| EDITOR AND STILL SUPREME COMMANDER: James W. Moseley
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
|
NON-SCHEDULED NEWSLETTER Volume 48, No. 8 September 1st, 2001 |
MAILING ADDRESS: P. 0. Box 1709 Key West, FL 33041 |
TIDBITS OF TRASH (formerly HOT FLASHES)
First we are going (of course!) to the giant 38th annual National UFO Conference in Austin,
Texas, on the weekend of Sept. l4th - 16th. Then it's back to Key West briefly, and then on to
New Jersey, where we will be speaking at another of Pat Marcattilio's conventions in Bordontown
(near Trenton), during the weekend of Oct. 6th and 7th. We hope to see at least a few of you
hard-core UFO convention junkies at both of these events!
Speakers in Bordontown will include George Filer, Rick Hilberg, Diana Hoyt, Don Rose, Antonio Huneeus, Sue Swiatek, Tom Hackney, Ron Story (see the ad on this page), and of course your humble "Smear" editor. The title of our lecture is: "Weird Personal Experiences of a Skeptical Believer", and this year's rant will include a very strange possibly psychic event that occurred at our Key West Headquarters very recently!
We have also been asked to mention the 2001 Emergence Conference, to be held November 12th through 17th in Palenque, Nexico. Now, this one is really a bit out of the way, but maybe you'll decide after all to spend your last dime on this when you learn that John Keel himself (dragged out of semi-retirement) will be one of the speakers. Others include Antonio Huneeus, Jaime Maussan, David Perkins, Leo Sprinkle, Mancy Talbert, and Tracy Torme (son of singer Mel Torme). The Web site is www.emergenceconference.com, and the toll-free phone number is 877-620-8715...
Incidentally, Carteret, on the New Jersey Turnpike not too far from New York City, is the location of the transmiter for WOR radio in New York. In the early days of his all-night radio show, Long John Nebel used to broadcast directly from this transmitter. That's how contactee Howard Menger gained his fame, back in the 1950s...
"Smear" has been reliably informed that the release date for the movie "Mothman Prophencies"
is February 22nd of next year. This gives us an excuse to reprint the Mothman-oriented
advertisement at right, as well as the amazing photo below.
It seems that a friend of ours, who shall remain nameless herein, was allegedly called to Harrah's Casino in Las Vegas to perform a rather secret Mission. He, as a well-known graphic artist, was to create the setting for a Mystery Speaker of great renown.
Our mysterious friend writes: "Meeting the speaker that early morning hour was an experience I shall never forget. It was only then that everything began to make sense to me. He was in full dress costume: The glowing iridescent eyes, the dark brown body, wings and legs identified him to me as the notorious Point Pleasant Mothman of the '60s. At first I suspected this creature before me to be John Keel masquerading in a movie-set costume, but the creature's skinny arms and legs, not to mention his proboscis and antennas, kind of blew that theory all to hell".
Thus it is that "Smear" has obtained possibly the only existing photos of this unique event. Wheee!...
"In 1966 I was living in Washington, D.C., and on weekends I would go cave exploring with other spelunkers in nearby West Virginia. I often had dreams about the caves there, and about West Virginia."One day in November, 1966, I was napping and I had an 'out-of-body experience'. In my OOBE trip, I felt I was flying over some roads. I remember seeing and flying over some sights (sic) near Point Pleasant and Gallipolis, just across the river. At the time, I had some concerns in my mind about the safety of the bridge at that point, and I felt in my OOBE experience that I needed to tell someone that the bridge might fall into the river! I approached this person and that, but my exterior appearance, like a guy with wings, was a turn-off, so I was not able to give my message in words to anyone I flew over. Alas, some time later, the bridge did fall in, and some drivers lost their lives - sad to say.
"If anyone knows how to reach John Keel, maybe in N.Y.C, please put him in touch. I once met him, but at that time I had not yet recalled the OOBE. It is time to tell him now."
We do know how to reach John Keel in New York City, but even Keel doesn't deserve this!... (Our thanks to Patrick Huyghe for this one!)
However, none of this bears directly on the question of whether or not intelligent creatures in flying saucers are currently visiting the planet Earth. We still think that really big-brain creatures would be smart enough to stay away!
Among past beneficiaries of Joe Firmage's largesse is one member of the "Saucer Smear" staff (not the editor).
Mike had a UFO group briefly with his friend Jonas Kover. Both lived in New York City at the time. Over the years we lost track of both of them, though Mike continued to receive 'Smear'. Then, the other day Mike's widow Marcea informed us that her husband died back on March 12th of this year - from a series of heart attacks followed by Lou Gehrig's Disease. He must have been about the same age as your editor, i.e., circa 70 years old.
Mike Mann will be best remembered for his series of UFO photos over the United Nations Building in New York, over the Eiffel Tower in Paris, over the Washington Monument in D.C., etc. - always the identical saucer! He also wrote at least one article for the old "Saucer News", entitled "Who Is Fooling Major Donald Keyhoe?', or some such title. This was during our long-drawn-out feud with Keyhoe's NICAP organization in Washington, D.C.
Mike was never even as ufologically serious as Gray Barker and your humble "Smear" editor. He enjoyed ufoology, and he enjoyed life. Pity that his life ended so tragically.
Even though your "Smear" editor is not on the (cursed) Internet himself, we have
mysterious, shadowy friends who are - and a couple of them have conspired to send us current
information from the permanent anti-Randi Web
site - or at least from one of them. (Anyone as arrogant as Randi may well have more enemies
than can fit onto one Site, or whatever.)
Anyhow, the "URL" (that's computer talk, man!) is given below. We can't vouch for the veracity of all the other information thereon, but the infamous "Blackmail Tape" of yesteryear is there in full: You can read it or even listen to it, if you are sufficiently technically inclined. We have checked out the transcript, and it is the real "Blackmail Tape'! This is an item so sensitive that no one, including your editor, has ever had the nerve to print it openly!
For those of you not familiar with the "Blackmail Tape", it consists of several short telephone conversations, recorded many years ago from his own phone by the Amusing One himself. Randi appears to be solliciting Sex from these several young men. The only dispute is in regard to the circumstances of the recording. We don't want to get back into all that, as Randi's lawyer is still permanently on our mailing list, ever since he tried to sue us several years ago.
The Forbidden Web Site is:
You were expecting maybe Part 2 of "They Were Here"? Tune in next ish for that. This time some comments about a remarkable attack on my new book and me. Written by long-time ufologist Robert Durant, this textbook example of the Will to Believe in action takes up 12 pages of the 32-page Spring issue of CUFOS' magazine "IUR" (also on their web- site: www.cufos.org).
It would require a book to respond adequately, which I've already written: "Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe". Those genuinely interested in assessing for themselves the soundness of my research, evidence, and conclusions will study "Roswell" with open minds and arrive at their own conclusions rather than relying solely on Durant's opinions. Still, I do want to get a couple of things off my chest.
I am deeply disappointed and quite surprised Bob found it necessary to indulge in subtle and not so subtle ad hominem - even ad hominem by proxy in the form of an attack on my publisher, the dreaded Prometheus. (Just in case shooting the messenger doesn't do the trick, cap his horse, eh, Bob?) I am nearly as disappointed and surprised that CUFOS saw fit to publish such stuff. After all, "IUR" is not "Saucer Smear".
Durant's use of innuendo and the like is illuminating. It tells us he's not nearly as sure of his case as he would like us to believe. It's the True Believer's (or True Unbeliever's) version of the old lawyer's trick of pounding the table when the facts and the law are against him. Durant has very good reason to pound!
This legal analogy really is quite apt. Roswell is historical forensics rather than hard science, and there is no smoking gun. Everything on both sides of the issue is circumstantial. After eight years of painstaking investigation and open-minded consideration of all the evidence, I am reluctantly convinced the case against Roswell as a crashed/retrieved saucer incident easily exceeds the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard of criminal actions. The case for the Project Mogul explanation is not quite that strong. It is very strong nonetheless, more than satisfying the preponderance-of-evidence standard of civil actions.
Bob Durant has laid out his brief in "IUR". I have presented mine in my book. Now it is up to the "jury" to fair-mindedly weigh both in the balance and arrive at a verdict. And, by Fort, it better be the right one: Do ya get me?
The book consists mainly of reprints of short ufological articles of various sorts that Huyghe has written for respectable zines such as OMNI (now deceased) through the years. There are several references to your "Smear" editor, and a nice handwritten note in the front of our (free) copy, which reads in part: "I hold you primarily responsible for getting me into this swamp with your darn 'Saucer News'". "Saucer News" was one of the earlier titles for "Saucer Smear" One of the chapters we liked best is the one entitled "Blaming the Japanese for Roswell", in which the author bashes John Keel's absurd notion that the Roswell wreckage was from a Japanese World War II Fugo Balloon. Said balloon would have had to stay aloft somehow for over two years after the end of the War, before crashing down on the Brazel Ranch! As for his own opinion on UFOs, Huyghe says (and we concur): "...The extraterrestrial hypothesis is really too simple; it's an extrapolation based on human technology and human desires. If UFOs are indeed produced by something exotic - something alien - it's likely to be something we have neither the concepts nor the vocabulary to describe...
A fine job by a talented reporter. 350 pages, paperback, published by ParaView Press, New York. A signed copy can be yours by sending a mere $20.45 to the author at: PO Box 577, Jefferson Valley, New York 10535...
Through many years and many crackpot books, there has been intense speculation as to who (or what) Conanander X reall is. Of course our friend Timothy Green Beckleys is one of the leading suspects, and the autograph in our (free) copy ("Enjoy! Commmander X, 6/30/01") looks suspiciously like Beckley's handwriting. The publisher is GLobal Communications, which is controlled by Beckley himself. How decidedly odd!
According to the semi-mysterious author of this book, on a number of occasions he witnessed the testing of highly classified "super TopSecret black project" aircraft engaged in maneuvers over Area 51 in the Nevada desert. The technology being tested involved principles of teleportation gleaned from reverse engineering of alien spacecraft which have crashed to earth.
The book also includes do-it-yourself exercises by which you can teleport yourself to wherever you want to go. This sounds to us like the same sort of thing as astral projection.
This literary masterpiece sells for $14.95 from Global Communications, Box 753, New Brunswick, N.J.
"Jim:"Subject: Second Horwitz Brother on Mars!!!
"According to the 'Fortean Times' of September 2001, researchers have found a second face on Mars. Astronaut Brian 0'Leary, Ph.D. and astronomer Tom Van Flandern, Ph.D. both say the face indicates 'intelligent life' on that planet...
"Flann Nolan de Selby of the Royal Sir Myles na gCopaleen AstroAnomalistic Institute, Dalkey, Ireland, says the face 'strikingly' resembles that of Jerome Horwitz, and thus supports the claims of the late Dr. Timothy F.X. Finnegan who identified the first face as Jerome's brother, Moishe Horwitz.
"DeSelby announced that he will now begin a 'painstaking' re-examination of all Mars photos in search of similar ikons depicting Laurence Feinstein, partner of the Horwitz brothers in teaching the Horwitz Pedagogic System.
"'I venture that the evidence now in hand indicates not only intelligent life on Mars,' deSelby said, 'but highly sophisticated intelligence, with a strong ludic element.'
"Keep the lasagna in orbit...
"Things which appear crude or offensive in the instant may become, with a change of perspective, somewhere between droll and riotously funny. - Hannibal Lecter, M.D..."
We look forward to meeting "Bob" Wilson for the first time, at the glorious forthcoming NUFOC convention in Austin, Texas - Editor.
"...in the early 1980s, I corresponded for a time with Robert Anton Wilson. Later I was surprised to see he had used some of my ideas in his 'Schrodinger's Cat,' Part III. Particularly evident was my 'trapdoor effect' notion, which he converted into 'trapdoor circuit'. I never mentioned this to him... but in September 1985 I happened to be in Manhattan at the same time he was giving a series of lectures."I attended a lecture accompanied by two attractive redheads, one on each side of me, with whom I sat in the first row. Naturally, his eyes were seldom elsewhere. When the question and answer period came, I queried him on my 'lifted' ideas, but never mentioned who I was. Bob was totally 'jammed' and it was comical to see this brilliant guy at a loss to know what was really going on. The three of us got a good laugh out of it. I love Bob Wilson's work. He is, in my opinion, one of the most original thinkers on the planet..."
"Did you cut up your copy of 'Steamshovel' to get that graphic of the screaming Acharya S. on the cover of the latest 'Saucer Smear'? Shame on you' Do I need to send you another copy?"I notice that physicist Jack Sarfatti (www.stardrive.org) and Remy Chevalier (www.endsecrecy.com) have been arguing on the internet over the same thing that caused Richard Hall to quit MUFON- Letting Stephen Greer and Daniel Sheehan speak. Sarfatti even calls them 'Ban Space Weapons Marching Morons, mere Cannon Fodder to their Puppet Masters (who) plan to disrupt U.S. Military (and might be under foreign influence). Where is General MacArthur when we need him?
"Both Hall and Sarfatti seem to be woefully or willfully ignorant of the parapolitics surrounding the Star Wars initiative. (They killed a couple of dozen guys like Sarfatti - scientists, contracted to Marconi - who worked on the original SDI - because they knew too much. Sheehan, of course, brought a bold lawsuit against the Iran-Contra secret government baddies.)
"I can think of no better public forum to discuss the issue than at MUFON-type conferences."
"...The resignation of Richard Hall from MUFON is a very big step forward for ufology and MUFON. I know Mr. John Schuessler to be an ethical, intelligent, well educated professional man, and I very much support him and highly commend him for his action concerning Hall."In my experience Hall is both vicious and stupid. I have his letters to me to prove this. I have his statements about me published in the MUFON Journal to prove this. My understanding is that Hall has no scientific training whatsoever. UFO Magazine had the wisdom to get rid of him years ago. Now he has done MUFON a big favor by leaving. Good riddance!
"It may be that some people in MUFON do not fully realize just how good a leader Mr. John Schuessler really is. Schuessler is a professional engineer and a good, fine man. MUFON should rally behind him and give him its full support. He has my full support..."
| First off, Joseph Smith was born in December of 1805 and allegedly obtained the "golden plates" for "translation" in September of 1827. That makes him almost 22 years old, not 14 as Eldon has it. Secondly, Rigdon met Smith in the sphng of 1826 via Church co-founder and "Second Elder," Oliver Cowdery, whose brother Erastus was Rigdon's neighbor in Ohio. The Smiths and the Cowderys were cousins. Details about the meeting came to the attention of New York newspaper reporter James Arlington Bennett while he was travelling through Western New York with (future president) Martin van Buren in 1831. These were duly noted in Bennett's diary and, a few weeks later, in his newspaper. Third, I would hardly expect Mr. Byrd to purchase a copy of "my" book since it might just shake him out of that self-imposed state of complacent ignorance he's been so cozy with for so many years. And finally, as to his effort to skew the meaning of my statement that "every one of the Mormons' arguments are false," surely he recognized that my words applied only to Mormon arguments against a Spalding authorship for the Book of Mormon and not to Mormon theology in general, some of which, contrary to Mr. Byrd's assertions, is based upon the Holy Bible or upon other of Smith's regurgitations which his Church prefers to call "revelations." Our book was not written to persuade existing Mormons to leave their Church, but rather to enlighten intelligent non-Mormons who have come into contact with Mormonism and find themselves curious about how the movement came into existence. |
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"I saw the article in FATE on the Clarksburg, W.Vao confab. Pretty nice piece, I thought. And Pflock's Roswell book is indeed a sound and solid piece of research and writing. Hey, I was once upon a time a Roswell Believer, but I began having my own serious doubts some years ago. Pflock's book sets a lot of these doubts and many more - in a version of harder-to-bridge stone!"...Happy Birthday to the still-Supreme Commander!..."
What's Up, Doc?
University of Washington researchers
say that one-third of those exposed to a fake Disneyland ad talking about how they met Bugs
Bunny and shook his hand later said the event had actually happened to them.
Of course, Bugs Bunny has never appeared at Disneyland because he is a warner Bros. character. "The frightening thing about this study is that it suggests how easily a false memory can be created,'" Said one of the researchers. |
ROSWELL Karl T. Pflock Prometheus; $25, 345 pages
Officially, the debris found in early July 1947 near Roswell, N.M., was weather balloon
wreckage. According to UFO believers, what really crashed was an alien spaceship which,
with the corpses of its crew, was promptly hidden by our government. In "Roswell: Inconvenient
Facts and the Will to Believe," Karl Pflock disagrees with both explanations. Pflock, who
believes some UFOs are alien spaceships, is a former CIA intelligence officer and onetime
deputy assistant secretary of defense. He's also a doggedly persistent investigator who, over
eight years, has re-examined every available scrap of evidence about the crash, reinterviewed
witnesses, studied and cross-correlated the testimony of those now dead, and ferreted out
documents not available to earlier writers. Pflock's conclusion? The weather balloon
explanation was a government cover-up that cloaked a then highly secret program to detect
Soviet nuclear tests. Given his background, his conclusion is bound to be controversial, but
it will take more than howls of outrage to overturn it. Those who give Pflock's book a careful,
thoughtful reading will find it hard to disagree with him. |
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Saucer Smear Index
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 Please note that letters for Smear editor James Moseley should be snail-mailed to PO Box 1709, Key West, FL 33041, insofar as Cdr. Moseley is proudly computer-illiterate and determined to stay that way. |
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