Showdown  

 

Allow me to quote from a message widely broadcast by Gordon last Thursday:

Langley's major players are indicating they or their business surrogates will support financially - the pending RAM Conference announcement. Do you object to being BCCd in the RAM broadcast lists? RP has had Dan contact Alison yesterday in L.A. to advise her RP has had surprisingly two previous meetings with Spielberg and has the offical -albeit covert - support of the "company" and his new boss as Deputy Director of ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence).  Adm. Mike McConnell the new Director of ODNI is also the current or former MJ- #1 Director General.

Here is the response from RP on Saturday:

Effective sponsorship of a conference requires honesty and integrity.  Please delete all the fabrications and nonsense. 

Then, later on Saturday came this from Gordon, excerpt:

D) Mr. Smith while providing me a small amount of financial support recently at the behest of RP and which was much appreciated is reportedly now in complete disagreement with our RAMSTAR Productions screenplay treatment for the KINGDOMS COME film trilogy and directly intended to finance RAM in Phase One. Instead he has recently indicated to our new co-producer - the professionally brilliant Alison [...] - that he would instead like to replace our KC story with his Eschaton ideas to end our world and concomitantly have Christ II return to have 144,000 surviving souls worship him on a planet destroyed by an environmental or other global catastrophe over the next 1000 years per Biblical or Dan's prophecy. Dan's beliefs in who he thinks may be the Christ II who can't walk on water, fly without the assistance of technology, raise anyone from the dead, or feed multitudes with any kind of food falling out of the air - is not mine. I will leave you to guess who he thinks this second time around Deity may be.

And a couple of hours later, back from RP:

Actually I thought this was one of Gordon’s more accurate letters.  It is true that each of you has demonstrated at various times that you think he is psychologically unbalanced, a poor indecisive leader and scientifically inept relative to ARV=UFO=RAM.  In that you certainly are not alone and in some respects you may be correct.  In the phase space in which Gordon operates, there are no norms or metrics from which to gauge deviations.  You could perceive him as balanced or unbalanced depending entirely on your immediate perspective.  The issue here seems to be whether you are willing and able to support Gordon as he attempts to move forward.  While it may not always be obvious what it means to “move forward” it is after all Gordon’s prerogative to define this in terms of his perceptions.  And it is within that frame of reference that he perceives alternating efforts to support and impede his progress.  In the coming weeks Gordon will be attempting to define his path forward in terms of the RAM conference.  I think it is important the he has an opportunity to do so without too much external interference.  That said, the conference should provide ample opportunities for a mix of agendas.  My suggestion is that where these differ, sponsors/participants express their views as additional context rather than as opposing context.  Within Gordon’s phase space, very little is certain, so it makes little sense to impede his progress unless that is in itself the objective.

Interesting.  No?  And what are we to make of all this??  Wouldn't it be convenient to have a whacko meter? 

Additional context: BPW relative to RAM??  Now there's a stretch! If we were all geniuses, diplomats and saints, RP's strategy might work, but in the real world there will be confusion and conflict.  The RAM conference portends to be a microcosm.  I hope it can be pulled off.  My intervention with Alison was a friendly heads-up to her and the others that this would not be easy and not always pretty.  How do we make sausage look like tenderloin?  Spielberg is poised to earn another star in his crown. 

For the past week on Jack's list there has been much chatter about the JJA notes.  It sounds like there may be something serious there. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have two interviews coming this week, Wed & Sun, to think about.  My job is to provide a metanarrative for the various stories that have been surfacing:  

And here is a timeline:  [a]

Now this from CI:

If RP truly wants to help pave the path to Disclosure then why use loose gravel instead of asphalt for the roadway, especially when you know the brand new vehicle (disclosure) has a delicate suspension and could use the best possible support system available???

Good point.  Yes, the path to heaven is not paved with yellow bricks.  Gravel is the medium of choice.  This is just another application of the Prime Directive: minimal interference means allowing maximal leeway to the Hidden Hand.  We are all God's Clowns.  This is what TF refers to as the the Soap Opera.  CF's job is to keep the pot stirred sufficiently so that nothing sticks to the sides and gets burned. 

GN just called complaining that my one phone call to Alison has apparently sabotaged the entire RAM/KC project!  He now wants to see me levitate, without benefit his anti-gravity torsion circuit.  I do sympathize.  What's a body to do?  Am I to roll over and play dead?  On Friday I told CF that the only reason I was involved with RAM was because of him, but he said the only reason he was involved with RAM was because of me.  After all, I did introduce Gordon to an initially very reluctant CF.  Here is a prime example of the Soap Opera. 

BTW, Gordon, how do you spell KINGDOMS COME??  I spell it BPW. 

I notice that Serponaut has posted some questions for our interview on Wednesday:  

  1. How do you foresee disclosure, or a "critical mass of awareness", ever coming to fruition and what is your estimate on the timeframe?
  2. What political or social advantage do you perceive by the ongoing (20 years?) psyops employed by sectors within the intel / ufology circus?
  3. What are your views on the historical and present occult connections to the governments of the world?
  4. You have been writing about the Eschaton for over 10 years. What convinced you personally that such end times are imminent?
  5. Out side of Paperclip and the popular history, what influence do you feel Nazi Germany has had on the landscape of American politics and values?
  6. You may not be directly requesting such, but why should anyone place any trust or faith in what you or Pandolfi or Green or Novell or Hamilton or Puthoff or Scott-Jones or Sarfatti has to say about paranormal subject matter?
  7. In terms of evidence to your claims and aside from educational qualifications, what differentiates you guys from the rest of 'uferdom'?
  8. What evidence do you have that Adm. McConnell even knows DB?
  9. Why do you personally place any credence in DB's claims?
  10. What are your thoughts on George Knapp's article on DB? http://www.ufomag.com/articles/articles19/articles19.4/knapp.html

Answers:

  1. I have been laboring under the assumption that the PtB will want to be slightly ahead of this curve.  If I'm their designated mascot, then they will need to keep me in play.  At the present rate, the internet buzz will reach a critical level in a few months. 
  2. Advantage to whom?  The PtB?  They get me as their mascot. They could do a heck of a lot worse, and they know it!
  3. Many and varied.
  4. My powers of ratiocination.
  5. Nazis?  I'll bet we've learned a few tricks from them.  Probably not good tricks. 
  6. I can speak only for myself.  My transparency on this website is my only token of trust.
  7. Differential?  Us guys?  Ron is the only official 'phenomenologist' in the public eye.  I'm his only public eschatologist.
  8. Virtually none.
  9. Only from CF.  But, allow me to opine that if DB did not already exist, it would be in the public interest to invent him.  Comprene?
  10. I'll read it next. Ok, I'll have to admit that George's report does give me pause.  On the other hand, where are MY groupies?  Why hasn't Ron been able to provide them?  I'll be sure to ask!!

Any more questions?  I gather that you have zero interest in the BPWH.  Shame on you!  Is your forum anything more than a motley crew of cynics?

 

[2/6]

This was posted yesterday to the RU forum:

There's been a lot happening lately that have led lot's of folk to believe we are close to "disclosure". It seems there is no limit to the stories that have been pounced upon and the noises coming from the so-called "insiders". All of this and more is being touted as the precursor for official disclosure being "just around the corner".
 
The sad thing is, there is nothing of the sort happening. We've been very busy behind the scenes these last few weeks and months and the only thing we have seen is a helluva lot of evidence suggesting that most of the people involved in this so-called process are unethical fraudsters and liars who have managed to successfully hoodwink people into believing their fabricated tales for many years now. The lies these people tell in order to have others believe their non-existent histories of past official capacity within the USG is frightening and ridiculous at the same time. What's frightening is most people simply believe these tales without really looking into who it is telling the stories in the first place.
 
To put it bluntly, We've had enough of these conmen and we will be lifting the lid on what is really going on and what has been happening lately within certain circles of the UFOlogy crowd. Most of this nonsense goes back a few years and for the most part it is the same set of people responsible for it.
 
Why unethical? Because what "they" have been doing is no different to what was done with Paul Bennewitz all those years ago. It's disgusting behaviour and it will be exposed.
 
So yes, full disclosure is "just around the corner". The only difference between our disclosure and theirs is ours will be the truth.
 
Cheers,
Zep

I am told that this was not specifically directed at me.  I can well sympathize with Zep's annoyance with all the game playing.  I have been caught up in it, as much as anyone.  Where I probably differ from Zep is that I am in a position to better appreciate how high these stakes are.  Once this Pandora's box is opened, nothing will ever be the same.  Every last one of us will have some nostalgia for these good old days, i.e. the last six thousand years of history.  Tomorrow that sweet sadness will be gone forever.  It will be a brave new world.  Savor our innocence for these last couple of days.  We'll be wishing that Ron could have kept us all going in circles for just another week or two. 

It is important to understand that I'm no ufologist.  I was dragged into this game, kicking and screaming.  My younger sister was put in intensive care at the same time with a similar breakdown.  She headed for the hills, I headed for deep cover. 

I have been presented with an expanded list of questions by Ryan, which are all basically nit picking, IMO.  It's all about their debunking agenda, nothing really about disclosure, per se.  This will be a waste of everyone's time.  It will all be, 'he said she said'.  Someone on the forum remarked that I wasn't seeing the bigger picture!!!  If that isn't the kettle calling the pot 'black'.  All the gossip I know is right there on the blog in black and white.  Why waste air-time rehashing all this effluvia?  Someone can write it up as background information for the miniscule number of ufo dumpster-divers.  I'll be glad to sign my name to it.  Then we can get on with the real issues. 

Ryan and I have had a preliminary conversation.  I will try to be accommodating of their interest being mainly in CF.  After all, I have been his 'PR' person for these last many years.  That is the least I can do.  We have to get over that hump, before we can start bringing in the larger issues.  I hope that the OM interview on Sunday can then take up were we leave off with RU. 

Another excerpt from the RU discussion:

It's important with an interview like this to keep in mind that there are religious aspects involved, and regardless of our personal beliefs, Dan holds many things to be self-evident. Keeping those things in mind, admitting that you may not agree, there remains a large volume of information, data, contacts, and insight which Dan shares in his blog as well. He analyses his data through the filter of those things he believes are self-evident. But there is nothing to say that you can't (in fact, I believe if you ask Dan - he would encourage it) analyze the information that he presents through your own filter.

Self-evident?  Wrong!  I would like to see an instance of where I do that.  I simply adhere to the coherence theory of truth, and I go with what seems to cohere the best.  BPWH = Best Possible World Hypothesis.  Can I be any more explicit than that??

And here is a question for the RUers:  Why is scientific materialism like a balloon? 

Answer:  One paranormal prick and it's all gone? 

I aim to be Sophia's Prick.  If CF wants to help out, that's his business.  There are a lot worse pricks out there than Chicken Little. 

Or, why is Chicken Little like Joseph?  He interprets Pharaoh's 'dream'.  It's also called Unconventional Collections. 

BTW, I am now told that Gene Lakes did work for NIDS.  Is that already known? 

 

[2/8]

CF called to get Ryan Dube's phone number.  I would imagine that he might wish to preview the interview.  I told him that it seemed uneventful to me and that there was nothing covered that was not already in the blog.  I believe he commented something to the effect that there was, indeed, a lot in the blog.  Some poor grad student may someday have to give it a thorough parsing. 

'Ex-China Foreign Ministry Official says Extraterrestrials live among us' -- by Paul Chen, The Canadian, 2/7/07.  This article is being circulated by email.  The following paragraph hit my eye:

In the industrialized West, there evolved the prevailing Pseudo-religious dogma that human beings are at the centre of 'G-d's creation in the universe'. This dogma is the ideological motivation behind the on-going de-legitimization of the verifiable contact that people have had with Extraterrestrials (ETs). This apparent dogma has become the modern equivalent of the corresponding dogma, that "the world is flat", which Church and other elites centuries ago used to champion. In contrast, free of Western pseudo-religious based dogma, the Buddhist milieu of China, has freed their scientific community, with the support of government, and of community participation, to seek to explore UFO incidences and evidence of human contact with Extraterrestrials.

Ah, so!  Our Western fear of ET's is merely a hangover from our theocratic heritage.  Yes, there is no small amount of truth here.  Dialectical materialists flock where our scientific materialists still fear to tread.  I have spoken on these pages about CF's special interest in China, and my own sojourn therein.  The dialecticians do not labor under the shadow of our perennial bias toward dualism.  I am a Hegelian from way back. 

BUT, dialectical materialism suffers from the incoherence of Transhumanism.  Only theism can overcome that incoherence.  Yes, where does Mao's Little Red Book speak of VALIS?  Where is the Chinese Roswell?  Not to brag, or anything.  It does appear that the Three Magi took a wrong turn on their way to the Forbidden City.  I'll bet there is a mad dash in the Kuomintang to dig up the notes to my talk in Guan Dong. 

That's right folks, retail ufology may be terminally ridden with dialectical materialism.  And, yes, the Xian hardcore of MJ-12 is right to be suspicious of the pinko greys; surely they must be on an mission for the A/C.  But, then, those Xians did not have Sophia come and knock on their door in the middle of the night. 

 

[2/09]

Chris has forwarded to me some of the "J" material that they have not circulated yet.  This is allegedly from Angleton.  I'm not particularly impressed.  I find it less impressive than the Serpo material, which at least had new stuff.  This Angleton stuff is warmed over from things that have been out there for decades.  It provides no new insights about what is going on. 

The source spends too much time with petty ufo politics.  This is certainly a turn-off in my book.  Keep in mind that JJA was strictly C/I.  This just continues in that vein.  Meanwhile, Jack has access to other Angleton material that has Einstein talking about superconductors.  I would be surprised if this were not anachronistic.

I was told by RD that there was a disturbing message.  None of these other scenarios speak to any specific message.  The only message is the basic inference that we are going to become food for the bad 'gods'.  The good 'gods', evidently, can do nothing to protect us from these predations.  This is downright silly.  Where is VALIS when we need her?

But, yes, there is some sense in which we are food for the gods.  This is what apokatastasis is about.  There are only two stories: the core story and the cover story.  The cover is a physical rendition of the core metaphysics. 

There is a new age variant of the cover story.  The evil powers on Earth have fallen in with the bad ET's, and are preventing the good ETs from bringing us to the next level of 'evolution'.  There is no eschatology therein.  The New Agers then must subsume some form of transhumanism.  We all get genetically transformed or end up as avatars in a cosmic video game.  Apokatastasis is beyond the ken of all who wish to traffic in such nonsense. 

If you manage to scratch the surface of MJ-12, you find a Xian hardcore.  The existence of that hardcore is nowhere visible in these cover stories. 

 

[2/10]

Thanks to the intervention of CF, Gordon and I are provisionally back on speaking terms.  Alison did have a chat with CF about my input, and they do not see that it should negatively impact the KC project, and perhaps the contrary.  In any case, there may be a meeting out there next month, and, having already made my views known to the principal player, I can sit back and enjoy the show.   

I had a lengthy chat with Gary B this morning.  He has a lot of lose ends that he is trying to sort out before composing a new expose.  In the meantime, Ryan D is threatening a major release any time now.  After tomorrow's interview, will there be anything left for me to say?  Perhaps I will have been fully debriefed.  The rest will just be fleshing out the details, at least relative to the political side of things.  But, as to the BPWH, it seems that the surface has barely been scratched.  No one is really  up for that hard slog, not at this point.

 

[2/11]

The question on most of our minds, Open and otherwise, is whether we are any closer to disclosure now than we were sixty years ago.  I certainly cannot say for certain.  Perhaps we'll never get closer than we were alleged to have been in Sept. '91, a couple of weeks before I met CF.  Blame it on me. 

What are we waiting for?  We're waiting for closure.  Who wants to open a can of worms?  Who wants to open a Pandora's box?  Closure will have to address mainly our relation to VALIS.  This is a moral issue which cannot be addressed globally by any any existing secular or sectarian establishment.  There will have to be a fresh start.  It will be a private, ad hoc group with a suitable vision and adequate connections.  Clearly the Aquarium is a candidate to be that group.  Steve Greer's C-Seti is another such group.  It has been much more active and in the public eye.  It has had many government connections.  A principal distinguishing feature is the pronoia vs. the paranoia.  Only the Aquarium provides a positive rationale for the sixty (twelve thousand?) year delay.  It comes back to the basic point that there cannot be creation without concealment.  Ask any artist.  The self-revealing VALIS is the self-concealing VALIS. 

 

[2/15]

I have gotten no feedback yet on the OM interview.  I will check their website later.

In the meantime there has been a continuing controversy and confusion concerning the Angleton notes.  Caryn is attempting to make some sense out of this.  That is my principal source for what follows, the residual confusion being just my own.  

The first known contact that JJA's grandson, JA, Jr., had with a ufologist was with Richard Boylan in 1998.  Subsequently he distributed copies of these notes also to Hal Puthoff.  Other members of the aviary have also been in this loop since back then.  Between 1998 and 2001 the bulk of his fathers notes were stolen from a warehouse.  Some of the remaining notes were water damaged in a hurricane after 2001.  Also, these notes had been reviewed by the FBI, before they were stolen. 

After being stolen, JA, Jr., attempted to retrieve the copies that he had already distributed.  Some of these returned copies were then transmitted to Bob Collins and appeared in the 2nd edition of EfD.  Somewhere in that confusion, it appears that some of Jack's and Mondanese's writings were collated into the copies of the original notes, and this is what had appeared in Collins' book.  Various of the actors here have had recent communication with JA, Jr. about these matters.

What else do we know or are able to surmise?  Three generations of the Angleton's have displayed interest in the ufological connections to JJA's original work.  How much of this interest and material is informational or disinformational is open to speculation.  Whether it will be possible to separate out the later interpolated bits from the original notes is not clear.  There is no longer a definitive repository for any of this material. 

As far as disclosure goes, this whole saga seems to have deteriorated into titillating bits of gossip.  It is surprising that nothing about these notes has made it into the mainstream press.  It is peculiar that the only remnant of these notes has to do mainly with ufos, when you think of all the other provocative stuff they must once have contained.  Collating the notes was the project of JA2.  JA1 died in 1987.  JA2 developed a brain tumor in '01 and died in '04.  The Sarfatti/Mondanese references were most likely to have been penciled in by JA2. 

With the advent of the Good Shepherd, it is surprising that there seem to be no reporters involved in this recollection of these notes.  This would now, at this late date, still be fresh material for a news story.  As such, it would present a convenient vehicle for disclosure, IMO. 

This material could be fodder for the last hurrah of the old Aviary.  If they want to make a significant contribution to disclosure, they will need to get their act together, one last time.  This is now happening only at the prodding of outsiders.  There is still much foot dragging and whining on the part of Bob. 

How much of this sideshow is being coordinated or otherwise overseen by other insiders?  There has been much opportunity for meddling; a temptation that would be hard to pass up, we should suppose. 

It remains amusingly probable that JA1 is contributing to this counter-intelligence effort from beyond the grave, along with the possible witting cooperation from JA2&3.  Regardless of the residual informational content, it still makes for a great story.  Jack has added the additional likelihood that the ghost of the KGB plies these same waters.  Wouldn't we expect that all the major players would want to get their thumbs in this very aromatic and not so humble pie?

 

[2/16]

I am trying to make sense out of this Angleton business, but it is not computing. 

We in the UFO community are used to handling two-bit affairs, but this is not one of those.  We have not yet been able to get our heads around the possible significance of this story. 

The Good Shepherd was a major work, and a significant bit of history. 

I cannot even begin to imagine that JJA stole his notes.  No other government employee is likely to have had such a sensitive collection.  Think about it!!  This is the biggest disconnect I have run across in my sixteen years in this business. 

There is a simple explanation.  These notes were much too sensitive to have been left to FOIA.  The family was encouraged to get them out of the government files.  Once out of federal jurisdiction, they could then easily be spirited away to a secret location. 

The movie makes a big case about these files.  The fact of their existence was suggested only in the second edition of EfD.  Only when the movie came out, did we begin to suspect that we were only seeing the tip of an iceberg.

Where have all the historians and reporters been wrt these notes?  Has no one wondered where the JJA files were?  Has there been no FOIA request?

Of all the people that the family might have wanted to contact about these notes, only one person is known: Richard Boylan.  I ask you, folks, does this make sense to anyone?  It sure doesn't to me.  If the world were normal, none of this would make any sense.  However, if the world is not normal in the way many of us suspect, this begins to make perfect sense.  [n.b. Richard was not the only one.  He was the first one.] 

It seems quite possible, even only based on the few things we think we know at this point, that the JJA files were a time capsule, or more like a time-bomb.  This fact could not be an accident.  Any number of insiders could have seen this coming years ago, ever since FOIA was a cloud on the horizon.  This simple fact provides much information about the disclosure timeline and the number of people who must be aware of it.  It would not be a small number.  The number would be at least several times greater than the 28 previously mentioned.  Yes? 

I'm now willing to speculate that the JJA files have, for many years, been intended to be the primary vehicle of disclosure.  And now they are missing?  Yes, but.  JA, Jr. is not missing.  He now holds the key.  I find it difficult not to suppose that he is well prepared to follow one or more scripts, depending on last minute developments. 

Is all of this now going to wait upon his scheduled meeting with Jack in May?  We shall find out sooner, rather than later. 

Another point is that Jack, Richard, Robert and Hal are not the only people who have been in communication with JA, Jr. about the unusual content of these files.  I have been told that TF has also had direct communication.  That would be, at the least, semi-official.  Everyone we know has their thumb in this pie, it seems, except CF.  Is CF so important that he can ignore all these goings on?  I sincerely doubt it.  If this is not meant to be the dropping of the other shoe, then what is it meant to be?  I can call Gus Russo now, and he can call his good friend, Seymour Hersh.  That might fix this mess in a hurry.  Want to make a bet?  BTW, Seymour is not at all unaware of this angle. 

Ok, so I have spoken with Gus, and he is more than a little bit interested in these developments.  I submit, that if Gus is willing, that he should be our primary investigator in this affair, for many reasons, which I will get to when I have helped my nephew locate his cell phone. 

Yes, Gus does know the family and he has had a long standing interest in our subject since his own experience at age 10.  Look him up.  Yes, he has met with CF almost a decade ago.  He is now making some phone calls and will get back to us.  Whoever we decide should follow up on this, should have it coordinated with both CF and TF.  If there is an issue about that, then let's hear it, or hold your peace.

Gus agreed that these files would not have been sufficiently secure had they been left in the Government vaults.  These would have had to been dealt with in some unique, ad hoc, i.e. 'private', fashion.  Just like this disclosure. 

 

[2/17]

Gus, Sam and I are meeting this evening to go over the background, and then do some strategizing about how to approach the story. 

The likely approach for now is to focus just on the history of these files.  How did they come to be privately sequestered by the family?  Are these quite possibly the single most provocative set of files in our nation's history, quite apart from any questions about the weird stuff?  The FBI was alleged to have been consulted.  That, in itself, would provide the basis for several interviews.  A single phone call from Gus to his friend, Tom Mangold, might go a considerable way to clearing up the preliminary issues about the handling of these files. 

Once the one-time existence of the files has been established in the press, there will be ample opportunity to delve into the phenomenological issues.  These steps will depend heavily upon the close cooperation of the grandson.  He would be the designated control valve for the handling of it.  The movement on this story will hopefully be keyed into the movement on the Hollywood front.  There could be a tie-in on the storyline and politically, a natural spin-off from the Good Shepherd. 

If Gus does want to move ahead on this, he will be needing the cooperation of the folks here who have already been involved.  He needs some talking points from us for his approach to Tom.  He and I will need to agree on some minimal coverage of his progress here on the blog. 

Suggestions?  Questions? 

 

[2/18] [a]

This was received last night by Gus from a fellow investigator:

Gus, You haven't given me much to go on about the grandson's claim, so my short answer is "I strongly doubt it" -- although I hasten to add, anything is possible.  
 
I'm unaware of any official files or documents taken home after he was fired (or at any time earlier).  I also know that his successors (and subsequent investigators) were unaware of any official papers that were taken home.  [I spent more than a week inside his house -- with his widow's permission -- carefully going thru all of the boxes of his personal and professional papers/notes/letters/photos that she had collected after his death.]  The grandson may have inherited this interesting stuff that I saw.  Or maybe he/they found some additional boxes of materials in the years since I was there.  Hard to tell without knowing more.

Then this:

Dan,
 
In regard to your blog of 2/17...
 
A while back we were in touch with a person who knows Angleton Jr. well. We were told about the files; how they came into the families' possession and then were told via our contact, by Angleton to stay out of it.
 
Judging from Robert Collins' recent contact with him, Angleton's family is not wanting to get involved in revealing this publicly. So unless he changes his approach that is likely where things will stay. The files were, we were told, as I mentioned to Jack, confiscated in broad daylight, by members of the government or people posing as such. That's as much as we are able to state at this time.
 
However, if you are able to get in touch with him, we would love to interview him on this topic!
 
Best wishes,
 
Kerry and Bill

In response, Jack stated, in regard to his recent conversation with JA, Jr. about the 'confiscation':

That's not the way Angleton told it to me directly.

There are still plenty of things that don't add up. 

Out of his files, Gus has sent me a copy of the alleged Angleton memo of Aug. 3, 1962, concerning Marilyn Monroe, JFK and UFO's, presumed to have been forged. 

-----------------------------

I spoke with Gus this evening.  He and his colleague, Scott, know two people who worked directly for Angleton at the Agency.  Neither one has recalled anything to do with UFOs.  Nor do they imagine that he could or would have removed any files from the Agency before or after being fired. 

Also Gus believes that Timothy Cooper has knowledge of the forgery of the Marilyn Monroe memo.  Timothy being named as a contributor to EfD could be damning. 

But we both agree that JA, Jr. remains a person of interest. 

The following speculation is only mine.  JA, Jr. is unlikely to have been motivated by either notoriety or greed, yet there seems to be no doubt that he has been proactive in disseminating UFO information alleged to have been recorded by his grandfather.

It is strange, however, that JA, Jr. would have gone directly to the likes of a Richard Boylan with this information.  There are many more legitimate outlets for such information, to which he would have had easy access. 

There is, however, a pattern here.  This is the Rick Doty/Gordon Novel pattern: use easily deniable cutouts for the dissemination of sensitive information.  Lest either of them should take offense, I may be tarred with the same brush. 

Given that JJA had access to provocative UFO information, he might very likely have shared it verbally with his son, who also worked for the agency.  If he had to share it with someone, it would have been smarter to share it with his son, than with an assistant, say.  There are many instances of such familial lineage in this field. 

The grandson might have felt a personal desire to share this information with the world.  Thus was he incorporated or read-into a larger dissemination effort.  He was instructed to go first to lightweights like Richard and Timothy to test the water.  There may never have been any documents.  The documents were manufactured on the spot to facilitate the transfer of (dis-) information.  Thus do we have the management of leakage. 

Could Gus hope to go back to JA, Jr. to sound him out about any of this?  Would James be likely to be more candid?  I would suggest a phone call, after having consulted with CF & Co.  We expect that there will be more information from third parties by tomorrow.

Soon there will have to be a decision about going to Florida. 

 

[2/19]

In EfD I notice a reference to an exchange scheduled to occur on 4/24/97.  See this in the context of the timeline above. 

There have been more phone conversations today relative to the alleged JJA notes.  There is some encouragement from CF for me to participate in a meeting.  Jack is being fedexed what few notes the grandson still has.

Meanwhile, an inside source has told one of us, that it is known that disinfo is still being fed into ufo channels.  This has a specific C/I purpose, not specified to me.  CF discounted this allegation as being counter to their charter to not interfere domestically.  This is an issue that has been discussed here previously.  There are expected to be further questions about this. 

Jack said that the grandson noticed the theft of the bulk of the notes soon after his father's death in '04. 

Gus is quite unimpressed with the material on Angleton in EfD, apparently originating from Tim Cooper.  The grandson is reported to share this view. 

 

[2/20]

I would like to say that there need not be a showdown.  What is more likely is a split between a mahayana and various hinayanas relative to the apokatastasis. 

In that regard, and with a slight shift in metaphor, I would be glad to nominate TF to be the archbishop of whatever, conceding that the R&D show is intended to be the papal nuncio.  If TF does intend to be the devil we know, he does have his work cut out for him.  I wish him Godspeed.  We could do a lot worse, as in almost everything that will be transpiring.  This is only to get our accounts in order for the crunch time. 

What seems to be shaping up is a little treasure hunt for the sources who have been put in place.  This way we can all see who is where on the track.  There should be an orderly queue.  There need be no pushing and shoving.  The grandson should be able to point us to the next logical source.  One source does not make a story.  We need someone independent of the family.  It would have to be someone at least a credible as say, a Woolsey.  There would then need to be some backup sources so that the first two would not be ganged up on. 

This is how we could proceed for awhile and still avoid the WH press briefing for as long as possible.  Before that point, there would need to be access to some of the 28.  Some of them would need to be willing to stick their necks out, and this would be the logical place for them to put up a finger to test the breeze. 

Some of this should be worked out before we could expect the grandson to say a whole lot.  The main thing we will need from him will be additional live names.  Well, those names could come from CF/TF. 

If any of this is legit, then we should expect that the saber rattling relative to Mahmoud is meant to be linked into this timing.  That will simply be another marker point along the trail.

Another person who might go to Florida is someone who baby-sat for Golitsyn for a spell. 

This is from Gary:

A well-placed 'source' identified the counterintelligence aspect as originating with the IBC -- Intelligence Business Community --  and therefore outside of government supervision.

I've never heard of this designation: IBC. 

I had conversations with CF and TF.  Nothing new.  There is still not a clear story about who was the Area 51 person who may have been employed either by NIDS or Bigelow Aerospace.  TF has spoken to JA, Jr., but only about a personal matter.  Also he is not optimistic about any of his (8?) sources as being willing to share any sort of public podium with the grandson.  I have not brought this issue to CF, but, yes, he remains upbeat about a meeting with the grandson. 

Gary interjects in reference to the alien/human encounters mentioned in the timeline: 

I am wondering if these 'exchanges' might correspond to a specific category of anomalous mental phenomena -- 'encounters' involving the 'upload' and 'download' of 'mind-stuff' -- and not to nuts and bolts material arrival. 

Me: That could be overly mentalistic. 

The 'phenomena' presents as a lucid 'bubble' opening into the mind's eye. One is reminded of an operating room observation dome. Human? observers appear to be on the 'other side' and are involved in some procedure that extracts the personality and memories of the experiencer. An 'alien' presence appears to hide just outside of the range of observation, directing or facilitating the work at hand. A clone of the mind-memories is created and archived? There is an exchange of information, and then the memories/mind-stuff is returned to the original body, but not in the original state.

Well, this is an interesting metaphor.  Yes, a stargate may have the properties of a bubble.  It need not be two-dimensional.  Are these stargates merely mental entities?  Here is where I have to fall back on the immaterialist mantra.  The good news is that ufos/stargates are merely illusions.  The bad news is that so is everything else, and this is where the eschatology comes in.  There is no absolute reality.  Everything exists only in relation to everything else.  We exist as 'physical' human beings only in the tension between the Alpha and the Omega/Telos.  Gary is a smart guy, but leading him to this simple truth is like leading a horse to water.  He may die of spiritual thirst, with his nose in the babbling brook.  The floodgate will open.  My best hint to Gary is to consider what probably happens when we die.  We go to heaven.  What we usually fail to appreciate in the BPW is that we never left heaven, it simply became frozen with our little karmic feet stuck in the ice, so to speak.  As we awaken to the true nature of our metaphysical/dreamtime reality, that ice will begin to thaw.  The visitors never experienced our Big Chill.  They bring their more fluid reality in through the portals that they can create down here.  At those thresholds has been, and will be, much action. 

But, yes, Gary is right: everyone of our individual minds is a mini-portal.  The external portals are our folie-a-deux.  These require a more robust external intervention.  But we'll soon get the hang of it. 

Yes, Gary is in thrall to the pall of orthodoxy known as the physics daemon.  That is just the definition of Modernism.  Gary is a thoroughly Modern Millie.  It is the theoretical physicists who are on the threshold of post-modernism.  They have seen the inside of the sausage factory known as professional Physics.  They know enough to take physicalism with a big grain of salt.  They ought to and usually do know how the physicalist fashion can change in the blink of an eye.  They can have a much more nuanced understanding of the mental quicksand that otherwise passes for the Real World.  Realism was something invented by a stressed-out philosopher.  A realist physicist is an oxymoron who has given up looking for the next Big Thing.  

The next big thing is metaphysics. 

 

[2/21]

There always has to be a next step.  We won't be able to get to JJA without one.  TF does not wish to cooperate, not with R&D.  CF has already noted this fact.  Has TF shared any of his eight names with CF?  That is a significant issue for our little triumvirate.  If I were JA/J, I would not come forward without some company.  It is up to C&T/F to provide that company.  But JA/J already has come forward.  No.  Coming out to Timothy and Robert is something less than serious.  We'll need a quid pro quo.  That is a much for us as for JA/J.  If C&T/F are half-way serious, they could, at the very least, have a heart-to-heart with JA/J.  Make sure he knows he is on the side of the angels/daemons. 

I'm expecting a call from Nick Redfern:

Dear Mr. Smith

My name is Nick Redfern; I work as an author and journalist (I have copy-pasted my work history for you below this email).

I have a new book out in a few months from now that focuses on a past-and-present "Think Tank"-style group in the US Government/Intel/military world that has been (and still is) focusing on thwarting the activities of what they believe is the truth behind the UFO mystery - namely that these "things" have demonic origins and that they are attempting to usher in Armageddon via a "UFO-alien" deception.

The group is heavily influenced by Eschatology. I know the names of some of these people, I have already interviewed some of them for the book, and I now have some of their papers on this (officially via FOIA).

My reason for writing is as follows: I know that this is an area that you have studied and investigated (with respect to the Government interest in the subject of Eschatology and UFOs); and with this in mind, I wondered if you would be willing to be interviewed for the book about your experiences in this area?

If not, it's not a problem; but I'm just trying to find as many people with good credibility who know about this story, and who can comment on the issue of official interest in Eschatology and how it relates to concerns at an Intel/defense level about so-called "alien abductions" and UFOs.

Best regards,

Nick Redfern

My response:

Nick,

Yes, you come with a good reputation.

I did mention this to [CF], and his comment: “If these are not our people, then they are probably not important.”

One could take this in several ways.

[...]

So I am looking forward to hearing more about the outsiders!

Gus and I had a strategy conversation earlier today.  One issue was whether to have CF intervene directly with JA/J.  I conceded to him that CF does not have a good bedside manner, or, at the least, it is one that takes some time to appreciate.  He might even spook a spook. 

That being agreed upon, there is the issue of providing cover for any witness.  I have never dealt directly with such a one.  Gus had much opportunity to do so in researching his JFK book.  He did get the spooks to come clean in detailing their designs on Fidel, in support of his case that the JFK hit was blowback from Havana.  Perhaps.  That would be the most innocuous of all possible scenarios, IMHO. 

That is all well and good, BUT, how do you tell a professional investigator that we are not in Kansas anymore.  Is it even necessary?  Naiveté is the order of the day.  Cherish it while we can!

Interesting:

Dan: Many thanks for speaking to me this afternoon. As promised, here is the summary of the story I'm pursuing. I have no objection to my email address being included with the summary, as I'm actively pursuing leads that may shed further light on this, and I am trying to track down as many people who might have an awareness of "the project."
 
It basically goes like this: a couple of years ago I spoke with a former Department of Defense (DoD) guy who had been asked in late 87/early 88 by his superiors to study a huge body of data held by the DoD that originated with the UFO research community, such as books, periodicals (things such as Budd Hopkins' Missing Time; Whitley Strieber's Communion; complete collections of the MUFON Journal; old APRO and NICAP bulletins, and much, much more).
He was specifically asked to look for any data linking UFOs, abduction accounts, contactee accounts, "unusual dream" accounts with the human soul.

He said that elements of the DoD were concerned that the UFO presence on our world was a "deception" and that these things were literally demonic and that this same presence was focused primarily upon the manipulation of the human soul and the ushering in of an "anti-Christ" type scenario and doing so behind a false "ET smokescreen."

The way it was described to me was that this wasn't an official group as such, but more of an unofficial body of like-minded individuals who had these concerns and that focused primarily upon Eschatology.

Since speaking with him, I have uncovered other official sources telling broadly similar stories about how the UFO angle is seen as a type of deception and that concerns still exist at an official level about "End Times" and how the "UFO" entities are manipulating and orchestrating this for reasons specifically to do with "harvesting" human souls. It is my intention to publish the full story of what I have uncovered and to encourage anyone with knowledge of this to come forward and divulge what they know and set the record straight.

Best,

Nick    [email protected]

Hmmmmm...................

In fact, the DoD bloke contacted Nick while he was researching Body Snatchers in the Desert (2005).  Furthermore, Nick did not get my name off the Internet.  I believe it was given to him by one of his subjects.  He did recall that I was mentioned in an article on Armen Victorian in about 1993.  He has read Vince Johnson's article.   

Nick says that none of the people he has been interviewing are known in this connection.  They all know each other, of course. 

May we live in interesting times.

 

[2/22]

I pointed out to Nick that there is a definite Christian streak within the Aviary.  Nonetheless, he was quite sure there was no overlap with his subjects.  I find that a bit odd.  There would have had to have been an active avoidance of the Aviary on their part.  Until now? 

Gary's interview with Terry James was pointed out to Nick.  While you're there, take a look at the updated website.  There are several articles related to this blog. 

Nick was anxious to know about any official backing for the Aviary/Aquarium.  I had very little by way of specific information on that score.  He is headed out to Laughlin in a few days, if anyone wishes to contact him there. 

There are some interesting reviews of THE HUMAN TOUCH Our Part in the Creation of a Universe. By Michael Frayn (2006).  It is about realism vs. idealism, or the revenge of the metaphysician:  

Indeed, modern physics tells us that solidity itself is an illusion, that the seemingly real objects around us — rocks and trees, tables and chairs — are mostly empty space. And if you take a closer look at the more provocative claims associated with idealism, they’re not always as outrageous as they sound. When idealists say that we “make the stars,” they don’t mean that we make them the way a brickmaker makes a brick; rather, they mean that we make them conceptually, right down to the elementary particles of which they consist. (But how, you ask, could we have made the sun if it was around long before we were? By making time too, the idealist knowingly replies.)

So who is manning the physicalist barricades against this postmodern subversion?  Certainly not the NYT.  And next comes the eschaton. 

Today, though, the consensus probably tips toward realism — in part because of the strenuous pro-realist arguments of certain philosophers from Australia, where the bright sunlight is said make everything look really real.

Nice touch.  Yes, all you reality freaks, your reality hangs by a slender thread, indeed.  

And his attacks on certain deep ideas that he finds uncongenial — the theory of truth advanced by the great 20th-century logician Alfred Tarski, say, or the doctrine of an innate “language of thought,” championed by Steven Pinker among others — have a facile hit-and-run quality.

I should take a look at Pinker.  What is the connection between LoT and realism? 

And here is from another review:

The universe plainly exists independently of human consciousness; but what can ever be said about it that has not been mediated through that consciousness? What can ever be wordlessly seen of it that is not dependent upon the existence of a single viewpoint from which to see it? What can be understood of it without the scale and context of human purposes, or the instruments of human thought?

'... plainly exists...'??  Is someone missing the point?  To paraphrase another great philosopher, it all depends on what 'is', is.  Or, to be or not to be.  What is the horizon of existence without a point of view, to paraphrase Emerson.  Where are space and time without Presence?  Consider Heidegger's Dasein, being-with.  There can be no simple being.  What must contain any existence?  If you have never experienced an existential vertigo, you had better stick to your knitting.  God assuages her vertigo by creating a vertiginous us.  And we are oh so quick to return the favor. 

Corrections from TF/SI:

"TF does not wish to cooperate, not with R&D."  
 
Not true.  
 
"CF has already noted this fact."  
 
Wrongly noted.  
 
"Has TF shared any of his eight names with CF?"   
 
Yes. Two.  
 
Time's a-wastin'.  Three are dead. Two are on their way. Three are kickin' and won't talk. One wrote a letter accepting another meet. Then on the phone said he had changed his mind and "forgotten everything about the subject."  
 
CF is in the Cat-Bird's seat.
 
TF prefers to be known, as previously reported as Salmo irideus [Rainbow Trout] [hence-forth, SI]

[Later...]

And, in case the picture didn't get through...Salmo iredeus...is the Genus and species name of ... none other than...(Ta DAH!...)  Trout fish...specifically...the Rainbow Trout.

 (That was one of the Genus and species I used for my PhD Dissertation.)

Interesting.  The ball is back to CF/CB.  The grim reaper is stalking more than two of us.  Who then is holding back, and why are they holding back?  Is everyone waiting on JA/J?  Is that fair?  Who has the luxury of forgetting?  If they won't lend their names, will they not lend their stories? 

So SI has named 2/8 to CF, and CF has named 3/20 to us.  If both were to tell everything they know to Gus, say; would that not be the end of this story?  What are we waiting for?  I ask everyone.  Who decides the timing?  Last I heard, it was Ferret and Ocelot, the birds who were not birds, and that was a long time ago.  Where are they now?  Have they suffered the fate of Puxatony Phil?  Are they afraid of their own shadows?

To paraphrase another great philosopher, times a-wastin'.  We won't ever be able to put this genie back in the bottle, but neither will we be able to let out a dead genie.  The only valid excuse is that the visiting genies have a solid plan.  And how can we know that, if we don't know what it is?  So, who knows?  Ferret and Ocelot?  That is a big burden for two little rodents, afraid of their own shadows.   

Speaking of which, how many of us have seen Groundhog Day?  How does Bill Murray, the ghost-buster himself, manage to escape from his time warp?  I think it has something with I Got You, Babe.  Hmmmmm.......

And here is Fodor on Frayn:

The universe would still be just the size it is even if there weren’t astronomers to measure it. And water would still be H2O even if there weren’t chemists to analyse it. And water would still run downhill, and there would still be hills for it to run down, even if none of us were here to take note of its doing so. You can’t pin the natural order on me, Frayn; I’m not guilty. I didn’t make the universe; I wasn’t even there at the time.

Cute.  Such is the state-of-the-art of critiquing of idealism.  Jerry is never able to distinguish between solipsism and idealism. 

Have I gotten this right, from Joe Stefula, that SI/TF was mentioned by Bill & Kerry on the Kevin Smith Show?  He is putting them in touch with one of the principals of the Serpo saga.  No, sorry, it was on the Ian Punnett show on Coast to Coast, 2/17.  Would someone with a subscription care to check this out for us? 

Chris Iversen supplies the following, mostly from the radio show.  Kerry & Bill heard last spring about the existence of a backup Serponaut.  More recently they were given the name and residence.  They show up at his home with a letter explaining their desire to interview this 'old man'.  He refuses.  Soon after they get an irate communication from SI, chastising them for having 'harassed' the old man. 

There are two additional points to consider.  SI has been involved with the debriefings of the regular astronauts.  Chris recalls that SI claimed to have been doing TDY at Area 51 c. '77.  I was not aware of this.  We wonder if any actual or would-be Serponauts are among the 8 people on SI's list. 

If Fodor is not a fan of idealism, neither is he a fan of materialism: The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism, Jerry Fodor on Pinker and Plotkin.  Yes, philosophers are trapped between a Darwinian rock and a theological hard place.  One can see them squirm.  The simple fact is that cognition has global/holistic properties that no one has the slightest idea how to modularize.  Without a robust modularity, natural selection has no purchase.  No one can think of a non-theistic alternative to Darwinism, so the price for practicing secular philosophy is to forego all semblance of coherence.  Analytic philosophy died ignominiously over half a century ago.  All we are left with is a professional guild of nit-pickers.  It's not a pretty sight.  I can feel their frustration. 

And the theologians?  They stopped thinking 700 years ago.  Metaphysics scares the Bejesus out of them. 

DF reports that it was RD who supplied the name to Bill Ryan.  It's a small world, after all.  If this is all a con job, it should be an easy matter for someone like CF to set the matter straight.  His failure to do so is a puzzle.  Despite all his skeptical rhetoric, he lifts nary a finger to put an end to it.  Au contraire, he is now a primary instigator. 

CF owns SI's clearances.  He calls him up and demands an explanation.  One phone call, and it's all over.  Where is that phone call, we'd like to know? 

 

[2/23] [a]

No word, via Jack, from JA/J.  Does this mean he is not a serious player, or that he doesn't want to play seriously?  Has he taken to reading the blogs, and decided to dodge the bullet, just like every other alleged 'witness' out there?  If that's the case, then it's time for our fellow travelers to step up to the plate.  It's time for CF to call SI.  It's that simple.  Why fly to Florida, when the real truth is right at the other end of the phone line?  This is a terrible time of the year to be flying around.

Good, then we can get back to Jerry & Co.  And in the meantime, I'll be calling CF to lodge my formal complaint.  I won't even have to get out of my comfy chair, while the Siberian express howls past.  

My formal complaint is that SI needs to come clean with CF, to the extent that he can without being ad hominem about his very bashful sources.  Is this asking too much?  Would this be violating any security oaths, or any other trusts?  That is something he should be discussing with his Phenomenology supervisor.  No?  Ok, the call has been placed; the complaint lodged.  We aim to please.  You aim, too, please!

Jerry F. is messing with our minds by conflating his LOTH with Wittgenstein's much more important Private Language Argument (PLA).

Am I missing something here?  Ludwig proved, to the satisfaction of most philosophers that the notion of a private language is incoherent.  Fodor was an exception, and thus he concocted his own LOTH.  This was a Godsend to the AI community.  They wanted to adopt Jerry as their mascot.  Jerry got cold feet, heat from his colleagues, and started back-peddling. 

Here is the word from CF.  Here is the innocuous interpretation.  SI is wont to drop names onto Rick, Bob and Hal.  You'll recall that this happened recently with John Gannon.  After weeks, even months of public speculation, it is finally agreed by all parties that this was another case of confusion and miscommunication.  A similar thing happened with the DIA woman who was IDed by this same group.  The list goes on, I am told.  In any case, CF has deputized me to take up this matter directly with SI, which should happen later today.  I simply ask him if the 'old man' is connected with the Serpo story, or if this was another case of miscommunication.  CF is strongly suggesting that it would have been SI who dropped the name, in the first place. 

In this same vein, I brought up the lists of the 20 + 8.  CF averred that, yes, Robert Gates, e.g., might be put in the same basket as JG, i.e. he is connected with the core story only through SI.  Well, I could see where that was going, and I balked.  Wait a minute, are we now blaming the entire Soap Opera on SI, with RD as the best supporting actor?  No.  There were indeed other connections, independent of SI & Co., and this was the case even for RG.  CF did acknowledge that SI had passed to him 2 of his 8 names.  I asked for CF's assessment of those names.  Were they any more or less legitimate than JG?  He again averred that the two names he was given did seem to have some independent validity.  So there we are.  More or less still on track.  One step back, and one and half steps forward.  I will get back to SI in my designated afternoon time slot.  The Old Man and the Serpo?  According to CF there can only be three answers: yes, no and can't tell.  It would not be legitimate, in other words, for SI to substitute the second answer when it is actually the third.  I trust that SI will understand this protocol and accept my ad hoc deputization.  I'll just ask for his concurrence at the outset. 

In the meantime, CF will follow-up with Jack about his non-follow-up from JA/J.  Everything clear?

--------------------------------------------

Back to Wiki: 

The LOT hypothesis has wide-ranging significance. It implies a strongly rationalist model of cognition where many of the fundamentals of cognition are innate, and challenges eliminative materialism and connectionism.

And that includes Darwinism, as we have seen.  So we need not be too hard on Jerry.  He provided for the AI folks a sucker hole, as we say in the business.  It looks tempting to the desperate/unwary pilot.  When they find out, it's too late.

The LOTH is my main beef against Jack.  He is a sucker, and like a pied piper, he has taken a lot of physics suckers with him.  This was the whole strategy of the cover-up and the concomitant disinformation.  Jack has lent himself to that strategy with an unparalleled gusto.  Now it's like shooting fish in a barrel.  Hardly a sport. 

All of the representational theories of the mind, RTM, suffer from regress, which is the prime exemplar of all the logical fallacies.  This goes back to the Cartesian Theater.  There is a great temptation to compare the mind to a theater, with all its projected images.  But then where is the homunculus?  If you could ever find the homunculus, you would be right back where you started.  It's like standing between two mirrors. 

The PLA tells us straight out that AI is impossible.  Jack's magic sword of non-locality has no bearing on this argument.  The philosophers treat Ludwig's PLA as a skeleton in their closet.  If they ever took it out and examined it, they would have to all run to the nearest confessional booth.  Much better to leave it as Ludwig's little poetic curiosity, and go on as if nothing had happened.  They can treat as just another (premature) piece of postmodernism. 

Meanwhile, regression continues apace in its more robust form of endless complexification.  Regression transforms into epicycles of every possible form.  We see this in the compulsive striving for the next layer of complexity that will finally explain the previous layer.  But guess what, when one finally reaches the horizon or the summit, it turns out to have been an illusion. 

In the particular case of AI, the horizon is actually seen to be receding faster than anyone is even able to move.  This is a quandary that few professionals like to brag about.

And what is the alternative to representationalism?  Direct realism, as coined and ably defended by Thomas Reid in 1764.  It is the only safeguard against the slippery slope of regression into skepticisms of all kinds.  He argued against Berkley, but I, for one, don't see how the direct realist can avoid immaterialism. 

Take first the case of the stick that looks bent in the water. Direct realism does not say that the stick actually is bent; it says, rather, that the stick, which is straight, can, in some unusual circumstances, look bent. And to say that it looks bent is just to say that the light, which is reflected from the stick, arrives at our eyes in a crooked pattern.

Our poor, dear Wikipedian has got it muddled, IMHO.  This is what happens when one attempts to understand direct realism outside the venue of monistic idealism. 'T'is a puzzle.  There is only one thing in the world, which is love.  There is then the dialectic of lover and lovee.  The One stretches into the Many.  Photons are merely an aspect of the semantic glue that holds it all together.  Photons are a logically necessary component of the cosmic coherence.  They are part of our bridge across these troubled waters, back to the Telos.  But if we take them too seriously, in too reductive a fashion, they will pull us down off that bridge.  We can appreciate photons without being mesmerized by them.  That latter digression is the path into the absurdity of physicalism.  I should know.  I've been there, done that, and have the T-shirt.  There but by the grace of Sophia and the altered Jack, go I.

Only thus do the visitors come here.  Yes, they come like photons, oblivious to space and time, frozen in the eternity that is Serpo.  They come here to get their blood circulating, to lay down with the daughters of Eve.  Can we blame them?  This is where the action is.  We are their jail bait. Meet Br'er Rabbit.  They come here direct, just as in direct realism.  The 20-day carpet ride is just another aspect of the agape. 

But, yes, I have had a not altogether friendly conversation with SI.  He did not pass the name to Doty.  He references a third party who connected him with the Old Man about a medical issue.  Someone else, not SI, passed this same name to Doty.  That other party is a party to a major piece of deception, or to a leak.  SI said that he could say more about this to CF.  I have a call into CF to expedite that conversation.  I expect to speak with CF this evening.  There should be a further report here, then.  Yes, it was reported to SI that the Old Man had been harassed.  But he is now satisfied that there was no such harassment.  Then why did Rick pass the name to Bill and Kerry, we'd like to know?  If there is blame here, some of it might fall on Rick, but clearly not all of it.  BTW, where is Rick with his alleged agreement to disengage from UFOs? 

The above vignette is a piece of the frustrating runaround to which we've all been subjected for these many years.  There is ample opportunity here to clarify one little piece of this mess.  Am I right?

------------------------------------

As Teilhard would say, nature is a mirror to God.  We are part of that reflection.  Like Narcissus, we fell into that pool.  Only when we recognize the illusion, can we begin to extricate ourselves.  But we must keep in mind that only by the projection of that reflection could we have been weaned away from the cosmic teat.  Felix culpa. 

----------------------------------------

There has been a second and more successful conversation with SI.  A similar issue had come up earlier concerning people at DIA who were alleged to be involved with Serpo.  In that case, SI turned all his information over to his local FBI office (sound familiar?), in the view that someone was posing as a government official. SI speculated(?!) that it was the same person then as with the Old Man.  The person who contacted him about the man, was the same one who contacted Rick, and had previously been involved with the DIA end of it.  Does not SI have this party's identity?  I should think so.  Has the FBI not already questioned this person?  Do we not now have a need to know about the resolution of this matter?  I certainly think so! 

SI told me that CF was upset about the DIA issue.  It would stand to reason that CF was apprised of the identity of the third party in the former case, who may be the same person connected with the Old Man.  It is quite likely then, that he knows the person and we know that he knows.  But, hey, fool me once and you're to blame, fool me twice and I'm too blame!  Enough is enough.  Now this will have to be aired in public.  [2/25 -- I believe that the name given back then was T....a.  CF inquired further to determine that this information was bogus.]

 

[2/26]

If you want to understand what is going on with the BPW, you will appreciate this article.  Kaye argues against Fodor's defense of mentalese.  To the extent that he succeeds, he defeats the AI crowd.  Recall that Fodor does not appreciate the way the AI people try to exploit his mentalese.  Jack is an AI person.  But he does not even comprehend the implications of that. 

 

[2/28]

Here's a helpful article by Pierre Le Morvan:

Since the demise of the Sense-Datum Theory and Phenomenalism in the last century, Direct Realism in the philosophy of perception has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity.  Curiously, however, although there have been attempts in the literature to refute some of the arguments against Direct Realism, there has been, as of yet, no systematic treatment of all eight of the main arguments against it.

I'm realizing that many folks conflate direct perception with direct realism.  Perhaps we need another phrase for this aspect of idealism.  The use of 'perception' may be misleading.  'Recognition' might be more accurate.  We might think of a concept as a person.  We learn and recognize concepts rather the same way we learn about and recognize persons.  Think of our individual learning of words as something like an ontogeny, which is recapitulating the historical, public phylogeny.  And so we have these social, conceptual maps. 

Concepts are carved out of a spectrum of meaning, the way one might carve a figure out of marble.  This is a process of symmetry breaking.  Words are like handles, as are personal names.  And how do they differ practically from the scents as remembered by the bloodhound?

Concepts, scents, words, names, sounds, etc., are all touchy-feely.  They enable direct contact with the semantic individual that we are re-cognizing.  There is the sensorium.  We are fitted with prismatic glasses that distinguish the colors.  Language is a social filter/prism that is internalized.  Infants are color-blind, but can certainly distinguish shapes.  We are all synaethesiacs to a degree. 

Each of us possesses a microcosmic map/genome, to a degree, but there need be no ultimate distinction between map and territory.  Our idiosyncrasies are what enable us to recycle the cosmic intelligence.  It all gets repackaged, and we make that possible by spinning our personal Rubik's cubes.  This is the recombinatorics of the cosmic, semantic genome.  There may be a lot of re-presenting, but not so much representing.  Our space-time manifold is just God's sensorium; it is a house of cards.  It is a balloon, filled mainly with the hot air of our overheated abstractions.  Science presents us with a Rube Goldberg conception of nature.  We wonder how it all hangs together.  But that is the wrong question.  The real trick is blowing up the balloon in the first place.  It does take a bit more than hot air, and the Big Bang comes at the end, not at the beginning.  The scientists do have good ideas, they just need to turn them inside out. 

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On occasion there is a raising of expectations, and we all get a bit antsy, and start seeing figures in the shadows.  Then it's time for the bucket brigade.  There was a vicious rumor afoot that CF had been visited by the bureau, somehow on my account.   This merely precipitated the recounting of some tales about how our public servants and protectors have to struggle with the soap opera, through no fault of their own.  It takes them well beyond the call of duty.  It's J. Edgar in the funhouse.  There are regular meetings with the bureau, not only about us, and omething came up recently.  I have been advised that it was probably as much to do with a recent broadside from GB, as anything appearing on this poor little blog.  My precious innocence remains mostly intact, despite the accusations of GN.  

Then there are rumors about confabs in the SW, i.e. TX/AZ/NV.  We can try to connect the dots, but it won't amount to a hill of beans.  Then there is the internal memo, containing proprietary medical information, mainly about the author, I understand, which must still be filtered. 

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Here is an interesting paper: 'Perception and Hallucination: The Case for Continuity' -- Charles McCreery (c. '97).  This appears to be a treatment of direct perception. 

 

[3/1] 

The McCreery paper is a significant one.  In particular are his arguments for a top-down, hypothesis-driven model of perception.  He also call this view, representationalism as opposed to direct realism.  I have been calling it direct perception, which, as noted, may be a confusing choice of terminology. 

According to the BPWH, the world is constructed teleologically, i.e. from the top-down, so that it should not be surprising that our minds operate in the same fashion, even on the perceptual front.  What I have been trying to avoid, however, is the physicalistic or mechanistic aspect of the representational view.  On the BPWH, reality is not reducible.  In our perceptions, we have direct access to the ideas that make up the world.  All we have to do is add a fractal quality to those ideas, as witnessed in the Mandelbrot. 

Another way to put this is that the representations we employ in thought and perception are universal, more than personal, certainly to a greater degree than we presently are willing to consider, in our egocentric view of the Psyche. 

McCreery, as do I, points to hypnotic perception as exemplifying the top-down, suggestibility, sociability of perception.  Once we take onboard the cosmic collectivity of the Psyche, we have an adequate model for an immaterialist, idealist view of perception. 

Back to direct realism: consider the following paper by Pierre Le Morvan: Arguments against direct realism and how to counter them ('04).  The author states clearly what he is arguing against, but what is he arguing for?  'Scholastic perceptionism'.  What the heck is that?  One idea is that the mechanisms or the causal chain of perception is merely the means of perception, and not what is actually perceived.  This makes sense.  Given that there is allegedly a continuous causal chain from input to output, where and how would one break that chain to produce an object of awareness?  It would be entirely arbitrary.  But so what?  What were those Thomists up to? 

The direct realists wish to avoid skepticism about the external world.  But why would the Thomists be concerned?  How does this issue impinge on the problem of consciousness?  All the arguments I have seen about consciousness assume that, if it exists, it is inside the brain.  But the brain is only one part of the causal chain of perception.  Why should the organic part be privileged in that mechanistic chain?  The representations are inside the head, but where?  No one can point to the critical ones, and so we are left with the homunculus in the Cartesian theater.  It is the intractability of this problem that motivates the direct realists.  One may also wonder if the regress of representationalism is similar to the regress in the quantum observer problem. 

In his dissertation, A DIRECT REALIST ACCOUNT OF PERCEPTUAL AWARENESS (1998), Michael Huemer points to the problem of awareness in general.  Every kind of epistemic occurrence depends on causal chains of one sort or another.  Isn't hearsay just another form of representationalism, where the representations are mainly outside of one's own head. 

Do I have a direct perception of the citizens of China?  If there is a God, she does have that direct perception.  In as much as I partake of her, then my perception is of the same sort, but a tad more fuzzy.  Every other explanation suffers from an inordinate multiplication of hypotheses.  God's sensorium includes China, along with you and me.  That is the only place that any perceptual buck ever stopped. 

It is the same with the observer problem.  How could Wigner's 'friend' be anyone other than God?  That is also the direct answer about teleology.  Yes, how we have striven to complexify the world, but it's all a charade relative to the eschaton.  It's all about deprogramming ourselves, and seeing beyond the cycles.  The visitors will show us how to go.  We'll show them where to go.  

So, yes, there are not really any causal chains; there are just telic cycles.  The cycles are always present.  They encircle the Present.  We stare at them, and they make us dizzy.  Is this a course in TM?  Yes, that's all, along with a little history and cosmology. 

Of what are we aware when we are aware of Santa Clause?  We are aware of a tradition of people pretending to be Santa Claus.  Where is the exemplar?  Sometimes at the North Pole?  Sometimes reported as an IFO on NORAD radar?  Generally someone about whom adults are supposed to be skeptical.  How great is the ontological distinction between Santa and a UFO?  I'll warrant that it is much less great than either the believers or the skeptics imagine.  The good news is that UFOs are not real, the bad news is that neither are you or I.  Each serves a social and cosmic function.  One rules the night; the other rules the day.  Each construct is unavoidable in its own way.  Each has its own set of tricks.  And me?  I'm just a one-trick pony.  At night, I sleep with my nose under the Big Tent, like everyone else.

 

[3/2]

Michael goes on to point out that awareness has both intensional and extensional connotations.  Naturally, I would downplay any such distinction.  The world is one big semantic web.  Everything is intentional, even the Mandelbrot.  Any singular object is such only by intension.  Ostension does not compute, in other words.  Pointing is only a convention, and often a taboo.  Multiplicity is perfectly intensional in my book.  Yes, all relations are necessarily internal.  Space and time are fully intensional.  Everything is entangled observationally.  We cannot jump outside of our subjectivity.  We can only ameliorate or enhance it.  We can socialize it to varying degrees.

The lesson here is that 'direct realism' is one of the more egregious of the many oxymorons that philosophers are prone to utter. The only way that an object can be independent of the mind is to posit it as separate from the mind.  This implies an intermediating representation that is a hybrid of mind and body.  If you are willing to buy such a metaphysically concocted bridge, I know of another one in Brooklyn that just went on the market.

Philosophy and theology are essentially word games.  The struggle between science and religion for the high ground in the semantic landscape has come to a stalemate.  This stalemate constitutes a breakdown or, more accurately, a psychotic break in the body-politic.  The social cost of that psychosis is mostly below the surface.  It is a wound that festers.  Pluralism is one thing, massive perplexity is another.  If the truth is out there, we are overdue for a close encounter, for some kind of a fix.  If you can find a better fix than the BPWH, you be sure to let me know.  Hear!  Standby for an electronic mimetic epidemic of biblical proportions, all at the speed of light.  It will bring about a climate change unfavorable to Dinosaurs. 

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Meanwhile, speaking of festering, CF continues to sit on SI's report.  It is beginning to appear that the gauntlet has been thrown down.  I can hear the avian chortles all the way back here in the aquarium peanut gallery.  Any day, now, Mr. Whack-a-Mole.  As a point of fact, there are now two documents outstanding.  Both entail notable anachronisms.  Whoever is hoaxing this stuff does favor that Signature.  I trust that MASINT is taking note. 

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What I have not addressed right here is the problem of the (non-existent?) memory trace, when it comes to defending direct perception. 

 

[3/3]

I have discussed the memory problem before.  Treating memory as direct perception, does raise the problem of the asymmetry of time.  If time is an illusion, then we should also be clairvoyant.  Fortunately we are not, for the most part. 

 

[3/4] 

I called CF yesterday.  He was in the middle of a tiling project.  He said he would call back later.  He has not.  One person has suggested keeping the pressure on; another has advised me to sit back for a few days.  I'm taking the latter course. 

If the disclosure heat gets turned up, is the R&D show going to be put on hold?  A three party consensus is that it is probably too late in this game to put aquarium on the shelf.  There are too many loose ends now.  Folks are going to demand answers.  Where else will they go?  Where else can the be sent? 

I recommend The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos -- James Gardner (2/15/07) for the state of the art of Transhumanism.  This crowd is way ahead of where the physicists will allow their own thinking to wander.  Jack has not been following this crowd.  He is not on the cutting edge of science.  These folks are. 

And here is the latest word out of Austin: Skinwalker is where the action is, and it is not about physics.  If disclosure is actually moving forward, the physicists will be way out in left field.  Jack does have something going, and so does Gordon, and they are both on the physical side of metaphysics, but Hal is the inside physics person, and he knows that the action is elsewhere.  Hey guys, it's Ziebart or Rust. 

Gardner (p. 31):

The longer that Fredkin goes on explaining the implications of his theory, the more he seems to veer off into a weird techno-religious zone that bears an uncanny resemblance to the scientifically disreputable intellectual territory populated by the Intelligent Design crowd.

Jack has been forced to recognize VALIS.  He just doesn't know what to do with It. 

Does evolution favor complexity?  If it does, then intelligence is not a fluke, and neither is VALIS.  VALIS + eternity = God/Creator.  Yes, no, maybe??

Is the concept of a Creator truly THAT weird?  I don't think so (p. 31): 

Especially quirky is Fredkin's fervid insistence that the religious concept of the soul can be reformulated in terms of computational theory. 

If this is not an egregiously arrogant dismissal, then there never has been such.  Smell the coffee, Jim!  Or, I can suggest a new figure of speech: praise with faint damnation!!!

Gardner (p. 36):

Life mind and human civilization are no mere accidents? Once again, this is starting to sound suspiciously like Intelligent Design rhetoric.  But let's defer judgment pending a closer look.

Do, let's! Was the kettle calling the pot, 'black'?

Then Jim truly goes off the deep end with Seth Lloyd and John Wheeler (p. 39):

Can we become clever cosmic hackers?  Can we learn how to stick out our thumbs and hitch a ride on the Software of Everything... 

Some of us call it the Glory Train.  Jack and Gordon have absolutely no clue.  Hal does have a clue and is keeping his mouth shut.

Could the most efficient means of hijacking the ongoing cosmic computation be to somehow persuade that computation to hijack itself for our benefit.

Been there, done that....  JC is the ultimate software hacker. 

 

[3/5]

I have finished Part 1 of IU.  This was about the singularity in terrestrial AI.  Part 2 is entitled 'Extraterrestrials'.  Part 3 is 'The Emerging Mind of the Cosmos'.  The next chapter is 'The Fermi Paradox Revisited'.  Yes, I'm anxious to see which way Jim will go with cosmic intelligence.  How will he finally manage to avoid the BPWH?  I can hardly wait!

But we don't have to read ahead to know what the choices are.  The only real choice is between a virtual and a non-virtual model for reality.  Tipler only barely touched on this theme in his Omega book.  Allow mind to get its foot in the ontological door, and everything else will be a quaint illusion.  Allow mind to get its foot in the door of retro-causality, and we all stand at the threshold of Eternity.  The WAP is dead on arrival.  A virtual SAP is the only way to go.  VALIS rules the roost.  Everything else is decoration. 

I guess I'd better skip to the last chapter, Alpha <-> Omega.  It sounds positively Ouroboric, no?!

The simple point is that the Transhumanists are egregiously geocentric in their thinking.  The Fermi Paradox barely registers in their hopelessly parochial disdain of cosmology.  They are so parochial because of the ridicule that has been heaped upon the Flying Saucer phenomenon.  The modern incarnation of that disdain is to be found with Donald Menzel's debunking of same.  His debunkery stood on the broad shoulders of the Protestant debunkery of Catholic demon/angelology.  That latter doorway was the doorway to the Cartesian/Newtonian worldview.  Everything since that watershed has been one knee-jerk reaction after another.  It has all been social conditioning within that stultifying metaphysical canopy.

Will James Gardner pull any surprises?  I'm highly dubious.  Without Sophia and Ron, what chance do they have?  The R&D show represents a conceptual bottleneck of formidable proportions.  Could it ever be reinvented?  Les jeux sont fait. 

The title of the last chapter in IU derives from Gott and Li's theory of closed timelike curves, CTCs. 

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Back to the Old Man and the Serpo.  The report sent by SI to CF about the Old Man has been deemed unusable by CF.  He will go back to SI to request something that can be released.  One issue is a plethora of medical information that seemed only to obfuscate the issue of the identity. 

Here is what I have been told.  The Old Man has been a fixture of the Aviary going back at least to 1985 when CF first got involved.  This one person may also have been variously IDed as Raven, Falcon, Ocelot, etc.  Another speculation that has recently come to my attention is that this could be the alleged 'Paul McGovern' who has just shown up again at Laughlin, for at least the second time.  This is a person who once contracted to NASA and is still doing consulting of an engineering sort, and who lives with some other individuals in Arizona who have a similar but still unspecified background. 

SI was called in to provide medical consultation to one or more of this group, and his consultation had something to do with their job related experiences.  Rick Doty provided this name to Bill Ryan in the context of Serpo.  Evidently, the information provided by SI to CF about the Old Man does nothing to refute a link of that nature.  Neither is CF personally impugning such a link.  He has suggested that another specific member of the Aviary be approached to obtain more information on the background of the Old Man.  By that suggestion is he contributing to the furtherance of this putative connection.  Are we to believe that our erstwhile C/I sleuth has foregone the opportunity to ID this mother of all Typhoid Mary's?  This would make sense only if he already knew the Grandmother. 

It does appear that this process is being dragged out.  One can go along with it, make an issue out of it, or ignore it.  I go along with it while complaining about the runaround.  This game would be forgivable only if it is an end game.  That is only if the Old Man is a key element of the story.  The players would have a pretty good idea whether or not this were the case.  The Avians would already know the significance of that person.  So why are they waiting on us to take it to the public?  Why would Bob Collins not have included this information in EfD?  It must have been waiting on the release of the Serpo story.  It was not Bob's job to follow up on that element prior to that release.  We are given no other path to follow.  The JA/J angle is in a holding pattern at present.  That purports only to be a sidebar, in any case. 

Ok, there is plan for getting back to Bob Collins to learn the role of the Old Man in the core story, which role has been known to the avians for at least the past twenty years.  It is essential to understand this background in order to decide how best to move forward, and to make sure that the various players here have reached a consensus on this point. 

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Back to Gardner.  I frankly see very little that is new here.  He has made an admirable compilation of the ideas that push physicalism to its limits.  He is endorsing a version of the cyclic version of the SAP. 

There is a notable lacuna.  There is much talk of the maximal ultimate computer, but nothing about what it might actually do, or how it contributes to the cosmology.  VALIS?  His vaunted retro-causation is never fleshed out.  Tipler's idea of immortality in a virtual heaven is never alluded to.  He is one of the many cosmologists who are playing a game of chicken, to see how close they can come to theology without ever using the G word.  It is a transparently silly and exasperating game.  There is a total disregard of the mind-body problem that should be seen as the heart of the matter.  Even Wheeler's 'participatory universe' gets only the most cursory mention. 

So near, yet so far.  That will be the epitaph for postmodern physics. 

Now back to the ETs and Fermi's Paradox. 

 

[3/6]

Jim does a creditable job of trying to tie together a collection of very loose ends of theoretical physics.  Like a plague, and like most of his colleagues, he assiduously avoids the heart of the matter.  There is no entry in his index for 'mind', yet he has whole chapters on computers.  It is sad how incredibly myopic science has become.  Many of his colleagues do recognize that there may be a quantum-mind link, but Jim rushes right past those clues, in his haste to embrace the Megaverse.  So, understandably, he refuses to jump off any of the available deep ends.  His otherwise eclectic treatment will bring others closer to the proper edge of physicalism.  That will be the peanut gallery for the paradigm inverting disclosure that is now upon us. 

Fermi's Paradox?  Jim talks all around it, but does nothing to dispel it.  It's all about those marvelously advanced civilizations keeping us in quarantine.  Jim has no sense of our reaching a critical stage in our history.  He talks up a storm about how one universe must influence another, but then there is no conception of one civilization interacting with another. 

James is the honeybee visiting the flowers in one corner of the garden.  He has no conception of metaphysics or the discipline of having to make tough choices about basic principles. 

He comes excruciatingly close to the notion that our universe must be a CTC, but then he drops that ball, and heads on to the next flower.  He concedes that it must be possible for the cosmic intelligence to constrain the ensemble of possible worlds, but never considers Leibniz' conception of the BPW.  There is not even a flirtation with the notion of anything beyond space and time.  What could be the manifold of manifolds, if it is not strikingly mind-like? 

Physics, the profession, has too many sacred cows in its forum.  Some of those oxen will have to be gored if we are to get to the next level.  Jim is hardly even going to ruffle any feathers.  Jim is a cheerleader.  He is not going to get his hands dirty.  He knows his way around the physics ballpark.  But to win this game, you are going to have to swing for the fences.  He does, at least, help to delineate the fences.

Jack is, perhaps, one step ahead of Jim.  But Jack will have to step outside of his formulas if he wants to see the new dawn.  Jack can see some of the holes in the fence, but he cannot see the light shining through those holes.  That is what the Telos is.  Jack can see the teleological formulas, but he is afraid to take his eyes off those formulas long enough to behold the Telos.  He did that once, back in his hippie days, but without Sophia and Ron to hold his hand, he can only run for cover. 

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Back to the real world of the soap opera.  A couple of the OM types are going to talk to a couple of the avians about the Old Man.  I suggest a crib sheet of avian history to expedite the conversations, given that this fellow has been hanging around for a couple of decades.   

The partial surfacing of the Old Man is linked to the Serpo saga.  That now is being linked to the repositioning of the 20.  It is all to get the ducks lined up, and to spearhead a private initiative. 

The avians are gradually awakening to the fact of the aquarium.  It is their least favorite option, and so they all drag their heels.  They wanted to do their own thing, but they have not been able to get their act together.  The closest approach was Bob's EfD, but that seems to have led to a falling out. 

Why Chicken Little, why the eschaton?  For most folks, the aquarium scenario is the worst possible one: repent, the end is near!  But this is the offer (from CF?) that cannot be refused, try as they might.  Even if the BPWH is only one of several possibilities, it is most prudent to lead with what appears to be the worst case.  Yes, we lead with our chin!  Then there cannot be recriminations later.  You were duly warned.  The disclosure warning label cannot be hidden in the fine print.  It must be in plain sight.  You can kick and scream and generally throw a tantrum, but you cannot fight City Hall on this score.  Suck it up, boys!  Quit the bellyaching and let's get this show on the road.

And a bit later at the soap opera. [a]

CF claims that the (Serpo?) Old Man's (SOM) connection with SI goes back to the late seventies when they were both working with Bob Frosch at NASA.  At that time, the SOM was a NASA contractor.  Around that time, according to CF, SOM was involved with a hoaxed transmission from an Apollo mission allegedly reporting a UFO encounter.  Bruce Maccabee wrote an article on this alleged incident.  RC claims to not know of SOM in this prior context.  We need to check back with RD and SI about these allegations.

[This story has now been largely retracted by CF.  See the update on 3/8]

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At the end of the 'Alpha <-> Omega' chapter Jim does consider the case of the whole universe being a CTC, where the past and future co-evolve, yielding order for free.  This is his only logical way to avoid the problem of infinite regress.  This is then his Mother-of-all-Universes.  He then arbitrarily tacks on the baby universes, which do nothing more than recapitulate the Mother universe.  They do serve the political purpose of assuaging the many-world, WAP crowd.  This Mother universe is as close as anyone can get to the Ouroboric BPW, without delving into an idealist metaphysic. 

Yes, indeed, so near yet so far!  If he took more seriously the Wheeler notion of the self-excited circuit/universe, bootstrapping itself out a quantum potential by including a virtual observer in the loop, he would be within a hair's breadth of the BPWH.  A small step for a person, a giant leap for humankind. 

When the physicists finally reach the summit of their Mount Improbable, they will find the ancient sages already gathered.  It was a lot longer than forty years in the wilderness. 

 

[3/7]

The only significant issue from yesterday is that the Aviary has a new honorary member: RF, deceased [3/8 - evidently not].  The unmistakable implication from CF is that RF was somehow complicit in the alleged Apollo hoax.  If there were any reserve Serponauts, what better way to recycle them than as NASA contractors, and what better candidates to participate in an exercise in disinformation.  That provides them with a double cover.  Involving NASA in this panoply brings us far beyond the scheme of a military ruse.  NASA was always supposed to be squeaky clean.  Did NASA have its own skeletons in its own closet that would require the occasional mis-directional output.  You betch'ya.  Just ask SI.  BTW, I believe it was RF who hired SI at GM. 

Now we begin to see why SI had to be so coy about his report to CF on the Old Man.  It's a long and involved story.  Is there anything here that isn't.  The convolutions easily become self-concealing.

Where does this leave us with disclosure?  With the cover-up so effectively deployed, how long will it take to dig though the crap to get to something solid?  Someone will have to get serious and stop all the buck-passing and the sarcasm.  Someone will have to be deputized to this end.  The most likely prospect would seem to be SI.  Even if he does not have direct access to anything solid, he knows enough about where and how the BS is deployed to bring us all to the next level.  Who would have the authority in this arena to mandate SI's compliance?  Does anyone?  It does not appear that CF does.  The sixty year cover-up has been so effective that we may have to go on for another sixty years just to unravel it.  They locked the vault, threw away the key, and left no one in charge.  I've been told that the way to push SI's buttons is to ask about Jupiter Technology.  To me, that sounds like an excuse for another round of foot dragging and recriminations.  Can we in no way skip these endless formalities?  Isn't our hero doing far more with GN?  What do the Bahamian and New Orleans Port Authorities have in common besides the close attention of GN? 

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I've been reading the reviews of Jim's IU and Biocosm books.  Most reviewers express frustration at his lack of depth.  Where depth is most needed is just where it is most lacking.  That is in his borrowing of Wheeler's idea of the self-creating universe. 

JAW came up with that idea some thirty years ago.  It is the absolute limit of how close science can come to the BPWH.  No scientist, qua scientist, has ever come an inch closer.  They run smack into the mind barrier.  The reductionism of science is self-constrained from ever tackling the irreducibilities of the mind.  It is finally the Self  (Wigner's friend, if you will) that is the irreducible basis of any and all existence.  It is the Ont in Ontology!  Complexity theorists wax eloquent about the power of self-organization, yet we still have precious little understanding of what might have been the first self-replicating molecule.  The subtle point is that replication is strictly a normative concept, not anything objective.  Science has virtually nothing to say about normativity. 

I have spoken of this lacuna in reference to cyclic phenomena of any kind.  A 'cycle' is something that is surprisingly difficult to define objectively.  You'll know it when you see it.  It is a problem of identity.  What is identity without an identifier?  Nothing at all.  Identity gets us mired in the problem of representation theory.  Identity cannot be defined without a pointer or representation of some kind, yet all such are subjective to the point of being terminally controversial.

Ah, this is just semantics, you say.  That is the problem.  Recognition of any kind is a semantic problem.  Self-organization implies self-recognition, or self-identity on some non-trivial level.  There is no such thing as trivial recognition.  This is where ontology is forced to deal with epistemology, right from the git-go.  Identity is a primitive sign of logic.  It has no definition.  It can only be learned by repeated exemplification, i.e. a normative familiarity.  Science cannot deal with that which it cannot define. 

Physicists are very familiar with the notion of identical particles.  These drop out of mathematical representation theory.  Then we are left with the profound mystery of how physics ever become pregnant with mathematics.  Was this an immaculate conception? 

A metabolic cycle is nothing, however, if it is not self-maintaining.  That normativity can be sustained only in vivo, only in a larger reproductive, functional, semantic context.  It is not reducible to an in vitro system, except as a laboratory contrivance.  Are bacteria irreducibly semantic?  Is this a form of vitalism?  Of course!  Life can only be functionally defined.  A static cell is a dead cell.  A non-metabolizing organism is simply dead.  There cannot be life without a minimally very complex ecosystem.  Such a system might conceivably have emerged by chance.  Were there not false starts on the path to biogenesis?  Near misses.  That will be unknowable.  What about life on Mars?  Inferable long after the fact.  I would say it existed only in an epiphenomenal sense, as I also say about dinosaurs.  This fact should be much less difficult to take to heart than the scientific consensus that consciousness is epiphenomenal.  Consider the the relative weight of the evidence, for goodness sake! 

I say with all sincerity that bacteria, electrons and stars are epiphenomenal.  They are abstractions, abstracted from the necessity of any functionally, historically robust form of creaturely consciousness.  Is there not some extravagance therein?  No, not in the sense of there being anything superfluous to the whole BPW.   

The lowliest metabolic cycle is only an abstraction that only makes sense in a holistic semantic/functional web.  Every attempt by science to reduce that web will only increase our confusion about the nature of existence.  The benefits of science have been enormous, the costs have not been calculated.  We will have to reconsider the cost/benefit ratio as we move into the Millennial regime.  Undoubtedly, the techno-structure will commence to wither on its vine.  The visitor's technology will be telling in this regard.  There is no pig in the poke here.  Every tire will be kicked. 

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Back to the soap derby.

We have SI, RF and SOM.  This is the most telling link-up that has come to my attention.  Is CF mistaken about the SOM having been involved with SI and RF?  I have a message into BM, who is supposed to know about an alleged hoax that could implicate these three.  CI has not been able to find any likely candidates in Google.  Had there been such a hoax, then the hoax itself must have been covered up.  How would BM have found out about it? 

Any suggestions at this juncture?

Here is the response from SI:

I never even heard of the Old Man until very recently.

I also never knew anyone who looked like him or had a name like his before in my life.

So, CF's new information is new to me, too.

Perhaps there is a second person of interest, also connected with NASA.  I can only note that SI does not respond to the second part of CF's allegation concerning a hoaxed transmission. 

And this from Bruce:

The closest I can come to that is the "Discovery discovery" when (we think) Astronaut McGaha on the Discovery said something like "we have the ***** spacecraft under observance."   The ***** stands for a word I don't recall.

It might have been "alien".   In any case we interpreted the statement as implying that there was some OTHER spacecraft within sight of the shuttle discovery.   I think this was back in the 1980's.   Been a long time since I thought about it.   The words were supposedly picked up by a radio amateur listing to the shuttle communications and was recorded.

Was it a hoax?  I seem to recall NASA didn't say anything about it.

Might this account for part of CF's recollection?

CI reports:

I knew about the incident referred to by Bruce. I don't recall any serious thoughts that it was a hoax. It was after this event that NASA went to secure communications. It is very different from what Ron was describing.

CI is of the opinion that CF may have made a major miscalculation here.  I am a bit more sanguine, but, yes, if he is totally off base this would be a significant setback for the R&D show.  CF sneezes and I catch cold.  That could be the intent, even. 

Correction to the story from CF reported on 3/6: 

It now appears the CF managed to conflate two or three different stories, indicating what?  That his memory is not 100% reliable.  That may be a useful fact to establish, especially in government work. 

He maintains that there was an incident involving a retransmission of a Shuttle feed, that was somehow tampered with.  He vaguely recalls that there was a NASA contractor involved in that.  He is thinking it might have been Hoagland.  Why this came up in connection with the Serpo Old Man (SOM), I have no idea.  I am now told that the link between SI and RF was Uri Geller. 

Back to the SOM.  Has this been laid to rest?  It seems that the report about this individual that SI sent to CF contains a lot of medical information, but fails to explain how the SOM became known to SI and to Rick Doty. 

In the meantime SI states:

My belief in the Core Story has faded almost to nothingness. You can ask [CF] what I really now believe and why...he has been fully briefed by me and recently.

CF says that this must have been lost in the mail. 

Does this make everything as clear as mud?

 

[3/9]

Bill Ryan has sent a lengthy email to Chris and myself, copied to Victor, that he does not wish to publish, as yet.  He provides further information and reasonable inferences about the involvements of SI and RD specifically in connection with the SOM.  You may wish to contact him about this. 

Yesterday, CF reestablished himself as more of a diclosurist than SI.  SI is claiming now, as of a week ago, to be convinced that the idea of a conspiracy and cover-up is a mass delusion.  Why am I unimpressed with this claim?  Kit stands to know more about the provenance of this delusion than anyone who can be identified.  He has fully briefed CF to this effect, but now his briefing document has been lost in the mail, and he has destroyed the original, leaving the rest of the world fully exposed to the fallout from the virulent meme that he and Rick Doty, almost single-handedly, unleashed upon the world as part of a government sponsored psyop. 

Now that his psychological experiment has run amok, Kit wishes that we should absolve him of all responsibility, and never ask him any more questions about his involvement in it.  He wishes to retire onto his very lucrative government consulting residues from this very same experiment.  Will we, the guinea pigs of the world, put up with this insouciance?

I'm also aware that this 'friend of disclosure' (FOD) contest between CF and SI may very well be staged.  It's a lot like the horse race where the owners bet on whose horse will come in last.  Hey, guys, how about switching horses?!

Two new links have been brought to my attention:

[3/25/07-- this link has been removed for good reasons.]  

   http://www.mysterious-america.net/komarekinterview.html

I had not previously heard Ed's background story.  I suggest you check it out!

Now this from SI:

Ron just forgot the briefing...it was face-to-face recently at the Academy.

I was never connected with Bob and Uri. Bob and I never discussed Uri.

Back to you, Ron. 

 

[3/11]

And this too:

I have no involvement except to communicate with many people (too often!) to try and figure out who is running the hoax, that I suspect is a fairly serious and large one.

Sometimes, I have even ruminated with [CF] about the motives of the mysterious "They" who may be doing it. The "Report" to CF was my telling him that, and his response of agreement. Several years ago...I also wrote several long emails to [CF] (we have sometimes called them "Reports" but that is a bit overstated.  They were really ruminations at some length...long since erased from my GM computer when I left GM, where I expounded (before the SERPO Hoax) that while the "Core Story" might exist...and even part of it be true...we had zero idea of what parts, and neither of us (CF and myself) had ever been briefed on it by anyone in an official capacity. They were highly personal...because I named names...but they were not classified and they were not "official." Many people, including some pretty high-level people unofficially (including me) think there might be a "little" bit of the "Core" that is real...wrapped in mystery, magic, and absolute delusional meanderings of people who have created an artificial reality...that we are all seeing is very hard to rationalize.

 
But, no...other than being an analyst...and highly interested in the reasons that people become delusional (clinically)...I have never been "involved" in perpetuating any hoax about Serpo or any other thing.
 
(Oh yes, I also did not kill Holly Maddux, did not participate in her autopsy, and did not testify in Ira Einhorn's trial, and did not run a psychic warfare program. I am actually (well, in the past ten years or so) a fairly moral Anglo Catholic (Episcopalian) and try to be not bad guy...but I was pretty immoral in the past. Not about government stiff, though. That said...even then I never lied or participated in hoaxes...or other nefarious activity that makes people sick. I do take my Hippocratic oath seriously. About 50% of the internetania about me is true...it is actually the good 50%...which in my business is a blessing. All the physicians in one of the Departments in which I have an appointment (Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences...not the other one...Diagnostic Radiology) have tons of incorrect, sick, and frankly crazy stuff written about us all the time by many of the thousands of psychotic patients we see every year...so over time, our skins thicken up.)

Interesting.  No?

<<to try and figure out who is running the hoax, that I suspect is a fairly serious and large one.>>

IMO, [a] there is really only one ('serious'!) issue left.  Is it possible that this 'hoax' is of insufficient national interest to not warrant a high priority investigation?  Is there even a reasonable case to be argued in the negative?  What then was the conclusion of that investigation?  More specifically, is it possible that CF would not be privy to that conclusion?  Would he (finally) have been participating in the R&D show for the past fifteen years, if he had reason to believe that the story was just a hoax? 

 

 

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