The Lansdale catalog reflects that Lansdale owned inscribed copies of Human Nature and Political Systems (1961) by Hadley Cantril, the MKULTRA scientist whose work is discussed in the Steamshovel book, Flying Saucers Over Los Angeles; and The Hotel Tacloban (1984) by Douglas Valentine, whose book The Phoenix Program appears in the footnotes to the Steamshovel book, The Octopus.
More thanks to Brian Redman of Conspiracy Nation for this follow-up to the Clinton AIDS story being developed by the Ottawa Citizen.
The Ottawa Citizen Sunday 4 October 1998
Clinton pal tied to blood scandal
Vince Foster suicide linked to Arkansas tainted plasma sales
Mark Kennedy The Ottawa Citizen
The controversy over how a U.S. firm collected tainted blood from Arkansas prison inmates and shipped it to Canada has spread to Vince Foster -- U.S. President Bill Clinton's personal confidant who committed suicide in 1993.
Mr. Foster, a boyhood friend of Mr. Clinton's, was one of the president's most trusted advisers. As a corporate lawyer in Arkansas, he worked in the same law office as Hillary Rodham Clinton and became a close colleague of hers.
When Mr. Clinton left Arkansas for the White House in early 1993, he called on Mr. Foster -- known as an earnest individual with high ethical standards -- to join him as deputy White House counsel. Mr. Foster obliged, also remaining the Clintons' personal lawyer. Now, five years after his mysterious death, two developments have prompted questions about Mr. Foster's knowledge of the U.S. company's prison-blood collection scheme:
- There are signs that Mr. Foster tried to protect the company called Health Management Associates (HMA) more than a decade ago in a lawsuit.
- And a major U.S. daily newspaper recently reported that Mr. Foster may have been worried about the tainted-blood scandal, which was just emerging as a contentious issue in Canada, when he killed himself in July 1993.
Mr. Clinton was governor of Arkansas when the Canadian blood supply was contaminated in the early and mid-1980s. He was familiar with the operations of the now-defunct HMA, the Arkansas firm given a contract by Mr. Clinton's state administration to provide medical care to prisoners. In the process, HMA was also permitted by the state to collect prisoners' blood and sell it elsewhere.
HMA's president in the mid-1980s, Leonard Dunn, was a friend of Mr. Clinton's and a political ally. Later, Mr. Dunn was a Clinton appointee to the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission and he was among the senior members of Mr. Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial re-election team.
The contaminated prisoners' plasma -- used to create special blood products for hemophiliacs -- is believed to have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. As well, it's likely the plasma was contaminated with hepatitis C.
Any information linking Mr. Foster to HMA and its blood program is bound to raise more questions about how much Mr. Clinton knew.
Michael Galster, a medical practitioner who did contract work for the prison system, has revealed to the Citizen that Mr. Foster once approached him in the mid 1980s to ask for a favour.
At the time, Mr. Clinton's administration and HMA were facing a $12-million lawsuit from a prisoner whose infected leg had been amputated at the hip in 1982.
The inmate was claiming that poor medical care by an HMA doctor -- who had been working in the prison despite being denied a permanent licence to practice by the state medical board -- had resulted in the needless amputation.
Mr. Galster, an expert in prosthetics, says HMA's medical director had asked him to build a special artificial leg for the prisoner in the hope that it would lead to an out-of-court settlement. Mr. Galster refused to get involved, and was visited several weeks later at his office by Mr. Foster, who appealed again for his assistance.
"The purpose of his being there was to convince me to take this, smooth it over and everybody would be happy," says Mr. Galster, who has written a fictionalized account of the prison-blood collection saga, called Blood Trail.
"I refused him. He said, 'I understand your predicament, but this could make it difficult for you to get a future state contract.'
"If it's like the past state contracts I've had, I don't need any," Mr. Galster says he replied. "He (Foster) kind of laughed and said 'OK, I appreciate your time.' "
It was the only time the two met, but Mr. Galster now says he believes Mr. Foster was trying to protect both Mr. Clinton and HMA from public embarrassment.
The questions surrounding Mr. Foster became even more intriguing when, several days ago, the New York Post published an article entitled "The tainted blood mystery" by one of its columnists, Maggie Gallagher. She reported on how the Citizen had broken a lengthy story in mid-September about the Arkansas prison-blood scheme.
Most significantly, Ms. Gallagher wrote that the story suddenly cast new meaning upon "a strange little memory fragment" that had been "meaningless in itself."
Citing a source who asked not to be identified, Ms. Gallagher reported that a day or two after Mr. Foster died on July 20, 1993, someone called a little-known phone number at the White House counsel's office where Mr. Foster had worked.
"The man said he had some information that might be important," wrote Ms. Gallagher. "Something had upset Vince Foster greatly just days before he died. Something about 'tainted blood' that both Vince Foster and President Clinton knew about, this man said."
Mr. Foster's mysterious death spawned a political controversy from the moment that police, responding to an anonymous 911 caller, found his body in a national park in Washington, D.C.
Police concluded that Mr. Foster had stood there coatless in the late-afternoon heat, inserted the muzzle of an antique Colt 38. revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Immediately, conspiracy theorists began spreading rumours that Mr. Foster had been murdered. But independent counsel Robert Fiske (a special prosecutor who examined the Whitewater scandal before being replaced by Kenneth Starr) conducted his own review and agreed with police that it was suicide.
It was believed that Mr. Foster had been suffering from depression and was especially perturbed by a brewing scandal in which he was embroiled. In the so-called Travelgate fiasco, Clinton aides had fired several veteran White House travel-office employees as part of an alleged attempt to give the lucrative travel business to Arkansas cronies.
However, Ms. Gallagher's column has raised questions over whether Mr. Foster was distressed about something he knew regarding tainted blood, and whether this anxiety contributed to his suicide.
In Canada, the summer of 1993 was a critical period. A Commons committee, which had conducted a brief review of the tainted blood scandal, had just released its report in May. Its first recommendation called for a major "public inquiry" to conduct a "full examination of the events of the 1980s" when the Canadian blood supply became contaminated with AIDS.
Indeed, on Sept. 16 -- eight weeks after Foster's death -- the federal government announced the public inquiry, to be headed by Justice Horace Krever. During the course of his work, Justice Krever unearthed the Arkansas prison-blood collection scheme and wrote about it in his final report last year.
However, no mention was made of Mr. Clinton until last month's story in the Citizen, which drew on documents obtained from Arkansas State Police files.
Copyright 1998 The Ottawa Citizen
LOCH NESS MINISUB EXPEDITION PICKS A PASSENGER
PORTLAND, Maine:
The pursuit of one of this century's most enduring mysteries, the Loch Ness Monster, may be closer to being solved. Dan Scott Taylor, Jr.'s minisub expedition has picked internationally known cryptozoologist Loren Coleman to come along for the ride. Taylor, who built the original "yellow submarine" to seek Nessie in the 1969 expedition sponsored by World Book Encyclopedia, is building a bigger minisubmarine to "finish the job we set out to do in '69," notes Taylor. And he has invited Coleman along as a technical observer.
The Nessa, as the submarine will be christened, takes its name from the Gaelic Goddess of Water, Nessa, after whom the River Ness, Loch Ness, and the Monster, Nessie, were named. The Nessa Expedition plans to launch the minisub in June 1999. Nessie sightings go back at least to 565 A.D., and continue to this day. The Nessa Expedition will attempt to return with film, sonar and tissue sample proof of the creatures' existence.
In 1969, Dan Taylor operated his self-built, one-man sub, the Viperfish, in the murky waters of Loch Ness. Taylor soon discovered, despite hints of a couple intriguing encounters, that this earlier sub was too small, too slow and lacked the battery capacity to complete the mission. Taylor hopes to have more success with the Nessa, a larger, more mobile, swifter underwater craft. Taylor has sold his house, already sunk a quarter of a million dollars into the new adventure, and has been very busy working on completing the minisub's construction. His compelling story has been a focus of increasing media interest.
Taylor who was recently interviewed by NBC Dateline came away intrigued when the program did a national survey of marine biologists and cryptozoologists, and picked the passionate, scholarly professor Loren Coleman, a four decades veteran of cryptozoology research and pursuits, to be interviewed. Taylor talked to Coleman after the filming, and Taylor invited Coleman on board the sub in his quest of the Nessie animals.
As it turns out, Taylor discovered, Loren Coleman is a filmmaker, as well as an honorary member of several cryptozoological organizations, and a Life Member of the International Society of Cryptozoology. Coleman has been on several investigations for undiscovered species since the yeti and loch monsters caught his interest in 1960, leading him to travel throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Virgin Islands interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence of lake monsters, Sasquatch, black panthers, and other creatures.
Coleman contributes a regular cryptozoology column, "On the Trail," to a London-based magazine. He has written seven books on these mysteries, including a biography of Texan millionaire Tom Slick who searched at Loch Ness in 1937, a new field guide to Bigfoot due from Avon next Spring, and a cryptozoology handbook being published by Simon and Schuster during the summer of 1999.
Coleman says: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to search for the Loch Ness Monsters. It truly is something that every scientific cryptozoologist dreams about, and I'm overjoyed with Dan Taylor's invitation.
For further info, contact: Loren Coleman phone: 207-772-0245 email: LCOLEMAN1@maine.rr.com
Before the recent US bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan, Steamshovel posted the following in a review of David Hoffman's book The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror:
Readers might quibble about the assessment of guilt relative to right-wing militias or middle east terrorists, but few could argue that Hoffman's conclusions are not based on a wealth of evidence and informed reporting. In fact, Hoffman achieves a level of "triangulation of research" that is quite prescient in the context of the recent embassy bombings in Africa, particularly in light of finger-pointing toward Saudi engineer Osama bin Laden:
"In March of 1995, Israel's Shin Bet (General Security Services, Israel's equivalent to the FBI), arrested approximately 10 Hamas terrorists in Jerusalem, some of whom had recently returned from a trip to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida...interrogation of those suspects was thought to have revealed information concrning the plot to bomb the Murrah Building. The Shin Bet filed a warning with the Legal Attache (FBI) at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv as a matter of course. On April 20, the Israeli newspaper Yediot Arhonot wrote: Yesterday, it was made known that over the last few days, U. S. law enforcement agencies had received intelligence information originating in the Middle east, warning of a large terrorist attack on U.S. soil. No alert was sounded as a result of this information...the BND (German equivalent of the American CIA), also sent a warning to the U.S. State department. That was followed by a warning from the Saudis. A Saudi Major General...informed former CIA Counterterrorism Chief Vance Cannistraro, who in turn informed the FBI. There is a 302 (FBI report) in existence...the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service reported that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries--Afghani War veterans [like bin Laden, ed.]--to bomb targets in the U.S., one of which was the Alfred P. Murrah Building. They also advised the FBI that--as is often the case--the true identity of the sponsor may not have been revealed to the bombers."
Note that media have been describing Osama Ben Laden as an example of a new kind of transnational terrorist, "beholden to no nation or ideology, self-financed and savvy about weapons, tactics and technology." It sounds a bit like Casolaro's Octopus.
Osama Ben Laden has his sights set on the Saudis, of course, which provides another--albeit remote-thread to the Octopus research., via the Al Yamama contract umbrella. The Al Yamama contracts sustain the Saudi royal family in its corrupt wealth and keep the British aerospace industry in business. It's difficult to understand, but the Saudis buy substandard military hardware (planes, etc.) with loans from Britain itself that cover far more than the cost. The threat that Mohamed El Fayad posed to this arrangement was probably the reason behind the hit that killed his son and Princess Diana. One suspected architect of that possible assassination is El Fayad's brother-in-law, Adnan Khashoggi. Khashoggi spent much of his career developing the Al Yamama contracts, and Danny Casolaro was investigating him on the day he [Casolaro] was found dead.
Another more obscure aspect of this unifying conspiracy theory concerns biowarfare. A childhood friend of Khashoggi's headed one of the expeditions to the North Pole to recover RNA residue from the frozen corpses of the victims of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Another such expedition was mounted by the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. New Yorker covered this story last fall but for some reason it has emerged again in recent news reports.
Richard Sauder discovered that Ron Brown owned the patent for an AIDS-like retrovirus. One of those who died in the Kenya embassy bombing was a virus specialist from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, and another mysterious "administrative assistant" had previously almost died in a crash of a flight that she decided not to take at the last minute. A similar pattern happened to Mohammed Ferrat, an Algerian business associate of Ron Brown (note that Osama ben Laden also has many Algerian business contacts), who was scheduled but to travel on the flight that killed Brown but failed to show at the last minute. Ferrat later died on Flight 800. During the investigation of that disaster, the FBI gave Ferrat special attention, ostensibly because only his last name was listed on the passenger manifest.
In April, Kathleen Janoski, former chief forensic photographer for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, provided the Bob Grant Show (WOR, New York) eerie details in the following description of AFIP's handling of reports from investigators in Croatia about the condition of Ron Brown's body:
CALLER: And then Lt. Cogswell was dispatched to Croatia the next day, right?
JANOSKI: Well actually, Lt. Cogswell saw Brown's body briefly that Sunday. He left Dover Sunday and drove back to the Washington, DC area. They flew out of Washington Sunday night and they arrived in Germany on Monday.
CALLER: The point of my question was, at some point Cogswell called back to Dover and told (Col. William) Gormley (the ranking AFIP doctor at Dover) that he couldn't find anything at the crash site that would explain that headwound and told him that Brown should be autopsied. By that point, was Ron Brown's body still even at Dover? Could it still have been autopsied or had they already shipped the body out?
JANOSKI: The body had already been embalmed and it had been released to the funeral home. So at the time that conversation took place, Ron Brown's body was no longer at Dover.
CALLER: So Gormley never even intended to rely on what Dr. Cogswell had to tell him, did he?
JANOSKI: No, not at all. As a matter of fact Cogswell said he couldn't find any- thing to match the wound at the crash site. Everything was either too big or too small to have caused the headwound.
Steamshovel encourages readers to review Casolaro's interest in Wackenhut, the security firm that protects Area 51 and its involvement with the Cabazon/Wackenhut joint venture that involved the PROMIS software and led to the deaths of Cabazon tribal leaders.
From Private Eye, 21 August 98:
Home secretary Jack Straw is getting into bed with some rum types while building private prisons - people like the Florida-based Wackenhut Corporation. Straw has just announced that Wackenhut is preferred bidder to build and run one of his "secure training centres" for 12 to 14-year-olds in Medomsley, Co Durham. Wackenhut is also preferred bidder for a £32m y oung offenders' institute at Pucklehurst, near Bristol. It already operates at Lowndham Grange Prison and has been managing Doncaster jail since 1995. However, Wackenhut has had links with far right organisations and a history of practices that appear diametrically opposed to the few principles left to "new" Labour. It once made money from holding files on 2.5 million Americans which employers could check to ensure they had no "subversives" on their payroll. And when blacklisting was investigated in the 70s, Wackenhut donated its files to the Church League, a far-sight group which continued to check names.
Today Wackenhut's National Research Centre of Athens, Ohio, offers "pre-employment screening services". And when Aleyska, an oil consortium led by Exxon, was worried by the activities of an environmentalist, Charles Hamel, it hired Wackenhut. The company's agents followed Hamel but their intensive pursuit ended in a law suit. This led to a senate committee concluding that "Wackenhut agents engaged in a pattern of deceitful, grossly offensive and potentially, if not blatantly illegal conduct". Mr Straw's preferred bidder continues to offer extraordinary services in the US. Its "skilled investigators blend in with other workers to become management's eyes and ears in the workforce" and offer the latest "surveillance" devices.
However, Straw may still not save any money. In Texas, where prison privatisation is well-advanced, the department of criminal justice became so tired of being called out by private jails to chase escapers and quell riots it began charging for services. In 1997 Wackenhut paid $10,872 for guards, horses and tracking dogs to hunt an escaper.
Thanks to Mark Pilkington for the above.
UK News Electronic Telegraph Wednesday 6 May 1998, Issue 1076 DNA database of population by John Steele, Crime Correspondent A national database of DNA samples taken from the entire population was proposed yesterday by a leading police officer. The suggestion by Chief Supt. Peter Gammon, president of the influential Police Superintendents' Association of England and Wales, met with a cool response from Home Office officials and resistance from civil liberties groups. But Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, is prepared to meet Mr Gammon to discuss the issue, and the officer will press his case in a meeting tonight with Alun Michael, the Home Of fice minister.
Mr Gammon said last night that he recogonised the implications in terms of cost and fears for civil liberties, but he wanted to start a reasoned debate about the proposal. He said: "You have serial killers on the loose, serial rapists. If you can identify them at their first offence, we can save people's lives." Liz Parratt, campaigns manager for the human rights group, Liberty, said: "This proposal represents part of a drift towards policing by coercion."
4 January 1998: DNA tests for business men at risk of overseas kidnap 19 February 1997 - Electronic tagging urged for parents of unruly children 9 February 1997.- Howard to revive ID cards as vote-winner Thanks to Clay Douglas for the above. To find out more about Casolaro's work, read The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro, published by Feral House. Order information is available by clicking on the cover of the book, found on the Steamshovel main page.
A respected researcher notes that Monica Lewinsky is dressed in hat and coat while most in the crowd have on t-shirts and shorts. Many in the crowd are looking in wildly irrelevant directions (much more noticeable in other photos of this scene.) The figures in the foreground seem super- imposed. Could this be a Forest Gump-styled fake? How much of the Lewinsky scandal, or any public distraction, is created by media manipulators at extremely high tech work stations that put the wonders of home photoshop software to shame? It also calls into question the photograph below.
Clinton meets Kennedy.
From St. Louis Today, September 19-20, 1973: Even if President Nixon is forced to release the Watergate tapes, their contents may be worthless as evidence, the Southern California Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union believes. Citing studies that show how easy it is to alter tapes and how difficult it is to detect such editing, the group argues that the tapes should be destroyed.
New evidence to support pport the contention that tapes can be altered without detection comes from the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which prepared a special 30-minute tape containing interviews and a musical melody -- and then deleted, rearrranged and reconstructed the contents. Examination by 18 experts in North America and England proved that most changes, particularly deletions, were undetectable. The experts concluded that "at the present time, deception techniques are superior to detection rechniques."
The Canadian study is being used in another case where tape recordings have been introduced as evidence. In New Orleans, where District Attorney Jim Garrison is on trial on charges of bribery, Garrison's attorney, F. Lee Bailey, has challenged the admissibility of taped evidence on the grounds that tapes can be altered without detection.
Garrison, who came to national prominence by challengeing the conclusions of the Warren Commission's investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, contends that he is being framed and that high government officials are "out to get me."
"Don't shoot this pope! I have to spy on him for the Stasi!" Alois Esterman might have uttered something similar when he jumped on the popemobile to shield John Paul II from any additional bullets. Would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca already had hit JP2 in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981, but Esterman's subsequent actions earned special notice in the eulogy he received from Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Angelo Sodano. According to recent reports, Esterman and his wife were murdered by a lone nut, a 23 year old vice corporal in the Swiss guard named Cedric Tornay. The story goes that Tornay was distraught about not receiving an award. Now the Berlin Kurier, a German newspaper, reports that Esterman began spying on the pope for East Germany that very year, after having contacted him as early as 1979. After killing his superior officer and wife, Tornay ostensibly shot and killed himself. The implications and permutations of these deaths have yet to be analyzed, but the family of Cedric Tornay has already claimed that the Vatican is witholding the whole truth.
Readers following the anthrax-terror arrests in Las Vegas must, as usual, read through the news to get to the bottom of it. Even some of the conspiracy net chatters and web pages have missed a big point--the connection to Rife technology. In the 1930s, Dr. Royal Raymond Rife created a nuclear magnetic resonance plasma beam vacuum tube which can be tuned to destroy cancer and disease cells. Ronald Rockwell, who finked on Larry Wayne Harris and his Mormon ex-bishop patron, William Leavitt, is heir to Rife's work. Rockwell gained this distinction after a death-bed agreement with John Crane, the co-author of a book that revived interest in Rife in 1987. Leavitt apparently offered Rockwell $20m for some latter-day version of the Rife resonance technology. Steamshovel recently learned that Leavitt also is represented by Lamond Mills, the same ex-U.S. Attorney who represented by Bo Gritz in the late 1980s.
That's a stiff price tag for a 1930s cancer cure that many argue cannot possibly work. Why would Rockwell turn it down? When linked with modern magnetic resonance technology (what MRIs are made of), promoters of the Rife device say it has the potential to treat anthrax infection en masse, with rooms full of people, maybe even military troops. Coincidentally, the latest issue of Nexus (Vol 5, #2, 2-3/98)--issued before the arrests--includes an article on Royal Raymond Rife and his work by a chiropractor who has modernized it.
The news media identify Rockwell simply as a Las Vegas businessman who claimed to have invented a new technology designed to electronically neutralize dangerous toxins without the use of pharmaceuticals or vaccines. Harris and Leavitt were on their way to a public forum in Florida to discuss this when the FBI picked them up. Harris, of course, previously had been arrested for possession of freeze-dried bubonic plague.
A longer article on this by Kenn Thomas will appear in a future issue of Fortean Times.
In Waco, TX, Jason Leigh, a well-known UFO researcher, surrendered Sunday evening, March 8 in Waco, TX, after a 12 hour standoff involving his concern over the plights of US veterans. Leigh took footage of UFO in Roswell a couple of years ago and has been consulted by many research groups and media outlets, including the Sightings program. Last summer, while covering the 50th anniversary of Roswell, the folks at ParaScope invited Leigh out to its makeshift compound at the Roswell County Fairgrounds. See the ParaScope site for an upcoming report.
"I've got to do something to save this guy. He's an intelligent guy. He's got terrible weaknesses, but so does most of his generation, so--you know, why pick on him?" --Lyndon LaRouche on Bill Clinton
October 24th1999
Noon
Steps of the Capitol Building
Washington DC
America is America because it’s in a state of perpetual revolution. It has learned over the years to absorb every extreme into its mainstream culture. Individuality is praised while slogans like “dare to be different” are the kudos of its media campaigns. Our Constitution has allowed us such a luxury. But no massive paradigm shift takes place in this country until or unless its people assemble in sufficient numbers in Washington DC. That’s liberty and true democracy in action. It was the case for the civil liberties movement, demanding an end to the Vietnam war, shutting down nukes, attention for AIDS, all these issues and causes mobilized millions of people on the Mall to tip the scales in favor of reason and common sense. But lately there hasn’t been any great catalyst. The Million Man March and the Peacekeepers don’t really count. They were more about style than substance.
We’ve all been too busy surfing the web and networking online to realize what we are doing is not working. It’s just like being on the phone. So while we weren’t paying close attention, the real world outside cyberspace just got worse. It’s as if America has left the rest of the world behind in its cultural evolution, and now we’re faced with an international order controlling our politicians and our corporations, wanting to bring America down because the secrets we keep scare them. And rightly so…
Strange things are flying in our skies. Rumors of extraordinary technologies, louder than X-Files fiction, can no longer be brushed off as wishful thinking. It’s come to our realization that what we were fighting for back in the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s was just the tip of the iceberg, that military secrets run deeper and darker than we dared possible. We couldn’t or wouldn’t admit the truth to ourselves; our government had run away from us, and created its own parallel universe to the tune of billions of tax payer dollars, quietly funneled into black budgets, building underground cities all over the world.
It wouldn’t be quite so dramatic if by doing so, the Powers That Be and the Status Quo weren’t perpetuating an oil-based economy damaging the very air we breathe at the expense of all life on earth. Ever since Earth Day 1970 the environmental movement has been up against a foe, an enemy, an obstacle, call it what you will, which we’ve never been able to identify. A resistance running deep as an undercurrent against change, which to all should have simply been self-evident. But there was more to it than met the eye. Not only did the financial temptation of keeping the old machinery oiled and running have the upper hand, but a quasi-religious attachment to post-industrial philosophy has prevented serious change at the root base of the problem. It’s even visible in the lore of so-called “free energy” or “new energy” advocates who see in a turn-of-the-century hero like Nikola Tesla a future that never was instead of a possible one. They celebrate his forgotten inventions instead of following the money and paper trail that could lead to where they might be today.
Over 10.000 scientific documents are classified every day. It would come to no surprise for most of us to know that since all these technologies are kept under wraps for their destructiveness, along with them disappear their beneficial potential. It’s not far fetched to wonder if a great part of our environmental, or medical problems, didn’t already have their solutions built into those problems before they were so methodically suppressed. It is to that end that the entire National Security Act has come into scrutiny by some members of the House and Senate under the leadership of Senator Moynihan.
The Rally To End Secrecy was already in the works when his work came to light. The rally plans are an offshoot from the March For Peaceful Energy that was held last year on the steps of the Capitol Building on October 24th 1998. We want to bring national attention to the fact that secrecy has gotten out of hand and needs to be not only curtailed, but also completely reassessed. In the past, a timid attempt at a rally to end UFO secrecy held in DC was foiled by low turnout. The 50th anniversary celebration at Roswell degenerated into a carnival, thanks to spoilers from the intelligence community who wants to preserve the zany aspect of the UFO community intact. It is after all the perfect cover for testing experimental aircraft.
This is why we are asking you, in the alternative media community, who frequently address issues such as these, to promote, publicize and assist us in building momentum for this event, so that once and for all, those who have kept us in the dark can be made accountable for their motives.
Remy Chevalier Rally To End Secrecy endsecrecy@hotmail.com
Allow me a moment to take you far from the Patterson Film, which few in the public really care about day to day, to a topic that is on the mind of many around the globe - AIDS. The news today, about the link between chimps and AIDS, could affect cryptozoologists more deeply, in the long-run, than debunkers and hoax claims about the 1967 film. Let me explain:
While the following articles point to humans killing or eating chimpanzees for food as the means by which Homo sapiens got the HIV virus from Pan troglodytes troglodytes, a murky and perhaps absurd question must be raised.
As Dr. Beatrice Hahn has noted, while chimps have long been suspected as the source, "there have been a lot of loose ends that made people uncomfortable drawing that conclusion." Is it an illogical jump that this happened because of sexual contact between chimps and humans? Will this new link be seen as as kind of "open-season" on acquiring chimps for research, vaccines, or worse - or killing them out of fear? And what of gorillas? Or Sasquatch? When Bigfoot is fully discovered, will the then remembered infrequently-reported kidnapping and sexual contact between humans and Oh-Mahs, Ucus and others be blamed for the spread of AIDS?
I think we have to look at such news events as having farflung implications for cryptozoology, on levels we can't even imagine, yet.
Loren Coleman
HIV ORIGIN IS LINKED TO CHIMPS FINDING MAY BE STEP TOWARD DEVELOPMENT OF VACCINE Chicago Tribune, 1 February 1999 By Jeremy Manier,Tribune Staff Writer. Tribune staff writer Abdon M. Pallasch contributed to this report.
In a finding that helps resolve the longstanding mystery of how the virus that causes AIDS first infected humans, a team of researchers announced on Sunday that the major strain of the virus almost certainly came from a type of African chimpanzee.
The results may one day yield insight into why chimpanzees do not get ill from the simian form of the virus, while the human strains are deadly.
In addition, the findings should help scientists understand how HIV developed and continues to mutate in infected people. Such knowledge is a necessary step toward the elusive goal of fashioning vaccines for the ever-changing virus, experts said.
"If we know where we've been, we can tell where we're going," said Steven Wolinsky, an AIDS researcher at Northwestern University Medical School.
Although many scientists have suggested that the virus was passed to humans from animals, until now there was no convincing proof that chimpanzees were the source, according to Dr. Beatrice Hahn, of the University of Alabama-Birmingham, who led the researchers and who addressed the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections at the Chicago Sheraton.
"We never knew for sure whether (the source) was chimps or another species," said Hahn, noting that monkeys and apes also had been proposed as the source of the epidemic. "Now we know it was the chimps."
Exactly how the virus jumped from chimp to humans remains a mystery, though Hahn proposes that humans originally were infected while hunting chimps for food in Central Africa.
Hahn's discovery of HIV's primate origins began with a chimp named Marilyn.
A research animal taken from an unknown location in Africa in 1959, Marilyn died in 1985 after giving birth to stillborn twins. She tested positive for the simian form of HIV, one of a handful of chimpanzees ever to show signs of contracting the virus naturally.
But laboratory techniques available at the time could not isolate Marilyn's virus, Hahn said. So parts of Marilyn's body were frozen and sent to Dr. Larry Arthur, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute Laboratory at Ft. Detrick, Md.
"He stuffed it in his freezer and it sat there for 10 years. Then one day he had to clean out his freezer, and he found this big bag of chimpanzee parts. He knew about my research, so he called me." said Hahn, who was studying the primate origins of HIV.
"On occasion you get lucky," she said.
Using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method of amplifying traces of genetic material that became widespread only after 1985, Hahn's team was able to isolate Marilyn's virus and compare it with three other samples of the HIV-like virus that infects chimpanzees, identified as SIVcpz, shorthand for simian immuno virus from chimpanzees.
The results, to be published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, showed that Marilyn's virus was closely related to strains found in two other primates belonging to the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes, which were taken from the Central African country of Gabon.
Those strains also were similar to HIV-1, the most common strain of the virus that afflicts humans. HIV-1 is thought to have originated among humans in the same region of Central Africa that forms the natural range of Marilyn's subspecies. The fourth infected chimp, which had a very different form of SIVcpz, belonged to a different chimpanzee subspecies native to East Africa.
Statistical tests indicated that Marilyn's form of the virus and the two samples taken from the Gabon chimps formed a common genetic lineage with HIV-1. Those varieties of chimp virus are more similar to the human virus than they are to the virus taken from the East African chimp subspecies.
Previous research by Hahn and others already had shown that the less common human strain of HIV-2 had its source in sooty mangabeys, a monkey often kept as a pet in West Africa.
Additional genetic tests convinced Hahn that humans living in Central Africa contracted HIV-1 from the chimp subspecies to which Marilyn belongs.
"She filled in the blanks, the missing links," said Douglas Richman, a researcher at the University of California at San Diego and head of the retrovirus conference where Hahn gave her paper Sunday.
Northwestern's Wolinsky co-authored an article in the journal Science last year that used genetic techniques to conclude that HIV first entered the human population sometime between 1927 and 1942. It's possible that chimps passed on the virus during that time span, though Wolinsky said the connection cannot yet be proved.
Because the simian virus taken from the two chimp subspecies is so different, Hahn thinks it may have been present in chimpanzees even before the chimp groups diverged, several hundred thousand years ago.
That leaves open the mystery of why HIV became a widespread human problem only in the last few decades, infecting up to 30 million people worldwide.
However the virus was spread, Wolinsky said it's probably no coincidence that the rise of HIV has occurred just as humans have increased trade through parts of Africa that are home to the chimpanzee.
That's dangerous for chimpanzees whose habitats are being destroyed, and for humans who may be exposed to new diseases.
"As contacts with animals in these areas become more common, these events might occur more often," Wolinsky said.
Carol Rosin vitae: Founder, Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space, ISCOS First woman exec in an aerospace industry Spokesperson for the late Dr. Wernher von Braun Space and missile defense consultant who helped start the movement to ban weapons from space, who started the "the Leaky Umbrella Campaign," the "SOS-Save Outer Space" Campaign, etc..: "Rosin is regarded to be the original political architect of the movement to stop the SDI and ASAT's," a quote from "Military Space" magazine. Testified numerous times before the Congress about this issue.
From the mailbag of Stop Cassini: Carol Rosin responds (#1)
To: "Russell D. Hoffman"
#87 is pretty funny to me. I mean truly laughable. Puts a sick smile on my
face.
Here's my answer to a question that an author we know just asked me
about...why the media didn't cover the funding of the Star Wars and related
programs that just happened.
This answer is relevant to all this, really:
Note, this is what I've been telling you would happen if WE didn't take a
position from the beginning to first ban all space-based weapons instead of
focusing on the nuclear issues: We have now witnessed the first tier of the
Star Wars space-based weapons system funded. And, the media completely
missed the fact that Clinton made an important trade-off which allows him to
stay in office in return for his support for the first phase of the Star
Wars funding and a few wars thrown in. Yes, everybody is happy now. You
remember that candidate who promised that if elected he'd stop Star Wars.
Well, what's one more lie...it just got missed, so what.
Of course, this whole story of the Clinton trade-off slid by the media.
Hidden perfectly. No protest. And the spin masters call it something other
than what it really is. They add that it isn't what Reagan really wanted
(though in reality, it is the first part of it...soon to build momentum so
that none of it can be stopped). It must be so utterly boring to the media
(no sex, no blood and guts, yet) that while it did hit the news, they barely
notice that it is often called a Ballistic Missile Defense System or a
Global Protection System instead of a Strategic Defense Initiative. They
say it isn't the Star Wars program as Reagan called for. And, either the
public believes them, or wants it, or doesn't care...not because of a media
error, but because of the lack of information, misinformation, ignorance or
apathy.
We all know Clinton lies, and we all know he is now tied into this
space-based weapon system that is absolutely unnecessary, unworkable,
destabalizing, unwanted, untestible, dangerous, draining, and too
costly...and won't stop a suitcase bomb or a bacteria warfare. Yet, there is
no outcry when it is funded ... those who do know about it are afraid to
lose their jobs or are desperate for funding so they will support anything
as long as they get the money.
Though we have only a teenie window of opportunity in which we could steer
things easily into a direction that most everyone would love instead of into
this one that will kill us all, the war game on earth has now officially
been escalated into space...funding-wise.
You see, there isn't anything new that is really attractive to the media.
There is no dramatic or creative talk of how we could transform the war game
of technologies and mindsets, the old game, into a space game with the
highest of technologies and consciousness... without losing any jobs or
profits.
If there was any talk at all to the media, it has mostly been centered on
the stopping of underground nuclear testing, the stopping of the Cassini
mission, or on other secondary bandaids related to the nuclear issue.
Sometimes those who protested said they were against the militarization of
space...even though space is already militarized and even though the
military has a totally different role in space that benefits us all...IF we
don't put weapons in space. The foundation, the premise upon which all this
was happening, the weaponization of space, was confused as it was presented
to the media, at best, and at worst was put on the back burner as an issue.
There has been nothing new, recently, in the space conversation that would
attract the media to this story...except the funding that has been recently
allotted.
The media would have been attracted if a worldwide movement had begun to ban
all space-based weapons...to sign a verifiable treaty to ban all weapons in
space. This movement, which would call for the ban while simultaneously
calling for an expanded world cooperative space program to replace the war
industry, would have caused the media to take notice and to track the space
related nuclear issue in a unique way...to focus on alternatives instead of
on the usual anti-nuke protests.
But, the nuclear protestors who took on the space issue didn't want to take
on the space issue as a primary issue...and so they became part of the old
game that always did fit. Protests and reactions to what the military
industrial complex produced.
Unfortunately, these protesters could seem to relate to a positive
vision...the one that showed how we could/can create a healthy and
prosperous planet with more jobs and profits, more products and services, a
stimulated economy with a real security system based on cooperative world
space military, civilian and commercial technologies and services that would
provide an abundance of unlimited benefits and opportunities to all the
world's peoples. We could apply these services and technologies directly to
solve our earthbound problems...including those of the environment, humans
and other animals...as we evolve into the universes. All of this can only be
created by transforming the war game into a space game. But, just as there
are vested interests in the nuclear and weapons industry, there are vested
interests in those who work to try to "stop" them.
It doesn't surprise me one bit that there is no media attention. Once ISCOS,
the only group who focused only on this space weapons and alternatives issue
including on the stimulation of relevant action disappeared, and got NO
recognition or support from those who supposedly care about this issue, the
"egos" rose to the surface to give their speeches and sell their books
mostly about why nukes in space are a bad thing. Most of the "peace in
space" activists, the handful of them, bumped each other out of the
limelight with their infighting. Why would the media be attracted to this?
No wonder the media wasn't interested. They have plenty of hot issues to
cover.
The media has been given little or no information except from a small few
authors and so-called experts...hardly enough to attract or maintain their
attention. There are no dramatic coalition statements to make and no
individuals working with the high level decision makers who are at the helm
... and so the small and splintered coalition doesn't attract any media
attention or even educate them.
Of course, there are the scientist groups and a few peace groups who
continue to say they are against space weapons and the nuclear technogies
they deem dangerous while they compromise in their positions, as they lie to
their subscribers about what they are REALLY going for in the
Congress...taking compromised positions so that they will "look credible"
and be "politically effective," neither of which they are. Then there are
the space advocates pushing for commercial and civilian ventures in
legislation, not acknowledging the inexorable link to the military ventures
... in fact, never never mentioning "space-based weapons" for fear of losing
their funding or jobs. And, I mean, 12 people protesting on a launch pad ...
people who never did see the whole picture and, therefore, didn't call for
the priority issue (a ban on space-based weapons...which would have put a
literal lid on all this and would have called for a new way of thinking
entirely) ... well, gimmie a break. Why would the media cover such a weak
picture.
Finally we see, WAG THE DOG style, the truth that isn't being addressed ...
more wars to cover-up what is really going on plus Clinton trading space
weapons funding for being able to remain in his seat. The media, and most
everyone, missed this completely. The trade-off Clinton made...with the
lack of media attention, is what makes me realize it's about time to throw
in the towel. There is no awakening ... no shift in consciousness or
awareness...and we are all about to die...geeze, I used to be such a
positive person.... But, clearly, this story was completely missed by the
media...and, how could they know about it?
This trade-off, more weapons, now the first tier of space weapons being
funded midst the wars and the cigars, was not noticed by the media. The
rest of the story is old news. This is the new news that should have hit
the media fan. The media doesn't seem to realize that the space weapons
funding so satisfies the Republicans that they will do their Senate hearings
(mainly to satisfy their media image and constituents) but that there is no
need, now, to replace him. Now, the Democrats and the Republicans are the
same...all want to tear down the forests, have lots of wars so we can
further build what is already the largest R&D program in recorded history,
the space-based weapons program...well, hmmmm, they are non-partisan on one
issue. They are all now committed to continuing the destruction and
suffering on earth by escalating the arms race into space...always to "seize
the high ground." This could include an escalation of dangerous nuclear
technologies...as the mindset hasn't changed one bit. As was said in a
strategy paper I submitted, years ago, to Congress as a supplement to one of
my Congressional testimonies on this issue, words I found that were designed
by the Heritage Foundation, included our USA intention to "steal the
language of the arms control community" as they build this space-based
weapon system "regardless of the merits or non-merits of the system." In
other words, the trade-off gets lost in the news intentionally, and almost
everyone gets what they want. At least, that's how the media must be seeing
it. They sure aren't seeing any protest or new suggestions.
With the lack of media attention and public action, it won't surprise me at
all when we very soon shall see our bodies and environment continue to
break down, and soon will see our children's faces melt, due to lack of
intelligent attention and funding on important issues as brains and money
get further dedicated to developing this next phase of unlimited extended
warfare into that place above all our heads. If we survive much longer,
we'll get a chance to see hundreds of battlestations with thousands of
weapons pointed down our throats. Meanwhile, we'll be satisfied with the
usual crumbs, called "spin-offs," of the war gamers. So, why would the media
be attracted to this story? Boring.
The sex and war stories are humorous and dramatic. The public laps them up,
while claiming they aren't interested. The world laughs at the US media, but
the world media, too, has nothing more to project. We've got zillions of
channels on TV to turn to if we don't like these stories, to fill our minds.
Space ... so what ... there are plenty of movies about it that are similar
to the real life ones.
Until we, who understand that we can have peace on earth through peace in
space, that we can survive in harmony and love in the light, by becoming
aware of what can be done only right NOW to ban weapons from space and to
build world cooperative space military, civilian and commercial
ventures...until we focus on this with all our hearts and minds on educating
the media about what space is all about (not just to build commercial
ventures or just to build Star Wars)...we deserve to get little or no media
coverage.
If we do something dramatic, build a movement about transforming the
military industrial complex and relationships around the world (without
threatening jobs, politics or the economy...and with stimulating all of them
in a most positive way), until we reach the decision makers with what is
feasible that we want in our space frontier that will benefit all of us,
until we call for a worldwide ban on all space-based weapons and
simultaneously for ideas from everyone of all ages around the world about
what we can do in space together ... we won't get the kind of media
attention space deserves.
Listen, I could go public about the [men] I slept with while I
worked in Washington. But, at this point, that story is told. It's done. We
all know this part, now. This story is just more of the same. What's
exciting about the media saturating the world with this story is that now,
maybe now, the people of the world will be more receptive to a brand new story
that will stimulate them with even more sex appeal and fun.
Look at it this way, Clinton has given us a gift...this cover-up/trade-off
story. It's certainly a complex, exciting, sexy, dramatic, humorous story
worthy of media attention. It's riveted the world. And, best of all, we
should now be able to see that the media might just want to see this next
level of truth...the trade-off...and how it leads us into an entirely new
way of thinking...a cosmic way. We've linked the world to this story. Now,
with the space issue emerging in the middle of it, if we raise the
issue...the world might just grasp it and start an entire movement to cause
a huge change that would allow our species and many others to survive and
relish in the Space Age together on this Earth. And, the media who "get it,"
who help bring the space piece to the awareness of the world public and
decision makers, would also help us get the word out...about the importance
of cooperative space R&D to our survival on earth! Don't you think the media
would love to participate in telling a story like this one?
From the mailbag: Carol Rosin responds (#2)
This newsletter content doesn't surprise me at all. I've been trying to tell
everyone that if we don't ban weapons from space as our primary focus...and
stop trying to stop these nuclear tests and launches (or at least put them
as a secondary issue), we won't stop the industry from putting either
weapons or nukes in space. But no, no one would listen. The "coalition" of
anti-nuke activists do it again...lose. It's kinda like going to a
surgeon...if you go to a surgeon, they recommend surgery. If you gather
anti-nuclear types, you get a focus on nukes. Unfortunately, from one who
came out of the military industrial complex strategy department, that isn't
the game they are playing. They are playing the game of going into
space...and nukes are only a small part of it. They'll hide the rest by
focusing the public and Congressional eyes on the civilian and commercial
uses...and the experts in that field are "afraid" to mention, let alone be
against, nuclear technologies in space. Their jobs and funding are at stake.
Meanwhile, just as I thought, we're going to have lots of weapons and
nuclear technologies in that space above all our heads. Why? Because even
though there is a TEENIE window open of opportunity in which we could get
the word out, the Coalition Against the Weaponization and Nuclearization of
Space fits their protest perfectly into the game by continuing to emphasize
the WRONG protest and NO solutions that are realistic. I mean, these are the
same people who think we should build roads and schools instead of
guns...duh. That ain't where the industry is headed...wrong argument, again.
As usual, nothing new is vote or media worthy coming from the so-called
coalition who have their hearts in the right place but who have their egos
confused with their minds and their old way of thinking and acting. And so,
the game goes on as usual. Just a bit of sex scandles and more wars to
cover-up...WAG THE DOG style. And the game simply accelerates as it
escalates into the space frontier. Guess I'll go to my grave not wanting to
say outloud, "I told you so."
Will our group wake up? Doubtful. Too busy selling their anti-nuclear books
and protesting nukes. Too bad. We could have banned all weapons from the
space frontier, thus CAUSING another way of "THINKING" to emerge.
But since WE don't allow our spirits to guide us rather than our egos, we
continue the fight in the same earthbound way against issues that will not
be dented, without incorporating a cosmic consciousness, without putting a
literal lid on the reasons we "need" nukes in space, and without calling for
worldwide space military, commercial and civilian space cooperative R&D and
ventures that could have taken us, Akido style, into the millennium in a way
worthy of the Space Age.
So, I think it's time to focus on whatever makes you happy in life. We are
all going to die sooner than we thought. And these words come from a former
optimist.
AND IN CONCLUSION...
Do we all feel better now? Safer, more at ease? Do we feel like we've done
enough for our children, and our children's children, today? Have we served
the human race to the best of our ability? Pass this newsletter on. There
is someone out there who has not read it.
Please send any news directly to the editor at the email address given
below. Please feel free to post these newsletters anywhere you feel it's
appropriate! You can send them to news media too! (If possible, please do
not send or post these newsletters anonymously.) THANKS!!!
Welcome new subscribers!
Thanks for reading,
Sincerely,
Russell D. Hoffman
rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com
Editor
STOP CASSINI Newsletter
Webmaster
STOP CASSINI Web Site
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/cassini.htm
CANCEL CASSINI
Arlen Wilson, wife of Illuminatus! author Robert Anton Wilson, died peacefully in her sleep on May 22. RAW says "don't worry about me." Steamshovel shares in the grief over the passing of this great woman.
According to Art Bell, Terrence McKenna has a brain tumor.
Terrence had a seizure and was airlifted to a hospital, suffering cardiac
arrest in transit, like Richard Hoagland. The report described a 1 inch by 2.5 centimeter
tumor in a frontal lobe. Bell initated a prayer effort, which is also the way
Bell does "cloudbusting."
Kansas City investigators report that a feathered costume may have caused a cable to malfunction, initiating the fall that killed Owen Hart, a wrestler for the WWF. Other rumors include suggestions of murder by dominance-degradation elements among WWF executive elements.
The 34-year-old Hunt plummetted 90-feet from the top Kemper Arena in Kansas City on May 23. Kansas City police say feathers from Hart's
A quick release mechanism jammed on a harness holding the wrestler because of the feathers. The harness was to lower Hart into the ring, as part of an effort to humiliate him. Dominance, degradation, humiliation--themes that help explain recent affiliation between the wrestling world and politics.
In 1989 the Globe tabloid newspaper reprinted charges made by
former CIA agent Robert Morrow that Pakistani native Khalid Khawar (named
Ali Ahmand by Morrow) assassinated Robert Kennedy with a gun disguised
as a camera, on behalf of the shah of Iran. Morrow made the claim in his 1988
book, The Senator Must Die. Khawar filed a defamation suit that ended with
a $1,175,000 award. The California Supreme Court upheld the judgement last
year and on May 17, the US Supreme Court let the verdict stand "without
comment or dissent." The decision ignored arguments by the Globe's lawyers
that the case "seriously threatens the right of the media to accurately report
previously published allegations of public concern''--which would include book
reviews as well as news items based on controversial books--should be protected
against libel lawsuits.
Mr. Hitchens had a brush with high notoriety (although already rightfully
well-known and respected) a few weeks ago when he reported that he heard
the story about Monica Lewinsky stalking Clinton from Sydney Blumenthal,
the White House conspiracy theorist (known as "GK" for "Grassy Knoll").
Clinton once told Blumenthal that he felt trapped, like the character Rubashov
in Arthur Koestler's novel, Darkness At Noon.
Interestingly, in a recent column for The Nation, Mr. Hitchens mentions
that one of the Serb anti-fascist internationalists he stays in contact with is
Dusan Makavejev, the filmmaker responsible for WR-Mysteries of the Organism,
a fairly wretched misfire of a documentary (identified by Hitchens as "one of
the defining movies of the seventies") that nevertheless contains the only
available footage of Wilhelm Reich. At one time, Reich and Koestler shared
a red cel.
Arlen Wilson Passes
McKenna Medical Worry
Feather Costume Contributed to Wrestler's Death
Supreme Court Lets Morrow Verdict Stand
Hitchens, Koestler and Reich
In a brief conversation outside the Midnight Special bookstore in Los Angeles,
critic Chistopher Hitchens offered his opinion that recent charges of rape made
against the renown anti-Communist and paranormalist Arthur Koestler are true.
Apparently Hitchens knows one of the accusers, Jill Craigie, and does not doubt
her word. Craigie's word includes the detail that she had forced Koestler out of
her building, let him back in and then the rape occurred. Hitchens noted that
he has recently finished a column about this and Steamshovel looks forward to
his full analysis.
Arthur Koestler
Little Letter from the UK
Lobster's Robin Ramsay sent this missive:
Hull, Tuesday
Dear Kenn,
There's a book out about the Rhodes scholars:
Cowboys into Gentlemen, (sic!) Rhodes Scholars, Oxford and the
Creation of an American Elite by Thomas J. Schaeper and Kathleen
Schaeper (Berghahn Books, NY and Oxford, 1998). Not a very good book,
though full of interesting fragments on US Rhodies. In chapter 15 the
authors consider the conspiracy theories around Rhodies, miss out
Quigley! but say this on p 338:
"Most of the leading exponents of this conspiracy theory are little
known to the general public, but they have thousands of devoted
fanatical fellow-believers. From the late 1940s to the present day
they have churned out thousands (??? -RR) of books and newsletters
claiming to provide incontrovertible proof of their charges. Two of
the most famous books are Rose L. Martin's Fabian Freeway: High Road
to Socialism in the USA (1989) and Gary Allen's None Dare Call it
Conspiracy (1971). One of the more influential periodicals espousing
these views is aptly titled Steamshovel."
The aptly bit I don't get ...old fashioned? Heavy industry?
Blue collar?
Best,
Robin
Right: Steamshovel's Kenn Thomas, ready to heave some heavy industry
at Schaeper and Schaeper.
Hallellujah Harold Weisberg!
Kris Millegan reminded Steamshovel Press to take some
space to celebrate the achievement of Harold Weisberg,
long-time luminary of JFK research. In April, Harold and
his wife Lil reached their 86th and 87th birthdays. Weisberg
wrote the Whitewash series and the assassination. He has
otherwise been an articulate spokesman for the truth
and a guiding light in the social/political darkness of the
decades that followed the assassination. Steamshovel
wishes the Weisbergs many more happy years, secure in the
knowledge that their contribution is known, has been understood
and the US--bad as it may be--is a better place because of them.
Genuine heros! Please send cards and letters of love to them
at 7627 Old Receiver Road, Frederick, MD 21702.
Still Shrouded
Skeptics want to conclude that Carbon 14 tests already performed
on the Shroud of Turin conclusively prove it to be a medieval forgery.
Not so says organic chem prof James S. Chickos. Introduction of
molten silver and water from the effort to combat a fire suffered
by the supposed burial cloth of Jesus contaminated the sample, as
many have pointed out. Chickos, however, has another angle:
chemical changes in the linen through the introduction of long
carbon chains found in lipids from the tallow in candles found
on the shroud. "Our hypothesis is that the tallow from candle
wax reacted chemically with the glucose to produce an ester
of cellulose, thereby adding to the carbon base," says Chickos.
Ever notice how books written years ago often make for more satisfying reading than the bulk of what is being churned out today? This seems to be true particularly when it comes to UFOS. Nostalgics will be delighted with Flying Saucers Over Los Angeles, a previously unpublished student dissertation written by DeWayne B. Johnson in 1950. Kenn Thomas, editor of Steamshovel Press, stumbled on this valuable historical document while researching the controversial Maury Island affair.
The well-researched manuscript contains reports from 1947-1950, a time when America's skies seemed infested with UFOS. Johnson focuses on Los Angeles in 1950, before the flurry of saucer books published from the mid- 1950s through the 1960s. Of particular note is information Johnson gleaned from a friendly United Press International correspondent about Kenneth Arnold, whose 1947 "flying saucer" sighting near Mt. Rainier kicked off the modern era in ufology. These early interviews with Arnold portray him as a paranoid man, irrationally worried about hidden microphones, who believed the saucers were somehow connected to a rash of mystery submarine reports off the U.S. coast. Johnson presents an impartial face as he seeks explanations, giving consideration to hoaxes, secret government projects, extraterrestrial theories, and psychosocial factors. Debunkers have their say, no matter how convoluted their logic. One Australian physiologist, for example, endorses the idea that UFO reports are caused by the effect of "red corpuscles ... passing in front of the retina." Flying Saucers Over Los Angeles is lav- ishly illustrated with vintage saucer material and an eye-popping color section of archival FATE covers and UFO photos. UFO historians will treasure this superb chronology of the events that marked the beginning of ufology. - Peter Jordan