oriented towards public policy issues concerning extraterrestrial life; and its relationship to UFOlogy, which primarily focuses on evidence concerning unidentified flying objects (UFOs)

.

I think that's true much of the time; UFOs can't be seperated, not completely, from the idea of ETs.

And there's this:

Many individuals are still trying to grasp what exopolitics is all about, and many 'UFOlogists' remain highly critical of exopolitics as an emerging disciplinary approach to public policy issues concerning extraterrestrial life

.
For some reason, it does seem that the concept of exopolitics is slippery; it shouldn't be, but I know it's been a bit difficult for me to completely "get it." Whether one gets it or not, I know a lot of UFO people are critical of exopolitics. I'm not sure why. As I've said, even if they may be misguided and assume much, at least they mean well, and are proactive. There's worse things after all.