Obama on Aliens - 090508

Austin Mufon 9/26/92 with Karla Turner Pt1

Part One

Central Texas UFO mini-Conference on September 26, 1992. Karla Turner was an exceptional researcher and experiencer of Alien Abductions. This is part 1 of 9 parts. - SMiles Lewis

The following was originally published in the Fall 1994 edition of E.L.F. INFESTED SPACES - Journal of Possible Paradigms:

TAKEN INTO THE FRINGE
RESEARCHER FOCUS: Dr. Karla Turner
by SMiles Lewis

My first exposure to abduction researcher/ experiencer Dr. Karla Turner was on September 26, 1992. She was speaking to an audience of approximately 200 people in Austin, Texas. The mini-conference also featured Ed Conroy and George Wingfield, and was organized by the local Austin MUFON chapter. I have seen very little from abduction researchers that I qualified as being of any significance, so Dr. Turner was a particularly unexpected surprise.

Austin MUFON » Flashback: Abduction Researcher Karla Turner

Somehow this has flown under my radar for a couple of months, but Dan Akroyd is marketing his own brand of boutique vodka sold in a skull shaped bottle. What does this have to do with anomalous phenomenon you ask?

Everything!

In his online video explaining the liquor, an oddly sweaty Akroyd almost seems to be parodying himself in some Twilight Zone episode of SNL as he talks about everything from ghosts, UFOs, and the “invisible world”,  to ectoplasm (a running gag of his Ghost Busters movies) and the latest Indiana Jones movie. That’s right. The latest Indie movie and this vodka have something in common other than actors who made their best movies two decades ago. The bottle shape was chosen as a tribute to the infamous crystal skulls.

So that the packaging matched the spiritual potential of the contents, naturally.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any stranger, Akroyd reveals the secret filtration process that makes his vodka the purest in the world. I won’t reveal it here. The video just has to be seen for itself.

And in spite of the sheer ridiculousness of it all, I can’t help myself. I really want a bottle of this vodka! Or thirteen. After all, as the website for Crystal Head Vodka notes:

Brought together, the Crystal Heads are said to contain vast knowledge and enlightenment capable of unlocking our most enigmatic ancient mysteries. Alone, each is believed to house radiant psychic energy, which has magical powers and healing properties.

Spirits indeed.

www.CrystalHeadVodka.com

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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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I found this item about those crazy Raelians on Huffington Post thanks to Chez Pazienza over at Deus Ex Malcontent.

For those not familiar with the Raelians, they are a saucer cult founded by French race car test-driver turned spiritual guru Claude Vorilhon. The Raelian ideology is the standard ancient astronaut world seeding theory, with heaping dollops of late 60s and early 70s free love, and generically spiritual “war is bad” platitudes. They have been in the news most recently for their support of, and claim that they had succeeded in, human cloning. Vorilhon, who currently goes by the name Rael and claims to be the son of an earthly mother of an extraterrestrial father, founded his religion after an alleged close encounter in 1973 where he met his father and learned the truth behind our creation myths.

That all may be true. Or it could be that after failing as a pop-singer (under the name Claude Celler) and as a race car driver, and with his youth fading as quickly as his car in his competitors’ rear-view mirrors, Vorilhon decided the only sure fire way to continue getting laid by a different woman every night was to start a free love cult.

The truth is for more devoted seekers than me to puzzle out.

But for now, enjoy the links. Pull out your old UFO paperbacks and look in the index for anything on Vorilhon and Rael. Enjoy your holiday. And try not to be too upset at the lost opportunity for deliciously comic irony that could have been found in a group celebrating the season when we remember the virgin birth of the Prince of Peace, with a World Peace Orgy.

Merry Christmas. Happy Chanukah. Festive Festivus. Happy New Year.

80 Years with a Blinking 3rd Eye - Free Austin Event

The name C.B. Scott Jones is both obscure to many a casual UFO buff yet widely known among “deep seekers” of the UFOlogical and Parapsychological communities. His work for Senator Claiborne Pell investigating paranormal phenomena and his briefing of President Clinton’s Science Adviser on behalf of Laurance Rockefeller are the stuff of legend - and yet they are fact. He is the founder of the Human Potential Foundation and the Center for Applied Anomalous Phenomena. He supported the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR), served on the board and as President of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) and  served as board member for Atlantic University (a division of ARE, the Edgar Cayce organization the Association for Research and Enlightenment). He also helped with the TREAT II (Treatment and Research of Experienced Anomalous Trauma) conference at Virginia Tech that brought together many in the UFO, alien abduction and paranormal research fields.

These and a lifetime of other anomalous experience make Cecil B. “Scott” Jones an extraordinary guest for the Austin Consciousness / Anomaly Community.

We hope you will join us in welcoming C.B. “Scott” Jones this coming Tuesday night:

Tuesday, November 25, 2008, 6:30 - 8:30 P.M.
Austin History Center, 810 Guadalupe St., Austin, TX
Free and open to the public.

Read More Here:

Free Austin Lecture: C.B. Scott Jones on UFO Disclosure - Austin, November 25th

In a recent forum discussion (Triangle ufo at Rigorous Intuition forums) someone brought to my attention video of an alleged triangular UFO that shoots a red beam of light. The video is posted online at several websites: Zwamneus Report, YouTube, LiveLeaks and others.

(”weird black triangle UFO with red lights” - YouTube)

The information posted at these video links alleges that the footage is connected to the recent article posted at the Irish Independent News website headlined We’re not alone . . . politician and pilot spot UFO that states:

“Footage, filmed on a camera phone at 10.35pm on August 3 near Dunboyne was also played and replayed to over 70 delegates who attended the fifth Irish International UFO conference in Carrick-on-Shannon.

The triangular shaped image, with lights at each point, which appeared to send a red laser-type light towards earth, drew gasps of amazement from the 70 or so delegates who attended the world premiere of the footage.”

The above quote does sound a lot like the footage in the video at the cited video sites. But the text at the YouTube link (recently updated) makes the claim that the footage was “found along a trail near the North Carolina / Tennessee border. It was found before the Irish video was announced. I only put it up when I heard about that one because it sounded like the same thing.” The poster goes on to say that he has given the camera and footage to a “UFO / Paranormal” researcher and that they will be posting the full, higher quality video online this weekend. [As of this weekend, it has indeed been updated to confirm our suspicions.]

Somehow I serendipitously came across the website for the Hoax Research Center and when I clicked through the headline UFOs: Phoenix Lights Effect Reproduced I (re)discovered the Annual Speaking of Strange UFO Experience and Fake UFO Contest organized by paranormal author, researcher and radio personality, Joshua P. Warren. And what should I see on that page but a picture of Jeff Wilson’s First-Place Winning UFO from last year’s 3rd Annual Speaking of Strange UFO Experience, which looks strikingly similar to the video in question:

(Photo by Sarah Harrison of the AshevilleParanormalSociety.com)

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FIRST TEXAS U FIND OUT FORUM SET FOR OCT. 25

FORT WORTH, TX – Responding to increasing serious interest by the public concerning the issue of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO), the Texas Research & Information Bureau (TRIB) has scheduled a forum on the subject featuring four area authorities.

The First Annual Texas U Find Out Forum will be held on October 25, 2008, at Vance Godbey’s Restaurant located at 8601 Jacksboro Highway just past Lake Worth. Doors will open at 9:30 a.m. and the program will begin at 10 a.m. and last until 4 p.m. A catered buffet lunch, a panel discussion and book signings are included. Cost is $65 per person but persons who pre-register by Oct. 10 can pay only $55. Orders may be placed by telephoning 817-379-0773.

Leading off the day-long presentations will be Jim Marrs, author of the 1997 book Alien Agenda, the top-selling non-fiction investigative work on UFOs in the world. Marrs will present an overview of the subject ranging from Ancient Astronauts to the latest research into the 1897 crash at Aurora, TX, just 20 miles north of Fort Worth.

“This will be an excellent opportunity for folks who once had only a passing interest in this subject to learn of the historical narratives and documentation of some of the best UFO incidents,” Marrs said. “It is time for the public to start dealing with this reality.”

British-born author Nick Redfern, who has extensively researched government documents regarding the UFO phenomenon, will report on what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs. Redfern is the author of several UFO books, including A Covert Agenda: The British Government’s UFO Top Secrets Exposed, The FBI Files: The FBI’s UFO Top Secrets Exposed and Strange Secrets: Real Government Files on the Unknown.

The sightings near Stephenville earlier this year will be discussed by Kenneth Cherry, the Texas State Director of the Mutual UFO Network, the nation’s largest organization dedicated to investigating UFOs. Cherry directed a 10-person investigative team that looked into the reports of large lighted objects seen around Stephenville shortly after the first of the year. “We’ve eliminated a lot of the known possibilities regarding the Stephenville sightings,” Cherry said. “Early on in the investigation, we could see that something important was happening or we wouldn’t have devoted so many resources to this event.” His talk will include a discussion of recently-released radar data from the Stephenville sightings.

C. L. Turnage, an area freelance writer with an extensive background in history and ancient languages, has studied more than 300 translations of ancient Mesopotamian and Vedic Indian texts, the Hebrew/Greek scriptures, Egyptian writings, and extra-biblical books such as “Enoch the Prophet” as background material for her books. A member of the Ancient Astronaut Society, she has authored War in Heaven and Extraterrestrials Are on the Moon and Mars, using numerous NASA photographs to support her thesis. She will explain how the UFO phenomenon can be traced back to humankind’s earliest writings.

This First Texas U Find Out Forum is presented by the Texas Research & Information Bureau, a Texas non-profit organization begun in 2002 and dedicated to bringing information to the general public seldom covered in the mass media.

UFOMystic » A Texas UFO Gig

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 »