Those 1561/1566 Woodcuttings are “Editorial Cartoons” – not UFO depictions

Copyright 2014, InterAmerica, Inc.

While reading the June 19^th edition of The London Review of Books, about John Donne’s sermons and poetry [circa 1600], in a review by Blair  Worden, I was drawn to  references of the religious turmoil of the times….the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in particular.

I recalled that UFO aficionados and Ancient Alien theorists posited that these woodcuts from 1561 and 1566…

…portrayed a clash of UFOs over the skies of Nuremberg, Germany and Basel, Switzerland.

But that’s not the case at all.

(See http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case486.htmfor the ufological take)

The woodcuts, by Hans Glaser, a publisher, and article by “reporter” Samuel Coccius, were, in fact, examples of Middle Age editorializing, metaphorical depictions of the religious disputes between the Roman Catholic Church and Martin Luther’s new Protestant church.

The Council of Trent was meeting [1545 to 1563] in Italy and the whole European region was filled with religious strife.

The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento (Trent) and Bologna, northern Italy, was one of the Catholic Church's most important ecumenical councils. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation.

 In 1565, however, a year or so after the Council finished its work, Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed (after Triudentum, Trento's Latin name) and his successor Pius V then issued the Roman Catechism and revisions of the Breviary and Missal in, respectively, 1566, 1568 and 1570.[Wikipedia]

The “newspapers” of the period dealt with the turmoil in striking, new ways (as the Gutenberg printer, invented 100 years earlier) allowed.

But, as the Donne piece I read, made clear, discourse about church and state, was still circumspect as various punishments were often brought to bear on those who were cavalier about the mores of the Church – Catholic and Protestant both.

But, just as early [Neanderthalian] cave art and Roman graffiti provided depiction of dicey events…

...Glaser and Coccius presented, by allegorical renderings, what was happening in society.

Note that the iconic renderings have significant religious meaning(s): crosses, a Cathedral, and Eucharistic vessels.

And in the Nuremberg woodcut, it’s a Church that has been destroyed by fire or explosion – the right, lower-corner of the woodcut.

No, the alleged UFO “wars” depicted in the 1561 and 1566 woodcuttings and articles have nothing to do with UFOs.

They are brilliant “editorial cartoons” telling readers what was going on with their religions while skirting excommunicative punishments or worse.

RR

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You tell me Martians won't start their own Roswell nonsense?

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/28/nasa-launch-saucer-vehicle-parachute-hawaii-mars

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Bird Watching and Ufology

 UFOs as a hobby or life-engagement is a fringe activity; most of us know that.

It is an embarrassment to tell persons who are not UFO-keen that one is involved with the topic.

As an adult, in old age, like CDA and a few others who visit here, it is sad, pathetic actually, that I’m still enthralled by UFOs.

But I think I put UFOs into perspective, family members and friends see my attention to UFOs as inordinate.

What brings me to write about this is the passion with which Tony Bragalia’s ongoing Roswell writings, especially about the so-called memory metal found at the supposed 1947 crash site, evoke.

Mr. Bragalia is vilified by skeptics and adored by Rowell/ET believers.

Common sense and decency often leave the table when Roswell enters this blog or a discussion elsewhere.

Roswell is that side of the UFO coin that comes up too often for most ufologistic followers. It irks them, even though UFOs, generally, are just as frivolous for skeptics, such as Zoam Chomsky.

Passionate bird-watchers get just enlivened when one of their own spots a speckled-beak woodpecker, some saying the spotting is bogus or erroneous.

Telling one’s friends that one is a bird-watcher raises eyebrows just as UFOs do when they are mentioned in polite conversation,

And it’s not just the kook-factor that causes this. It’s that the world is fraught with real issues and real problems, practical and otherwise. And spending time and life about UFOs is seen as almost pyschopathic by wholesome members of human society.

UFOs, like bird-watching, or stamp collecting or growing petunias, is a niche topic, and should be treated gingerly by the rational folks among us.

That it raises such ire and vitriol bespeaks a mind-set that isn’t quite sane.

UFOs are only a quirky side-bar to life and Roswell is only one facet of the whole UFO malarkey.

So, let’s take it easy, fellow UFO followers.

RR

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AIR FORCE SCIENCE COMMANDER: “MORE ROSWELL DEBRIS WAS FOUND 10 YEARS AFTER THE CRASH” by Anthony Bragalia

The government’s efforts to recover debris from the UFO crash near Roswell, NM in July of 1947 was not as complete or thorough as many believe. This is because a decade later -in the late 1950s- a Roswell cowboy retrieved a very strange piece of metal from the desert floor. The material was in fact so extraordinary that it was examined by a military scientist who would soon afterward be appointed Commander of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, located at Roswell-involved Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The Commander, Dr. Knox Millsaps, indicated that the cowboy’s find was very similar to what witnesses to the crash debris had reported in 1947.

The lead to this story was provided by General Nathan Twining’s namesake son. Twining was Commander of the Air Materiel Command (AMC) at Wright Field at the time of the crash and later became the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

My associates Tom Carey and Don Schmitt relate this information in their 2013 book “Inside the Real Area 51: The Secret History of Wright Patterson.” Tom shared with me some additional details on this extraordinary debris find. And in researching the story further, this author has learned more. The namesake son of the Air Force Commander who had examined the flexing metal is the Chair of Aerospace Engineering for the US Naval Post Graduate School. It is the US Navy that invented Nitinol (memory metal.) And the Commander’s son’s research interests include shape recovery alloys and the use of memory metal in space vehicles.  And interestingly, the year after Millsaps Sr. was appointed Commander of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the first shape-memory alloy in history, Nitinol, would be produced by the US Navy. Other telling connections have recently made supporting the story .

A GENERAL’S SON PROVIDES A LEAD

General Twining’s son Nathan Twining Jr. became very close with Tom Carey and Don Schmitt. He provided to them intriguing stories learned from his father about the UFO subject. Of special interest to researchers (including myself) is the persistent mention of strange debris found at the crash, some of which was described as thin pieces of “shape memory” alloy. Such material is a distinctly post-Roswell concept. When Twining Jr. was asked by the researchers if he may have any leads on this, he suggested that they get in touch with his friend, retired Lt. Colonel Sidney Johnston.  Johnston, he told them, was very credible and may be able to provide some insight into the matter because Johnston had himself held and inspected the material.  He may be willing to relate to them his own Roswell metal story. Thankfully, he was.

A COLONEL’S CONFESSION

In verifying his credentials, it was established that Sidney Johnston was a Lt. Colonel and accomplished Pilot and Aeronautical Engineer during WW II for the Army Air Corps.  Upon retirement from service, he became a civilian Test Engineer with military contractor Northrop Aviation and worked at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, NM. Wright Patterson Air Force Base often used Hollloman for testing aircraft, flight endurance and other experiments and evaluations. Johnston (who flew 44 combat missions) also served as pilot for Holloman’s Commanders - Generals Davis, Hooks and Branch. While there, Johnston collaborated with two extremely accomplished engineer-scientists. One was John “Rocket Man” Stapp, an MD, PhD and Air Force Flight Surgeon who also personally tested ultra-high-speed vehicles. He was known within his time as “The Fastest Man On Earth.”

THE SCIENTIST BRINGS IN THE METAL

Johnston’s other associate (with whom he shared office quarters) was the late Dr. Knox Millsaps. Millsaps, an acclaimed mathematician with a focus on thermodynamics, was an associate of Werner von Braun and other science luminaries. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell stated in a radio interview that von Braun was involved in the Roswell crash investigation. Millsaps was prior assigned to Wright Field where his research included working on metallurgical projects. In fact he was there in 1947, the year of the Roswell crash. Knox was also associated with the T-3 Branch (Research and Development) at Wright under General Curtis LeMay at the Pentagon. LeMay, according to the late Senator Barry Goldwater and others, had knowledge of the UFO crash material. From 1960-1965 Millsaps would serve as Commander of our nation’s Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Located at Wright Patterson, Millsaps likely knew Wright’s Base Commander in 1964 and 1965, General Arthur Exon. In the late 1990s Exon admitted to researchers Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt the ET nature of the crash and talked about the debris and its testing, saying, “the reports are still around.” Given where he was, who he was and the people he associated with at various times (von Braun, LeMay, Exon, etc.) Millsaps would be uniquely positioned to have known more than a little about the nature of the Roswell crash. As shown in the interview transcript below, what he said to Johnston and Stapp made it clear that he knew this newly-found material related to the Roswell crash from years ago and that he must get it to Wright’s Materials Lab as soon as possible.

Johnston, when reached, related that in the late 1950s when he was at Holloman, he and “Rocket Man” John Stapp  were joined by Dr. Millsaps one morning on coffee break. And it was on that morning that all three would together be bewildered by a material with seemingly otherworldly properties and characteristics. Dr. Millsaps presented Stapp and Johnston with what Johnston said was:

“Roughly a foot square of aluminum-like metal, about 3/16 of an inch thick. The edge of it was not cut but separated like it had a rough edge, but straight.”

He gives a further description on the impervious yet ultra-thin material’s “squeezability” and flexibility and it’s odd “tension” and temperature dispersion properties:

“The more you squeezed it, the more tension you could feel. It was flexible…we couldn’t break it or scratch it in any way…yet it was flexible.”

“We put a cigarette lighter to one end of it, and it immediately became the same temperature all over.”

“I had no idea what it was so I asked Millsaps if he knew. Millsaps answered that he’d like to know too.”

Johnston was curious, and asked of Millsaps where he had obtained the remarkable material.  Johnston states that Millsaps then replied, “Go talk to the people over at Roswell.”

When asked what he was going to do with the metal-like debris, Millsaps shared,“I’ve got to talk to somebody at Wright-Patterson about it.”

Later that day the conversation about the magical material picked up again. As Johnston recounts, Millsaps then further explained, “A cowboy over at Roswell who came over to Alamogordo to visit a friend had presented him with the strange piece. The other man brought it to the base where his brother worked and brought it to my attention. He wanted to know what it was but I couldn’t identify it myself. Wright-Patterson has a Materials Lab, which is where I’m taking it.” Millsaps then took back the bizarre material and headed out. The subject was never discussed again. Johnston apparently felt it best not to inquire of his security-cleared coworker the results of the lab’s analysis, and Millsaps never offered Johnston any further details.

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON

Dr. Knox Millsaps namesake son is Dr. Knox Millsaps Jr. He is currently the Chair of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the US Naval Postgraduate School. The US Navy’s involvement in memory metal studies has been well-documented by this author. The Naval Postgraduate School is attended only by military officers and select contractors in the private sector.  Department Chairs and other employees at the University often hold Top Secret Clearance with SCI access.

Curiously, Dr. Millsaps Jr. seems to have “picked up” on his father’s interest in exotic materials. He has acted as both Advisor and Approver in guiding research dissertations that relate to the use of Nitinol Memory Metal in Space Vehicles. One of these research documents has led to the award of a US Patent. The Secretary of the Navy is named as assignee. In both 2010 and in 2012 Millsaps reviewed and accepted dissertations, the first of which is entitled, “Development of Nano-Satellite Micro-Coupling Mechanism with Characterization of a Shape Memory Alloy Interference Joint.” The 2012 dissertation is similar but includes studies on the actual integration and testing of such memory metal space devices.

And Millsaps Jr. maintains association with his late Commander father’s base, Wright Patterson. Millsaps Jr.’s picture can be found on the Wright Patterson AFB website giving awards through the National Defense Education program. It is inconceivable that Millsaps Sr. did not relate the same Roswell metal story to his namesake son. After all, he shared the piece for examination by his co-workers John Stapp and Sidney Johnston and related to them the backstory. Would he not have shared this information with his same-name son, who like his Dad, is a PhD , an engineer, in military, and who has a specific interest in aerospace metals? This author has left repeated messages (both by voicemail and by email) to Dr. Millsaps to gain this benefit of his thinking on this Roswell-related episode involving his father. Millsaps has elected not to call or email me back. He rather obviously wishes to avoid comment on the matter. But what does matter is that his learned father added to his admirable legacy by sharing the material with a coworker friend who, when sought out, revealed what he knew.

If this story is accurate, it means for that at least 10 years after the crash some of the debris had yet to be recovered. This gives hope that some might still be left to be found. The military is not infallible and they were unable to retrieve every single piece. Some of the debris from the crash remained to be discovered by a Roswell cowboy on an arid day a decade on. Though that cowboy’s name is now lost to history, his actions have forever changed it.

AJB

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Arguments and Counter-Arguments to my Trent/McMinnville Item

David Rudiak has, like others elsewhere, makes the point that hanging a mirror or anything on the wires in the LIFE photos and the original Trent photos would provide a sagging of the wires which is not evident.

It’s a valid, significant point.

But the “ladder photo” (that provoked so much antipathy when Tony Bragalia displayed it in his Trent piece here last year) seems to imply that the LIFE photographer was insinuating that he, the photographer, thought that maybe the Trents hung an object from the overhead wires to create their flying saucer).

While a few respondents went off on tangential Ford car information, no one has settled whose car that is in the photos.

That the Trents were poor seems arguable, when one sees their house – not a hovel, but a typical, middle class or lower-middle class house, that a working farmer might have.

Further, Mr. Trent was able to buy a nice camera and, although the clothes on his wife and son, are not New York chic, they are hardly burlap sacks. (Mr. Trent is dressed as a farmer might be, hardly fashionable and a little filthy but not ragged.)

No one has ever answered my point that the object shown in the photos was apparently chugging along as Mr. Trent was able to go into the house retrieve his camera, prepare it to shoot, and get two shots before the “saucer” departed or disappeared…Also, the tilt of the object; why would the object be askew in its trajectory? It's an odd aerodynamic.

Also, we have no other photos, from anyone, anywhere showing a similarly configured flying object. (The Rouen photo is argued, in some quarters. as a reworked Trent photo.)

Anthony Bragalia is attempting to locate the Trent son, pictured on the ladder (above). Let’s see what he has to say, if or when he’s found.

Meanwhile, the photos, like almost everything else involving UFOs, remain iffy to some, but a real ET craft to others.

(We received a few comments from believers attacking “debunkers” but not offering any counter arguments to the perceived “debunking.” Those comments were not added to my posting, just as the car asides were ignored. And, while I did allow Lance Moody’s templated attack on David Rudiak, let me say that Mr. Rudiak’s arguments have merit and I accept them as valid, even understanding that they are biased by Mr. Rudiak’s obsession with the ETH.)

So, we have settled little or nothing, but as French skeptic Gilles Fernandez often reminds us, “That’s ufology.”

RR

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The Trent/McMinnville UFO is a Ford Side-View Mirror?

This is one of the McMinnville/Trent UFO photos

While looking through the LIFE magazine photos, taken of the Trents and their farm, I noticed that the Trents had a 1950 Ford coupe, the very same as my first car:

That car had a round, side-view mirror on it, but where is it on the Trent car?

Is this what Robert Sheaffer was referring to in his evaluation of the Trent UFO photos?

"There exists no factual basis for rejecting the following hypothesis: at approximately 8:20 in the morning of May 11, 1950, a small asymmetrical model was suspended from overhead telephone wires by two very thin threads. It was photographed once, then reoriented either by hand or by its assumption of a pendulum-type motion, and photographed again."

Here is his full analysis of the Trent photos:

http://www.debunker.com/texts/trent1969.html

RR

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Madness and UFOs

My Abnormal Psychology class (at Wayne State University) often went to Wayne County General Hospital aka Eloise (Psychiatric Hospital) for “field trips.”

While there, it struck me that patients listed as schizophrenic or as paranoiacs had a calmness that only broke into spasmodic outrage or tempered violence when their reveries were provoked or interrupted by staff (to get them to move, take medicine, et cetera).

I thought these mentally troubled individuals were accessing something they thought was real but which we outsiders assumed were hallucinations or delusions.

This takes me back to my previous posting about persons who seem to have perceived UFOs and/or creatures from them or within them.

Such “witnesses” entered, as I conjectured, another reality [sic] when they were in that twilight stage between consciousness and daydreaming or somnambulism.

That is, certain persons (as those I listed) experienced an alternate reality for a brief moment, a reality that only became accessible when their mind and senses were removed from conscious behavior.

This is when someone enters a “zone” as they do rote chores or activity that are part of their daily or regular habits.

In the cases of mentally aberrant individuals, they are removed from the common reality when the (Platonic?) “real reality” intrudes upon them and they can’t cope with the insertions of voices and images from that real reality.

They break down, as it were – some more than others.

A scrutiny of outsider literature (poetry included) doesn’t produce anything akin to UFO sightings but outsider art brings forth many examples of odd objects, in the sky, or obtrusive lights to the disturb’s milieu or personal being.

Some examples (similar to those when I broached this topic several years ago):

What happens is that objective reality clashes with the real reality and all that a mentally afflicted person experiences is a mash-up the two realities; these are people who can’t contain a mental balance when this happens…..they disintegrate psychically.

Jung approached the matter by attributing his archetypal mandala symbol as the template for UFO sightings by some. (See Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of things Seen in the Skies).

Richard Maurice Bucke, in his magnum opus, Cosmic Consciousness, provided an overlay of some human incursions into the (Platonic?) real reality, but that reality remained non-described pretty much by those who has the epiphanic vision: Lao Tse, St, Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, et al.

William James in his The Varieties of Religious Experiencealso approaches the matter of the other reality but he also doesn’t provide definitive description.

For those named by Bucke and those whom James referred to the “vision(s)” they had did not destroy them; they were of keen minds and stable mental ability, intellectuals one and all.

Those who have the twilight “zone” experience shrugged it off and dismissed their episodic vision as an odd, unexplainable occurrence.

Schizophrenics, severe manic-depressives (bi-polar persons), and paranoiacs lost their mental faculties when they were subject to the other reality, and they psychically disintegrated.

Why some are so afflicted and others, the common folk, are not or were not, is a matter for neuroscience and/or psychiatry.

But is seems to me that, on occasion, some persons step into the other reality, the “real reality” and don’t come back, at least not fully.

That UFOs fly into our objective reality and disappear abruptly tells me that our reality is sometimes in flux and some persons experience that moment when the two realities collide.

Mad persons don’t cope with the collision while others do.

I’m not saying that UFOs are a major delusion, as Jung seemed to suggest. Rather UFOs are an insertion, by accident or design (See Jose Caravaca’s “external agent” thesis) and are experienced in various ways by humans, some handling the experience sanely (Bucke’s listings), others dismissing the episodes as bizarre and odd but otherwise immune to psychic disturbance, and still others mentally devastated by their experience of the other reality from which UFOs come, even if UFOs are not the hallmark of their experience.

RR

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A Socorro-like incident in 1790 France?

David Ritchie in his book UFO: The Definitive Guide to Unidentified Flying Objects and Related Phenomena [MJF Books, NY, 1994] provides an incident that allegedly occurred near Alençon, France in 1790.

“ … farmers in the area saw a huge globe, described as big enough to contain a carriage … surrounded by fire, flying through the air, with a whistling noise, at high velocity … it decelerated and settled on a hilltop. The object gave off so much heat that trees and grass beneath it began to burn …

That evening … they examined the globe and found it was still warm. It appeared to be undamaged … From a door that opened in the side of the object, a humanoid wearing tight-fitting clothing emerged. The entity said something that the spectators did not understand, and then escaped into the nearby woods …

Soon afterward, the globe exploded and sent fragments flying all around. The fragments … burned themselves to powder. No trace was found of the humanoid. [Page 6]

Interesting, right?

But Terry Hooper, at his blog, no longer thinks so:

http://terryhooper.blogspot.com/2012/02/crashed-ufo-in-1790.html

And David Darling, at his web-site, dismisses the story altogether:

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Alencon_Spaceman.html

Is this what will happen, eventually, to Lonnie Zamora’s 1964 report?

RR

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A Titan Mystery

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-mysterious-magic-island-saturn-moon.html

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UFO Buffs are NOT Intellectual Gourmands!

I placed four posting this past weekend [6/21-22] online: one about interesting early Airship/UFO sightings, one about the Big Bang, one about the NSA and evil government shenanigans, and one about Roswell and memory metal (from our colleague, Spanish UFO researcher Jose Caravaca).

Which one did readers surfeit on? The Roswell memory metal/Uri Geller item from Señor Caravaca.

Yes, it is an interesting item.

But is it the only item that deserves attention?

Roswell, in a title – despite the irritation it causes sensible UFO devotees – always brings a raft of comments, most biased and many incendiary.

That’s what happened with my postings; the relevant Redfern-connected machinations of the U.S. military and government when it comes to UFOs and the spicy UFO sightings of the 1890s and 1947, all dismissed so mavens could debate the Roswell memory metal item.

It’s shameful, intellectually.

That’s why academics, scientists, and news media general eschew UFOs. It’s not just the epithet UFOs that causes sane persons to eschew the topic. It’s often the inordinate attention to Roswell, which lopsides the matter.

Changing the UFO sobriquet to UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) or UAO (Unidentified Aerial Objects) as Gene Steinberg addressed in his recent Paracast newsletter won’t assuage the obtuseness of the subject for rational humans.

It’s the concentration of attention on Roswell, with all its erratic permutations, that keeps the UFO topic from real scrutiny.

UFO aficionados, swilling on Roswell, have ruined the UFO topic, in general, with their obsession.

An intriguing phenomenon has been emasculated by the Roswell fixation just as this blog has been diverted by readers who have no idea what is nutritious and what isn’t.

RR

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Uri Geller and the Roswell Memory Metal

Our colleague, UFO researcher Jose Antonio Caravaca, talked with Israeli conjuror Uri Geller, who was involved, allegedly, with the Battelle people about the Roswell memory metal, as Anthony Bragalia has reported here.

Jose Caravaca provided this to us about his recent conversation with Geller:

ROSWELL: GELLER CONNECTION

Uri Geller was subjected to a series of experiments within the "Naval Surface Weapons Center on 29 October 1973 and October 1974, with the intention of studying his “psychic powers”. The manager of the project was Dr. Eldon Byrd. One test was performed with a metallic material of last generation, the NITINOL. Curiously according to an official document declassified in 2009 (FOIA), from the Wright-Patterson AFB, where according to most researchers were sent the remains found in Roswell, it was requested, in 1949, the "Battelle Memorial Institute," a private institution dedicated to the scientific study of technology, research and develop materials with molecular memory, one of the most characteristic features described by all witnesses who have had access to foreign material recovered at Roswell (1947).

Experiments of nitinol under the "psychic influence" would have been carried out in the area of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) involving scientists as Fred Wang and Howard Cross. Years later, Commander George Hoover confirmed that the U.S. Navy had been dedicated to reverse engineering using for that material obtained in Roswell. He also said realized experiments in psychical research collaborated Dr. Fred Wang and meanwhile, another involved Dr. Howard Cross participated in the '50s in the official investigation of UFOs the U.S. government. In an interview in 1990, General Arthur Exon, who was stationed in 1960 at Wright-Patterson AFB confirmed the existence of the confidential reports on the Roswell metal. Exon told that he was aware of some of the details on the composition of the remains of the UFO / Crash and variety of tests that are conducted on them, and that such research resulted the nitinol. In addition another involved in the development of nitinol, but only appears in the titles of the declassified document, Elroy John Center said in 1992 that in the sixties have worked with the remains of the UFO crash in Roswell ...

Uri Geller after 41 years remembers the strange events ocurred in Naval Surface Weapons Center. The famous mentalist recalls the participation of at least two scientists accompanying Dr. Eldon Byrd and that one of them had an oriental name. About the nitinol, Byrd said that "it was spacecraft technology, some kind of extraterrestrial technology" ... to the surprise of Geller, who did not quite believe in this information, Byrd adds: "this technology was found in a spaceship." Uri Geller said they did not tell the whole truth about the series of experiments conducted that day, and perhaps the CIA was involved. Between questions put to him, he asked if it was possible to “fly an aircraft with the power of the mind” ... And apparently according to some researchers, the military were fascinated by the possibility that the crew of the Roswell UFO could control with their minds some devices of the aircraft. Geller also noted that their participation was a section more the psychic research were being conducted in that military institution.

Uri Geller knew that the NITINOL was being developed by the "" Battelle Memorial Institute. "

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The NSA, Edward Snowden, and Nick Redfern

The July 10, 2014 New York Review of Books has a review by Sue Halpern of four books about the NSA and Edward Snowden [Page 16 ff.].

If you’re not now a fan of Mr. Snowden, you will be after your read the evaluations of him and the NSA in particular.

Reviewer Halpern writes that “the NSA employs  as many civilian contractors – 60,000 – as it does agency employees – 30,000 – many of whom hold ‘confidential’ and ‘top secret” security clearances.¹ [Page 16]

¹More than 4.9 million people have some form of government security clearance, and about 1.4 million of those have ‘top secret’ clearance.” [See John Bacon and William M. Welch, Security Clearances Held by Millions of Americans, USA Today, June 10, 2013]

Ms. Halpern then tells readers of how the NSA treats or has treated employees who’ve tried to temper the NSA’s “illegal” activities by disclosing such illegalities to their superiors or government oversight committees:

“ … Thomas Drake, William Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Edward Loomis, long-time NSA employees … attempted to raise concerns with their superiors – only to find themselves rebuffed … Binney, Wiebe, and Loomis resigned – and later found themselves the subject of FBI interrogations. Drake, however, stayed on and brought his suspicions to the office of general counsel for the NSA, where he was told: ‘Don’t ask any more questions, Mr. Drake.’ Frustrated, Drake eventually leaked what he knew to a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. The upshot: a home invasion by the FBI, a federal indictment, and the threat of thirty-five years in prison for being in possession of classified documents that, when he obtained them, had not been classified. After years of harassment by the government and Drake’s financial ruin, the case was dropped the night before trial.” [Page 16]

Along with the article in The New Yorker that I noted earlier here, about a researcher who was tormented by the EPA for his concerns about atrazine, Ms. Halpern’s review and the books she was reviewing show just how ruthless and malicious the government can be and is when it comes to keeping its activities – legal and illegal – under wraps.

This goes to the Roswell incident, perhaps, and is the grist of many of Nick Redfern’s books, including his most recent one, Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind, reviewed here a few weeks ago.

Anyone with a sense of hidden reality can see that if there is something important and sometimes not important will be defended extremely by the government and agencies, often outside the law or morality.

RR

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The First Step in Deflating The Big Bang Theory?

http://news.yahoo.com/big-bang-breakthrough-team-allows-may-wrong-114835743.html

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How Can Such UFO Reports as These Be Explained, Rationally?

This 1897 Airship Sighting:

In 1897, two Arkansas lawmen allegedly had a face-to-face encounter with a UFO and its pilot.

Constable John J. Sumpter, Jr. and Deputy Sheriff John McLemore were investigating reports of "cattle rustling" in Hot Springs when they watched a bright light descend behind some trees. After trekking through the woods, they eventually found the source of the light.

Approaching with their guns drawn, a bearded man emerged from the forest and told them that he and his crew were travelling the country in an "airship". The stranger then showed Sumpter and McLemore his vessel: a cigar-shaped amalgamation of blimp and balloon that was nearly 60 feet long The pilot even offered them a ride, but the officers refused.

Bidding farewell to their new acquaintance – who said he was on his way to, of all places, Nashville – the two officers left. Forty minutes later, they returned, but found no trace of the pilot or his mysterious airship.

Sumpter and McLemore's account isn't without precedent. It was one of many reported "airship" sightings that swept the country in the late 19th century

Detailed here: http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/arkansasairship.html

Or these sightings in the Kenneth Arnold 1947 time-frame:

About June 29, 1947; Jacksonville, Oregon

About 1:00 p.m.. A V-formation of UFOs seen by a group of people on a Sunday either at the end of June or early in July. The date, believed to be June 29, had not been definitely established. A group of people west of Medford, just above the California border. The formation was traveling northwest toward Medford, east of the observers. There were nine objects. According to one witness, when first seen the objects were "as white as snow geese";  as they came closer they became blue-white, "like a fluorescent-bulb light." They were sharply outlined and seemed to be solid; "also translucent, like a light, pebbled, frosted bulb." The size of the individual objects was estimated as more than twice the diameter of the full moon -- presumably when the objects were nearest to the witnesses, although this is not stated definitely.

June 29, 1947; About 20 [15?] miles ENE of Las Cruces, New Mexico (BBU)

About 1:15 [1:20?] p.m. Rocket scientist-engineer Dr. Carl J. Zohn, Admin Asst., Rocket Sonde Section, USN Naval Research Lab (NRL) temporarily assigned to White Sands Proving Ground (WSPG), NRL scientist Curtis C. Rockwood and his wife, and WSPG technician John R. Kauke, were driving in a car from Las Cruces to WSPG headed NE when they saw to their right front [E] a rotating silvery or shiny disc or sphere with no appendages, wings, tail, propellers, reflecting sunlight [pulsating?], crossing the sky at high speed heading N at about 8,000-10,000 ft which suddenly disappeared in mid-air in a clear cloudless sky. Kauke had stopped the car and briefly saw a short vapor trail at one point not reported by the others. Zohn on the passenger side rolled the window for an unobstructed view. Nearly 60-secs. (FOIA; cf. Ruppelt, p. 20; FUFOR Index; Randle-Schmitt; Bloecher 1967; etc.)

Taken from the NICAP web-site http://www.nicap.org/waves/1947fullrep.htm

Credible accounts, surely.

But what did these people actually see or experience?

There is no indication of delusional behavior in these reports nor a mistaken observation of Venus.

What explanations -- within the parameters of the information contained in the reports themselves -- can be proffered?

RR

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Symbolism: Socorro and Otherwise

I have dozens of books on symbolism. This is one, from which this comes [Prefix ix]:

Quoting Manfred Lurker, “The meaning of the symbol does not lie in the symbol itself but points to something else outside of it … The symbol is at once concealment and revelation.”

In the Socorro incident, Lonnie Zamora’s observation was compromised by some military machinations. Why?

The reason – to uncover possible hoaxers – lies fallow.

What was being covered-up or obfuscated?

Here are some alchemical symbols that resemble the popular symbol, which I happen to think is the actual symbol or insignia Officer Zamora saw: 

One can imagine that whomever in the Army or Air Force concocted the bogus symbol, which I think is the inverted V, they got their idea from their military insignia:

The reason I continue to ramble on about the Socorro symbol is that I think it is the vital clue that explains the Zamora sighting.

If it can be proven that the symbol Officer Zamora saw was Earth-derived, it would indicate that the craft he saw was a secret prototype (my preference) or maybe a “shout out” from the NMIT students in Anthony Bragalia’s hoax thesis.

If it seems to be too odd or strange to be accounted as Earth-produced, that would support David Rudiak’s extraterrestrial inclination for the Socorro event.

Either way, the symbol is important. To dismiss it is to shrug of a forensic item that tells us what was seen by Officer Lonnie Zamora in 1964.

(Other observed lettering or symbols on credible UFO sightings, such as the Chopic 1973 account, can be corroborative.)

RR 

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The End of the World [circa 250 A.D.] -- No UFO Help.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/06/17/remains-end-world-epidemic-found-in-ancient-egypt/

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An April 30th 1964 UPI Story about the Socorro Sighting and Symbol

Don asked, earlier here, when the Socorro/Lonni Zamora inverted V with three lines through it was first mentioned.

Here's a UPI newspaper account, dated April 30, 1964 with the symbol described, (the green accented portion of the newspaper scan):

http://fkbureau.homestead.com/upi.jpg

RR

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The Failure of the ETH (The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis

Certain UFO devotees, especially the Roswell alien-crash believers, think that Roswell will come to prove that we have been visited by entities from outside our Earth, extraterrestrials.

And those extraterrestrials have provided by their sheer unfortunate appearance in 1947 Roswell and at other times the possibility of advanced knowledge or beneficent morality and thought.

But this is a false hope, and a delusional hope also.

Since, it would seem that if beings from elsewhere besides Earth, who have been monitoring human activity here for millennia or even just from 1947 have actually observed what has transpired on this planet, with humans and other living creatures, they have acted with benign indifference.

When or if UFO creatures, if there were any, saw what has happened or is happening to multitudes of living sentient beings – Earth’s humanity – they have not intervened or acted in any way that would indicate an ethical or moral basis for life.

The non-intercession of UFOs in the plethora of inhuman acts on a scale that any monitoring culture would be blatantly exposed to goes to the heart of what UFOs are or are not.

I don not need to recount human barbarisms, from the past or in modern times, to show that an observant or monitoring presence, whether God or extraterrestrial beings are without compassion or empathy, even scientific empathy.

Those who see the UFO presence containing possible saviors of a kind for humanity’s evils or ills are in a state of irrational denial.

In the movie The Thing (From Another World) the pilot from the crashed flying saucer only operates in the context of its own survival, having no idea of what is good or evil that underlies human behavior.

That UFOs have never intervened in any human catastrophe, man-created or nature-created, indicates that UFOs are either an emotionally inert phenomenon or, if containing a non-Earthian sentience has no concept of what the sine qua non of human existence is.

That is, after millennia of data collecting, or simply passive observation, UFO beings, if there were such entities, are without any redeeming value(s) that would help humankind in time of crises.

As the slaughter of human beings and the multitude of genocidal acts have occurred, no UFO or otherworldly craft has interacted or interceded in any way whatsoever.

This means that either extraterrestrials are without emotion or ethical/moral standards or UFOs are merely a benign, non-thinking phenomenon.

And Roswell hopefuls, thinking to overlay that 1947 incident with a possibility of a culture or civilization that came here, to Earth, to help humanity, is as delusional as that segment of society still hoping for Christ’s Second-Coming.

The ETH has the patina of religion, but without the sacred accretions, which make religion so amenable to the great unwashed mass.

RR

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Verification of One Socorro Symbol

This is, as you know from my recent posting here, what Ray Stanford thinks may be the actual symbol that Police Officer Lonnie Zamora saw in Socorro, New Mexico in 1964:

A debate has ensued because this symbol was said to be hidden from the public on the advice of Army Captain Holder who was investigating the Socorro incident.

(Incidentally, why was an Army Captain investigating the event rather than someone from the Air Force?)

Holder wanted to make sure that a hoaxer would not come forward with an identical sighting of a UFO with a similar symbol, so a ruse-symbol was proffered to the media and public: supposedly this image here:

But here's a symbol seen on a UFO byGary Chopic in 1973:

Depending upon the orientaiton of Mr. Chopic's UFO and sighting, one can see what appears to be a similar symbol to that seen by Officer Zamora.

The Zamora/Socorro symbol, as I keep insisting, to the point of irritating redundancy here, is the "smoking gun" of the Socorro sighting -- find the origin of the symbol and you'll have the source of the egg-shapped craft that spooked Officer Zamora.

That presupposes that the craft is not from outer space, which I don't think it was, as many of you know from previous elucidations here and elsewhere about Howard Hughes, Raven Industries, and the CIA.

(And, no, I do not subscribe to the Anthony Bragalia hoax thesis. The whole episode is too convoluted to have been a concoction by the students at the university in Socorro, as I see it.)

RR

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Betty Hill's Alien Book and The Adamski/Orthon Shoe Print

This is a reproduction of what Betty Hill said were symbols on a book she espied on the craft that allegedly abducted her and her husband Barney in 1961:

This is purportedly an imprint from the shoe of Orthon, the "man from Venus" who met with George Adamski in the Colorado Desert in 1952:

One can find similarities in both of the symbolic renderings.

What does this tell us about the alleged incidents?

That they were real alien contacts, from bona fide extraterrestrials, from the same place, using the same "language" or "writing"?

Or that delusional people tap in to similar aberrant mental configurations?

An investigation or study of the symbols provided by flying saucer (UFO) witnesses might provide a clue that is neurologically significant or extraterrestrially significant.

(I don't think it's the latter.)

RR

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Was this a more significant event than Roswell?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/us/north-carolina-nuclear-bomb-drop/

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The Roswell Hat

We've asked this before but didn't get an answer:

Who's hat is that on the chair behind General Ramey during the press moment when Mac Brazel's crappy debris was showcased for media?

Identifying the owner of that hat will tell us who provided the cover-up debris.

RR

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NASA's "Flying Saucer"?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/11/nasa-flying-saucer-test-postponed-weather_n_5484501.html

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Murder Most Foul (in the UFO Arena)

Nick Redfern, in his latest book, Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind, provides intriguing material about the 1959 “suicide” of M.K. Jessup, astronomer and UFO proponent who was (in)famous for his involvement in the alleged Philadelphia Experiment.

Nick offers material which suggests that Jessup was either murdered (my take on Jessup’s death) or he committed suicide by being subjected to mind manipulation techniques of a U.S. agency (likely the CIA). [Chapter 7 of his book, Page 69 ff.]

That some U.S. government agencies or sub-sets of the U.S. military were experimenting with mind altering techniques in the 1950s is substantiated by a number of documents and disclosures (which you can locate on the internet, from reliable, credible sources, Nick providing many of those sources in his book).

That the government often acts in nefarious and dastardly ways is a given, or those seeking out such machinations.

This is not conspiratist (or conspiratorial) inklings from the minds of paranoiacs.

The New Yorker piece “A Valuable Reputation: The plot to discredit an outspoken researcher” [February 10^th, 2014, Page 52 ff.] provides ample examples of what even a nominally benign agency (The E.P.A.) will resort to in order to quiet or destroy someone who is shaking the status quo.

That the military or NSA or CIA would be even more ruthless is understandable and known to cognoscenti.

The UFO underbelly, while not my purview, is grist for those who want to know why or how the government reacts to UFO sightings and witnesses who get involved with the topic in serious ways.

Nick’s book is an exceptional resource for those who wish to understand what went on in Roswell and with other notable UFO events or sightings.

RR

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The UFO “Zone"

In revisiting some classic UFO events, I notice that the persons involved (the witnesses) were all engaged in activity that was almost somnambulistic or they were in that daydream moment that comes upon people who are either engrossed in what they’re doing to the point that their movement and thought processes are almost automatic or unconsciously stimulated.

It seems that while in the performance of their activity, they’ve shut down their consciousness to an extent that they are moving and acting by sheer routine.

A number of UFO or flying saucer episodes involve this semi-conscious behavior that, for some reason opens the door to perceptions that would never occur in a fully waking state.

The mental process mimics that found in Cosmic Consciousness(as defined by Bucke) minus the revelatory elements in such transcendent occurrences.

For example, Kenneth Arnold’s iconic sighting of nine strange objects flying near Mt. Rainier came while he was flying, solo, in a routine manner – a flight experience devoid of a need for attention or full awareness.

The process functions inside the psychiatric-defined mechanism of “sensorium.”

Not to make too much of the effect let me state that some UFO accounts appear to generate an entry into a “zone” that is not necessarily delusional but a “zone” in which a percipient sees UFOs or interacts with creatures attendant to UFOs, both possibly real but from another reality.

I choose to see such activity as hallucinatory (or delusional) but physical remnants seem to undercut such an explanation.

That is, while such accounts strike one as part of the panoply we name as hallucinations or mental aberrations, the possibility is that such events are actual happenings wherein the persons involved have stepped over into a place that one might call The Twilight Zone.

The somnambulant-like condition make allow a person to perceive a reality that exists in a plane of reality that parallels their usual reality, but only fleetingly.

Other “sightings” that seem to fall into this Twilight Zone category would include the 1954 Rosa Lotti interaction in Italy, the 1961 Betty.Barney Hill “abduction,” the 1967 Michalak/Falcon Lake event, the 1973 folie à deux Pascagoula encounter, the 1979 Robert Taylor episode in Scotland, and others.

Of course, not all UFO sightings or events fall into the “zone” category I’m highlighting here, but there are enough – see Jose Caravaca’s litany of odd UFO encounters – to allow the conjecture that, perhaps, some flying saucer sightings or UFO encounters involve a transient perception of another reality or other realities: one’s mental state opens the door to such perceptions, as Aldous Huxley recounted in his “The Doors of Perception” (which was served up as part of a drug-induced experience) but which I see as an occasional neurological glitch opportuned by the routine mental state(s) I note above.

(Ghost encounters would be accounted in a likewise manner, but that’s for another time and other persons to delineate.)

RR

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Close Encounters of the Fatal Kind: A Review

Nick Redfern’s latest book, subtitled “Suspicious Deaths, Mysterious Murders, and Bizarre Disappearances in UFO History” provides an in depth look at the underbelly of the UFO phenomenon – the history of devilish deeds and felonies of a kind that are almost unimaginable, except they are actual possibilities in most cases and true in all the rest.

Nick Redfern is no slouch when it comes to ferreting out the truth of things; in this case the odd circumstances that underlie UFO events that ufological devotees think they know.

Nick’s 223 page exposé of deaths that have a definite link to the UFO phenomenon and its significant events (or sightings) shows what a real researcher or historian does or is meant to do when examining a portion of human activity – in this case the UFO milieu.

There are 18 Chapters, with titles such as this:

From Melting Man to Maury Island

The Victims of Roswell

Zapped by a UFO

The Microwave Incident

A Deadly Disk in the Desert

Another Adamski and Another Death

Star Wars of the Deadly Kind

A Killer Curse and a Deadly Date

The opening chapter deals with the Maury Island incident of 1947 which is replete with events weirder than any murder mystery: the death of two military men (sent to gather facts and “debris” from a sightings that involved Kenneth Arnold and his near-death) and threats of death to witnesses of a bizarre UFO sighting.

The Victims of Roswell chapter contains information that even obsessed Roswellians have not known or have ignored.

Zapped by a UFO recounts the infamous 1948 Mantell sighting and death with a slant that will make theorists, such as Kevin Randle, livid, as the Skyhook (balloon) explanation seems able to be set aside.

The “suicide” of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in 1949 is recounted, with information that few know.

Mysterious “heart attacks” of UFO notables, including Blue Book’s Edward Ruppelt, are enumerated.

The CIA’s secret mind-manipulation efforts are detailed, especially the dastardly MKULTRA project(s).

The Tentacles of the Octopus chapter [17] provides a “Six Degrees of Separation” delineation of UFO events and persons related to UFO events that will startle even the most well-read aficionado of UFO lore.

If you want to know what lurks in the nooks and crannies of UFO stories and events you think you know, you have to get this book.

If you pretend to be a UFO maven, you need to get this book.

If you’re a ufological wannabe, you have to have this book in your library.

Buying the book won’t make Nick Redfern a wealthy man but it will encourage him and other serious researchers and UFO historians to continue to unearth vital elements in the UFO saga, elements that may eventually explain what UFOs are.

Nick’s book shows how persons intermingled with the phenomenon have often ended up.

It’s not a pretty sight, but it is an intriguing insight into the furtive underside of a phenomenon that has made some do things that are not nice, not by a long shot.

The book is published by New Page Books, a Division of Career Press, Inc., Pompton Plains, NJ. [2014] and sells for $15.99 (paperback).

It can be had from Amazon or Anomalist online and at your favorite brick and mortar bookstore.

(I’m getting a few copies for my UFO compatriots. They’ll be thankful, I’m sure.)

RR

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