Magonia

The BBC and Scientology have come into battle over a documentary to be screened tonight on BBC1.

In anticipation of its negative view of the cult they have posted a YouTube video of reporter John Sweeney losing his cool.

On the BBC website Sweeney defends his outburst:

'While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists, brain-washed - that is how it felt to me - in a mock up of a Nazi-style torture chamber and chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers.

'Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.

'I have met mothers who say they have suffered Scientology "disconnects" - meaning that their children have cut them completely out of their life so that they can spend more time with an organisation which a judge in 1984 characterised as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".'

Scientology is not a cult that should be messed with, in the past they have taken on the notoriously anarchic South Park animation series who took a poke at them.

The current battle with the BBC shows that Scientology is able to run rings round media organisations by using the Internet and by making their own videos. The BBC has to acknowledge that they are no longer a privileged source of entertainment and education for the masses, and that groups or people with alternative viewpoints now have a media voice that is independent of national and establishment control.

The extraterrestrial origins of Scientology can be viewed on the OT III Scholarship Page. The pros and cons of the 'UFO' aspects of Scientology can be viewed here.

This blog is unusual and strangely hypnotic.

Mooch Factor 23 tells us that 'I have been absent for some time, however, this is just a perceptual limitation of your stupid eyes! For you see, I have been traveling at a consistent velocity of c for the past 1.4 days in a stolen concept-spacecraft of an alien corporation. What corporation is this, I hear you ask?

'Disney.

'It all started when myself as my robot sidekick, ‘Waa!’, had detected abnormally high levels of schizoid-fluxed psychic energy pattern outbursts amongst users of the “Buzz Lightyear space ranger spin” ride at Disneyworld. Disguised as pancakes, we observed from a distance as ordinary tourists stumbled from the ride’s exist, muttering alien obscenities against the human race and proceeding to the nearest confectionary booth, whereupon they proceeded to consume vast amounts of sugar-based products in an unconscious attempt to prevent the cellular bonds of their internal organs and bones from disintegrating due to the deadly vibrational impact that utterance of these alien words resonated throughout their bodies. But all of this maniacal consumption was in vain, for it was not long before each and every one of the poor wretches collapsed in a bundle of empty, Disney merchandise-clad skin.'

Makes more sense than 'real' UFO contactee stories with a dash more humour. Perhaps, the damned greys have got to this person without him suspecting?

http://20six.co.uk/omniresonant/cat/67597/0

If you were to write a novel in which the hero lived to a ripe old age thanks to a series of similar coincidences, it is unlikely that any publisher would accept it. In real life, though, some people are remarkably fortunate, as an obituary notice in yesterday's Daily Telegraph reminds us.

Chief Petty Officer Gordon Selby, who has died aged 87, served in submarines in the Royal Navy during World War II. In September 1940 he was appointed coxswain of the submarine Upholder, and during 13 months he survived 24 patrols at a time when one British submarine a week was being lost in the attempt to cut supply lines to Rommel's army in North Africa.

Upholder disappeared in 1942, but a few weeks earlier, Selby had been drafted to the submarine P-39.

On the outbreak of war he should have joined the submarine Oxley, but his place was taken by a more experienced man; Oxley was lost.

On P-39 he escaped injury when the submarine was wrecked during a Luftwaffe attack on the submarine base at Lazaretto, Malta. With other survivors he was evacuated in the submarine Olympus, which struck a mine about six miles south of Malta. He was one of only seven survivors of the 90 persons on board.

In 1943 Selby arrived in Algiers to join the submarine Sickle, which after patrols off southern France, was lost with all hands, but Selby was not on board, having been selected to join the submarine Storm.

After the War he became coxswain of Truculent, which he left in 1949 when his 12-year engagement expired. The folowing year Truculent was lost in a collision in the Thames.

He was re-engaged to continue his Naval career and the most amazing coincidence occurred on the afternoon of 15 April 1951 when he was due to sail in the submarine Affray. He had already settled into the boat when, as president of HMS Dolphin's chief petty officers' mess, he was called ashore to attend to some last-minute mess business. He became ill and was admitted to hospital half an hour before the submarine sailed. That night Affray was lost in the Channel with all hands.

SCI-FI-LONDON, the UK's only annual festival of science fiction and fantastic film announces that the restored, extended edition of THINGS TO COME (TTC) will be given its first theatrical screening on 2nd May 2007 at the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival. This version of the film is the longest in existence anywhere in the world and contains four additional scenes which have not been seen since the film’s original theatrical release in 1936.

Every version of TTC shown in cinemas, on television and available on video since 1936 has been drastically cut. Network has commissioned the best and longest known version to exist of this film anywhere in the world in H.D.

The film adapted from the HG Wells novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933), can be viewed at SCI-FI-LONDON, from 2nd-6th May and it will be released as a special edition DVD on 7th May 2007 by Network DVD.

The film is of interest to us because it contains images of mobile phones, flat plasma video screens, voice projectors, desktop laptops, an education channel and biological weapons. So it's no wonder some have suggested Wells was a contactee who worked his experiences into his novels. I don't buy that, rather this just indicates that there was plenty of technological images of the future that contactees could draw on from "popular culture" even if they were never sf fans.

Wells' book also predicted World War II; it includes cities being destroyed by aerial bombs and predicts the rise of Fascist dictators.

Other amazing facts about THINGS TO COME, according to the press release:

* Mussolini banned the film in Italy because he believed that Ralph Richardson’s portrayal of The Boss was a parody of il duce

* Hitler also banned the film in Germany but Hitler was so impressed with the image of a British city being destroyed that he ordered the head of the German air force, Herman Goering, to screen it to his subordinates

* The last engineers and scientists establish their base in Basra - Iraq!

* TTC is the first western film to show human civilization reduced to ashes

* TTC was released in the year that Guernica was bombed

* Arthur C. Clarke showed the movie to Stanley Kubrick when they began production on 2001: A Space Odyssey

* Homage was paid to TTC in the 1951 Ealing Comedy The Man in A White Suit

On Tuesday, April 03, 2007, "UFO Hacker" Gary McKinnon lost his final appeal against extradition in the High Court, London. Lord Justice Maurice Kay told him:

"We do not find any grounds of appeal against the decision.

"Mr McKinnon's conduct was intentional and calculated to influence and affect the U.S. government by intimidation and coercion.

"As a result of his conduct, damage was caused to computers by impairing their integrity, availability and operation of programs, systems, information and data on the computers, rendering them unreliable."

For more than a year he searched for evidence for the existence of UFOs and advanced technology by hacking into US military computer networks. His activities were not discovered until after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and it largely due to this context that the USA has been determined to take legal action against him.

Reaction to this latest legal decision has been rapid and mixed in the UFO community. On UFO Updates one contributer callously wrote:

"Dude is sooooo screwed!

"That'll be the title of the movie about McKinnon.

"When his butt hits the shores of this star spangled land he won't see the light of day again until Jesus comes back.

"There'll be more headshrinkers on him than paparazzi on Britney Spears.

"After they vacuum his brain and turn him into the newest version of Charlie McCarthy he'll be a good boy from then on.

"Watch to see if he'll panic and start telling more secrets to barter his way out of this.

"Let this be a lesson, do not mess with the U.S. Government."

A more sympathetic view was that:

"This is an absolute outrage!

"It could be competently argued that a current administration lets bona fide terrorists into this country fore and aft or North and South, but then interrupts that meager effort to
hazard and persecute comparative innocents!

"McKinnon's crime? He exposed a blithe governmental incompetence and a criminal disregard of our security... on the backs of billions of dollars allegedly spent to secure same!
McKinnon performed a service; they should let him go with a cash award and the thanks of a grateful nation!"

McKinnon's legal team had argued that his human rights were breached under Article Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, it is alleged that the US authorities had claimed that they wanted to see him "fry" for his hacking crimes that caused nearly a million dollars worth of damage. He could face an undetermined length of imprisonment before any trial in the USA, and he would not be allowed to appeal or to spend any of his jail term in the UK.

McKinnon's fight against extradition has not come to an end as he plans to challenge the current ruling through the House of Lords.

Magonia Supplement has not been published since August last year. This is because of a shortage of suitable material and my recent house move.

I am now working on the latest issue, which is to include my review of the January 2007 issue of International UFO Reporter (Vol. 31 No. 1). This is because it is such an old-fashioned, nuts-and-bolts ETH publication, full of dozy speculations about alien visitors, and rehashes of old UFO reports, even those which have long since been explained, so there is plenty of scope for critial comment. Most of the material it publishes would certainly never get into the pages of Magonia or Magonia Supplement.

The main article is about the Big Sur (California) incident of September 1964 (even the precise date was not recorded by the witnesses), in which it is alleged that a UFO was observed and filmed circling a ballistic missile which was being tested, causing it to crash to earth prematurely. Opinions differ as to what really happened, but of course author Robert Hastings goes for the ETH interpretation. It is no doubt more popular with his audiences on his lecture tours.

The editors of Magonia are fond of looking through copies of old UFO magazines in search of items which are interesting or amusing (usually unintentionally), or both. We recently came across this delightful account of an informal meeting of ufologists in the BUFORA Journal and Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 3, Winter 1964:

B.U.F.O.R.A. MEETS Mr JOEL RHENSTROM FROM FINLAND
On January 29th, at Mrs. Lloyd's home, Mr. Creighton, Mrs. Lloyd, Mr. Oliver and myself had pleasure in meeting Mr. Joel Rhenstrom (whose address is Oitti, Finland). Mr. Rhenstrom is Information Secretary of INTERPLANETISTITRIY, which has about 50 members and is the only Finnish U.F.O. society. He was visiting London to study our dry-cleaning methods as he has his own business in Finland.

We learnt that "Lentava Lautanen" is Finnish for "Flying Saucer". Mr. Rhenstrom has published a few American saucer books in Finnish (bearing the cost out of his own pocket) and very kindly donated a book to our Library entitled "Olen Ollut Lentavalla Lautasella", which translates as "Inside the Spaceships" (by Adamski).

Swedish is the Finns' 'second' language and Mr. Rhenstrom remarked that on about January 20th this year, a Swedish evening paper published details of the Russian cave painting of a "Martian spaceman". It would seem that the Russians are preparing for the day when they can announce the reality of flying saucers. Our guest has tried to interest the air defence authorities in flying saucers, without apparent success. However, Mr. Creighton remarked that these authorities the world over are keenly interested in UFOs and probably know more than they let it be known.

We were told of a contactee story about a gardener, Mr. Valkeinen, who was fishing at a lonely lake in Finland in 1952, when an Adamski type saucer landed by the lakeside. The man was irresistibly drawn towards the UFO, which he entered, and met three short mongolian featured, yellow skinned men with large heads and short spindly legs. He conversed with them (telepathically?) in Finnish and was taken for a ride round the world, stopping at Lake Titicaca in Southern Peru. He apparently gained considerable knowledge of the world's history from his hosts, which he would have been unlikely to know about otherwise.

Our conversation covered trolls and other gnome-like creatures, and it was agreed that some of these creatures might well be UFO entities. Mr. Creighton has made a special point of meeting people claiming to have seen "little people" and feels that these often tie up with contactee reports.

B.U.F.O.R.A. wishes Mr. Rhenstrom and Interplanetistitriy every success with their activities. Last year we welcomed Miss Lou Zinnstag of Basle, Switzerland, and Mr. Rex Stanford of the U.S.A., and will be pleased to meet other overseas UFO researchers visiting London.

Lionel Beer - Publicity Officer

Ever since Captain James McAndrew's The Roswell Report: Case Solved appeared in 1997, ufologists have ridiculed his suggestions that some of the details recalled by witnesses actually referred to events which took place some years after 1947, in particular that some of the reports of alien bodies, were distorted memories of the recovery of dummies used to test parachutes.

However, such confusion of the timing of events is not unusual when persons are asked to recall events which happened many years ago. In 1998 Peter Rogerson discussed the confusion which resulted when witnesses to the Goose Bay case of 1954 were interviewed about 13 years later. The following article appeared in Magonia 65, November 1998:

PETER ROGERSON'S NORTHERN ECHOES

There has been some scepticism expressed about the claim made by the United States Government in The Roswell Report: Case Solved, that people had misremembered incidents occurring in the 1950s as having happened at the time of Roswell. Surely memories cannot be that distorted, can they?

Historians who work with oral testimony, however, are familiar with just this sort of problem, as one of them writes:

"Memories play tricks, as drastic pruning commences very soon after an experience, one person's selective processes operating very differently from another's, offering several perceptions of even the most mundane incidents. Memory is a mixture of fact and opinion, full of inconsistencies and excisions. Events may be reinterpreted over time, may relate to occurrences which [either] had no great significance for, or made a huge impression on, a child; several may be telescoped together, or recalled out of order, whilst a person's role in them might be enlarged by wishful re-enactment. Some may remember events as participants, others retell a story based on hearsay which has been recounted many times over with embellishments at every telling." (Colwell, Stella, Teach Yourself Tracing Your Family Tree, Hodder, 1997, p. 11)

An interesting example of just such a memory distortion, compressing events which occurred over a decade apart can be found in Jenny Randles's Something in the Air, concerning the Goose Bay Stratocruiser case. Interviewed by Jenny Randles (presumably in the early 1990s), the chief stewardess recalled that after being quizzed before they left Heathrow, she was later asked to go to the Air Ministry with Lee Boyd and James Howard. They asked her if she often saw things, whether she was psychic and if she had seen fairies.

After further questions at the Ministry all three were introduced to a Professor Black, a psychiatrist. He asked about their perception and eyesight, and speculated about optical illusions and light refractions. Then, quite remarkably, the officials requested Daphne and the pilots to undergo hypnosis. Jenny goes on to say how remarkably early 1954 would be for hypnotic regression, and how all trace of this incident is gone from official files.

In fact the name Black is a vital clue here, for it allows us to identify the correct time in which these incidents occurred. The crew of the BOAC Stratocruiser did not meet 'Dr' Stephen Black (who may or may not have had a degree in psychology) in 1954 but in either 1967 or just possibly early 1968. And the meeting was not at the instigation of the Air Ministry, but that of the BBC, for the documentary UFOs and the People Who See Them broadcast on BBC 1 on 9 May 1968. A detailed review by John Harney appears in MUFOB, volume 1, number 3, pp 23-25, and was the subject of an editorial by Charles Bowen in FSR 14, 4, pp 1-2. Both these reviews note the BOAC crew's appearance in the programme. This study by Stephen Black was indeed remarkably prescient, anticipating much of the psychosocial ufology of the 1980s and 1990s. There is no doubt that the interview with Black that the chief stewardess recalls was for this programme (in which she appeared). The hypnosis was not exactly hypnotic regression, but was part of Black's testing of his theory that close-encounter UFO witnesses were deep-trance hypnotic subjects. He suggested that flickering light, the way people react in groups, and hypnosis could all combine to explain UFOs. Many of us would think he may have hit on something very important.

This case of memory distortion is very informative. Daphne the stewardess had correctly remembered the doctor's surname and his line of questioning, but had the time frame and context totally distorted. Another person may well have remembered the day when the interview took place, could have told you what the weather was like, but could not have remembered anything of what was asked. This inciedent proves that time compression over a decade is possible, and that there is nothing totally improbable about the USAF claims over Roswell.

How many other such cases of memory distortion are there in which groups of events thought to have occurred at roughly the same time occurred ages apart, and where context is misremembered? It reinforces the warning Stephen Smith (then BUFORA's director of research) gave at a conference a quarter of a century ago: there is little point in investigating cases much more than a week old, and that the aim should be no later than 48 hours. Today's ufologists are becoming obsessed with cases from half a century ago, for which original documentation is sparse, and memories confused with the passage of time.

On Tuesday (24 October) a pelican caused a sensation in St James's Park, London, by scooping up a pigeon in its bill and eventually swallowing it. Ornithologists expressed amazement, saying they had never heard of pelicans consuming birds.

Magonia has a formidable bird of this type, known simply as The Pelican.

The Pelican does not eat pigeons (unless properly prepared and cooked) but does eat True Believer ufologists, together with some of the barmier sceptics who come to believe that almost all UFO incidents have the same explanation, e.g., mirages, meteors, electrical phenomena, etc.

However, The Pelican does not make unjustified attacks on his victims. As Chilean ufologist Diego Zúñiga once so rightly remarked: "El Pelícano es fuerte en sus apreciaciones, pero muy razonable." The Pelican proudly adopted this as his motto.