Art by Isoban

Via Technoccult:

Mac Tonnies was a ufologist, the author of After the Martian Apocalypse and The Cryptoterrestrials, and the blogger behind Posthuman Blues. He died on October 19th, 2009 due to heart complications.

The Cryptoterrestrials was released posthumously on March 15th, 2010. Fortunately, Mac gave numerous interviews on the subject of his book prior to his death, including this one with the Ballardian and an interview on Coast to Coast AM.

Since his death, a dedicated community of friends and readers has been working to preserve his legacy. Blazingbetta (aka Sarah Multiverse) has started a Mac Tonnies tribute site, and Capn Marrrk has been hard at work archiving Posthuman Blues. I talked to both of them via instant message.

It is not every ballot initiative that has its own hip-hop song.

But then, how many times are voters asked to approve formation of a commission to study visitors from outer space?

Jeff Peckman, director of the extraterrestrial affairs commission ballot initiative, will launch a campaign to educate voters about his proposal this evening at 7 P.M. at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds.

Peckman collected signatures to have the measure placed on Denver’s Aug. 10 ballot. If it passes, the City of Denver will be required to create a seven-member commission tasked with collecting evidence that extraterrestrials and UFOs have been visiting Earth.

“Pink UFO,” a song by Chris Steele, of the hip-hop duo Calm, wrote and performs “Pink UFO,” which will be replayed at tonight’s event. The song, which is dedicated to the campaign, includes the refrain: “Pink UFO, Pink UFO, What truth do you know? What do you know?”

Peckman believes that the government is hiding evidence that technology found on an alien space craft that landed in Roswell, N.M., can cure cancer, among other things.

[Read more at the Denver Post]

Witness image. MUFON database.

Roger Marsh writes in the Examiner:

Very little information accompanied a photo of what is claimed is an object that fell from the sky near the Mongolian capital, according to a report filed February 23 with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness database.

The report states that two objects fell near the Mongolian capital on February 19. The first object, according to the report, weighed 10 kg, while the second larger object weighed “approximately 2 tons.”

Could this simply be an engine that fell off a jet?

Read More: Examiner

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We are VERY pround and honored to welcom Stanton Friedman to The Black Fridays Podcast.  Stanton T. Friedman received his BSc. and MSc. Degrees in physics from the University of Chicago in 1955 and 1956.

He was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist by such companies as GE, GM, Westinghouse, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics, and McDonnell Douglas working in such highly advanced, classified, eventually cancelled programs as nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and various compact nuclear powerplants for space and terrestrial applications.

He has lectured about UFO’s at more than 600 colleges and 100 professional groups in 50 U.S. states, 9 Canadian provinces and 16 other countries in addition to various nuclear consulting efforts. He has published more than 90 UFO papers and has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs including on Larry King in 2007 and twice in 2008, and many documentaries.

Reports of “flying Toblerones” and objects travelling at 1,100 mph across the Scottish sky have been released by the Ministry of Defence. The files detail how unidentified objects have been witnessed flying over a range of locations across Scotland.Among them were one from a senior air traffic controller at Prestwick Airport who reported seeing a fast-moving UFO on the airport radar.

While four fishermen spotted a flat, shiny object hovering off the coast. The Scottish accounts are among the thousands of reports made of close encounters with UFOs across the UK which have been released in a joint project between the MoD and the National Archives.

For five years the people both you and I represent have witnessed a phenomenon in the area that has been left unexplained The Prestwick airport incident in February 1999 led to an extensive investigation by RAF air defence staff who impounded radar tapes from a number of airports around the UK.

But the report concluded that no additional evidence could be found to corroborate what the air traffic controller had spotted.

Read More on the BBC

Lunargate by Alex Burns

In a now infamous 1961 speech, US President John F. Kennedy pledged that America’s space program would “place a man on the moon before the decade’s close.” At the heart of cold war battles for geopolitical supremacy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs also became the vehicle for inculcating domestic populations with American values and belief systems.

NASA’s growing power, its protection by the Kennedy administration, and the rise of the Right Stuff astronaut as celebrity hid the steady growth of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower had warned about.

These anxieties — of monolithic social institutions controlling information, and the decline of US global empires — are the core of conspiracy theories claiming the historic Apollo moon landings were elaborately faked. The world was hoaxed.

Anatomy of a Faked Hoax?

Conspiracy theorists like Bill Kaysing and Ralph Rene claim that:

— The Nazis built a small moon base.

— Strange geological structures are evidence of alien life.

— NASA photos were ‘doctored’ and transmissions were censored.

— NASA “stage managed” astronaut interviews and press conferences.

— NASA “conditioned” astronauts by Nazi-derived mind control techniques.

— The Van Allen Belt’s high radiation levels prevented the astronauts from leaving Earth.

— Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, Chaffee and White were going to reveal NASA’s conspiracy to the world, so they were murdered in a 1967 launchpad fire.

Perhaps the most believable part of Kaysing and Rene’s scenario is their analysis of the space industry as a political economy. The authors contend that, in a climate of lucrative multimillion dollar industrial contracts and public euphoria, the Military-Industrial Complex fueled the conspiratorial imperative for creating Lunargate.

The Medium is the Space Age

These hoax theories can teach us much about the Paranoid Style (Richard Hofstadter) of post-Watergate American politics. The fascination with decoding NASA photographs for clues and analysing suggestive scenes in films like Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Capricorn One (1978) echo Marshall McLuhan’s media models and postmodern theorists’ fascination with ambiguous texts and the limits of knowledge.

When Bill Kaysing claims that the Apollo 13 debacle was a “simulation within a simulation,” or anonymous theorists suggest that director Stanley Kubrick filmed the historic Apollo 11 moon landing (July 20, 1969) on a Nevada soundstage, they offer scenarios that closely resemble postmodernist Jean Baudrillard’s concept of American culture as hyperreal:

People’s imagination demands the real thing, but in order to get it, they have to create fakes.

A Dark History, Indeed

NASA’s verifiable history has had some questionable aspects:

— The use of Nazi V2 rocket scientists saved by Operation Paperclip.

— Several key Apollo astronauts were 33-Masons.

— The questionable management decisions by Morton Thiokol Inc that indirectly caused the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

The real concern of these conspiracy theorists, maybe, is the longterm fate of NASA’s space program. Resource allocation pressures have made it difficult over the past thirty years for a largescale population the Overview Effect (comprehending Earth as a single integrated system that is post nation-state/tribal band) consciousness change that astronauts experienced.

US Congress passed a bill in 1999, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing . . . and then cut NASA’s annual budget by over $1 billion.

Maybe the real conspiracy is one of institutional infighting and bureaucratic stupidity. We have faith in fakes after all.

Further Reading:

The Wrong Stuff
Very indepth article by Wired writer Rogier van Bakel surveying the ‘moon hoax’ theories prevalent on the Internet and as American folklore: Alternative 3, Bill Kaysing, Ralph Rene, movie portrayals of moon hoaxes and a reply from NASA officials.

NASA
Search the NASA network for the latest space news, scientific research, photos, archives . . . and maybe the truth about the Apollo program?

The Enterprise Mission
Richard Hoagland’s controversial but detailed site is more well known for the Martian Case for the Face, but he has assembled an enviable resource on Moon anomalies, and their role in The Plan, an intriguing memetic engineering hypothesis implicating NASA, the Hollywood-12 and possible future global catastrophes.

Narduar vs. Bill Kaysing
Narduar The Human Serviette gets the scoop from Bill Kaysing about the alleged murder of Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom; ex-Ghelen Nazis working for NASA under Operation: Paperclip; faked photos and Nevada desert soundstages; the Apollo 13 film as propaganda and the legendary TV confrontation with astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
We Never Went to the Moon!
Frederick ‘Fog’ Horne’s controversial site features basic introductory information on Lunargate conspiracy theories. Make sure you check out his other columns.

Aulis Publishers
Publishers of the excellent book Dark Moon: Apollo and The Whistle-Blowers, this site includes book excerpts, an online shop, reviews and links.

Apollo Oxygen and Two-Gas Environment Problems
David Wozney has compiled materials relating to the aftermath of the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire that killed astronauts Grissom, Chaffee and White. Other anomalies Wozney explores include exhaust, crosshair and photographic image inconsistencies.

Global Shadow Government Masonic New World Order Conspiracy
Excellent list of links to articles on the proposed Illuminati-Masonic-NASA hoaxed moon landing conspiracy. Topics include John Glenn, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the Sirius-Orion-Giza connection.

The Groom Lake Desert Rat
NASA, Groom Lake, Alpha Draconis, Hungarian UFOs, Alien Hygiene and more. With an explosive cocktail of memes like this, who could resist?

NASA Masonic Conspiracy: Apollo Missions Masonic Symbols
Thoughts from controversial conspiracy theorist William Cooper on Masonic links with NASA and the Apollo moon missions. Never let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory!

The scientific evidence behind this growing set of suspicions — that the Spiral somehow caused the Russian missile to fail — lies in the extraordinary geometric structure that Enterprise has discovered within the too-perfect, too-concentric “shell-like rings” … making up the Spiral — A key part of this “impossible” geometry consisted of four, exactly 90-degree darkened “reticle-like” divisions of the Spiral … precisely separating it into four radiating quadrants ….

Geometric behavior simply inconceivable for any “randomly rotating … fuel-spewing third-stage rocket ….” This “too-too-regular-geometry …” can only be explained by the presence of —

Some kind of energy-induced, standing-wave-pattern in the Spiral …. Creating — Narrow, uniform-width concentric striations … ordered in an underlying medium (the leaking third-stage fuel?) by an external “forcing 3-D energy pattern” —

Then, it hit me: “Chladni Figures!”

Read More of Richard C. Hoagland on Enterprise Mission

Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Friday that he doesn’t know what people in southern Newfoundland saw recently but he promised the federal government does have plans to help them.

“We will provide money to build a landing strip for UFOs at Harbour Mille,” said MacKay, speaking in St. John’s to announce federal funding for road construction in the province.

“No, I’m only kidding. I’m joking. That’s a joke.” Jokes aside, MacKay said there’s no need to worry about the unidentified flying object. “We’ve checked with other countries and we’ll continue to do so but I don’t think it is any cause for panic,” said MacKay.

A model plane flier said an earlier a comment from the Prime Minister’s Office about a mysterious object spotted near Harbour Mille is laughable. Thursday, a federal government spokesperson suggested people in Newfoundland and Labrador like to launch model rockets.

[Read more at CBC News]

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The Black Fridays welcomes Dr. Steve Cowan to talk about UFO’s and other Esoterica from a Philosophers viewpoint. We had a great time talking to Dr. Cowan and look forward to talking with him in the future!

SATELLITE TV and the digital revolution is making humanity more and more invisible to inquisitive aliens on other planets

That might be good news for anyone who fears an Independence Day -style invasion by little green men. But it is also likely to make the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence by Earthly scientists harder.

Speaking at the Royal Society in London, Dr Frank Drake, the world’s leading ET hunter, said the digital age was effectively gagging the Earth by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space.

At present, the Earth was surrounded by a 50 light year-wide “shell” of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions, he said.

But although the signals had spread far enough to reach many nearby star systems, they were rapidly vanishing before the march of digital technology

[Read more at Scotsman.com]

Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona University will tell a meeting at the Royal Society that the best way of proving that extra-terrestrial life exists elsewhere in the universe is to use evidence from earth. The meeting at the Royal Society, which will include representatives from Nasa, the European Space Agency and the UN Office for Outer space Affairs marks the 5th anniversary of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme. Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society will also lead one of the sessions.

Prof Davies said: We need to give up the notion that ET is sending us some sort of customised message and take a new approach.”

He suggested that the search could focus on deserts, volcanic vents, salt-saturated lakes and the dry valleys of Antarctica – places where ordinary life struggles to survive – to find “weird” microbes that belong to a “shadow biosphere”.

Felissa Wolfe-Simon, from the US Geological Survey, is currently looking at the possibility that arsenic, found in contaminated places such as the Mono Lake in California, might support forms of life in the same way as other life forms use phosphorous…

[continues in the Telegraph]

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The Black Fridays is happy to have Richard Dolan on the show.  Rich is one of the foremost experts in ufology and as published what could be the definitive work on the subject from an historical perspective.  UFOs and the National Security State: An Unclassified History, 1941-1973 (a 2 edition work) and The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991 deal with how UFOs and their cover up by the government has affected policy.  Rich is currently working on Volume 3 of this extensive trilogy.

It’s been a while since we’ve visited the realm of UFO investigation; so we felt when we did return, we would need to bring along a true expert in the field. Luckily for us, we found just that in Dennis Balthaser. Dennis actually lives in Roswell New Mexico, and has been studying the famous ‘Roswell Incident’ for many years. He has appeared on countless television and radio shows, and is often published in UFO Magazine.

This week we discuss: The Roswell Incident, Dulce underground base, Area 51, The state of Ufology today and much more. Please feel free to email ken@sittingnow.co.uk. Enjoy!

Extradition of UK hacker Gary McKinnon to the U.S. might reveal that NASA defrauded taxpayers for billions of dollars. If McKinnon loses his fight against extradition he could face up to 70 years in prison if found guilty of breaking into military computers and NASA computers. Then again, maybe not.

McKinnon claims to have discovered NASA files containing evidence of UFOs of extraterrestrial origin. Numerous Disclosure Project whistle-blowers formerly with Top Secret security clearance have revealed that NASA has hidden, destroyed, or altered videos or photos that contained images of UFOs or extraterrestrial life forms.

NASA gets more than $17 billion each year in annual funding. That translates into about $30 million from Denver taxpayers and $245 million from Colorado taxpayers. A significant portion of that is used to “Look for signs of life in other planetary systems” — one of the NASA objectives previously stated on its web site.

Read More on UFO Examiner

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Stacy and Wes welcome Smiles Lewis to the show.  Smiles talks about the basics of UFOlogy and some of the current theories of the field.  SMiles Lewis has had a lifelong interest in all things anomalous. An early age proclivity at recalling his nightly dreams as well as several personal experiences with ESP, precognition and dream switching bolstered his interest in the paranormal.

Reporting from Denver – Manuel A. Sanchez has ruled out every logical explanation for the fate that has befallen the calves on his ranch in southern Colorado.

Over the past month, he’s found four calves dead in a way that he cannot reconcile with anything in his 50 years of raising cattle: eyes and ears missing, tongues and genitals excised in what appeared to be a series of fine cuts.

Mountain lions, bears or coyotes would leave messier marks, he said. And Sanchez found no tire tracks or footprints that would suggest a human invader — nor even bloodstains he’d expect to find around the carcasses if someone had butchered them.

“There’s nothing to go by,” said Sanchez, who estimated his financial loss at $10,000. “I can’t figure it out.”

Costilla County Sheriff’s Sgt. James Chavez agreed: “There’s nothing to follow up on.”

Besides Sanchez’s calves in San Luis, several cases have been reported near Trinidad.

It’s not the first time.

[Read more at the LA Times]

Do you know why Richard Branson was in such a hurry to unveil SpaceShipTwo last week? It’s not because he loves cool toys — it’s because he was worried an inventor who’s created a personal UFO would steal his thunder.

Or at least, that’s what a new press release from UFO guru Luke Fortune claims. Fortune, an inventor, has put the plans and patents to allow you to build your own laser-fusion-powered UFO online for free.

The prototype will cost $60,000 for you to build, but don’t worry — soon, building your own UFO will be dirt cheap, and everybody on the planet will be flying them, according to Fortune’s press release. And this will transform the world’s economy.

Read More on io9.com

Tromsø Geophysical Observatory researcher Truls Lynne Hansen was certain the light had been caused by a missile launch. He told Norwegian media that the missile had likely lost control and exploded. The spiral, he claimed, was the result of light reflecting on the leaking fuel. He was quoted as saying the light was sunlight, despite the strange lights showing up at night.

The Barents Observer quoted Norwegian Defence spokesman Jon Espen Lien as saying that the Norwegian military does not know what the lights were — but that they were probably from a Russian missile. He said it was normal for Russia to use the White Sea and the Barents Sea as a testing ground for missiles.

C’mon, time travel is so much more fun…

It is a disappearance almost worthy of Mulder and Scully. After almost 60 years investigating the UFO threat over Britain – the MoD ‘X Files’ bureau has been axed.

Earlier this week the UK Ministry of Defence quietly cut their hotline for members of the public to report UFO sightings.

And it wasn’t because no-one was calling – the line has received more than 12,000 UFO and alien reports since it was launched in 1950, including 135 last year.

The reports were all investigated and despite the MoD admitting that five percent could not be explained, they say they do not think they are worth investigating any more.

SAN LUIS, Colo. — A creepy string of calf mutilations in southern Colorado has a rancher and sheriff’s officials mystified.

Four calves were found dead in a pasture just north of the New Mexico state line in recent weeks. The dead calves had their skins peeled back and organs cleared from the rib cage. One calf had its tongue removed.

But rancher Manuel Sanchez has found no signs of human attackers, such as footprints or ATV tracks. And there are no signs of an animal attack by a coyote or mountain lion. Usually predators leave pools of blood or drag marks from carrying away the livestock.

Two officers from the Costilla County Sheriff’s Office have investigated the mutilations but say they don’t know what’s killing the calves.

“There’s nothing really to go by,” said Sanchez, who’s ranched for nearly 50 years. “I can’t figure it out.”

Read More: Fox News

Today (Nov. 6) through Sunday (Nov. 8), UFO researcher Ryan Wood will gather with peers in Las Vegas for the 7th Annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference.

The event showcases hard evidence of UFO crashes on Earth, from newspaper clippings and eyewitness reports to actual pieces of flying saucer wreckage.

Wood estimates there have been more than 300 UFO crashes on Earth over the years. He’s personally aware of about 100 of them.

He says the lesser-known incidents — like a mysterious crash in Mexico that the CIA covered up by killing witnesses and hiding evidence — are usually the most credible.

However, he can also see why aliens would gravitate to the highly-publicized site in Roswell, New Mexico. Since New Mexico is where the atomic bomb and other scientific devices originated, Wood believes advanced E.T. civilizations would find the state rather appealing.

With alien themes coming back to television, the folks in one tiny Texas town will be watching the shows — and the skies — even closer.Legend has it that residents of Aurora, TX, had their own alien encounter more than 100 years ago.  Just north of Fort Worth, Aurora has a population of 376. Something about it is different — mysterious, and some say, down-right weird.  “It’s just a legend,” said Barbara Brammer, Aurora Historian.

April 19, 1897 would change this town’s identity forever.  “They said, ‘Have you heard of the Martian that crashed his aircraft into a well site in Aurora?,’” Brammer said. “And I said, ‘No.”  A former mayor, Brammer first heard the story of the UFO crash shortly after her arrival in the 1950s  “I kept the legend going whenever I was teaching or when we had new people in to the community,” she said.Legend has it that in 1897 — six years before the Wright Brothers’ first flight — a number of reports came in from across the country of a cigar-shaped flying machine.

[Read more at ABC]

Extra-terrestrials have today conceded that a decades-long programme of abduction to gather detailed knowledge of human society and biology might have produced better results had they looked beyond suggestible loners with a history of mental health problems.‘In hindsight, I suppose there was always going to be a limit to the intelligence we could get from a depressed farmer drink-driving his tractor at 2am,’ said an alien spokesbeing today. ‘We were disappointed to find that the majority of these people from isolated rural communities were not as well-connected to the planet’s major political powers as we’d hoped, and in truth they only confused our understanding of the human race. For a time we weren’t sure the species had a definitive stance on incest, or indeed what the correct number of fingers and toes was for a human. Perhaps we should have made better use of Wikipedia.’

Alien leaders have taken the opportunity to apologise formally to the ‘lost generation’ of socially awkward stay-at-homes they had previously targeted, expressing particular remorse that their routine examinations of human reproductive organs may have been seen as a come-on by the many abductees with limited sexual experience. They also apologised unreservedly to all their former guests for any damage to their credibility or social standing on earth caused by their failure to return and crown them Grand Master of Quadrant Z as promised.

‘If we could travel back in time and do it all again,’ continued the spokesbeing, ‘we’d probably choose to convey our message of constructive engagement with humans in writing or by just popping round to introduce ourselves in person, rather than relying solely on crop circles. And we’d certainly think twice before going with recreational drug users again as our preferred messengers for warnings of global apocalypse.’

Aliens had hoped that their apology would go some way to building bridges between human and extra-terrestrial civilisations and might attract more promising candidates for cranial and rectal probing, but their latest visitor appears to be no different to previous guests. ‘He talked passionately about a vision of the world as a giant theme park in which adults and children live in a harmonious condition of mutual love and respect unhampered by legal interference. By the time he tried to convince us it was normal to walk backwards while keeping both feet on the ground at all times, we knew he was taking the piss and we sent him packing with enough drugs in his system to forget the whole sorry episode.’