The strange case of Paul Hellyer

Paul Theodore Hellyer, PC (born 6 August 1923) is a Canadian engineer, politician, writer and commentator who has had a long and varied career. He is the longest serving current member of the Privy Council of Canada, just ahead of Prince Philip.

As Canadian Minister of National Defence in the cabinet of Lester B Pearson, Hellyer oversaw the drastic and controversial integration and unification of the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force into a single organization, the Canadian Forces.

Hellyer contested the 1968 Liberal leadership election, placing second on the first ballot, but slipped to third on the second and third ballots, and withdrew to support Robert Winters on the fourth ballot, in which Pierre Trudeau won the leadership. He served as Trudeau's Transport Minister, and was Senior Minister in the Cabinet, a position similar to the current position of Deputy Prime Minister.

In early September 2005, Hellyer made headlines by publicly announcing that he believed in the existence of UFOs. On 25 September 2005, he was an invited speaker at an exopolitics conference in Toronto, where he told the audience that he had seen a UFO one night with his late wife and some friends. He said that, although he had discounted the experience at the time, he had kept an open mind to it. He said that he started taking the issue much more seriously after watching ABC's Peter Jennings' UFO special in February 2005.

Watching Jennings' UFO special prompted Hellyer to read U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso's book The Day After Roswell, about the Roswell UFO Incident, which had been sitting on his shelf for some time. Hellyer told the Toronto audience that he later spoke to a retired U.S. Air Force general, who confirmed the accuracy of the information in the book. In November 2005, he accused U.S. President George W. Bush of plotting an "Intergalactic War". The former defence minister told an audience at the University of Toronto:

    "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning... The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change:

    "I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation...that could be a way to save our planet...We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough."

In an interview with RT (formerly Russia Today) in 2014, Hellyer said that at least four species of aliens have been visiting Earth for thousands of years, with most of them coming from other star systems, although there are some living on Venus, Mars and Saturn’s moon. According to him, they "don't think we are good stewards of our planet."

CIA releases secret files of 'flying saucer' UFO sightings - including over UK

via The Independent

Spy agency releases formerly classified photographs from the 1950s to celebrate the new series of cult sci-fi series The X Files 

The CIA has posted online previously secret photographs purportedly showing UFOs or ‘flying saucers’ hovering over Britain.

The hand selected images are among formerly classified files from the 1950s which were hidden away by the American spy agency.

First released in 1978, the images show how the CIA carried out extensive and secretive investigations into whether extraterrestrial life exists.
According to the documents released, one 1952 report entitled “Flying Saucers" said all but 100 UFO sightings had a reasonable explanation.

It said: “Less than 100 reasonably credible reports remain ‘unexplainable’ at this time. It is recommended that CIA surveillance be continued.

“It is strongly urged, however, that no reports of CIA interest or concern reach the press or public.”

And the 10 files - released to coincide with the revival of cult sci-fi series The X Files - do not contain any clues to any “alien abductions” or “crashed spaceships”.

A spokesman for the CIA said:  “We’ve decided to highlight a few documents both sceptics and believers will find interesting.

“Below you will find five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity.

“We also pulled five documents we think his sceptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings.”

Some UFO conspiracy theorists do not believe the CIA’s decision is so innocent.

Stephen Bassett, the executive director of the Paradigm Research Group - which is campaigning to get the US government to "admit" aliens are real - believes the release is a face-saving exercise by the CIA to prepare the public for the existence of extraterrestrials.

He told the Mirror: "The recent postings to the CIA website could well be strategic on the part of the agency.

"It appears the CIA used the revival of the X-Files franchise as a convenient time to remind the public the agency has, in fact, engaged the extraterrestrial presence issue in the past.

"Post-disclosure the CIA will have substantial public relations issues as it has played a significant role in maintaining the truth embargo over six decades.

"These recent postings could have an inoculative effect in service to the agency's future PR strategy."

Podcast: Project Poseidon's Channel Aquarius

We now have three episodes of our podcast available for download off soundcloud.

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:185587404/sounds.rss

The podcast seeks to take a somewhat grounded and rational approach to fringe topics such as conspiracy theories, the paranormal, ufos, the occult, metaphysics, psychology, philosophy, and where possible, we try to reflect with a sense of wonder on this thing we call a universe.

Unexplainable UFO Phenomena To Be Scientifically Analyzed In New Project

via iflscience

An international team is trying to create a systematic and rigorous approach to studying unexplained aerial phenomena, commonly known as UFOs.

The non-profit organization is called UFO Detection and Tracking, (UFODATA) and it seeks to construct a large network of surveillance stations to monitor the skies 24/7 using optical and infrared cameras, sound and ultrasound detectors, weather stations, Geiger counters, and magnetometers.
"[…] we are going to use astrophysical methodology in order to carry out research on light anomalies appearing in our atmosphere, where we expect to obtain an optimum signal-to-noise ratio due to the predictably high luminosity of the phenomenon and its relative closeness to the observer," Astrophysicist Massimo Teodorani, a member of the UFODATA science team, said in a statement. "In such a way – with precise numbers in our hands – we are in a condition to select very carefully truly anomalous cases from cases that can be explained by prosaic causes."

Aerial anomalies almost always have a very mundane explanation behind them: planets, stars, meteors, weather balloons, planes, and atmospheric events are often responsible for what might appear mysterious at first. However, the team plan to focus on those events that are less easy to scientifically explain, and show what they could be.

A scientific approach of this type would provide a rational answer to various UFO phenomena, as well as potentially delivering a large amount of data regarding our atmosphere. It could also provide data on rare and unusual atmospheric episodes such as ball lightning.

The last few years have seen a dramatic change in how UFOs are reported. The availability of smartphones and image manipulation software has seemingly increased the number of fake reports from fame-seekers, with many videos purporting to show extraterrestrial phenomena easily dismissed as fabricated on closer inspection.

"It has become clear that any breakthrough in our understanding of the UFO phenomenon will require a break from the past," added Mark Rodeghier, leader of the project. "Witness testimony, photos and videos, and government documents have taken us only so far; instead, we need to record and study UFOs directly, as other sciences do with their own specific objects. Of course, this is a daunting task, but it is made conceivable by advances in technology, software, communication capabilities, and power sources."

More information regarding the project can be found on the UFODATA website.
 

 

Towards 0: Cognitive Dissonance and the Revolution

 A breakdown of life, the universe, and everything, this document is my attempt at a 'manifesto' for the 21st century. It covers such topics as cognitive dissonance, non-aristotelianism, critical rationalism, politics, religion, ufos, consciousness, ontology, and synchronicity in a concise 60-some pages. It's an amateur work but I'm proud of it. As of this date, this can pretty much be considered a summary of everything I know for sure... click on the link below to access the pdf.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1JMPTOXDYaLV2xtX2RRdXR3Vk0/view?usp=sharing

Can these sensors scientifically prove UFOs exist?

via Mother Jones

A group of scientists and academics from around the world has launched a new effort called UFODATA, which stands for UFO Detection and Tracking, to apply some rigorous scientific research to the study of UFOs. This all-volunteer, nonprofit project that includes scientists from the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Chile intends to use scientific data and research methods to advance an issue that has largely been confined to the margins (at best) of the traditional scientific community.

"It's abundantly clear that we're not going to make progress in understanding whatever is causing the unknown UFO reports and sightings without getting the type of data we want to collect," says Mark Rodeghier, scientific director and president of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, and now a UFODATA board member. "More witness testimony, where they fill out a form and tell you what they saw, is not going to help us solve the problem," he says. The problem that Rodeghier is referring to is the frequent, inexplicable sightings of aerial phenomena.

The group of about 15 scientists, engineers, astronomers, professors, and a journalist intend to install a series of automated surveillance stations loaded with scientific research tools at various locations in known UFO hotspots such as those in the western United States and in Hessdalen, Norway. The stations will be used to photograph unidentified objects and analyze the light coming from them in order to learn more about the sources of energy powering them. People have done this sort of thing in the past, but never before in such a coordinated and scientifically rigorous way.

The sensors that the group hopes to build will include several high-resolution cameras fitted with spectrographic grating, which is a method for analyzing the type of light the camera is seeing, and the ways that energy might be affecting the atmosphere around the light source. Here is a video explaining the process. Other equipment includes a magnetometer, used to measure electromagnetic radiation, as well as a Geiger counter and a weather station.

"In this area of science (physics, astronomy, etc.) the best way to learn about something is to get its spectra," Rodeghier says. He compares it to a rainbow, which is a "spectra" of the sun's light. "You can see the elements it's composed of, you can also tell things about its temperature and pressure. There are many, many things that you can learn from a spectra and associated data."

These sensors aren't cheap. Each one will cost between $10,000 and $20,000, the group says, which they're hoping to raise through crowdfunding and other donations.

"UFODATA will rely on crowd funding to finance the stations, allowing the millions of people who take UFOs seriously to be involved in the effort, independent of the scientific establishment," wrote Leslie Kean, an American journalist and the author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record. After covering the issue for years, she's also now a board member for UFODATA. Kean announced the project  on her Huffington Post blog earlier this week.

The all-volunteer group hopes to raise enough money to build one prototype station, test it, and prove the concept. Next year they plan to raise additional funds, Rodeghier says, after the project is better known and a more robust volunteer staff is in place.

Rodeghier says more reliable and scientific data will not only advance understanding of UFOs, but might also serve to persuade the public at large that this issue merits more serious examination. Nonetheless, the organizers appreciate that "the UFO community and the UFO problem is something that is pretty much looked down upon by what I call the establishment," Rodeghier says. "That includes scientists, big media, and politicians, Washington. All those people—and I'm speaking broadly because there's always exceptions—think the UFO problem, they laugh at it, it's to be ridiculed, and certainly shouldn't be supported and funded. And so yes, this is part of an effort, is to say, 'This problem is serious. It's like any other scientific problem.'"

But even the new organization has had to grapple internally with the taboo of scientific discussion of UFOs. The initial UFODATA team includes four "silent advisors"—two full professors, an attorney, and an astronomer—who "are prepared to lend a hand, but because of the cultural stigma attached to UFOs—or because of a personal preference for anonymity—have chosen to keep their involvement private" according to the group's website.

Resources for the UFO enthusiast

I want to get right to the meat of the matter without a big preamble.

I do not 'believe' in UFOs. I don't much believe anything.

I am convinced, though, that an intelligent person who sits down and takes a hard look at the available information will, if he or she overcomes cognitive dissonance, come away convinced that there is something going on.

I want to use this article to link to various resources that a putative explorer of this topic can use to arrive at his or her own conclusions about the matter.

1.> Let's talk about Ben Rich. Rich was the second director of Lockheed Skunkworks from 1975-1991. He oversaw the development of the stealth fighter, the F-117A nighthawk. Before his death, Rich made several statements which might be called eyebrow-raising.

Aerospace journalist James Goodall, who wrote for publications such as Jane’s Defense Weekly, Aviation Week and Space Technology, and Interavia, specializes in the history, development, and operations of the world’s only Mach 3 capable, manned air breathing aircraft, the SR-71 family of aircraft. He is also an author, as well as the Associate Curator at the Pacific Aviation Meseum, HI. He was also the restoration manager at the Museum of Flight in Paine Field, Everett, WA.

He alleges that he spoke to Ben Rich shortly before Rich's death:  “About ten days before he died, I was speaking to Ben on the telephone at the USC Medical Center in LA. And he said, ‘Jim, we have things out in the desert that are fifty years beyond what you can comprehend. They have about forty five hundred people at the Lockheed Skunk works. What have they been doing for the last eighteen or twenty years? They’re building something.'”

Jan Harzan, a senior executive with IBM, along with Tom Keller, an aerospace engineer who has worked as a computer systems analyst for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discusses a talk Ben gave some time ago. On March 23rd, 1993 at a UCLA School of Engineering talk where he was presenting a general history of Skunk Works, he said this:

“We now know how to travel to the stars. There is an error in the equations, and we have figured it out, and now know how to travel to the stars and it won’t take a lifetime to do it. It is time to end all the secrecy on this, as it no longer poses a national security threat, and make the technology available for use in the private sector. There are many in the intelligence community who would like to see this stay in the black and not see the light of day. We now have the technology to take ET home.”

Here is video of Jan telling his story:

2.> Paul Hellyer. Hellyer was Canada's Minister of Defence under Lester B. Pearson from 1963 to 1968. As Minister of Defence, he oversaw the drastic and controversial integration and unification of the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force into a single organization, the Canadian Forces. Under Pierre Trudeau, he served as Transport Minister, and was Senior Minister in the Cabinet, a position similar to the current position of Deputy Prime Minister.

Here's what he has to say: “Decades ago, visitors from other planets warned us about the direction we were heading and offered to help. Instead, some of us interpreted their visits as a threat, and decided to shoot first and ask questions after." 

"Trillions of dollars have been spent on black projects which both congress and the commander in chief have deliberately been kept in the dark.”

”In one of the cases during the cold war, 1961, there were about 50 UFOs in formation flying South from Russia across Europe. The supreme allied commander was very concerned and was about ready to press the panic button when they turned around and went back over the North Pole. They decided to do an investigation and they investigated for three years and they decided that with absolute certainty that four different species, at least, have been visiting this planet for thousands of years. There’s been a lot more activity in the past two decades, especially since we invented the atomic bomb.”

Whaaaaaat?

No, don't worry, Hellyer isn't "disclosing" anything. He became a UFO enthusiast much later in life. This is a hobby for him.

Here's a video of him speaking:

3.> Various NASA astronauts.

What does Brian O'Leary former Astronaut and Princeton Physics professor have to say?

“There is abundant evidence that we are being contacted, that civilizations have been monitoring us for a very long time. That their appearance is bizarre from any type of traditional materialistic western point of view. That these visitors use the technologies of consciousness, they use toroids, they use co-rotating magnetic disks for their propulsion systems, that seems to be a common denominator of the UFO phenomenon”

What about Edgar Mitchell?

“Yes there have been crashed craft, and bodies recovered. We are not alone in the universe, they have been coming here for a long time.”

Gordon Cooper?

 “In my opinion I think they were worried that it would panic the public so they started telling lies about it. And then I think they had to tell another lie to cover their first lie, now they don’t know how to get out of it. Now it’s going to be so embarrassing to admit that all these administrations have told so many untruths, it would be embarrassing getting out of it. There are a number of extraterrestrial vehicles out there cruising around.”

4.> Lord Admiral Hill-Norton, Former Chief of Defence Staff, 5 Star Admiral of the Royal Navy, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee:

“There is a serious possibility that we are being visited and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, by other civilizations. Who they are, where they are from, and what they want should be the subject of rigorous scientific investigation and not be the subject of ‘rubishing’ by tabloid newspapers.”

5.> Senator Barry Goldwater , Chairman of the Senate intelligence committee

“This thing has gotten so highly-classified…it is just impossible to get anything on it. I have no idea who controls the flow of need-to-know because, frankly, I was told in such an emphatic way that it was none of my business that I’ve never tried to make it to be my business since. I have been interested in this subject for a long time and I do know that whatever the Air Force has on the subject is going to remain highly classified”

6.> Various military personnel with verified backgrounds: UFOs near nuclear missile silos?

7.> Former head of CIA, Roscoe Hillenkoetter in a letter to Congress:

"Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense." (source)

8.> John Podesta:

"It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon"

Podesta wrote the forward to Leslie Kean's book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record

Here's Kean on the Colbert report:

Here she is being interviewed by physicist Michio Kaku: (see him here:)

UFOs as a psychological phenomenon

Everybody knows UFOs are bunk, you might say.

The UFO phenomenon interests me, not because I believe or want to believe that aliens are real and involved in human affairs, but because there is clearly something happening to make all these people report abductions, all these ex-military staffers report sightings, investigative journalists write books, and so forth.

From a psychological standpoint, the existence of the UFO phenomenon, and people's varied reactions to it, is interesting. As Carl Jung noted:

The problem of the Ufos is, as you rightly say, a very fascinating one, but it is as puzzling as it is fascinating; since, in spite of all observations I know of, there is no certainty about their very nature. On the other side, there is an overwhelming material pointing to their legendary or mythological aspect. As a matter of fact the psychological aspect is so impressive, that one almost must regret that the Ufos seem to be real after all. I have followed up the literature as much as possible and it looks to me as if something were seen and even confirmed by radar, but nobody knows exactly what is seen.

I'm not about to deluge you with links to UFO resources. Good information on the topic is readily available online to anyone with the curiosity, discernment, and ability to push a "search" button who is willing to go fishing for it amongst the deluge of crap that is even more readily available.

Yes, if there is "truth" to these UFO stories it turns everything our tv sets, educators, and governments are telling us about the world on its head.

Yes, there are a lot of loons out there who are UFO truthers.

Still, one can't look at the data and readily dismiss the reams of credible incident reports without lying to oneself or engaging in gross intellectual dishonesty.

 This is why many self-professed "skeptics", it would seem, never bother to look at the data at all.

The mainstream massmind's infantilizing obsession with science fiction and fantasy on the one hand while maintaining rigid, rabid ignorance of this phenomenon strikes me as somewhat dissociative.

I think the implications of there being any substance to this stuff scares the bejesus out of most people, frankly. Especially "religious" people (or more correctly, dogmatic people). Or perhaps the average person is uncomfortable living with uncertainties.

 There's also a really weird social stigma attached to being interested in this stuff, a taint by association that affects one's credibility and perceived intellectual merit.

For this reason I suspect there are many more people who are interested in this than would be apparent from the amount of conversation that takes place on the matter.

Strange that a society so taken with "science" should also be happy to ignore what's right in front of its face. But this goes back to cognitive dissonance, again... people are strongly psychologically motivated to ignore, forget, or hallucinate away data that interferes with their operating belief systems.

Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal

     Dublin, 1986.

I had given a talk to the Irish Science-Fiction Society and the question period began.

"Do you believe in UFOs?" somebody asked.

"Yes, of course," I answered.

The questioner, who looked quite young, then burst into a long speech, "proving" at least to his own satisfaction that all UFOs "really are" sun-dogs or heat inversions. When he finally ran down I simply replied,

"Well, we both agree that UFOs exist. Our only difference is that you think you know what they are and I'm still puzzled."

An elderly gentleman with blonde-white hair and a florid complexion cried out in great enthusiasm, "By God, sir, you're right. I myself am still puzzled about everything!"

And thus I met Timothy F.X. Finnegan, Dean of the Royal Sir Myles na gCopaleen Astro-Anomalistic Society, Dalkey, sometime lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, and founder of the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal.

In fact, Prof. Finnegan signed me up as a member of CSICON that very night, in the Plough and Stars pub over our ninth or tenth pint of Ireland's most glorious product, linn dubh, known as Guiness to the ungodly.

Now I hear that Prof. Finnegan has died, or at least they took the liberty of burying him, and I feel that the world has lost a great man.

The Commitee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON) , however, lives on and deserves more attention than it has received hitherto. Prof. Finnegan always asserted that the idea for CSICON derived from a remark passed by an old Dalkey character named Sean Murphy, in the Goat and Compasses pub shortly before closing time on 23 July 1973.

Actually, it started with two old codgers named O'Brian and Nolan discussing the weather. "Terrible rain and wind for this time of year," O'Brian ventured.

"Ah, faith," Nolan replied, "I do not believe it is this time of year at all, at all."

At this, Murphy spoke up. "Ah, Jaysus," he said, "I've never seen a boogerin' normal day." He paused to set down his pint, then added thoughtfully, "And I never met a fookin' average man neither"

(About Sean Murphy nothing else appears in the record except a remark gleaned by Prof. LaPuta from one Nora Dolan, a housewife of the vicinity: "Sure, that Murphy lad never did any hard work except for getting up off the floor and navigating himself back onto the bar-stool, after he fell off, and he only did that twice a night.")

But Murphy's simple words lit a fire in the subtle and intricate brain of Timothy F.X. Finnegan, who had just finished his own fourteenth pint (de Selby says his fifteenth pint). The next day the aging Finnegan wrote the first two-page outline of the new science he called patapsychology, a term coined in salute to Alfred Jarry's invention of pataphysics.

Finnegan's paper began with the electrifying sentence, "The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolph Hitler -- or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler's, if the average Anything actually existed." He then went on to demonstrate that the normal or average human lives in substandard housing in Asia, has 1.04 vaginas, cannot read or write, suffers from malnutrition and never heard of Silken Thomas Fitzgerald or Brian Boru. "The normal," he concluded "consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits."

Thus began the science of Patapsychology, Prof. Finnegan's most enduring, and endearing, contribution to the world -- aside from the computer-enhanced photos of the Face on Mars with which he endeavored to prove that the Face depicted Moishe Horwitz, his lifelong mentor and idol. This, of course, remains highly controversial, especially among disciples of Richard Hoagland, who believe the Face looks more like the Sphinx, those who insist it looks like Elvis to them, and the dullards who only see it as a bunch of rocks.

Nobody should confuse Patapsychology with parapsychology, although this precise misunderstanding evidently inspired the long and venomous diatribes against Finnegan by Prof. Sheissenhosen of Heidelberg. (We need not credit the allegations of Herr Doktor Hamburger that Sheissenhosen also dispatched the three separate letter-bombs sent to Finnegan in 1982, '83 and '87. Even in the most heated academic debate some limits of decorem should remain, one would hope.)

Sheissenhosen evidently believed that "parapsychology" represented an unprovoked attack on his language and thought, and that Finnegan often leaped from shadows; he even suspected the Dalkey sage of slinking and of hiding behind a belly laugh, although the latter seems physiologically impossible. (I tried it once and found it made me more visible, not less.) In fact, Sheissenhosen never did correct his original error of misreading patapsycholgy as parapsychology. You will find more about the Sheissenhosen-Finnegan-LaPuta-Hamburger controversy in deSelby's Finnegan: Enigma of the Occident, Tourneur's Finnegan: Homme ou Dieu? and/or Sheissenhosen's own Finneganismus und Dummheit (6 volumes).

Patapsychology begins from Murphy's Law, as Finnegan called the First Axiom, adopted from Sean Murphy. This says,and I quote,"The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured." In less technical language, the Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish punds [around $700,000 American] to any "normalist" who can exhibit "a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary."

In a world where no two fingerprints appear identical, and no two brains appear identical, and an electron does not even seem identical to itself from one nanosecond to another, patapsychology seems on safe ground here.

No normalist has yet produced even a totally normal dog, an average cat, or even an ordinary chickadee. Attempts to find an average Bird of Paradise, an ordinary haiku or even a normal cardiologist have floundered pathetically. The normal, the average, the ordinary, even the typical, exist only in statistics, i.e. the human mathematical mindscape. They never appear in external space-time, which consists only and always of nonnormal events in nonnormal series.

Thus, unless you're an illiterate and malnourished Asian with exactly 1.04 vaginas and 0.96 testicles, living in substandard housing, you do not qualify as normal but as abnormal, subnormal, supernormal, paranormal or some variety of nonnormal.

The canny will detect here the usual Celtic impulse to make hash out of everything that seems obvious and incontrovertable to Saxons, grocers and other Fundamentalist Materialists. Patapsychology follows in the great tradition of Swift, who once proved with a horoscope that an astrologer named Partridge had died, even though Partridge continued to deny this in print; Bishop Berkeley, who proved that the universe doesn't exist but God has a persistent delusion that it does; William Rowan Hamilton, who invented the noncommutative algebra in which p times q does not equal q times p; Wilde, who asked if the academic commentators on Hamlet had really gone mad or only pretended to have gone mad; John S. Bell, who proved mathematically that if any universe corresponds to the equations of quantum mathematics that universe must have nonlocal correlations similar to Jungian synchronicities; etc.

In the patapsychological model, the normal having vanished, most generalizations, especially about nonmathematical groups, disappear along with it. The monorchoid Mr. Hitler, for instance, could not generalize about "the Jews" within the patapsychological model, because first he would have to find a normal or average Jew, which appears as intracible to demonstration as exhibitting the Ideal Platonic Jew (or the Ideal Platonic Chicken Farm complete with Ideal Platonic Chickenshit.)

As Korzybski the semanticist said, all we can ever find in space-time consists of Jew-1, Jew-2, Jew-3 etc. to Jew-n. (For the nonmathematical, that means a list comprising Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Ruth, Jesus, Woody Allen, Richard Bandler, Felix Mendelsohn, Sigmund Freud, Paulette Goddard, Betty Grable, Noam Chomsky, Bernard Baruch, Paul Newman, the Virgin Mary, Albert Einstein, Lillian Hellman, Baron Rothschild, Ayn Rand, Max Epstein, Emma Goldman, Saul Bellow, etc. etc. etc. to the final enumeration of all Jews alive or dead.) Each of these, on inspection, will have different fingerprints, different brains, different neuro-immunological systems, different eyes, ears, noses etc. different life histories, different conditioning and learning etc. and different personalities, hobbies, passions etc... and none will serve as a norm or Ideal Form for all the others.

To say it otherwise, world Jewish population stood at about 10 million when Hitler formed his generalizations. He could not possibly have known more than at maximum about 500 of them well enough to generalize about them; considering his early prejudices, he probably knew a lot less than that. But taking 500 as a high estimate, we find he generalized about 10 million individual persons on the basis of knowledge limited to around 1/20,000 or 0.00005 % of them.

It seems, then, that Naziism could not have existed, if Hitler knew the difference between norms or averages (internal estimates, subject to error due to incomplete research or personal prejudice) and the phalanx of discrete nonnormal events and things (including persons) that we find in the sensory space-time continuum outside.

Similarly, the male human population currently stands at 3 billion 3 million 129 thousand, more or less (3, 004, 129, 976, the last time I checked the World Game Website a while ago). Of these 3 billion+ discrete individuals, Robin Morgan, Andrea Dworkin and other Radical Feminists probably have not known more than about 500 to generalize from. This means that Rad Fem dogma consists of propositions about 3 billion critters based on examination of less than 0.00000001 per cent of them. This ammounts to a much more reckless use of generalization than Hitler's thoughts on Judaism. You can no more find the male norm from Gandhi, Gen George Custer, Buddha, Bill Clinton, Louis Pasteur, Kung fu tzu, Bruno, Father Damien, Ted Bundy etc. than you can find the Jewish norm from Emma Goldman, Harpo Marx, Felix Mendelsohn, Spinoza, Barbra Streisand, Nathaniel Branden, Emma Lazarus, Jerry Seinfeld etc.

Now you know how the word "feminazi" got into the language. The two ideologies have a strong isomorphism. They both confuse the theoretical norm with a vast array of different individuals -- and they both have no idea how to create even a tolerably scientific norm (which will still differ in many respects from the actual series of individuals the norm allegedly covers).

CSICON applies the same Deconstructive logic all across the board.

For instance, to return to our starting point, whatever your idea of the "normal" UFO -- whether you consider it a spaceship, a secret US government weapon, a hoax, or a hallucination etc. -- such a general idea will render you incapable of forming a truly objective view of the next UFO that comes along. The only way to cancel such pre-judgement lies in patapsychology (and in general semantics). You must remember the difference between the individual and unpredictible event that gets called a UFO and your past generalizations about "the UFO" or the "normal" UFO."

Otherwise you will only note how this UFO fits your Ideal UFO and will unconciously ignore how it differs therefrom. This mechanical reflex will please your ego, if you like to feel you know more than most people, but it will prove hazardous to your ability to observe and think carefully.

People who think they know all about Jews or males or UFOs never see a real Jew or male or UFO. They see the generalized norm that exists only in their own brains. We never know "all" -- we only know what I call sombunall, some-but-not-all. This applies also to dogs (the patapsychologist will not say "I love them," "I hate them," "I fear them" etc.), and to plumbers, bosses, right-wingers, left-wingers, cats, lizards, sitcoms, houses, nails, Senators, waterfalls and all other miscellaneous sets or groups.

Personally, I see two or three UFOs every week. This does not astonish me, or convince me of the spaceship theory, because I also see about 2 or 3 UNFOs every week -- Unidentified Non-Flying Objects. These remain unidentified (by me) because they go by too fast or look so weird that I never know whether to classify them as hedgehogs, hobgoblins or helicopters -- or as stars or satellites or spaceships -- or as pookahs or pizza-trucks or probability waves. Of course, I also see things that I feel fairly safe in identifying as hedgehogs or stars or pizza trucks, but the world contains more and more events that I cannot identify fully and dogmatically with any norm or generalization. I live in a spectrum of probabilities, uncertainties and wonderments.

Perhaps I got this way by studying Finnegan's work. Or maybe I just drank too much linn dubh during my years in Ireland.

O rare, Tim Finnegan!

- R A Wilson, http://www.rawilson.com/csicon.html

‘Biggest failure’? Obama aide regrets not securing UFO files disclosure

From RT

Outgoing senior US presidential adviser John Podesta has revealed that the main regret of the past year of his service at the White House was keeping Americans away from learning the truth about UFOs.

Law professor Podesta, 66, published in his Twitter microblog on Friday – his last day as Obama’s counselor with a special interest in climate and energy matters – a list of his “favorite memories” of the year, concluding with his biggest regret that once again proves his fascination with aliens and TV show “The X-Files”, of which he is known to be a huge fan.

Podesta has been a longtime proponent of the disclosure of government UFO investigations to the public. Back in 2002, at a press conference organized by the Coalition for Freedom of Information, he said: “It’s time to find out what the truth really is that’s out there. We ought to do it, really, because it’s right. We ought to do it, quite frankly, because the American people can handle the truth. And we ought to do it because it’s the law.”

In 2007, a Washington Post journalist asked Podesta about reports on Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain email correspondence to and from the former chief of staff on such terms as “X-Files” and “Area 51” – terms, popular with UFO conspiracy theorists. Podesta’s response through a spokesperson was, “The truth is out there,” the tagline for “The X-Files” American science fiction TV show.

Podesta is also an author of an introduction to the 2010 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record.” In it, he wrote: "As someone interested in the question of UFOs, I think I have always understood the difference between fact and fiction. I guess you could call me a curious skeptic. But I'm skeptical about many things, including the notion that government always knows best."

Now, leaving the White House, where he also previously served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, Podesta is reportedly set to join Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as a senior adviser in the run-up to Barack Obama’s second term ending in 2016.

Thinking allowed: Michael Talbot

Michael Talbot's appearance on the show "Thinking Allowed".

The holographic model allows us to conceptualize phenomena that have remained on the fringes of science -- synchronicities, psychic experiences, UFOs, poltergeists, spiritual experiences, states of higher consciousness. In part one of this two part program Michael Talbot discusses the holographic model of brain functioning and the "implicate order" model of quantum physics. He proposes that these two models combined explain many unsolved mysteries in both brain functioning (such as memory and vision) and quantum physics (such as the problem of hidden variables and quantum interconnectedness).

In part two of the DVD, Talbot discusses his own unusual experiences with poltergeist phenomena and UFOs. He suggests that the holographic model provides a means for understanding these experiences without falling into the twin traps of skeptical debunking or occult romanticism.

Michael Talbot is author of Mysticism and the New Physics, Beyond the Quantum, Your Past Lives and The Holographic Universe. He also authored four novels. This program was taped approximately six months before his untimely death in May 1992.