Stephen Bassett speaking in Adelaide

Hi

UFO activist, and Exopolitics leader, Stephen Bassett will be speaking in Adelaide on Monday 28 June.

The talk will be held at Foke Federation Centre, corner of South Road and George Street, Thebarton, doors open at 6.30pm for the 7.30 talk. Tickets at $30 may be obtained by sending a money order or cheque to Kevin Robb, PO Box 62, Mt Compass, SA 5210.

Adelaide UFO seminar

Hi readers

For those readers of my blog who are in Adelaide, here is news of what promises to be an excellent UFO seminar.

AURA, the Australian UFO Research Association, will be holding a 6 hour seminar on Saturday 12 June at the Theosophical Society building, 310 South Terrace, Adelaide between 1 and 7pm.

Speakers will be Roger Koch "UFO phenomena: A Riddle within an Enigma." Bill Chalker "Science and UFO Research" and "The Abduction Controversy." Keith Basterfield "How to research the UFO Phenomenon and Stay Sane."

Admission is $10.

Disclosure

Dear readers

Along with Exopolitics, the other hot topic is "Disclosure." This is the concept that world governments know the true answer to the UFO phenomenon and should tell the people what the governments know.

Some researchers have argued that there is a campaign underway to reveal the truth and cite the fact that various governments have opened up their UFO files, e.g. Canada, France, UK, Brazil and later this year, New Zealand. I recently checked with the Australian Government National Archives whether or not they will be opening up their entire UFO files, but the answer was no they would not be doing so,

Other researchers argue that UFO researchers will need to fight to get the truth out of Governments.

One of the most visible campaigns to force "Disclosure" is associated with Steven Greer. I have followed Greer's earlier work some years back, so decided it was time to revisit this work.

In 1990, Greer founded the "Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence" (CSETI). Greer is the International Director for CSETI. According to the CSETI website (see http://www.cseti.org/) its programs include "CE-5 Initiative" and the "Disclosure Project."

The CE5 Initiative is described as "...characterised by mutual, bi-lateral communication..." "CSETI is the only worldwide effort to concentrate on putting trained teams of investigators into the field...in an attempt to vector UFOs into a specific area for the purposes of initiating communication. Contact protocols include the use of light, sound and thought. Thought-specifically consciousness-is the primary mode of initiating contact."

CSETI holds "Ambassador to the Universe & consciousness training/expeditions." Locations for 2010 are Crestone, Colorado; Wiltshire, UK; Mt Shasta, Cal; Palm Springs, Col.

The training overview includes "...learning advanced techniques in Remote Viewing and higher states of consciousness" and "A view of the next 5000 centuries; How the Earth and humanity will evolve from its present state to that of a cosmic civilization, living in peace among many."

CSETI also holds conferences. The Oct 2010 conference, features speakers Steven Greer, Colin Andrews, Richard Hoagland, and Theodore Loder.

Under latest news, dated 19 February 2010, is news stating "CSETI expedition Yields First Ever Photograph of an Extraterrestrial" from a 17 Nov 2009 Joshua Tree National Park expedition. "This photograph offers extraordinary evidence of interstellar, transdimensional technology and the efficacy of CSETI contact protocols. The photograph is credited to Raven Nabulsi.

The Disclosure Project has its own website http://www.disclosureproject.org/ Steven Greer is the Founder and Director.

"The Disclosure Project is a non-profit research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems."

The "Project Description" reads:

"To hold open, secrecy-free hearings on the UFO/Extraterrestrial presence on and around Earth

"To hold open hearings on advanced energy and propulsion systems that, when publicly released, will provide solutions to global environmental challenges.

"To enact legislation which will ban all space-based weapons."

The Project has gathered testimonies from several hundred individuals who have knowledge of government knowledge of UFOs.

Mentioned on these two websites is Project Orion, initiated in 2008. The website is at http://theorionproject.com/

It shows that Steven Greer is the Founder and Director of this project. "He was worked for 17 years to bring together the scientists, inventors and leaders in society to advance new clean technology energy systems."

Comments:

It is very interesting to note that the CSETI Ambassadors training course includes "learning advanced techniques in Remote Viewing..." My earlier posts on the US Government's remote viewing program show that some individuals were using RV to seek out knowledge about other civilisations in the universe. My posts on Exopolitics also indicated that remote viewer Courtney Brown was using RV to "...suggest the existence of a distant galactic federation of extraterrestrial civilisations." In addition, Alfred Webre's "Star Dreams Initiative" is using RV to gain data.

So, here we have elements of "knowledge" used in both Exopolitics and CSETI coming from the same tool -remote viewing.

New book alert

Hi

Thanks to blog reader Bill Chalker for putting me on to this new book.

"Authors of the Impossible:The Paranormal and the Sacred" is a new book by Jeffrey J Kripal. Published this month by The University of Chicago Press, 320pp, ISBN 9780 226 453 866.

Kripal is J Newton Rayzor Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, Houston, Texas.

The blurb on The University of Chicago Press website (see The University of Chicago Press) for the book reads:

"Most scholars dismiss research into the paranormal as pseudoscience, a frivolous pursuit for the paranoid or gullible. Even historians of religion, whose work naturally attends to events beyond the realm of empirical science, have shown scant interest in the subject. But the history of psychical phenomena, Jeffrey J. Kripal contends, is an untapped source of insight into the sacred and by tracing that history through the last two centuries of Western thought we can see its potential centrality to the critical study of religion.

Kripal grounds his study in the work of four major figures in the history of paranormal research: psychical researcher Frederic Myers; writer and humorist Charles Fort; astronomer, computer scientist, and ufologist Jacques Vallee; and philosopher and sociologist Bertrand Méheust. Through incisive analyses of these thinkers, Kripal ushers the reader into a beguiling world somewhere between fact, fiction, and fraud. The cultural history of telepathy, teleportation, and UFOs; a ghostly love story; the occult dimensions of science fiction; cold war psychic espionage; galactic colonialism; and the intimate relationship between consciousness and culture all come together in Authors of the Impossible, a dazzling and profound look at how the paranormal bridges the sacred and the scientific."

Comment:

The alert reader will have noted that one of the subjects of the book is Jacques Vallee, whom, as regular readers will know, is one of my favourite researchers.

Balls of light

Hi readers

Adelaide, South Australia, where I live, is having a rare few days of heavy rain. We have a reputation as being the driest capital city, in the driest state, on the driest continent, but not today. A good day for being in my local library, reading science magazines, which brings me to the topic of this post.

Balls of light which float over the countryside or even down suburban streets, during a thunderstorm, are part of UFO lore. "Ball lightning" has been suggested as an explanation for some of these UFO sightings.

Now, however, an article in the 22 May 2010 "New Scientist" magazine page 10 makes a startling claim.

The article, by Kate McAlpine, reports on the work of Josef Peer and Alexander Kendl of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. "They estimate that someone standing between 20 and 200 metres from a [lightning] strike has a 1 per cent chance of seeing a magnetically induced hallucination" of a ball of light.

This lightning strike generates magnetic fields which trigger neurons in the brain to fire, causing the perception of a ball of light.

"The general notion that the electromagnetic field of lightning might [affect] neural tissue is interesting" says Thomas Kammer of the University of Ulm in Germany, who advised the team on neurological issues."

The paranormal and UFOs

Hi readers

I have always been interested in both the paranormal and UFOs. No doubt, you could say that any fan of Jacques Vallee's would be interested in both these topics.

It was of therefore, of relevance that I came across an article in an old issue of the "Psychology Today" magazine dated August 2008, on pages 76-78.

"Peter Brugger is a neuroscientist at the University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland. He focuses on the neuropsychological underpinnings of belief systems and phenomena such as "phantom limbs" - the sensation that an amputated limb is still connected to the body." p 76.

"Brugger pursued a PhD in biology and steered his research towards the phenomenon of perception. For his dissertion, he preformed an ESP study of two groups of people: those who believed in the paranormal and those who did not. He exposed his subjects to a rapid sequence of light flashes, and made them believe that the stimuli contained dice faces. The paranormal enthusiasts were particularly unlikely to repeat the same guess for a dice twice in a row. Brugger concluded that those who have a hard time accepting that weird occurrences are purely due to chance tend to believe in the paranormal, because it is a way to explain the coincidences they naturally distrust.

Those who believe that funny occurrences-such as two identical dice rolls in a row-sometimes happen haphazardly don't need to blame unseen forces...."

"After 20-plus years of scientific explanation Brugger has accumulated evidence to show that belief in paranormal activity is a brain function, just as emotion and cognition are. The brain chemical dopamine is an obvious suspect. " "People with too much dopamine literally see things; they have suspicious thoughts. They see two many patterns in what is random" he explains. Parkinsons' patients take dopamine to control their motor symptoms. If you give them too much, they begin to see things like schizophrenics do" he points out."

Comment:

"...belief in the paranormal is a brain function..."? I'm not too sure about that. I must do some more reading about Brugger's ideas.

Paul Davies a UFO believer?

Hi readers

I returned to my reading of the latest issue of the Fortean Times, May 2010. On page 28 in an item referring in part to Professor Paul Davies.

"Back in his student days, Davies was a member of BUFORA and a believer in UFOs and intelligent alien life. In 1968 he wrote to protest about an article by the eminent physicist R V Jones that debunked flying saucers. Drawing upon the same arguments used by present-day UFO proponents such as Stan Friedman, the young Davies urged Jones to re-examine the hard evidence for UFO visitations that included ground traces and images captured on film or radar."

Kenneth Arnold and pelicans?

Hi readers

The Fortean Times magazine May 2010 pp75-76 has a very interesting letter from one Michael Price of Vancouver, British Columbia. It concerns the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 1947. Price states that he was the "...compilor/editor of the Vancouver Rare bird Alert in the 1990's." Researcher James Easton posed the question "If what Arnold had seen were birds, which birds could they have been?"

"I should stress that for decades I accepted uncritically the general consensus that Kenneth Arnold's assertion that they were artificial objects was unquestionable, yet following a recent re-reading of their behaviour rather than for his rather varying description(s) of their appearance in the context of James Easton's query, I knew immediately that he was describing the behaviour of very large birds in flight at long range in a set of particular light conditions...."

Price nominates the birds as being the American White Pelican, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos.

Comment:

Dear readers, what do you think of this explanation?

New book alert

Hi readers

Well, its a very pleasant autumn day here in Adelaide. Maximum predicted temperature is 20 degrees C, although the nights are now quite cold. A delightful time to read new books.

Here are three I recently came across:

1. "We are not alone:why we have already found extraterrestrial life." Dirk Schulze-Makuch & David Darling. One World Publications. 2010. Click here for more.

2. "The great airship of 1897." J Allan Danelek. Adventures Unlimited Press. 2009. ISBN 9781935487036. Click here for more.

3. "Grey aliens and the harvesting of souls." Nigel Kerner. Bear & Company. 2010. ISBN 9781591431039. Click here for more.

New book alert

Hi readers

I recently came across a reference to a new book titled "How to Find a Habitable Planet" by James Kasting.

For those of you keeping up with this topic click here for a link to details about the work.

"The Sensed Presence Effect."

Hi readers

Oc occasions, people report feeling that there is "someone" or "something" present, even when they know they are alone. It happens to mountain climbers, solo sailors and others. In a recent article titled "The Sensed Presence Effect" in Volume 301 number 4 April 2010 of "Scientific American," author Michael Shermer suggest four possible explanations.

"1) The hallucination may be an extension of the normal sensed presence of real people and is, perhaps triggered by isolation. 2) During oxygen deprivation, sleep deprivation or exhaustion, the rational cortical control over emotion shuts down, as in the fight-or-flight response, enabling inner voices and imaginary companions to arise. 3) The body schema, or our physical sense of self-believed to be located primarily in the temporal lobe of the left-hemisphere-is the image of the body that the brain has constructed. If for any reason your brain is tricked into thinking that there is another you, it constructs a plausible explanation that the other you is actually another person-a sensed presence-nearby. 4) The mind schema, or our psychological sense of self, coordinating the many independent neural networks that simultaneously work away at problems in daily living so that we feel like a single mind."

Comment:

I have previously written about the "sense of presence" and "sense of self" and its possible application to abduction reports, in posts dated 22 Oct 2009 and 27 Oct 2009.

RIP Michael Thalbourne

Dear readers

Adelaide based parapsychologist Dr Michael A Thalbourne passed away during the week. Yesterday, I went to his funeral at Felixstowe. In attendance were family, friends and colleagues. A sad loss.

Click here for a Wiki entry.

Northern Territory "UFO invasion"

Hi all

Here is a link (click here) to a recent newspaper report about the Northern Territory's "UFO invasion."

Paola Harris

Hi readers

Autumn has well and truly settled upon Adelaide. Grey skies, and rain today.

I'm continuing my look at all things to do with Exopolitics. Another person involved in the movement is Paola Harris. I went to her website at http://www.paolaharris.com/home.html

The header for the website is "Paola Harris Exopolitics." Just below this header is a statement " In the spirit of continuing my own field research with some sense of integrity, I feel it is time for a "reset." I am very excited to be a more integral part of the European Exopolitical movement."

"Exoplitics is defined as the study of Extraterrestrial presence on Earth and its sociological as well as, political implications for the planet is my main focus. I therefore need to distance myself from "conspiracy theory" and unsubstantiated claims which tend to marginalize and derail serious research in this field."

On her home page "Paola Leopizza Harris is an Italo-American photojournalist and investigative reporter in the field of extraterrestrial related phenomena research."

There is a link to "Exopolitics Institute Courses" where Paola Harris is listed as a course instructor for the topic of "Developing the road to disclosure-Quantum Cosmology."

The site has adverts for three conferences, at two of which Paola Harris is shown as a speaker.

There are also adverts for her books:

1. 2010 "Exopolitics:All of the above."
2. 2007. "Exopolitics:How does one speak to a ball of light?"
3. 2003. "Connecting the dots-making sense of the UFO phenomenon."

The site also has "News archives," "Engagements," "Contact" and "links" tabs.

Elsewhere I learnt that she has a masters degree in education; is the International Liaison Director for the Exopolitics Institute and lives both in Rome and Boulder, Colorado in the US. Her new non-profit organisation "Starworks Italia" aims to bring prominent UFO speakers to Italy.

Back to Exopolitics

Dear readers

Well, it's a perfect Autumn day here in Adelaide. Partly cloudy skies and 22 degrees centigrade maximum. I'm back looking at more material dealing with Exopolitics, in my bid to understand the origins, players and detail of this topic.

One of the individuals mentioned on the www.exopolitics.org website was Ed Komarek, who along with Mike Jamieson ran "Operation Right To Know" (ORTK) in the USA, between 1992-1995.

ORTK was a political activist group (click here to read some of their Newsletters.)

Ed Komarek has published a blog for several years now (click here to go there.)

The blog's home page reads "Exopolitics is based upon the understanding that earth is being visited by many advanced extraterrestrial races with diverse ethics, motives and agendas.The dynamics of the interactions between ET races and this interaction with earth humanity is to be explored on this site."

Ed's "About me" area includes "He was involved in exopolitics long before the word Exopolitics was coined by Afred Webre..." Ed lives in the USA and is now aged 61.

You can browse the blog articles by title and he also has a free e-book available at: http://authors.exopaedia.org/edkomarek which gathers together his earlier articles.

Recent articles on the blog include:

(1) "Brazil UFO/ET disclosure" -about the opening up of official Brazilian government UFO files.

(2) "Intel product for Policymakers" which includes "I think the four major UFO/ET issues are: The overpopulation driven ELE (Extinction Level Event), UFO/ET disclosure and how to pay for it, International Security Issues relating to trade with extraterrestrial races, and consciousness issues. Some of the secondary issues are: Issues dealing with the secret space fleet's atomic reactors, and Solar Warden's general effect on global security..."

A 30 October 2009 post "Is disclosure imminent?" states "I am aware of six different civilian-government high level disclosure efforts lobbying for UFO/ET disclosure..." The list is:

1. Steven Greer's Disclosure Project.
2. Clay and Shawn Pickering's Ad Hock Military UFO Working Group.
3. Steven Bassett's Paradigm Research Group.
4. Dan Smith's CIA R & D Disclosure Operation.
5. Gordon Novel's Project RAM Disclosure.
6. Ed Komarek's source "...a person that claims to have close ties to a member of Congress well informed on UFO/ET."

Exopsychology

Hi readers

After spending quite some time reading about Exopolitics, I needed a change of pace...to Exopsychology!

I came across a site run by Michael Gintowt (click here.)

Canadian Michael Gintowt has a Masters degree in psychology and has interests in the paranormal and normal sciences. He defines the term "Exopsychology" as "...the study of UFO phenomenon from a psychological, scientific, and multi-disciplinary perspective."

"We start with the hypothesis that this phenomenon has something to do with the evolution of our consciousness. "Aliens" are not necessarily from other planets..."

The home page has a number of "Categories" such as "Disclosure", "International Exopsychology", and "Experiences." Clicking on a category brings up a series of blog entries on that topic.