Deep Thought of the Day

Everything is a distraction from something else.

Top Five Annoying Things About "Interstellar"

5) over-use of loud dramatic music, in the absence of real drama

4) the subtle message that NASA is awesome and will save humanity

3) hints that the earth was (is?) destroyed by over-population and global warming but without really saying that; purposefully vague, perhaps to avoid turning off conservatives? Implication of massive human death but a totally detached, lame, sterile presentation of that ugly reality.

2) the initial promising hints that extra-terrestrials were aiding humans gives way to dumb and annoying idea that man is alone in universe and can back in time to help save humanity.

1) the perverse use of the idea that the Apollo moon landings were faked, is government propaganda meant to cover-up the space program.

Many other annoying things about the movie actually--
1) it was too long
2) dumb and not explained how Cooper survives going through a black hole and ends up near Saturn
3) no hint of any animals in the movie or other, non-human life
4) no hint of numerology or conspiracy clues in the movie
5) the robots that man relies on (though they were amusing enough)-- but just annoying that they only showed men and robots in the movie.
6) the crap about love being a real force

That being said, the movie was watchable and had some cool things. I liked the presentation of relativity and time dilation/contraction. There were some good plot twists.

Here's some other problems-- here and here.

911-Benghazi Truth!

You probably heard how a House GOP panel recently decided the Obama administration or CIA or DOD committed any crime during the Benghazi attack of 9-11-12...

One of the widely reported findings was that the committee decided the CIA was not shipping arms to Syrian rebels through Libya.

Well, so much for that conspiracy theory, right???

Of course, the truth is a bit more complicated.  Perhaps the CIA wasn't DIRECTLY arming Syrian rebels in Benghazi... but it does look as though the CIA was facilitating this process, but where the technical "arming" was being done by the Saudis and Qataris. So of course, we were totally involved in arming the same assholes we are now fighting (ISIS) in another grotesque permutation of the fucking endless bogus war on terror.

Ugghhh.

Arrgghhh.

He Grabbed My Gun!

Seriously, isn't that the oldest and lamest excuse given by a cop for shooting someone, ever?

I think that this is a more likely scenario.

I think Wilson pointed a gun in Brown's face... I think Wilson's intention was to scare Brown into following his orders, so he grabbed Brown and pulled out his gun to make his point stronger. Like any other human being, Brown reacted to a gun being in his face, trying to escape or at least keep the muzzle pointed somewhere else. During the struggle, the gun goes off by accident, injuring Brown, but surprising Wilson at the same time, allowing Brown to break free and make a break for it.

And the cop madness continues...  watch the video... just fucking INSANITY.

UPDATE: Here's a more clearly ludicrous example of a cop claiming that the victim grabbed his gun, hands handcuffed behind his back.

My original point, was that this is a typical excuse for cops shooting someone without good provocation.

Afghanistan-- the Forever War

Yes, it is fucking evil and fucking insanity.

President Obama has secretly extended the U.S. role in Afghanistan despite earlier promises to wind down America’s longest war. According to the New York Times, Obama has signed a classified order that ensures U.S. troops will have a direct role in fighting. In addition, the order reportedly enables American jets, bombers and drones to bolster Afghan troops on combat missions. And, under certain circumstances, it would apparently authorize U.S. air-strikes to support Afghan military operations throughout the country. The decision contradicts Obama’s earlier announcement that the U.S. military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year. Afghanistan’s new president Ashraf Ghani has also backed an expanded U.S. military role. Ghani, who took office in September, has also reportedly lifted limits on U.S. airstrikes and joint raids that his predecessor Hamid Karzai had put in place. 

Of course, Chuck Hagel was fired as Sec of Def today, likely because he wasn't an aggressive enough war hawk.

Bill Cosby, Serial Rapist

I think it's pretty clear that he got away with so much for so long because he never threatened the white PTB, unlike so many black comics, and he even criticized "black culture", for brownie points.

Sure wouldn't look good for the "good guy black comic" to be such a nasty piece of work.

And though it is easy to say this is why Obama gets away with so much nasty shit (note, I am referring to his militarism and corporatism, not the idiotic right-wing critiques of him), I don't think it has to do with race, since the public put up with similar crap from white presidents and politicians.


For that matter, I'm not even claiming Cosby getting away with serial rape had to do with him being black. I think it was more that he was never really threatening to the PTB and he made white people feel good about their feelings about black people.


Ultimately, it was the media and power structure who refused to make an issue about Cosby, or Obama, or Bush, or 9/11, or any other number of outrage put over on the public-- because the media and power structure is composed of traitors and venal psychopaths.

To be clear, as well, there is a very ugly and persistent racism in the US too, and much of it is institutionalized, such as by the police.

George Carlin on Aliens

I so love this--

"I find it discouraging and a bit depressing when I notice the unequal treatment afforded by the media to UFO believers on the one hand, and on the other, to those who believe in an invisible supreme being who inhabits the sky. Especially as the latter belief applies to the whole Jesus-Messiah-Son-of-God fable.

You may have noticed that, in the media, UFO believers are usually referred to as buffs, a term used to diminish and marginalize them by relegating them to the ranks of hobbyists and mere enthusiasts. They are made to seem like kooks and quaint dingbats who have the nerve to believe that, in an observable universe of trillions upon trillions of stars, and most likely many hundreds of billions of potentially inhabitable planets, some of those planets may have produced life-forms capable of doing things that we can't do.

What nerve.

On the other hand those who believe in an eternal, all-powerful being, a being who demands to be loved and adored unconditionally and who punishes and rewards according to his whims are thought to be worthy, upright, credible people. This, in spite of the large numbers of believers who are clearly close-minded fanatics.

To my way of thinking, there is every bit as much evidence for the existence of UFOs as there is for the existence of God. Probably far more. At least in the case of UFOs there have been countless taped and filmed and, by the way, unexplained sightings from all over the world, along with documented radar evidence seen by experienced military and civilian radar operators.

This does not even begin to include the widespread testimony of not only highly trained, experienced military and civilian pilots who are selected for their jobs, in part, for their above-average eyesight and mental stability, but also of equally well-trained, experienced law-enforcement officers. Such pilots and law-enforcement people are known to be serious, sober individuals who would have a lot to lose were they to be associated with anything resembling kooky, outlandish beliefs. Nonetheless, they have taken the risk of revealing their experiences because they are convinced they have seen something objectively real that they consider important. All of these accounts are ignored by the media.

Granted, the world of UFO-belief has its share of kooks, nuts and fringe people, but have you ever listened to some of these religious true-believers? Have you ever heard of any extreme, bizarre behavior and outlandish claims associated with religious zealots? Could any of them be considered kooks, nuts or dingbats? A fair person would have to say yes.

But the marginal people in these two groups don't matter in this argument. What matters is the prejudice and superstition built into the media coverage of the two sets of beliefs. One is treated reverently and accepted as received truth, the other is treated laughingly and dismissed out of hand.

As evidence of the above premise, I offer one version of a typical television news story heard each year on the final Friday of Lent:

"Today is Good Friday, observed by Christians worldwide as a day that commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whose death redeemed the sins of mankind."

Here is the way it should be written:

"Today is Good Friday, observed worldwide by Jesus buffs as the day on which the popular, bearded cultural figure, sometimes referred to as The Messiah, was allegedly crucified and according to legend died for mankind's so-called sins. Today kicks off a 'holy' weekend that culminates on Easter Sunday, when, it is widely believed, this dead 'savior' who also, by the way, claimed to be the son of a sky-dwelling, invisible being known as God, mysteriously 'rose from the dead.' According to the legend, by volunteering to be killed and actually going through with it, Jesus saved every person who has ever lived and every person who ever will live from an eternity of suffering in a fiery region popularly known as hell, providing so the story goes that the person to be 'saved' firmly believes this rather fanciful tale."

That would be an example of unbiased news reporting. Don't wait around for it to happen. The aliens will land first."

I have thought for a while that there is far more evidence for the existence of UFOs than there is for the existence of God.

Out of Control Federal Undercover Agents

Yikes!

WASHINGTON — The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show. 

At the Supreme Court, small teams of undercover officers dress as students at large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the protests to look for suspicious activity, according to officials familiar with the practice.

So the ever-paranoid-of-the-Federal-government GOP will be all over this, right?

Well, I know one part they are very upset about:

Within the Treasury Department, undercover agents at the I.R.S., for example, appear to have far more latitude than do those at many other agencies. I.R.S. rules say that, with prior approval, “an undercover employee or cooperating private individual may pose as an attorney, physician, clergyman or member of the news media.” 

An I.R.S. spokesman acknowledged that undercover investigators are allowed to pose in such roles with approval from senior officials. But the agency said in a statement that senior officials “are not aware of any investigations where special agents have ever posed as attorneys, physicians, members of the clergy or members of the press specifically to gain information from a privileged relationship.” 

The agency declined to say whether I.R.S. undercover agents have posed in these roles in an effort to get information that was not considered “privileged,” meaning the type of confidential information someone shares with a lawyer or doctor. José Marrero, a former I.R.S. supervisor in Miami, said he knew of situations in which tax investigators needed to assume the identity of doctors to gain the trust of a medical professional and develop evidence that is tightly held.

But bwahahaha--

Across the federal government, undercover work has become common enough that undercover agents sometimes find themselves investigating a supposed criminal who turns out to be someone from a different agency, law enforcement officials said. In a few situations, agents have even drawn their weapons on each other before realizing that both worked for the federal government.

Most relevant to 9/11 and "terrorism", the article discusses the infiltration of Muslim groups by Federal agents, and entrapment of suspects by manufactured terror plots.

The article doesn't mention, of course, how the first attack on the WTC was manufactured by the FBI, and of course doesn't dare to speculate that 9/11 itself could have had undercover agents involved in the plot, with the main hijackers entrapped in a much larger evil and insane plot.

White Anglo-American Man Afraid of Ethnic Cleansing by New Hispanic Majority

Because, god knows, white men know all about ethnic cleansing.

Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach is a piece of shit.

Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

I really do wish it WAS a hoax. But I fear it is not.

Warmer winters in Alaska are causing increasing numbers of geese to forego their usual 3,300-mile migration, evidence of how climate disruptions are heavily impacting wildlife. Scientists have documented how increasing numbers of Pacific black brant are doing this. Prior to 1977, fewer than 3,000 of them wintered in Alaska. In recent years, however, more than 40,000 have remained, and as many as 50,000 stayed last year.

Long referred to as the "lungs of the planet," the Amazon rainforest has been degraded to the point where it is actually losing its ability to regulate weather systems.
"The temperatures now in winter are much warmer," said David Ward, a researcher at US Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center, who conducted the research along with scientists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. "In years past you'd often have ice that would build up in these lagoons, and the eelgrass would be unavailable for the winter period. But now that's changing. The change not only causes a disturbance in the natural rhythms of the geese, but will have unknown ramifications throughout the ecological system the geese are part of."

Further south in California, sandhill cranes are finding their habitat squeezed by the ongoing drought in that state, as more and more of the birds are being forced into smaller areas, and farmers and scientists are pointing toward the ACD-exacerbated drought as the culprit.

Over in Europe, common birds like the sparrow and skylark are in decline across the continent, having decreased by more than 420 million in the last three decades, according to a recent study.

A recent report from a global analytics firm described ACD as a "threat multiplier" for 32 farming-dependent nations, which, it said, now face an "extreme risk" of conflict or civil unrest over the next 30 years.

ACD has been added to the list of causes for fewer bees in the United Kingdom, according to new research. The study showed that the increase in global temperature could be disrupting the "synchronization" that has evolved over millennia between bees and the plants they pollinate.

Long referred to as the "lungs of the planet," a stunning new report by Brazil's leading scientists revealed how the Amazon rainforest has been degraded to the point where it is actually losing its ability to regulate weather systems.

Speaking of degradation, over 50 percent of China's arable land is now degraded, according to the official state news agency Xinhua. This means that the country now has a reduced capacity to produce food for the world's largest population, and ACD is named as one of the leading causes.

Note-- it's quite possible that this crap is being made worse by chemtrail activity, or possibly even being mitigated. But something nasty is going on, either way.

Brownie points if you catch the 33.

A Simple Test Showing Atheism Is the Only Honest Answer

Along these same lines, what if you have different people who think their god has told them to kill the other person (or people of different religions)? If there is a god, how do you objectively say who is right? How can anyone religious, not be biased towards their own religion in this example?

Also, how can you discriminate between someone insane or psychotic -- and someone who says they have been told by god to kill other people?

Ultimately, how is belief in god at all tenable?

Navy Plans to Run Hundreds of Massive Electromagnetic Warfare Drills Over Pristine Washington State Wilderness

Can't they just leave nature alone?

Fucking assholes.

Let's Remember Armistice Day

More than a few veterans, Veterans For Peace among them, are troubled by the way Americans observe Veterans Day on November 11th. It was originally called Armistice Day, and established by Congress in 1926 to “perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations, (and later) a day dedicated to the cause of world peace.”

For years, many churches rang their bells on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – the time that the guns fell silent on the Western Front by which time 16 million had died.

To put it bluntly, in 1954 Armistice Day was hijacked by a militaristic congress, and today few Americans understand the original purpose of the occasion, or even remember it. The message of peace seeking has vanished. Now known as Veterans Day, it has devolved into a hyper-nationalistic worship ceremony for war and the putatively valiant warriors who wage it.

Here is a news flash. Most of what goes on during wartime is decidedly unheroic, and heroes in war are few and far between.

I have to tell you that when I was in Vietnam, I was no hero, and I didn’t witness any heroism during the year I spent there, first as a U.S. Army private and then as a sergeant.

Yes, there was heroism in the Vietnam War. On both sides of the conflict there were notable acts of self-sacrifice and bravery. Troops in my unit wondered how the North Vietnamese troops could persevere for years in the face of daunting US firepower. US medical corpsmen performed incredible acts of valor rescuing the wounded under fire.

But I also witnessed a considerable amount of bad behavior, some of it my own. There were widespread incidents of disrespect and abuse of Vietnamese civilians including many war crimes. Further, all units had, and still have, their share of criminals, con artists and thugs. Most unheroic of all were the US military and civilian leaders who planned, orchestrated, and profited greatly from that utterly avoidable war.

The cold truth is that the US invasion and occupation of Vietnam had nothing to do with protecting American peace and freedom. On the contrary, the Vietnam War bitterly divided the United States, and was fought to forestall Vietnamese independence, not defend it.

Unfortunately, Vietnam wasn’t an isolated example. Many American wars – including the 1846 Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the Iraq War (this list is by no means exhaustive) – were waged under false pretexts against countries that didn’t threaten the United States. It’s hard to see how, if a war is unjust, it can be heroic to wage it.

But if the vast majority of wars are not fought for noble reasons, and few soldiers are heroic, have there been any actual heroes out there defending peace and freedom? And if so, who are they?

Well, there are many, from Jesus down to the present. I’d put Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the list along with many Quakers and Mennonites. And don’t forget General Smedley Butler, who wrote that “War is a Racket”, and even, sort of, Robert McNamara, who came around in the very end.

In Vietnam, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson stopped the My Lai massacre from being even worse.

Another candidate is former US Army specialist Josh Stieber who sent this message to the people of Iraq: “Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.” Ponder a million Iraqi deaths. Chelsea Manning sits behind bars for exposing those and other truths.

The real heroes are those who resist war and militarism, often at great personal cost.

And:

It’s curious that war, something consistently recounted as ugly and horrible, should qualify its participants for glory.  

33 of the Day

Found: The viral infection that makes nearly HALF of us more stupid (and it lasts for YEARS)

The virus - called chlorovirus ATCV-1 - was only known to appear in algae

Researchers in U.S. have not established how it comes to infect humans

It hasn't infected just swimmers, which rules out direct link to algae itself

Instead humans could've been carrying virus but was not known to doctors

Research suggests it alters genes in brain including memory and emotion

Scientists found 44 per cent of patients tested had virus in their throats

So going to the actual paper-- first line of the results section:

Metagenomic sequencing was performed on DNA extracted from oropharyngeal samples obtained from 33 adult individuals without a known psychiatric disorder or physical illness.

"UFOs and the National Security State, 1973-1991, the Cover-Up Exposed" by Richard Dolan

I FINALLY finished reading this long book, after a few months. It was very slow going mostly because I read it at bedtime, and would get sleepy after a few pages.

It's a good compilation of the UFO/ET field from 1973-1991, and he synthesizes a lot of material. I liked that he brought in abductions and crop circles, apart from UFO sightings and interactions. Overall, there is little more important in our world than understanding the nature of UFOs and ETs. But of course, there is a massive cover-up at many levels of our society.

Here are the key points from the conclusion section at the end of the book:

1. the evidence is conclusive for an intelligent UFO phenomenon beyond the control of our civilization visiting and probably also living on earth
2. just from 1973-1991 there were hundreds of well-documented military encounters 
3.  regardless of where the UFOs came from, they triggered a response from world military agencies, that indicated the UFOs were foreign threats
4. beyond the military encounters, even more ordinary people encountered UFOs-- either via sightings or actual abductions.
5. ordinary people could not get anyone official to take their story seriously, despite the incredible trauma some of these people had undergone; they had trouble coping with the aftermath.
6. seems odd that so many major society institutions ignored investigating UFOs and seeking the truth but further on consideration, not so odd, given the massive disruption to society (technology, industry, energy, banking, military) that disclosure of the UFO/ET reality would bring (similar to 9/11-- Spooked).
7. much of UFO secrecy/control moved away from government control to private organizations/companies, in order to better maintain secrecy from public.
8. the farther and deeper the secrecy goes, the harder it is to disclose by anyone, as more time goes by
9. special relationships set up within government and academia and media to maintain secrecy
10. virtually unlimited govt black budgets can be used to maintain secrecy. (advanced technology can also be marketed piecemeal to fund more secret organizations-- Spooked)
11. pretty clear the US military was able to obtain UFO/ET artifacts and reverse engineer them and build their own vehicles
12. secrecy does not have to continue though; humans are reaching a breaking point with population growth and the earth's natural resources (clean air and water, wildlife)
13. the PTB may be forced to disclose at the "11th hour" of planetary crisis in order to save us (my guess is this disclosure could be masked as some sort of religious event-- Spooked)
14. the exact nature of the relationship between human elites and ETs, and how much ETs control or interfere with humanity is unclear.
15. seems as though ETs want to maintain secrecy of their presence.

UPDATE:

Some of the interesting UFO cases discussed in the book very thoroughly are:

The Gulf Breeze, Florida UFO incidents -- a much more complicated tale than it is typically presented as (of course), and (of course) it is typically written off as a hoax.

The Hudson Valley UFOs-- which I'd never even heard of before, but it's clear something major happened there involving UFOs. Interestingly, related UFOs were also spotted in Newtown, CT. 

One neat thing the book does is correlate UFO sightings with world events, such as the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Iran hostage crisis.

"Radiological Cleanup on ground zero-- This video is dedicated to Dimitri Khalezov"

Interesting but flawed video. I've actually posted a lot of the images in this video on this blog, over the years.

I think a lot of the National Nuclear Security Administration references are bogus in this, although the first one is probably legit. I imagine the official story is that the National Nuclear Security Administration was involved in the cleanup as a matter of bureaucracy in a large accident, and there was the tritium in the planes. They will say it was precaution, not a smoking gun. I wish this video was more real, but I also don't trust Khazelov one bit, and I think his specific nuclear demolition theory is bogus.

Pseudo-Science, Non-Experts and Conspiracy Research

The previous post about the whack-job Michael Snyder made me think of an issue that tends to nag at me about my 9/11 research, particularly investigations into the destruction of the WTC.

I am a professional biologist/molecular biologist, and as a bona fide expert in this area, I can say with confidence that Snyder's 44 points "debunking evolution" are just dumb, mistaken and cherry-picked pieces of "evidence".

Snyder gives himself away as an idiot when he says:

As an attorney, I am always looking for the evidence.  And I have been searching for good evidence for the theory of evolution for decades.  But I haven’t been able to find any.  I have investigated these matters very carefully, and I have concluded that the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of those that argue that God created this world.

So this guy is clueless or a troll or he's just brainwashed by religion. Maybe the latter is most likely. Religion is a powerful mindset that really fucks with the ability of people to think of things logically and objectively.

But what always nags at me about my work here is that I am not a trained engineer or physicist, so it's hard to speak with great authority about destruction of the WTC. I always worry that I am missing something that an expert would know, even though it seems like demolition is so freaking obvious.

As a trained scientist I can weigh evidence, further I have learned a lot about engineering and physics since starting this blog. So I have a good deal of confidence is my conclusions. But overall, to be honest, I have to have some doubts about everything I post about WTC demolition, as a matter of intellectual integrity.

 Another point though, is how one can assemble evidence of a "conspiracy", such as impressive lists of evidence, such as Snyder did "debunking evolution", that is just wrong. And I should point out that a lot of his evidence is not really evidence but just bad logic.

I even feel somewhat like I should try to respond point-by-point to Snyder's points, but I feel like that would take WAY too much time and would be a waste of time since I doubt Snyder would listen to me.

So in summary, this is a reminder for us all in the conspiracy biz not to get too hung up on one theory, and it's also a reason "9/11 truth" is such a hard slog.

Prison Planet's Michael Snyder

This guy is the most obnoxious and idiotic blowhard I can think of in the conspiracy world; why the fuck does Alex Jones post his work? 

Seriously-- a creationist?

Who Shot bin Laden?

It's all so confusing, isn't it?

But no way could it be that they just made the killing bin Laden story up, right? Sometimes Alex Jones does some decent work, and this overview of the fake bin Laden killing is reasonable (though I think it's silly when he thinks Obama had control over it).

Random Things of Interest

Who exactly gave the order to confiscate guns in New Orleans after Katrina? Was it just that police chief Edwin Compass decided on his own or by Mayor Ray Nagin or did the order come from higher up? Like Blackwater? Note the $33.3 million contract Blackwater got to work in New Orleans after Katrina.

Conservative Republicans are still the fucking worst conspiracy theorists: Five Of The Craziest Conspiracy Theories That The Freshman Republican Class Will Bring To Congress

The Dark Side of Pope Francis I.

"The Pedophocracy" by David McGowan-- a series of essays on the crime of pedophilia and the bizarre legal cases and lack of serious punishment.

The Grand Old Party

 ... they embody the worst tribal aspects of white America: bellicose, militaristic, ignorant, insensitive to their actions, selfish, racist, sexist, jingoist, anti-education, anti-science and extreme conservative religious views. They claim to be about freedom and limited government but support the out of control national security state. They claim to hate the welfare state but still support medicare and social security and even hypocritically criticize the Democrats for trying to make fiscal adjustments to the programs. They represent the corporate polluters, the big business elites, the selfish bankers, the 0.01%. They win elections by appealing to fear, lying endlessly and suppressing the minority vote.

I'm not saying all Republicans are exactly like that. But most of them are-- especially their political leaders-- to make them the worst of America. And any Republican now a days is supporting an openly duplicitous and occultly evil organization; every Republican is complicit in all the crimes of this party.

What have they brought us worthwhile in the past 30 years but murder and destruction abroad, degradation of this country, terrible leadership and retrograde policies?

The Democrats are far from perfect and are also complicit in many of the crimes of the GOP. The Dem leadership is terrible and basically are puppets of the PTB. Both parties FAIL the 9/11 litmus test, of course. BUT, and it's a big point, the Dems have a large and significant contingent of worthwhile representatives-- people actually fighting for the right thing, for humane and just policies, for peace and understanding.

If a politician has said something truly obnoxious, hateful or crazy, there is a 99% chance it is a Republican.

For diagnosing the sickness at the heart of our political system, patient zero is the GOP.

And indeed, there is something truly creepy at the heart of the GOP. Look no further than Craig Spence and the Franklin pedophile scandal. Then look at the Bush family crime syndicate and Dick Cheney and the endless creepy white Angle-Saxon protestant Christian evangelists who are always extremely conservative, but hide all sorts of weird transgressions.

And now the GOP has won many new seats in the US Congress.

God Bless America.

The Most Annoying Debate Ever

Arch-plane-hugger Ryan Dawson versus a Judy Wood drone.

God, I really want to punch both of them.

Abducted by Aliens-- the Strange Case of Dr. John Mack (and Dr. Susan Clancy)

This article on John Mack is fascinating. 

Personally, I think some people have indeed been abducted physically by aliens, onto ET spaceships. But other people may rather have been "psychologically abducted" by ETs. I think Mack was amazing to actually keep an open mind about this and to go against mainstream science in his investigation. And what a tragedy that he was killed in such a freak accident (which any conspiracy theorist has to wonder about).

What particularly annoys me is Susan Clancy, who sort of took over Mack's work at Harvard and soon decided that all abduction victims were imagining things. She actually had no proof of this at all, except that she decided there was no such thing as UFOs or ETs and thus these people were just making shit up. I read her book, "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens", and it was incredibly frustrating.  Now, sure, some people who think they were abducted may be hoaxers or were just deluded in some strange way. But not all cases can be written off.

Clancy more recently, has written a newer book--

...The Trauma Myth, in which she suggests that child sexual abuse is rarely a traumatic experience for the victims at the time it occurs, and is instead described by victims as confusing. She argues that later in life, after the memories are processed, examined, and more fully understood, the experience becomes traumatic. 

Clancy writes in “The Trauma Myth” that when she arrived at Harvard in 1996, the trauma theory held that “a child will only participate in abuse if forced, threatened, or explicitly coerced” (p. 41). Then she interviewed victims and learned, “They did not fight it. It was not done against their will. They went along... only 5% tried to stop it” (p. 41). Clancy concludes that since sexual abuse of children is not violent per se, the millions of victims who did not experience their sex abuse as traumatic grapple with crippling thoughts of shame, embarrassment, and self-blame, thus compounding their suffering.

So, how fucked up is that? Even if this were true-- which I can't see how it is-- how does this idea do anything but absolve abusive pedophiles of guilt and remorse?  How incredibly vile to downplay the physical trauma of what a child must feel from an adult sexually abusing them? 

So this really casts an odd and ugly light on her work denying people who say they were abducted by aliens. And in both cases, Clancy is really shielding the evil PTB from their crimes (covering up the ET presence and their abuse of children).

UPDATE: see the first comment to this post.