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(Anomaly Editor’s note—This article, and all opinions and conjectures expressed therein, are those of the author of this work and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs, opinions, or ideas of Anomaly Magazine, its various writers and contributors, or the editors. JDW)  

Gary McKinnon Is Right

Guest Article By Harv Howard

Does anyone with any knowledge about space hardware and our government’s denial of UFOs believe that we don’t have any war vehicles or weapons in space? Are we to believe that we have nothing better aloft than the shuttle that was on the drawing boards for 10 years before it made its first flight in 1981?

Gary McKinnon, to recap the on-going saga, is fighting extradition from the UK to the US to stand trial on charges that he intentionally hacked his way into 90 US military computers and destroyed files, causing thousands of dollars in damage. He has admitted to deleting some email files but hardly to the extent of the charges. 

What has attracted many observers to his case is that when he was initially charged he responded by saying he was only looking for data on UFOs. He claimed that what he found was the real reason he was being persecuted. His most amazing claim is that he found files containing the names of “spaceships.” With a bit of investigation, he claims to have determined that they were actually spaceships and not ships at sea. According to McKinnon, the files were not in themselves exciting, but contained routine information such as details of crew rotations for the ships, etc. 

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Today is Rabbit Hole Day, when bloggers are encouraged to post in a different style.

In that spirit, I’m departing from my usual format in that I’m posting several items in a single day today, and they are items written by others. While this isn’t unprecedented here, what is different is that I am not going to provide any introductions or commentary. You’ll hear nary a peep, opinion wise, out of me, but enjoy the event news and articles from others.

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Respectability. Reputation. Legitimacy.

For those researching strange phenomenon, establishing and maintaining a good reputation, a measure of respect, and the legitimacy of their studies is always an uphill battle. Mainstream journalist and pundits usually scoff, when they bother to pay attention at all. Hoaxers and scam artists garner big notice in the press. But researchers who are respected in their particular cloistered field, and who have called a hoax a hoax from the outset, are relegated to a footnote in the mainstream news reports. That is, they are relegated to a footnote if they are lucky enough to be noticed at all.

In the world of conspiracy theory, ufology, cryptozoology, and fringe science, your damned when you speak out, and damned when you don’t.

So, given all of this, what does respectability even mean to these fields? Enthusiasm and interest ebbs and flows, as it does for anything, and people choose to construct a world-view that best suits them. If that means that all bigfoot reports are hoaxes so that they aren’t afraid to go into the woods at night, or that ghosts are real because nothing else explains the creepy feeling they get in the third floor guest room where Uncle Jim died, then that is what people choose to believe.

With incidents like the recent pseudocide of 9-11 Truther Ace Baker, blogged on here by SMiles Lewis, and the Georgia bigfoot body hoax pulled off by a police officer and former prison guard (professions comprised of individuals normally accepted as paramounts of honesty and respectability) in August of last year, it seems valid that we pause and ask ourselves some questions.

How important is reputation in these fields? Jacques Vallee is educated, well written and spoken, not prone to jumping to conclusions, and yet he would be lumped in with the “saucer nuts” by most mainstream journalists. The same could be said for hominid researchers such as Jeff Meldrum, who like Vallee has an academic reputation to maintain outside of his personal studies.  Yet while the Meldrums and Vallees of this world suffer under the derision and constant scrutiny of colleagues and the media, or keep their private pursuits to themselves; known hucksters and hoaxers like Tom Biscardi continue to benefit from the flippant attitude toward the subjects and lack of background research undertaken by various local media outlets. Biscardi is a known and proven hoaxer, yet he can pull into any small town and have the cameras on his crew in a matter of hours.

Perhaps, as guest blogger Oliver Hallen muses in the post below concerning UFO reports by police officers in the UK, respect and reputation are concepts as culturally and contextually loaded, and therefore as ephemeral, as the UFOs and beasties we endeavor to understand.

(The views expressed by Oliver Hallen are his own and do not reflect the opinions or views of AnomalyMagazine.com, its editorial staff, or myself. — Jeremy D. Wells)

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911 Truther Shoots Movement in Foot – Commits Pseudocide

by SMiles Lewis

As if the 911 Truth Movement weren’t weird and ridiculed enough already – now it goes and shoots itself in the foot … again.

How often do people come across a severed human head lying in the middle of the road? Apparently as often as someone might happen to tune-in and hear a radio-show co-host commit suicide live on the air. Or is it simply a matter of weirdness acting as a strange attractor for ever more weirdness? Whatever the explanation, I witnessed both within forty-eight hours of each other.

On Tuesday, January 6th at about 2:35 pm (Central Standard Time) I was tuning in to the webradio stream of upstart Austin alternative media outlet, Freedom Underground Radio. This is the new radio station “rising from the ashes of We The People Radio Network.” WFU Radio has been founded by a co-founder of WTPRN. (Full disclosure: WFURadio has recently started carrying the PsiOp Radio show which I co-host with Mack White.)

I was tuning in to James Fetzer’s show, The Real Deal. Now, I’m not a huge fan of his research nor a regular listener to his show. He had on someone whose name I recognized as having been on the show before as a co-host who has been active within the 911-TV-Fakery branch of the conspiracy community, Ace Baker. Apparently they had switched roles for this particular show with Ace interviewing Jim instead of the other way around.

Within moments of tuning in I had the thought, “Is this guy (Ace Baker) about to commit suicide?” And moments later he did. He was speaking of regret, longing and despair regarding his daughter and deceased parents, about the disrespect and outright attacks that others in the movement had heaped upon him. “I’m coming home,” he said before I heard the sound of a gunshot. The moments leading up to and those that followed that bang were some of the most awkward live radio I’ve ever experienced.

Fetzer was understandably more or less speechless and to his credit seemed to keep his head. He managed to call Baker’s wife and leave a voicemail begging her to check on Ace saying he was worried about him. This is especially amazing for Fetzer as we were later to learn that his own Mother had killed herself when he was only 11 years old and he says had told Ace about this previously.

Of course immediately, the possibility of a hoax was apparent, at least doubly so because of the involvement of someone involved in the “fakery” branch of 911 conspiracy theories who is also a sound engineer. But even contemplating the hoax possibility I was still feeling shocked and shaky – calling my friend Mack and posting online and within Jack Blood’s Deadline Live website chatroom.

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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3559347770526635111 

Dallas, Texas 11/22/2008 Part One: Dealey Plaza – 090112 AnomalyTV

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