On his July 20 broadcast of Larry King Live, the CNN personality featured Robert Hastings, author of “UFOs and Nukes“, along with three retired Air Force personnel claiming that Unidentified Flying Objects had a keen interest in our burgeoning nuclear capacity. Among their claims are that UFOs caused missile malfunctions at Malmstrom Air Force base in 1967, and were even caught on film by Bob Jacobs during the filming of missile tests at Vandenberg Air Force base, but the films were confiscated by the CIA. You can watch a full YouTube version of the video by clicking on our “Video of the Week” link, or see the shorter version on the official CNN site by clicking here.

This isn’t the first time Larry King has used his show as a forum for discussing the UFO phenomenon. In November of 2007, for example, his program focused on the topic with a show entitled “UFOs: Are They for Real?”

(Part 1 of this episode linked here via YouTube)

However, while a part of me wants to applaud King for the courage to discuss UFOs in a public forum, my problem with King’s program, and most other treatments of the UFO phenomenon available on US television and across the width and breadth of the internet, is an extremely narrow focus on the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). Proponents of the ETH generally support the idea that UFOs are physical vehicles piloted, or remotely controlled, by intelligent beings assumed to be from another planet. Read more »

Topic for Discussion: Given the proliferation in recent years of ufo / paranormal / dreamtime imagery in the media (VW’s “Reverse Engineered From UFO’s” ad comes glaringly to mind), do you feel that this is actually changing or affecting the phenomenon itself? Is the mass-media consciousness causing the UFO phenomenon to change the way it interfaces with us?

Researcher Roundtable: Whose Weirdness Is It, Anyway?

By Greg Bishop

One of the first lessons of Buddhism, certain kinds of physics, and the courtroom is that people will see what they expect to see. Robert Anton Wilson gives the example of a university law or psych class (I can’t recall which) where someone runs in unexpectedly during the lecture and tries to stab one of the students. A great majority of the witnesses will swear that the criminal used a knife until the professor brings him back with a banana held in an upraised hand. This error in perception more or less applies as well to things that we haven’t seen or experienced yet.

Not to labor the point too much, but Wilson also recalled in an interview that there was a UFO case he had heard of in which one of the witnesses recalled a longish-shaped UFO landing, while the other said it was nothing but a school-bus going by. Although some may argue about “abduction screen memories” and the like, it is more likely that these people saw some “whatsit,” some “x,” and filled in the details later. Jenny Randles introduced the term “Oz Factor” many years ago to describe the indescribable events and atmosphere that surround a UFO or Fortean event. Part of this phenomenon is the inability of the participants to recall any details or just as likely, the entire episode. The reasons may lie with the cause of the event, be it intelligent or not, but the fault may also lie within ourselves. Read more »

Topic for Discussion: Given the proliferation in recent years of ufo / paranormal / dreamtime imagery in the media (VW’s “Reverse Engineered From UFO’s” ad comes glaringly to mind), do you feel that this is actually changing or affecting the phenomenon itself? Is the mass-media consciousness causing the UFO phenomenon to change the way it interfaces with us?

Researcher Roundtable: The Shape Shifters

by Jim Keith

Perception of UFOs and whatever-they-are that inhabits them has morphed numerous times this century due to the influence of the various forms of media, so that one might well wonder if we are not dealing with shape-shifters here, rather than a concrete phenomenon. Depictions of alien craft for the first half of this century–in magazines like Thrilling Wonder and Amazing–were primarily rockets, until the famous flying saucer coinage that came about after the Kenneth Arnold sighting. Similarly, the prototypical “grey alien” image did not really appear on the scene, in the public consciousness, until after the release of the movies Invaders From Mars (in which the big headed alien had tentacles, as I recall), and Invasion of the Saucer Men in the early 1950s.

Read more »

Topic for Discussion: Given the proliferation in recent years of ufo / paranormal / dreamtime imagery in the media (VW’s “Reverse Engineered From UFO’s” ad comes glaringly to mind), do you feel that this is actually changing or affecting the phenomenon itself? Is the mass-media consciousness causing the UFO phenomenon to change the way it interfaces with us?

Researcher Roundtable: The UFO is a Psychic Bomb

by SMiles Lewis

So, “are we being prepared?” Hell yes! The entirety of the human collective is preparing itself for the inevitable: overt contact with the probable multitudes of non-human intelligences / consciousnesses extant within the Universe. It is the urge-to-destiny of every lifeform to go beyond the confines of its original evolutionary environs and become a part of the galactic evolutionary process. It is this inevitability for which the human collective unconscious (and its governing hierarchies of morphic consciousnesses: local, national, global) is preparing itself. It does this through our imaginal experiencing of the alien other, and all aspects of our confrontations with the unknown.

The ufo phenomenon exists in a synergistic cybernetic interface with humanity. Whatever the true nature of UFOs, they interact with us within several different milieus, all of which are influenced by the media and culture. This media and culture in turn feeds back into the phenomena in a continuous cycle.

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by SMiles Lewis

ANOMALY magazine is proud to present the resurrection of The Elfis Network’s Researcher Dialogue project. Years ago the ELFIS Portal to Possible Paradigms launched a short lived section to its online E.L.F. Infested Spaces journal called Researcher Dialogue. Within that section of the online zine was to be a regular Question and Answer session for every issue, wherein a question on anomalous phenomena would be posed to the panelists composed of invited Kooks, each a noted Author and Researcher in some field of Anomaly Studies.

Among the first round of Invited Panelists was ParaPolitical Researcher Jim Keith, Paranormal Publisher and Author Greg Bishop, then Elfis Editor Mr. Baggins, Elfis Founder SMiles Lewis, Crackpot Historian Adam Gorightly, Hauntings Investigator Dennis Hauck, Local Investigator I.M. Aliensun, Devil’s Advocate Tim Brigham, Mysterious Investigator Eugenia Macer-Story, CyberFortean NeuroAnthropologist Steve Mizrach, Excluded Middlers Robert Larson and Peter Stenshoel, and Veteran Pagan Peacenik Thom Laaki.

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by SMiles Lewis

Some time back I saw this allegedly official patch for stealth bomber pilots and crew. The 509th Bomber Wing were the first atomic bomb flyers and were based out of Roswell, New Mexico. I never thought it was likely to be real.

Then last year friend and fellow researcher Greg Bishop wrote about his encounter with the patch while working on a new British documentary called Mirage Men. Apparently, UFO researcher Curtis Peebles had acquired one of the patches. And another UFO researcher, Dennis Balthaser actually called the Air Force and interrogated someone over the phone trying to ascertain the validity and meaning behind the patch.

Now, it appears that an artist and activist named Trevor Paglen is having a bit of fun doing what he likes to do most, “deliberately blurring the lines between social science, contemporary art, and a host of even more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us.” You see, Trevor just posted an article with slideshow and accompanying audio to the Newsweek website detailing this and many other exotic patches: Badges of Secrecy.

So while I doubt the validity of his analysis of these likely hoaxed patches and badges, I still have to stop and ponder their reality, and consider it alongside Trevor’s work in exposing “secret military bases, the California prison system, and the CIA’s practice of ‘extraordinary rendition.’ ”

By the way, you can get replicas of this and other patches through this LINK.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Email: retroufo@aol.com
Contact: Barbara or Rob Harris
Phone: 760-365-3266 or 760-365-5646
THIS IS NOT YOUR TYPICAL UFO CONVENTION!
SATURDAY, APRIL 26 and SUNDAY, APRIL 27, 2008

The UFO phenomena once experienced by thousands at Giant Rock, in Landers, CA in the middle of the last century returns for its third year RETRO UFO (3) Event Held At The Integratron in Landers, California.

Whether you believe in UFO’s or not, RETRO UFO (3) will take you beyond the typical UFO lecture hall of a hotel conference room and into a new, and nostalgic way of viewing the UFO phenomenon that has intrigued thousands for a millennia. The event is presented in tents and canopies on the grounds of the World Famous Integratron. Speakers will lecture, share their stories and experiences about Giant Rock, The Integratron, Crop Circles and the latest UFO’s information. Many of these stories will show how a small group of men and women impacted a region of the Mojave Desert and made history, often compared in scale to the stories of Roswell, New Mexico.

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