Nukes, UFOs and James Carlson

I inducted uber-pathological debunker "Noisy Negativist" James Mcgaha into my 'Snarly Skepticism Owl Award.' Previous proud winners: Joe Nickell and Bill Nye.

James Carlson leaves me a comment:

Gentlemen; It occurs to me that you may not be entirely aware of the dishonest testimony published by Robert Salas and Robert Hastings, who have lied about these UFO incidents for years. Please take note of the discussions regarding the incidents they have proposed on the two URLs http://www.scribd.com/doc/26641522/Americans-Credulous-by-James-Carlson and http://www.realityuncovered.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1688&p=25070#p25070 . Problems inherent to their claims indicate that both men have invented a number of incidents. Very best regards, James Carlson jtcarl@yahoo.com Albuquerque, NM

So interesting when big time names drop by my no account anti-skeptoid blog; James Randi even left me a comment over there once! Wow.  After letting Carlson know "I'm a dame," and not a male member of some anti-skeptoid gentlemen's club, I added that I knew of allegations, duh. I assumed he meant the usual, and after reading, okay, more like skimming for now, his I dunno, 5,000 plus? work on events surrounding Robert Salas and Hastings, ... you just have to look at it yourself. Here's what Billy Cox at Devoid had to say about Carlson's work on his blog: 'Nukes debate gets personal.' (By the way, Cox says the work is 357 pages, it just seemed like 5,000 plus.)

The latest round of a blistering, two-year cyber-debate between UFO researcher Robert Hastings and the son of nuclear missile silo commander clanged into De Void’s e-mailbox last week. That’s when James Carlson, whose father Eric was ranking officer at a launch control facility in 1967 when 10 ICBMs mysteriously went offline, dropped a 357-page bomb.

And. . .

Anyhow, at the end of the day, amid the endless and enervating well of anger dominating the news cycles from Capitol Hill to Main Street, Carlson just gets lost in the crowd. That’s because he calls his online tome: “Americans, Credulous, or The Arrogance of Congenital Liars & Other Character Defects.” He dismisses those who disagree with him as “fools, idiots and liars,” among other things. Yawn. Click.

That's pretty much how I felt as I looked over the piece. Frank Warren, who is nobody's fool, and obviously among the serious UFO researchers, has a lot about this on his UFO Chronicles; be sure to scroll down to the responses to Carlson. I'm not an expert by any means in this area; not at all! But a couple of things scream at me "something's not right here girlie girl" and that's: Carlson's obsessive, kind of on the pathological side tone, and, the fact his father was an officer at a launch facility, as Cox points out. 

New Blogger Templates!

Yea, Blogger has new templates! Thanks to Lesley at The Debris Field  for the info, I had ignored the blogger item at the bottom of my dashboard that tells about it. I'm not sure if I'll play around with the templates here and on Octopus Confessional, I finally got them to where I like it. Oh, who knows, I probably will. But I did change the look at Pulp Jello. And I'm still not satisfied with Women of Estoerica's look, so who knows. Have fun!

A Paranoid Moment: Project Blue Beam and Vatican Investigations

I had just posted an item at UFO Mary about the Vatican's decision to openly investigate the BVM sightings at Medjurgoje. As I was posting that, I asked myself why now, after more than twenty years, would the Vatican make this announcement? The sightings have been occuring since 1981, with official mandates from the Catholic Church to not give any positive credence to the apparitions.

Then I check my email and find this link on the Authentic UFOs blog to a story, with YouTube clips, on Project Blue Beam and fake religious holographic projections to control  the masses.

Oregon UFO: Variation of the Swamp Gas Disinfo -- The Northern Lights

A new variation of the infamous 'swamp gas' explanation to dismiss, distract and cover-up a UFO sighting: the Northern Lights.

A witness reported to Oregon MUFON she saw a craft in West Linn. (oddly enough, West Linn was also the location of a strange beam-of-light sighting not long before.) When the witness managed to get ahold of a live person at a local news station, she was told:

that's kind of funny that you'd report that today because it's the Spring Equinox and you could have seen a reflection from the Northern Lights.

The West Linn Tidings offers the following in the March 24th edition: Was it alien visitors, or just a reflection of the northern lights? (Kara Hansen.)

Implanting the idea of "the northern lights" as a quasi-scientific and rational explanation, the article begins:

Was it a UFO, or maybe a rare Oregon display of the northern lights? You be the judge.

The UFO is described in the news article as a "triangular, jet-sized vehicle" and the witness, in responding to being told she "could have seen a reflection from the Nothern Lights" said "This was no reflection but rather a solid, industrial strength vehicle."

The Color Green
The article offers another possibility for what the witness saw. Mistaking a solid, triangle shaped craft that "dipped low over the trees near her condominium"for either reflection of the Northern Lights, or, the color green:

Also possibly of note: Green is the most common color seen in the northern lights, a natural nighttime light display also known as the aurora borealis.

 It's not clear why this is included; does the writer mean that the witness possibly saw a vague shapeless green color in the sky and tunred it into a solid, triangle shape, complete with lights on the bottom? Which were orange, as the article does point out (“bright orange lights on the bottom.”)

Beams of Light
Mention of the beams of light coming from the sky in the same article. (These beams have been reported in other parts of the U.S. recently.) Citing the Oregon MUFON report, the news item gives us the following sighting from one of the two witnesses:

they witnessed] three or four “quick pulsating flashes straight over us coming from above the clouds."

“They were so bright that the entire park and surrounding neighborhood was lit up,” the account states. “There were no audible sounds … and it didn’t seem to affect the dogs at all.

Other Reports, and An Element of High Strangeness
Other reports are briefly mentioned, one in particular that I find very interesting for its Contactee and "high strangeness" elements is this one from 2008:

There was also a “close encounter” Sept. 3, 2008, at Lake Oswego’s George Rogers Park, where a man reportedly had telepathic “conversations” with an object hovering near the old iron smelter, mentally refusing to “take a ride on the saucer.”

A Comment Left About Northern Lights
In myprevious post about the West Linn triangle sighting, Ray left the following comment about the Northern Light explanation:

• What do the northern lights (aurora) have to do with the spring equinox? The aurora is generated by sunspots. It's not dependent on the equinox. You might as well say: “It's Easter and you saw a meteor."
• Sunspot activity generally has been low lately. Where the northern lights active on the night of the sighting?
• I've seen the northern lights a few times. What do they mean by a reflection from the northern lights? The aurora can be impressive but usually it isn't so intense that it reflects off objects (maybe at the north pole).

(Thanks Ray :)

The Northern Lights as a valid explanation was also put in its proper place by Tom Bowden at MUFON. In an email exchange he stated that even though there was recent activity of the lights, they were weak and "nothing to get excited about." More specifically:

 The Northern Lights happen when a burst of radiation from the sun, due to a solar flare or coronal mass ejection, hits the earth's ionosphere and the excited ions start emitting light.  People in the far north see them quite often, but they are much rarer at our latitudes.  There were some potential northern lights events in recent weeks, but certainly nothing to get excited about, and no chance they would have illuminated nearby objects.  They are not usually that bright.

MUFON is continuing its investigation of the triangle sighting. As always, witnesses are encouraged to come forward and report their sightings to MUFON.

Oregon MUFON:
http://www.mufon.com/oregon.html

UFO Sighting: What is it About West Linn, Oregon?

Not long ago I posted about a strange beam of light that appeared from the sky in West Linn, Oregon on UFOMystic. And now comes a report of a witness who saw a triangle object in the sky, also in West Linn, Oregon.

Thanks to Roger Marsh at the Examiner for both stories.

The witness reported the sighting to MUFON, and contacted local media. Only one news station was available; this is the frustrating response:

Right away I called the local TV Channels. The only one that had a live person to talk to said, "that's kind of funny that you'd report that today because it's the Spring Equinox and you could have seen a reflection from the Northern Lights. This was no reflection but rather a solid, industrial strength vehicle.

I've often commented that it seems since 9/11, media around here (Oregon)  are not interested in UFO stories. Before that, there were stories of sightings all over the place. But very few since then. The above rationalization from the news woman is almost bizarre; no attempt at getting more information from the witness, just a ridiculous brush off with an insulting response that the solid object was a "reflection of the Northern Lights."

The Snarly Skepticism OWL Award Goes To: James Mcgaha

I'm proud to announce that supreme skeptoid James Mcgaha has just been awarded the Snarly Skepticism OWL Award. Congratulations!

More Buzzing and Rushing

Electrical feelings, feeling "buzzy" as I've often described the physical sensation I get when experiencing anomalous events, (see post below on my exploding plate experience) and hearing/feeling rushing, roaring sounds particulary in connection with OOBEs seem to be in the air (heh) -- here's a post about one person's 'Rushing Wind' by way of Greg Taylor at The Daily Grail. Taylor has written about the rushing, roaring, buzzing, bell clanging sounds and feelings; see his excellent article Her Sweet Murmur, in Darklore volume I.  

Related post: Beeping Creatures

Exploding Glass

A strange and kind of cool thing happened earlier this evening. Jim and I were watching 'Psychic Investigators' while eating our dinner. We were also talking -- a lot. We talk a lot anyway, but we were kind of on a high, for some reason. We started off commenting on the program; then debunkers, then the Flatwoods case and my article I had just finished about that for Trickster's Realm, MK Ultra, the recent book and news about the LSD experiments in France, and so on. Just your typical kind of UFO/Fortean/esoteric nerd kind of conversation.

The energy was kind of "buzzy" and I had a distinct thought that "Hmm, Jim's really excited about this stuff," more so than usual that is, as I was. We were talking about Project Stargate and remote viewing and the idea that the government hadn't shut down a damn thing, just gone deeper down into the depths with their covert RV/mind control selves, when my plate exploded in my lap.

It's a heavy glass plate. I had it resting in my lap; we both heard a lot "bang" and the plate had broken into six pieces. We looked at each other and Jim said "That was pretty cool." Which was an insipid thing to say but I had to agree; it was "pretty cool." It made us laugh. The timing of the thing was weird, the thing itself was weird. A perfectly good plate, a heavy one at that, and it just broke into six clean pieces.

This happened to me one time before, when I was sixteen or so. I was sitting in my girlfriend's living room. I remember we were talking about sex, and, about ghosts.  A heavy green glass ashtray that was sitting on the bottom shelf of the TV stand kind of rose up in the air then, a loud bang, and the ashtray broke right in half. We both just looked at each other and, well, freaked. Obviously the combination of energies contributed to that incident; our age, the sexual charges in the air, and the communication-connection to the other side. A guarantee for that kind of thing.

Future Theater! Be There!

 Thank you to Lesley Gunter for posting this at Women of Esoterica; I'm passing it along . . .


UFO Magazine publishers, Bill and Nancy Birnes, are starting their own  weekly radio show - Future Theater.  Here is some information from Bill about  the show:

This  Saturday evening at 6PM Eastern on Future   Theater, Dr. Ted joins us  for a UFO Hunters reunion along with Dan   Zarenkiewicz, our producer.  You can catch the live broadcast at  futuretheater.com or ufomag.com or lanlamphere.com. We'll have a  chat   room and open lines, too.

Visit The Orange Orb
http://orangeorb.blogspot.com

Career Advice From Uber Skeptoids

Oh for crying out loud: Requirements to be a UFO investigator by way of the JREF.

Not at all unexpected but head bashingly annoying all the same. Here's what the OP wrote:

My 12 year old nephew wants to be a UFO investigator, he asked me what qualifications he needs

I told him

1, you need the ability to believe in something with no supporting evidence

2, you need the ability to ignore facts and evidence to the contrary while inventing a reason for doing so

3, you need the ability to not be a critical thinker

4, you need a tin foil hat

5. you need to have zero credibility from your peers

There are many comments, well, all comments, that follow which are the usual batch of pathological debunking/jokey crap, but this one really got me for its typical and cheap fall back onto classism:

All you need to be a UFO Investigator are:


- A single-wide trailer.
- Electrical service.
- A fridge full of beer.
- An internet connection.
- A five-year old computer.
- A ten-year old CRT monitor.


It's that third one that eliminates him from the profession -- you need to be 21 in most (all?) states. 6th-grade grammar and spelling skills are useful as well, but not necessary.

Staged Events: Eliciting "Accurate Emotional Response" in Students

Since 9/11, the United Kingdom has been a land where a bizarre blend of an Orwell/Kafka tinged atmosphere of fascist laws, bureaucrats obsessed with  minutia of the mundane, and  overt, heavy handed laws and practices rule. I’ve often commented that what goes on in England in particular is the prototype for what  soon appears over here. Maybe altered slightly to blend in with American culture; ease itself into our lives so we don’t even notice, but, present. Creepy, sucking your soul out of you, keeping you in the glided cage present. The UK is the playground of the industrial military globalists, no doubt about it.

Staged and scary events in schools in England, the United States, and most recently, Scotland, are one of these chillingly bizarre actions perpetuated by whatever forces are behind these post 9/11 games.  Parents are not notified of  these little scenarios, which are enacted in ways that have students believe it’s really happening. Teachers, sometimes with the complicity of local law enforcement, blithely manifest scenes as if they’re actual events. For some interesting reasons and one with no doubt all kinds of hidden motivations, England staged several fake (but said to be real to the students) UFO crashes, complete with missing -- “abducted” -- teachers and dead aliens.(I wrote about the odd crashed UFO scenarios for UFO Digest in August of 2009: My Teacher Was Abducted By Aliens: Preparation for Fake Disclosure? )

The latest of these fake events: a Holocaust themed scenario, at St. Hilary’s Primary in Scotland:

Students were “hysterical” after deputy head teacher Elizabeth McGlynn segregated nine youngsters in Gerry Blair’s P7 class and told them they were being taken away from their families.

The purpose of this was to give students an idea of what victims of the Holocaust went through:

insight into the horrors of the Holocaust as part of a project they are doing about the Second World War.

The teacher, Mrs. McGlyn, told students:

she had a letter from the Scottish Government saying nine children had to be separated from their classmates.

She told the shocked youngsters those who were born in January, February and March had lower IQs than other children, ‘due to lack of sunlight in their mother’s womb’, and that they had to put yellow hats on and be sent to the library.

When one child asked if that meant they might have to go to an orphanage, they were told that might be a possibility. At that point many of the children became very distressed. One boy kicked his chair over, one was angry and demanded to speak to someone in charge but most were crying on a scale ranging from mildly to severely.

The students were then told, after about fifteen minutes, that it was all an exercise and not really happening, but that the role playing would continue.

Now here’s the really interesting thing. When a parent, furious at the school for allowing such a thing, asked why anyone in authority thought this was a good idea, she was told:

they didn't inform the children beforehand because they wanted the children to experience an ‘accurate emotional response’ to this scenario in order for it to be reflected in their story writing.

This was the same reason given in other staged scenarios, that, and to encourage critical thinking. Usually these exercises are embedded in creative writing courses.  Eliciting emotional response from children seems to be the goal. Why? What is the real agenda? Under the guise of fostering creative writing skills or encouraging imaginative thinking,  eliciting intense emotional states from children is the objective.

The school defends the role play, downplaying the impact on students -- and parents:

Schools commonly engage in drama-based exercises which encourage children to use their imagination and act out a character. These role play situations are designed to help children understand diversity and develop empathy for the victims of prejudice and are usually very well received by pupils.
 

The shared facts of these staged events:

• Parents are not informed of these events or exercises
• Students are led to think these events are real
• Sometimes local law enforcement is in on the staged event
• Frightening and violent themes are chosen: crashed UFOs, dead aliens, missing humans, the threat of being kidnapped, etc.
• By the authorities own admission, the goal is to have children “to experience an ‘accurate emotional response’  to these events.

What is the hidden goal behind the need to generate intense emotional reactions of fear, hysteria, and anger from children? Who determines what is an “accurate”  reaction?

What happens if a student doesn’t respond “accurately?” 

Notes:
St Hilary's Primary kids traumatized by teachers’ Holocaust game
My Teacher Was Abducted By Aliens: Preparation for Fake Disclosure?
Follow-up: Staged Alien Events and Schools
Night of the Living Jackboots

Zorgy Winners

I just want to say, even at the late date, congratulations to all who won the Zorgy, and congratulations to the nominees as well! Which, ahem, I was one of, much to my surprise.

I'm glad Tim Binnall won for best paranormal podcast, congratulations to Tim, and Paratopia, Jeremy Vaeni's podcast, came in second which was good to see.  Other categories were harder to decide who to vote for, since there are so many excellent blogs and researchers out there. The Daily Grail also won, and glad to see Lesley's Debris Field came in third! Loren Coleman won for best researcher, and I don't have any problem with that; though my vote went to Redfern, because of the diversity of topics he explores, and his willingness to take a sometimes controversial view of things. (Roswell, cross-over cases, paranormal Bigfoot, etc.)

I was especially glad to see UFO Hunters win; that show seemed to get a lot of unfair negative comments from some inside the UFO circus so glad to see they won.

It's a silly thing and no one wins anything but silly and fun are good things... so thank you to the 9 people who voted for me (hey, that's something!) and again, congratulations.

Follow the Mystic Orb on UFO Mystic . . .

I am so jazzed and honored to announce that I'm now blogging at UFO Mystic, along with two other newer bloggers over there -- Lesley Gunter and Scott Corrales -- and of course, Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern and Craig Woolheater.

My first post over there is on those strange beams of light being reported: Beams of Light.

Pyramid Beam of Light Synchronicity!

The past few days had me working on two articles. One on the strange beams of light beaming down on witnesses, and the other on that, as well as the pryamid-triangle type of balloon like "UFOs" seen in December of last year. The latter article was just published on UFO Digest, the other hasn't yet been published.

From the UFO Digest article: 'New' UFOs: Of Triangles and Beams of Light:
on the recent beams of white light reported by witnesses in Oregon, Wisconsion and elsewhere:

Lately, beams of white and/or blue-ish hues have been beaming down on people, both in heavily populated areas, like West Linn, Oregon, as well as rural areas.
Theses beams of light light up large areas, are disconcertingly bright, and almost seem to go after humans, in the sense they appear right where humans will see them. Whether or not that last part is due to the specifics of the UFO, or coincidence, too early to tell. Me, always leaning on the paranoid suspect side of events like this, considers these weird beams to be intentionally staged “UFO” events. One beam of light contained a humanoid, reptilian type figure! Alien? Always a possibility. But (back to my paranoid suspect nature) a Project Blue Beam, hoaxed by psy-ops MIB types, event. 

Regarding the triangle, or more accurately, pryamid shaped UFOs from late last year:

Another new kind of UFO event were the strange balloon type triangles that appeared in Russia, China, England and Mexico in December of last year. Again, as with the beams of bright white light, these triangles are not the decades old giant black triangles seen by thousands of witnesses (myself included) the world over. These are more pyramid shaped; floating balloon type type objects floating in the skies.

Contrasting the two; beams of light, pryamid-triangle objects:

While the pyramids and beams of light are different in terms of type and behavior, they share the fact they are “new” types of UFO, something not seen before. And given their behavior, they are very likely man made. Purposes for the objects -- beams of light, floating pyramids -- may be very different, but they share things in common. What they share is covert activity over populated areas, performing for humans, and coveting secrecy as to their origin or purpose.
Beams of light, floating triangle-pyramids, both seem to appear in clusters. They’re not isolated events. A bunch of balloon type pyramids, a handful of white beams of light shooting down from the skies. Something, human or not, wants to get our attention.

And now, for a merging and a moment of synchroncity; Strange Planet gives us a report of beams of light shooting down into Mayan pryamids from July of 2009 with Mayan Pyramid Shoots out Beam of Light, in a Thunderstorm, as UFOs Hover All Around!:

Apparently, someone on vacation with their family, the beam shoots through the capstone of the Mayan pyramid, a thunderstorm ensues, and photos are captured of DOZENS of UFOs, on film, and even more on radar! 

There are several images of these beams of light on the Strange Planet blog, take a look and watch for updates, as I'm sure Dennis Whitney at Strange Planet will provide us with as soon as he gets them. 
 

Frank Feschino's Flatwoods Monster on Monster Quest!

Check Your TV Listings for the MonsterQuest Program On The History Channel March 10, 2010 at 9:00 PM EST (21:00 Hrs)! At Long, Long Last Frank Feschino's Flatwoods Monster Story Is Told And A Whole Town of Good People Are Vindicated!