WEIRD MAGAZINE FEB EDITION

Abercrombie Admits Failure To Discover Obama Birth Certificate how he remembered Barack Obama as a little kid in Hawaii whom he referred to as “Barry”.

Evans said he spoke to Abercrombie’s office who told him that Abercrombie had used his power as Governor to search records from all the hospitals where babies were being delivered at the time of Obama’s birth and that, “There is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii – absolutely no proof at all that he was born in Hawaii,” said Evans, pointing out that Abercrombie purposefully conducted the investigation to try and quash claims that Obama was not born in the United States.

Abercrombie Admits Failure To Discover Obama Birth Certificate Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com January 26, 2011 Veteran reporter Mike Evans has described in a radio interview how Hawaii Governor and close friend Neil Abercrombie was shocked at his failure to discover Obama’s birth certificate after using his power to search

hospital records, an outcome that could seriously impact President Obama’s re-election campaign.

Evans’ revelations contradict official claims that Abercrombie abandoned his search for birth records relating to Obama because of privacy laws that bar him from disclosing an individual’s birth documentation without the person’s consent.

The birth certificate issue has rocketed back into the public limelight in recent weeks as a result of World Net Daily and

specifically New York Times best selling author Jerome Corsi’s continuing investigation into the controversy, reports that have been afforded ample coverage by the hugely popular Drudge Report website.

On Monday, Corsi reported how, “Former Hawaii elections clerk Tim Adams has now signed an affidavit swearing he was told by his supervisors in Hawaii that no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate existed for Barack Obama Jr. in Hawaii and that neither Queens Medical Center nor Kapi’olani Medical Center in Honolulu had any record of Obama having been born in their medical facilities.”

In a radio interview with KQRS-FM, reporter Mike Evans explained how he had been a close friend of Abercrombie’s for decades since he first met him when Abercrombie was a taxi driver in Honolulu. Evans said that the Governor would often talk about how he was a friend of Barack Obama’s Kenyan father and

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The fact that the birther issue is again starting to snowball could prove disastrous for Obama’s re-election campaign, especially given the fact that Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges has introduced a well-supported bill that will require presidential candidates to prove their eligibility before being able to occupy the White House. Similar legislation is also being introduced in Montana, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.

Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution states, “No Person except a “Now he admits pubnatural born Citilicly that there is no birth certificate,” said zen, or a Citizen of Evans of Abercrombie. the United States, at the time of the Evans said that he asked Abercrombie what his first memory Adoption of this was of Barack Obama as a child Constitution, shall and that Abercrombie told him he recalled seeing Obama playbe eligible to the ing in the T-Ball league when he Office of Presiwas 5 or 6 years old. dent.”

“What about before that,” asked Evans, to which Abercrombie responded, ” I don’t really remember much before that,” a retort described by Evans as “very odd”. Evans said that Abercrombie was shocked when he failed to find the birth certificate, having steadfastly believed that Obama was born and raised in Hawaii.

To hear the interview your self on yourtube visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/wat ch?v=hvrb7YqdvxE&feature=pl ayer_embedded

CHEMTRAILS ON THE RISE STATEWIDE! CONTRAILS OR AEROSOL WEATHER WARFARE? CHEMTRAILS OVER MUCH OF THE STATE OF TEXAS!

By Johnny Jack What the Hell is in our Skies?

Have any of the intuitive Weird Magazine readers looked up in the sky in the morning on a nice sunny January or February afternoon recenty?

I’m not sure all the cloud cover in the early day, or afternoon sky are in fact, clouds. Uncertain of the validity of these “Contrails” I have begun several video recordings in recent weeks to document what is going on.

What are Chemtrails and how are they different from Contrails?

I ask you the reader. Do these look like contrails to the right and below? Because these Chemtrails are falling down from the higer levels of the sky and turn into a hazy spread as the get closer to the ground.

(TOP RIGHT).

RUMORS OUT THERE:

Scientists over the years who deem chemtrails as part of HAARP (High Frequency Auroral Research Program) situated in Alaska, with other locations in other countries doing the same thing. It has been said that oil companies use the “stretching

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of the ozone” to find oil locations with the pinpointed vibrations that come back to earth very strongly, which causes havoc for terrain in the form of earthquakes and tsunamis.

The skies are littered with barium, they say, which is used in the process, thus chemtrails are formed. This results in more trips to the doctor for those breathing the stuff when it comes down. Respiratory problems tend to increase traffic in health clinics after chemtrails are seen.

WHERE ARE THEY?

I have taken many of these pictures seen here in San Marcos , Austin , McAllen, San Antonio, Wimberley and other areas of Central Texas.

Conclusions:

So once in a while stop and take your head out of your arse and look up in the sky. It may not be such a cloudy day afterall.

Not clounds at least.

However, if you find your throat getting scratchy, eyes itchy, a roaring headache and a bad case of nausea! Just relax and take your Lipitor, your Celebrex, Viagra, or your Zolof. Because you’re more likely recovering from the symptoms of these drugs, than you are waking up from the bad dream this reality has turned in to.

- Twitter that!

Shocker: Citizen Spy Networks to be Given Immunity Shocker: Citizen Spy Networks to be Given Immunity Paul Joseph Watson January 27, 2011 New York Republican Peter King has introduced a bill that would protect the army of citizen spies Homeland Security hopes to recruit under Janet Napolitano’s “See Something, Say Something” snoop campaign from lawsuits brought by innocent people wrongly accused of being terrorists or extremists.

“A top US lawmaker unveiled legislation on Wednesday to protect individuals who tip off authorities to potential extremist threats from lawsuits, in the event that they turn out to finger innocents,” reports AFP. House Homeland Security Chairman King, who is pushing the “See Something, Say Something Act,” wants to shield “good citizens who report suspicious activity” from facing the consequences of misidentifying innocent behavior as extremism or terror.

Of course, this will only encourage untrained people to report any behavior whatsoever, no matter how benign, as potential terrorism, creating an army of enthusiastic but hapless citizen spies.

“King said his bill would extend protections from individuals “who report suspicious activity anywhere,” adds the report,

making reference to the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” campaign, which characterizes paying for things with cash as a suspicious activity.

The program was launched with the aid of Orwellian telescreens at Wal-Mart checkouts that play a message from Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano encouraging Americans to report anything unusual to WalMart managers. The program was subsequently expanded to include 9,000 federal buildings, as well as sports stadiums, businesses and communities in general.

DHS will no longer be limited to the airport in the form of the TSA, but will become a ubiquitous entity policing everyone through a network of citizen spies and infrastructure security technology. The agency will also assume the mantle of regulating Americans’ every behavior and activity. DHS signs are already in place all over the country telling people where they can and can’t park their cars.

As we have documented, every historical example of such informant programs illustrates that they never lead to a more secure society, but instead breed sus-

picion, distrust, fear and resentment amongst the population.

The only “benefit” that such programs have ever achieved is allowing the state to more easily identify and persecute political dissidents, while discouraging the wider population from engaging in any criticism against the government.

Since its official launch, the See Something, Say Something campaign has successfully wasted thousands of dollars of taxpayer money after people reported half-empty flasks of coffee and bags of clothes as deadly threats that required a response from bomb squads.

Of course, as we have documented, the federal government is fully aware of the fact that Americans are just as likely to be killed by lightning strikes, peanut allergies or accidentcausing deer than they are by terrorists.

See Something, Say Something has little to do with combating terrorism, and everything to do with implanting the notion that Americans are constantly under surveillance from each other and may be reported to the authorities for any minor example of aberrant behavior no matter how benign.

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In addition, since the Department of Homeland Security has characterized political activism which targets the state as extremist and terrorist activity, Americans are being trained that exercising their constitutional rights could get them in hot water with the law should their behavior be deemed suspicious by ignorant wannabe citizen spies who see themselves as terrorist hunters.

In an ironic twist, Rep. King, who is now trying to protect snoops who identify innocent behavior as extremism from lawsuits, was one of the primary co-sponsors of a 2009 House resolution that attempted to get answers as to why Homeland Security equated veterans, gun owners, Ron Paul supporters, and people who fly the U.S. flag, with violent terrorists, following the release of the agency’s infamous MIAC report.

Body Scanners Kill Woman. WTF?

Naked Body Scanner Blamed For Woman’s Death Steve Watson January 25, 2011 Editor’s note: Israel has a history of using dangerous radiation on unsuspecting victims. Between 1948 and 1960, the state “treated” more than 20,000 children from North Africa and the Middle East for ringworm with radiation. The primary agent behind these ringworm eradication operations was UNICEF, which assisted in the purchase of x-ray machines. In November, a group of scientists in the United States raised concerns about the “potential serious health risks” from airport naked body scanners in a letter sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology. Despite evidence the machines are dangerous, the TSA has continued to insist they are safe.

A radiation firing body scanner has been identified as the possible cause of death in the case of a 57 year old Palestinian woman who died over the weekend at a border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

Haaretz reports that Palestinian sources are blaming the use of a “U.S.-made

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advanced portal using millimeter wave holographic technology to screen passengers for weapons and explosives” for the woman’s death.

It is believed that the woman did not mention to security officials that she had a pacemaker.

The machine is said to have interfered with the woman’s pacemaker. Around half an hour after passing through the machine at the Rafah crossing, she is said to have suddenly collapsed.

She was pronounced dead at an Egyptian hospital shortly afterwards.

The same crossing was closed last week by Palestinian authorities in protest of the installation of the scanning technology which they believe to be unsafe, according to the report.

The millimeter wave scanners emit a wavelength of ten to one millimeter called a millimeter wave, these waves are considered Extremely High Frequency (EHF), the highest radio frequency wave produced. EHF runs a range of frequencies from 30 to 300 gigahertz, they are also abbreviated mmW. These waves are also known as tetrahertz (THz) radiation.

Experts have previously warned that people with medical implants such as pace-makers should avoid electromagnetic pulse generating body scanners as they can significantly alter the waveform of the pacemaker pulse.

As we have previously highlighted, there are other dangers associated with such scanning devices.

The force generated from tetrahertz waves is small but, according to scientists, the waves can ‘unzip’ or tear apart double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the DNA that could interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.

Those who pass through the scanners will be at risk of long term health effects, such as cancers, according to some scientists.

The reason millimeterwave bands are used by the scanners is that they render clothing and organic materials translucent. However, while this allows the observer to see metal objects concealed beneath clothing, it does not necessarily reveal low-density materials such as plastic, chemicals or liq-

uid, precisely the materials used by the so called underwear bomber.

This was the main reason that the manufacturers of the technology had to admit that it probably would not have prevented the incident form taking place (if you discount the fact that the bomber was aided through security by unidentified accomplices).

This is the first reported case of someone actually dying as a result of going

through one of the scanners. Unfortunately, it is almost certain not to be the last.

Meanwhile Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano, or big sis as she has been nicknamed, recently announce that hundreds more of the body scanners would be installed into American airports, with the long term goal to make their use mandatory for all air travelers.

W: Are you single?

THE BAR 1900 N Expressway # G Brownsville, TX (956) 548-2277

Samantha

W: AGE? S: 21 W: Years Bartending?

S: 2 years W: Your Favorite Night to work?

S: :Sundays W: Contents of pocket?

S: YES! W: Favorite Local Band?

S: Down and out, Fired up, Blue Finger Disco W: Harderst part about being a bartender?

S: Finding a way to nicely cut people off, and keep the tip as well.

W: Any Tattoos?

S: cell phone, usually lip gloss and bar key

S: Yes I have one of a star.

W: Best part about working at THE BAR?

W: Favorite Drink for Valentines Day?

S: The fun atmosphere, its always a good time

S: Arrow in the Ass

S: THE BAR float W: Contents of drink?

S: Come to THE BAR and try one

“QUOTES OF THE NIGHT” “I’m multi talented, I can talk and piss you off at the same time?””

“What whiskey won’t cure there is no cure for!” “your conversation is as flacid as your penis, boy!” __________

Interview by: Franko “flacid” Chavez

W: Specialty Shot Drinks.

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THE Music Of MONK!

Indisgust on Saturday the 19th. And we’re supposed to play Houston but we still don’t have the date at this point still. Our next San Marcos gig is March 12.

MONK: Ha ha! Yeah that’s FAIR I guess, actually quite accurate.

We’ll let you live. But next time listen to it in STEREO, Russell!

Just kidding.

W:Who are your influences?

MONK:

Interview By Russell Dowden

W: Welcome to Weird Magazine.

Describe the music of The MONK? MONK: Thanks for having us,

Russell! Well, we did name the CD “Total Zen Madness” as a descriptor, but if that’s too cryptic then how about: a psychedelic blend of just about every genre in the metal spectrum rolled into one! You know... a little bit of Shun, Robert, Jason, and Letty...

W: I hear you guys had a show last night in Austin at Dirty Dog on 6th.

How was that?

MONK:Great,actually! We’re

not usually ones to play on a Monday, much less open on a Monday, but the turn out was pretty good and we got to support Marc Rizzo’s solo band.

He’s and incredible guitar player who spends most of his time playing in Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy. Lots of fun!

JASON: They’re all over the map... from thrash/death/ grindcore metal bands, jazz musicians, classical composers, rock bands to the avant garde stuff like the Residents.

SHUN: Yeah, that’s a hard question to answer.

We have innumerable influences musically, but alot of our influence is also idealogical and comes from everywhere.

W: What motivates the band?

MONK: Uhhh... do you mean

why do we do this? I’d have to say: From love of music, yet being tired of the same old- same old crap. We’ve collectively learned a lot of what we would like to do and not do from past band experience as well. Lone Star ( and Bud Light in Jason’s case).

W: I have your new W: Where are you per- album here playing; forming in the month it sounds aggressive and head banof FEB? gin pscyhadelic.

MONK:February’s a slow month Is that fair to say? for us. We’re playing @ Sport’s West in Sequin with Paegan and

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W: Where in San Marcos do you play regularly? Triple Crown?

MONK:Yeah, hey, that’s where

LETTY: Yeah, Skinny Puppy, my Dad, our inner circle of friends...

ROBERT: ...Sepultura, Texas sunsets, Suicidal Tendencies, Ministry, Yoda, H.P. Lovecraft, Roland Deschain, Judge Holden, Ren and Stimpy...

Engineering was headed by Jon Butler of Lucid Audio ( he plays guitar with Jason in Southern Front and has a guest guitar solo on The Alpha- Omega Sickness). All the rest of the recording was done at his house (where Jason was living at the time). Jason handled most of the mixing. The two of them together basically make up Lucid Audio with Jon being the main part of the production team.

W: Why the name of the track, The End of San Marcos? lol sounds dark!

What inspired this track?

MONK: Hmmm. We all have a

history with this place, we all grew up in the area and it’s like now days we are watching the San Marcos we grew up with disappear and get built on top of. Well, you take that and mix in some anxieties like the river running dry, the fault line waking up, cameras everywhere watching you...Who watches them?

And at the end of the song the planet’s destroyed in a cosmic collision!

we’re playing in March! It’s practically our home base, we tend to only play there when we’re in San Marvelous. They treat us right and it’ s a cool place. We know everyone there and have kind of a built in crowd due to the fact that it is “home”.

I’ d say we play there about an average of once every other month or so.

W: Who designs the Art for the BAND? It’s very WEIRD and trippy and like somebody had an ACID flashback.

MONK:All we are allowed to say is he’s called Deathbot. He’s sort of an unofficial member... people have been trying to get him to show his stuff at coffee shops and art shows, but I don’t know...we’re lucky he’s on our side!

W: Where did MONK record this album?

W:MONK Tell us where the Aliens clash against the raging skies of Armegeddon.

MONK:Drums were done in

MONK:That would be track

our practice pad at Sound Tank Studios. They were done in one night- Robert did the whole album’s worth of drum tracks!

14 on the CD “Angel of Wrath” about 1 min. 15 seconds into it!

W: I like Ambition, Snippet # 2. & Headhunter!

Do you guys have a favorite track on the new album?

MONK: LETTY: Ambition is

one of my favorites as well, but ultimately I like the whole album in its entirety.

JASON: The Gothic Image or Pierre Shiette would be my favorite..

SHUN: The Alpha-Omega Sickness...? I dunno...

W: Smoke Dope and listen to Slayer.

MONKSHUN: Hey, we gradu-

ated from that high school too!

WORLD PAINTED BUD! REIGN IN BUD! JASON: The best advice for any aspiring metal musician!

ROBERT: CHRONIC INTERVENTION!!

W: Final words to the children of the forgotten?

MONK: JASON:

Who?

LETTY: Brap on!

ROBERT: While the humans of the world crawl all over each other ripping their dignities from their souls they sold in the name of progress and financial success, the children of the forgotten should take HEART knowing that we will continue to keep playing even as the illusion called civilization comes crashing down around us. This is who we are...this is what we do...

SHUN: Be excellent to each other...And PARTY ON DUDES!!! (sorry for the Bill and Ted’s reference.)

Aliens in Rock in Roll?

DAWN OF THE NEW MILLENNIA

does Luckman feel rock and roll came from outer space?

“It’s a legitimate question,” Luckman replied, “particularly based on Elvis and the blue light story, but I still don’t think that rock and roll came from outer space, no. But I think that it’s been INFLUENCED (italics) by forces or beings or intelligences from outer space.”

Alien Rock Feature

By Sean Casteel

Among the many stories that Michael Luckman likes to tell about the connection between rock music and the alien occupants of the UFOs deals with the birth of Elvis Presley.

“Elvis to me was totally wild,” Luckman said. “To have one guy, namely the guy who popularized rock and roll, be so closely involved with UFOs—he had contact when he was a kid with cosmic beings of light that communicated with him and showed him what his life would be like in the future, onstage as a performer. Elvis would have a lot of sightings throughout his lifetime. He was told, and actually believed, that he was from a blue star planet in the Orion Constellation.

“To me, this is quite amazing,” Luckman continued. “And, of course, there’s the story about the blue light. The moment Elvis was born, there was apparently a blue light over his family’s small, two-room shack in Tupelo, Mississippi.”

One immediately thinks of the Star of Bethlehem that preceded the birth of Jesus Christ, and wonders whether Elvis might be more on an even footing with Him than most of us mere mortals. Which begs the question,

Luckman’s personal interest in the subject of UFOs and the aliens inside them began when he was a child himself, in the 1950s, and first saw the sci-fi classic “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” with Michael Rennie as the benevolent alien sent to scare a little peace into us. By 1971, Luckman was teaching a college level course about rock and roll, the first in the country, at the New School For Social Research in New York. Around that same time, he also published an alternative newspaper called “The New York Daily Planet,” intended to compete with “The Village Voice.” Luckman’s newspaper featured a department about UFOs, which helped him make connections with some of the major UFO organizations at the time.

“There was a lot of very interesting material in evidence,” Luckman said, “and I was especially struck by the existence of so many photos, even back then, that pointed to the reality of subject.”

The parallel tracks his career was taking led him to realize that for a long time many rock musicians had written songs about UFOs and aliens as well as having had sightings and other experiences of their own.

“But I never imagined,” he said, “that the subject cuts as deep as it does and involves so many musicians. I never imagined, for example, that there were a great many rock stars, not just a couple, but at least eight with recognizable names, who have had classic UFO abduction and missing time experiences.”

The many years of research have resulted in a new book

called “Alien Rock, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Extraterrestrial Connection” (VH-1 Books/Pocket Books, 2005), which offers many, many anecdotes about rock stars and their fascination with, and even participation in, the UFO phenomenon.

Luckman’s research involved everything from combing through CDs and older record albums to voraciously reading books and magazines, as well as many hours spent searching the Internet.

“It couldn’t have been accomplished without the Internet,” Luckman said. “There’s just stuff out there that there would be no other way to know about, and certainly not within the period of time that I was able to do this book. I also had contact with a lot of rock stars, their management people, associates, friends and wives in some cases. Antonio Huneeus [a longtime “FATE” contributor] was my right hand man on this project. He was my research assistant, and I couldn’t have done this without him.”

There are, as Luckman rightly claims, a surprisingly generous number of rock star encounters with the UFO phenomenon in the book.

“I particularly like the one about David Bowie,” Luckman said, “in the earlier part of his career, when he was touring the United States doing concert appearances. He bought a telescope and had it mounted on the rooftop of his limousine, and he would go out looking for aliens between stops on the tour. This was almost like an all-consuming passion on his part. But I would have to say that David Bowie has in recent times played down the reality factor on UFOs. He’ll say on the one hand that he believes in extraterrestrial life, but on the other hand he’ll say that his use of aliens and UFOs in his songs were ‘just imagery,’ and weren’t meant to suggest hardware. But the fact was that in the 70s he was very heavily involved with it. He had a thousand UFO and related books, had a telescope, had his own sightings, and when he was a teenager, he edited a flying saucer magazine in England.

He had sightings both when he was younger and also during the filming of ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth.’ So to me, Bowie’s one of the most interesting stories in the book.”

The late John Lennon also had his share of alien encounters.

“There are two accounts about John Lennon,” Luckman said.

“The first is one that a few people know about, which is when he saw a UFO from the rooftop of a penthouse he was living in with his then girlfriend May Pang. They were both naked, as it happens, and John saw this thing outside. He went out on the roof naked, and he sees a large flying saucer that he said had lights around its rim and a red light on top. He said it was capable of holding two human-sized passengers.

It was just hundreds of feet away. And it really got his juices flowing. He had subscribed to ‘The Flying Saucer Review’ in England for many years, and here he was seeing it face to face, and he was very excited.

He said he yelled, ‘Stop! Take me with you!’ Because he was all prepared to go.”

The world-renowned psychic Uri Geller related another Lennon anecdote to Luckman.

“Shortly before his assassination,” Luckman went on, “there was another UFO encounter that involved some beings—now this is according to Uri quoting John—that were presumably grays that came into the Dakota, where John lived at the time. John saw a strange light coming through the door and the small beings came into his

apartment. They had some kind of telepathic communication, then they left him with a small egg-shaped, smooth object that John passed along to Uri. And Uri still has it. It’s never been analyzed, and if it’s real, that is, if it’s extraterrestrial in origin, then presumably there would be something in the makeup of the metal that would not be on the periodic chart of elements when they do an analysis on it. But Uri has kept it and hasn’t chosen to have it analyzed, although I’m pressing him to do that because it could really be the ultimate evidence of UFO visitation.”

Writer, editor and publisher Timothy Green Beckley has also written a book on alien contact with celebrities called “UFOs Among The Stars” (Global Communications, 1992) in which he relates similar stories about major show business personalities who have been touched by the Great Unknown. As with Luckman, UFOs and rock music went hand-in-hand from the days of Beckley’s youth.

“I’ve always been interested in UFOs,” Beckley said, “having had personal experiences and publishing literature on the subject even as a teenager. And of course I grew up with rock and roll. When I was a little tyke, about the same time I was having my out-of-body-experiences and things, I was also pestering my mother to buy me rock and roll records.

In those days, it was Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, and then Elvis Presley came along. So I grew up with both things.”

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Aliens in Rock & Roll History

by Sean Casteel

As an adult, Beckley promoted numerous rock concerts in the Manhattan area and was a familiar figure backstage in the late 60s and early 70s. He became a close friend of a woman named Wally Elmlark, a columnist for a rock and roll fanzine called “Circus,” and coauthored a book with her called “Rock Raps of the Seventies,” now long out of print. Elmlark also dabbled in the occult, billing herself as the White Witch of New York.

“She introduced me to David Bowie,” Beckley said, “and the Chambers Brothers and Edgar Winter. So I got to meet some of these people socially, and found out a lot of them were interested in UFOs.” Beckley also met the late, great Jimi Hendrix backstage at a show on New York’s Randall’s Island.

“He was standing there, tuning his guitar,” Beckley said, “and getting ready to go on. I just kind of walked by him and he made some comment about being—I don’t know whether he asked me if I was from Mars or whether he made some comment about him being from Mars himself, but we both kind of chuckled at that. I told him I was interested in UFOs, and he just kind of nodded and went onstage.”

Beckley later made the acquaintance of Curtis Knight, who had played bass in one of Hendrix’s early bands called The Squires.

“We became fairly close friends,” Beckley said, “and Curtis revealed to me quite a few of Jimi’s UFO experiences.”

Knight told Beckley a remarkable story about Hendrix, an event that happened a few years before Hendrix became the legendary and much beloved guitar hero.

“It was during the wintertime,” Beckley said, “and they were playing a small gig in upstate New York, near Woodstock.

This was before the Woodstock Festival, so it has nothing to do with that, except as a point of location. It was not very far from Pinebush, where there’s been a lot of UFO activity in the last few decades.

“Anyway, as I understand it from Curtis,” Beckley continued, “there was a very snowy blizzard and the boys in the band were trying to get back to Manhattan. They got snowed in.

It was so cold outside that they couldn’t even open a window.

The windows had frozen. They had the engine still running, and the carbon monoxide filled the

DAWN OF THE NEW MILLENNIA

car. A couple of the other guys passed out in the backseat, but Jimi was still able to breathe apparently, and he claimed that a cone-shaped object landed on the road not far from their vehicle. A door opened on the side of the craft and a being came out. He described it as kind of like a cross between a feathered creature, maybe like Mothman, and an angel.

“This thing drew its wings out and walked around the vehicle, and where it walked, the snow melted. So they were able to get out of the blizzard and get back to New York. Jimi always told Curtis that if it wasn’t for this being coming from the ship, he was sure that they would have all died in that car that night.”

Before Curtis Knight’s death in Holland a few years ago, he wrote a book dealing with Hendrix’s many otherworldly experiences called “Jimi Hendrix, Starchild,” which Beckley published in 1992.

We’re all very likely fascinated at this point, but what’s in it for the aliens? Luckman offered some interesting speculation.

“I think that extraterrestrials,” Luckman said, “are looking to influence popular culture through the rock stars. Exactly toward what end is

very, very hard to figure out.

This is something that is still to play out in the near future.”

Luckman would like to be a part of just how that alien contact plays out. He is working behind-the-scenes to organize concerts to be held around the world, in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and even West Africa.

“The rock concerts are based on the concept of beaming live music into space,” he said, “to make contact with extraterrestrials. While researching my book, I found that UFOs have been seen at various rock concerts. Not frequently, but they have shown up at some key rock concerts, including the Isle of Wight concert in England, and the filming for the Jimi Hendrix Rainbow Bridge Concert. Also at Woodstock, Altamont and a number of others.”

Luckman said that top-flight artist management firms as well as major corporate sponsors are already showing an interest in his idea.

“These concerts, each one of them, is supposed to be large enough for let’s say three to five hundred thousand people,” Luckman explained. “We’re currently having discussions in West Africa about the possibility of doing a free concert for a million to two and a half million people. These are very expensive undertakings, in the very high millions of dollars. So we’ll see what actually is feasible, but we’ve gotten a very strong response to trying to raise the kind of money that’s needed.”

Suppose that Luckman succeeds in making alien contact through the music—what kind of response is he seeking from the UFOs? First, Luckman shares the widely held belief that the end is near.

“I didn’t need New Orleans,” he said, “or the tsunami to prove this to me. I’ve felt for a very long time that we’re living in the ‘end times,’ or whatever you want to call it. We have relatively limited time left, and perhaps musicians are going to play

some kind of a vital role. It’s hard to say just how and what and where, but I would think that if ever there was an opportunity to gather momentum and involve musicians in a movement, this is the time.

“Therefore, I think that with the remaining time that we may have left, that we should try to do what we can to make contact.

Because, to me, it’s the ultimate quest. The aliens could tell us so much about the universe and perhaps help us in some ways to overcome some of our problems, although frankly I feel some of the damage is irreversible. But perhaps, if we are successful in making contact, we can get some emergency help from extraterrestrials. We’re heading toward increasing manmade catastrophes, as well as natural catastrophes, and we have a lot of knowledge to gain from contact.”

Luckman has founded an organization called The Cosmic Majority, which seeks “to advance the views of the majority of people living on planet Earth who believe in UFOs, life on Mars and other planets throughout the universe, the paranormal, the New Age and the sanctity of the environment.”

Can Luckman bring this off? Can he use his book “Alien Rock” as the starting point for an entirely new kind of social and cultural movement?

Rock music has nearly always had a social vigor that goes well beyond its role as a simple musical form, and has in fact been the catalyst for a great deal of cultural change for well over fifty years. Whether it can actually be harnessed to bring the UFOs down from the skies to deliver us from our seemingly insoluble problems remains an open question however. One can only hope, should Luckman ever bring to fruition the UFO/rock music alliance he envisions, that ET does more than think it’s got a good beat and is easy to dance to.

THE END

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Poles Shifting? WTF? Two un-related articles indicate so.

Wikileaks Bombshell Points To 9/11 Stand Down

Wikileaks Bombshell Points To 9/11 Stand Down Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com February 2, 2011

Newly released Wikileaks documents concerning the activities of three Qatari men who conducted surveillance of the World Trade Center and boarded flights on the eve of the 9/11 attacks adds to the plethora of evidence that at the very least US authorities were aware of the plot and deliberately stood down.

“The FBI has launched a manhunt for a previously unknown team of men suspected to be part of the 9/11 attacks,” reports the Daily Telegraph.

Secret documents reveal that the three Qatari men conducted surveillance on the targets, provided “support” to the plotters and had tickets for a flight to Washington on the eve of the atrocities. Ten days later they flew to Los Angeles, where they stationed themselves in a hotel near the airport which the FBI has now established was paid for by a “convicted terrorist”, who also paid for their airline tickets.

Hotel staff have told investigators they saw pilot uniforms in their room along with computer print outs detailing pilot names, flight numbers and times and packages addressed to Syria, Afghanistan, Jerusalem and Jordan. The revelation that these men may have been involved in the pre-planning for 9/11 again highlights the fact that the plot was known ahead of time. Whether they were double agents laying a trail for the attack to be later blamed on Muslim patsies or they were genuinely part of the plot is immaterial, the fact that their behavior, amidst a myriad of other obvious indications that an attack was imminent, was not acted upon by US authorities, provides yet more evidence of a stand down.

The US Special Operations Command’s Able Danger program identified the hijackers and their accomplices long before 9/11, but when the head of the program, Colonel Anthony Shaffer, tried to pass the information on

to the 9/11 Commission, he was gagged and slandered and the vital information his team had passed on was ignored and buried.

Curt Weldon, Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, documented how the US government tracked the hijackers’ movements before 9/11.

Louai al-Sakka, the man who trained six of the hijackers, was a CIA informant. A number of the other alleged hijackers were trained at US air bases. In the months prior to 9/11, alleged hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi were renting rooms in a house owned and lived in by an FBI informant.

In a 2002 article entitled The Hijackers We Let Escape, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman documented how, “The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11.”

The fact that there were numerous Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists involved in the pre-planning stages of 9/11 is unsurprising given former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds’ testimony that Bin Laden was working for the US right up until the day of 9/11.

On the very morning of 9/11, the money man behind the alleged hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials.

Indeed, even after 9/11, the so-called spiritual leader of the very hijackers who allegedly slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Anwar al-Awlaki, was himself invited to dine with Pentagon top brass mere months after the attack.

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Al-Awlaki was later involved in directing the underwear bomber, who was allowed to board the plane by order of the US State Department aided by a well-dressed man who got Abdulmutallab on the airliner despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and had no passport.

Eyewitness and Delta 253 passenger Kurt Haskell subsequently blew the whistle to state that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was given the bomb by the US government to create a pretext for the implementation of naked body scanners and boost the TSA’s budget.

While there has been plenty of focus on possible connections between other Muslim terror suspects and the alleged 9/11 hijackers, little has been said about the role of the infamous “dancing Israelis” who brazenly displayed their foreknowledge of the plot after they were witnessed setting up camera equipment pointed at the World Trade Center before the attack unfolded.

When the planes slammed into the towers, the men were seen dancing, cheering and congratulating each other.

The details of these new Wikileaks documents only serve to confirm that there were numerous drills and preparatory actions taking place immediately prior to 9/11 indicating that an attack was imminent. What the Telegraph and the rest of the establishment media will refuse to mention in any of these reports is the confirmed fact that through Able Danger and other intelligence operations, these events were being closely tracked by US authorities.

Add to this the complete reversal of standard operating procedure on the day of 9/11 in relation to NORAD’s failure to intercept any of the hijacked airliners, and the evidence for a government and military stand down which at the very least allowed the attack to take place is abundant.

Of Resistance and Revolution

By Cameron Cutrone

The actions of the United States have made it harder for necessary revolutions around the world, to be sure. Look at every incident that has happened in Russia targeting Moscow by its discontents since September 11th 2001.

The Chechen rebels have occasionally caused problems for Moscow, but since 9/11, Russia has cracked down BIG TIME. Their excuse? “See America? We have our own terrorist problem!” And we are silenced. 9/11 times a thousand. Works every time.

Whether you are speaking of the Uighurs in China, the occasional uprisings in Manila, or Myanmar, revolution has become near impossible. Whenever our government tries to engage in a discussion of human individual rights, these regimes cite the Patriot Act as their inspiration behind the laws they create to monopolize power, crackdown on dissent, and deal with “terrorists,” the same people our government two decades ago called “freedom fighters.”

Of Resistance and Revolution

by Cameron Cutrone

Americans take notice. As this edition goes to print, a radical development has started and the situation will remain fluid in at least two, and possibly several more countries. Overlooking the inspiration and the implications of these developments could prove tragic. Oversimplification of the situation is, of course, the job of the mainstream corporate media. So this analysis can be the antidote to FOX and CNN. First, we have in the last week seen a popular uprising in the state of Tunisia. Students, civil servants, and shop keepers have taken to the streets and brought society to a halt. Their dictator of three decades, Ben Ali, has been forced into exile in Saudi Arabia, our “ally” and popular retirement destination for other dictators, notably Idi Amin of Uganda. Most western observers don’t see the significance of his choice of destinations.

This uprising is one based on the country’s determination to have more responsive, transparent institutions, as well as to stave off the pillaging of their economy by the IMF. Tunisia is within the Mediterranean sphere of influence and it’s people’s mood reflects a lot of the discontent shown recently by the people of Italy, Greece, and Spain. This is NOT, in other words, an Islamist uprising of cave-dwelling fundamentalists. If it were, the dictator would have most certainly found refuge in the west somewhere. None the less, there is a concern that the neo-con/Obama-con consensus could see this as a reason to promote western style democracy, and even more interventionism. Of course this would most certainly backfire. But the childlike thinking of the pentagon and the State department shouldn’t be underestimated.

Now in another brazen act of defiance to dictatorship, the people of Egypt have taken to the streets, seemingly emboldened by the success of the uprising in nearby Tunisia. This resistance has a much higher mountain to climb. It faces internet censorship, a crucial organizing tool has been compromised. It’s a total police state armed to the teeth by the United States.

This is a result of our policy of “evenhandedness” which began at the end of the Arab/Israeli war, in which we supported Israel. So our always enlightened government thought they would fund Egypt’s development to make up for that. What was developed was one of the most oppressive states in the world. Torture, violent crackdowns, and compulsive lying animate the regime of Hosni Mubarack. Every once in a while he gives spineless rhetorical condemnations of the Iraq war, and statements in solidarity with the Palestinians in order to seem likable to the average Egyptian.

The incredible farce at the onset here is that our engagement in the Arab/Israeli war of 1967 was predicated on a complete lie. On June 8, 1967, Israeli armed forces fired upon the USS Liberty killing and injuring hundreds of American navy. The intent of the Israelis was to promote the lie that Egypt fired those shots in order to push the US into the Arab/Israeli conflict on the side of Israel. Amazingly, it worked. The US was totally suckered. They who wield power knew this and capitulated to this, notably LBJ. If this is too much to believe, just do ten minutes of research on the USS Liberty and Israel’s Operation Susannah. Consider what we already know about LBJ lying us into Vietnam by way of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under LBJ, actually admitted this in the film “The Fog of War.” Never the less, Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the incident, chaired an independent investigation and concluded that the attack on the USS Liberty was not accidental and was meant to sway the US into entering the Arab/ Israeli conflict on the side of Israel. Our own military top brass knows this, and funds Egypt to this day, perhaps out of guilt for blaming Egypt for the attacks. On top of that, from their perspective, there are plenty of other reasons to bribe one of the most influential Arab nations.

This is all very important to understand when discussing modern day Egypt. The country today is a lie that the US is wedded to. And so a revolution in Egypt isn’t going to be easy. In fact it would be as difficult to see a revolution in Israel as it would in Egypt. On the brighter side, if it can happen there, it can happen ANYWHERE!

We all share outrage when countries like Iran, Egypt and China censor, or just SHUT DOWN the internet. But what happens when we have the Cyber Security Act pass? What then when Joe Lieberman gets the Chinese style internet kill switch that he so covets? Will resistance or revolution be impossible? What if we continue on the course of self censorship and “toning down the rhetoric?”

Recently, toning it down has been the bipartisan rallying cry. But this breeds intellectual dishonesty. People should say what they mean. Otherwise people can be horribly misled and not understand the rhetoric’s intentions. Look very carefully at the consequences of sanitized rhetoric. What if the Patriot Act were instead called the “Extrajudicial Execution Act” or the “Snooping at Peaceful People’s Library Records Act?” The latter two titles are actually more honest, the Patriot Act allows for both of those things to happen under the guise of patriotism. So the government “toned down” the rhetoric, and it passed with almost unanimous consent.

Obama has even reauthorized it!

What about the Iraq War? Well it’s over. From now on, the people who die over there will not make the front page, or even the second page of the paper. For according to the current administration, the tens of thousands of troops still operating there on permanent military bases are now engaged in an Overseas Contingency Operation, not a war. Our troops and their civilians continue to die, and the outrage is muted as a result of the decision to “tone down the rhetoric.”

Should the people of Egypt and Tunisia tone down the rhetoric? Absolutely not. In fact they would laugh at us for seeming so weak over the Giffords shooting. What a shame. We are no longer the bastion of liberty that the oppressed of the world looked to for inspiration.

Should we forget our proud history and love for resistance and revolution for the false promise of stability and civility? Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and countless other American revolutionaries knew the answer to that question.

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

--Benjamin Franklin

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Aaron James Sorensen INTEREVIEW Interview By Russell Dowden

Conservatives and the Hippies all somehow get along together and have their shows following one another. I’m interested in that kind of diversity. I’m interested in people and organizations that accept and are award of vast difference and yet don’t have a need to hate one another.

W:Tell us about yourself Aaron. I underW: Tell us about Extra stand this is your Butter Pictures?

2nd film after direct- AJS: Extra Butter Pictures is ing Hank Williams just a cool name for a production company, so I had to start First Nation. one called that. Our mission is What gave you the to start a new alternative film center in America - and I think idea for Campus Central Texas is the place for it.

Producing and distributing films Radio?

AJS: I’m a musician. I love music. All music. Hank Williams First Nation was my country movie. Campus Radio is my rock ‘n’ roll movie. I have always been interested in the Campus Radio culture. I always thought there was something healthy about an environment where the Death Metal Zombie Show and the Lesbian Hour and the Christian

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for the “fly-over” states. I think Hollywood is so out-of-touch with America-proper right now they have no capacity to make films that resonate with middle America in a meaningful way. I think there is an opportunity in America for a new Hollywood.

There is no real reason for six companies in Los Angeles to dominate 96% of the US box office anymore.

W: Campus Radio is based in San Marcos I hear.

Tell us about the plot of this film?

AJS : Its about a guy, who rides a unicycle, plays unicycle football, and loves rock ‘n’ roll. He is a Campus Radio DJ and a band manager. He has a band that seems about to break when the lead singer quits.

Auditioning new vocalists he comes across a girl named Tommy - beautiful and talented and toxicto-the-core. He finds himself with an insane intoxicating infatuation with this rotten, sexy, girl that just can’t help but screwing over everyone she comes into contact with.

W:You and the team have been in town for a few weeks and

will be here for the Premiere of the film.

Is that right?

Aaron James Sorensen CAMPUS RADIO INTEREVIEW Interview By Russell Dowden AJS: Yeah. We’ve fought hard for the premiere of this film to be in San Marcos. Conventional wisdom is to open films at big festivals and LA and NYC but in Canada I opened my first film in the small town it was shot in and it was tremendous. Nice way to start a film’s release.

Nothing like playing to a hometown crowd. I like San Marcos a lot. I’m a small-town guy. I don’t much like pretentious film festivals. I don’t much care about LA or NYC. I get much more turned-on by seeing this play in a multiplex theater with a crowd of real people in San Marcos Texas. Sticky floors and over-priced popcorn. We’ll be around here a lot from now till opening night - which we think is Feb 4th, still waiting on final date confirmation.

about that project as well.

AJS:My first film in Canada was spun into a TV miniseries there and in the miniseries I needed a cover of a Hank Williams song. Billy Bob Thornton had a great version of Lost Highway on his first record and I found a way to contact him and got to know him a bit in the process.

He and I recorded some music together. He had just bought Slash’s house so he had this badass Guns ‘N’ Roses studio in his basement. He liked one of my songs called Well Enough Alone, and asked me to demo it for him. I went home to Canada and demo’d that song and a few more and was having so much fun I just wound up staying in the studio all week and recording a full CD. I love it. Very proud of it.

Nice to do some music here and there still.

W: As a musician you What can folks also produced Cran- W: expect from Campus berry Wind. Tell us Radio?

AJS: Folks can expect to get ten-dollars worth of cinema.

And to see themselves and their people and their places depicted honestly and in a genuine way on the big screen.

W: As a former DJ myself, I’m curious do you have a little bit of radio experience?

AJS:

I’ve sat in on shows and performed live in shows and cohosted shows but I’ve never had the honour of having my own show.

W: Why set the stage for the film in San Marcos TX?

AJS: I came out to Austin in 2007 and really liked it and decided to stay. One day I took a drive and found myself in San Marcos. I stopped for a beer at a place called Tantra (how can you not stop for a beer at a place called Tantra) and across the street in the parking lot these jack-asses were playing football on unicycles and I just said to myself, “This has got to be in a movie”.

W: Have you been to the student radio station here in San Marcos, KTSW? AJS: Oh yeah. We shot in the KTSW studios. All the footage from the station in the film was shot in KTSW studios. They have been great to us. From the beginning and still now. Several KTSW peeps show up in the movie as extras or background performers.

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Aaron James Sorensen CAMPUS RADIO INTEREVIEW

W: Who are some of your influences for film?

AJS: Honestly I’m more influenced by music. I’ve never studied film. I don’t understand Fellini and Bergman. I don’t think anyone does. The only guy from film school that I get is Truffaut. I like Francois Truffaut and especially 400 Blows and

Day For Night. I like the Bicycle Thief. But really I like Golden Era Hollywood movies. I love movies like It Happened One Night. I like Cary Grant and Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert.

I was watching Veronica Lake last night in Sulivan’s Travels,

on “Irene”, the Campus Radio bus - right here in the Walmart parking lot in San Marcos! I love Preston Sturges and Frank Capra. Howard Hawks. I love John Wayne westerns. Steve Mcqueen rocks. Paul Newman and Redford. I like a lot of 70s Hollywood movies. I don’t know if I’ve seen anything I liked this year. Winter’s Bone was great.

I liked The Wrester a lot and Gran Torino. Coen Brothers when they’re good. I like movies. I like movies more than films.

W: How can we get in touch with you for more information about your music and film projects?

AJS :Call me. I stay up late.

512-673-3526.

W: What can Weird Magazine readers expect from the film locally?

AJS:

cry (just a little).

I think y’all will be real proud of it around here.

Expect to come and be entertained and touched and maybe even inspired a bit.

You’ll laugh some of you will

W: Thanks Aaron for talking with Weird Magazine and best of luck on the release of your 2nd film.

AJS: Thank You Russell I Appreciate it.

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JFK and Our Secret History JFK and Our Secret History

By Richard Dolan It was fifty years ago on January 20 that John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States. While historians debate over the nature of his legacy -- whether as just another proponent for the militaryindustrial complex who actually got the U.S. further embroiled in Vietnam, or as a possible renegade with a vision of a different future, who was eliminated before matters got out of hand -- there is no question that there was something about the man that brings the world back to him, again and again.

Yes, it was youth, that sense of style, that energy -- above all the sense of possibility that pervaded the man himself. His assassination, essentially a public execution, finalized the image and gave the entire world a sense of loss from which it has never fully recovered.

I am convinced that the day will come when we as a society will agree that JFK was killed in a conspiracy, something involving elements from within the U.S. national security establishment.

The truth on that matter will not remain buried forever. So many people already know that the official statements of the U.S. government -- that is was all the work of one single unstable individual -- are false.

Even President Bill Clinton didn’t

believe that. Shortly after he became President, he asked his Assistant Attorney General, Webster Hubbell, to investigate two things. “One, who killed JFK. And two, are there UFOs.” Clinton may not have realized how closely the two questions may have been connected. Consider the likelihood that there is indeed a UFO reality and -- of necessity -- a UFO cover-up. Could Kennedy’s assassination have been related to the latter? The world of conventional wisdom would never pause to consider this, but -- really -- why is this so difficult to imagine?

The Kennedy assassination is something like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

Everyone had a motive: the Mafia, the CIA, the Cubans, the Pentagon, the Soviets, and the Federal Reserve, for starters.

Could that list also include Majestic Twelve, the name often ascribed to the powerful insiders who control the UFO secret?

My answer to that question is, why not?

We must recall that the UFO topic remains the great hole in our modern history. The great unspoken reality around which

so much has happened within classified circles, and about which so little has leaked to the outside world. There is an enormous history there, waiting for future researchers to describe, once the repository of data becomes available. And it will.

Make no mistake, it will.

Something as important as UFOs would not have escaped the attention of JFK. Throughout the 1950s, American newspapers reported sightings of the “flying saucers” much more seriously than they do today.

The topic was major news several times during the decade.

We know, furthermore, that at classified levels, the topic was taken very seriously. Why then, would Kennedy not have been interested? More to the point, how would it be possible for him not to have known something about it?

Kennedy was close to a legendary figure in the CIA named Art Lundahl, who had provided briefings to four U.S. presidents, as well as to Congress and the Senate, Lundahl was renowned for his outstanding ability to explain technical concepts clearly to laymen. Interestingly, Lundahl’s main interest appears to have been UFOs, a topic which dominated his personal library. In addition, according to an interview with Lundahl by W. Todd Zechel, a UFO researcher and former employee of the Army Security Agency, Lundhahl briefed Kennedy not only on Soviet missiles in Cuba, but on UFOs. Interesting, for sure.

Then there is the controversial Marilyn Monroe UFO document, which came to light in 1992. This is a single page memo from the CIA dated August 3, 1962, one day before she died, almost certainly because she was murdered. The information on the document came from two monitored telephone conversations: one between the journalist Dorothy Killgallen and her friend Howard Rothberg, and another between Marilyn Monroe and JFK’s brother, the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

The Killgallen-Rothberg conversation revolved

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around the fact that Monroe was telling secrets to select Hollywood insiders regarding her liaisons with the President, one of which was “a visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space.” The conversation between Monroe and RFK focused on her anger at the Kennedys, the sensitive information she had in her journals, and her willingness to give a “tell all” press conference. The document bears the signature of James Jesus Angleton, head of Counterintelligence at the CIA. Although the document lacks the kind of provenance that would make it of undisputed authenticity, I am one of the researchers who believes it is genuine. You can see the document and read more about it here.

So it looks like JFK was not only very interested in UFOs, but had connection to the topic in his capacity as President. Whether or not he was killed for reasons having to do with UFOs is not something on which I would care to pronounce a judgment. But I would say that, given the circumstances of his Presidency, it cannot be ruled out.

Like many people who have reviewed the life and Presidency of JFK, it’s my feeling that we lost something very important on that dark day of his assassination. What we lost was the implicit bond of trust that existed between the American people and their government.

The system that had been evolved for a century and a half, which despite all imperfections had moved in fits and starts toward greater power to the people, had made a great transformation during the Second World War. That was when the American republican system government became increasingly swallowed up by a “national security state.” It did not take new boss very long before it decided to remove the President in what became for all intents and purposes a silent coup d’etat.

Thus for good reason are we unable to look back at JFK, at the era of Camelot, and avoid that feeling in the pit of our stomachs. That feeling of loss, and the conviction that his assassi-

nation was a criminal action yet to be punished, or even acknowledged.

Yet, I prefer to remember something else about JFK. He was, without question, one of the greatest orators in American history. Much of that was thanks to Ted Sorenson, one of the greatest speechwriters any President was fortunate enough to have. But surely JFK had something to do with it, too.

So I would like to take a moment to re-read a classic statement made by the man. It was from a speech made at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on April 27, 1961. He gave it to the National News Publishers Association. His subject: the dangers of secrecy.

“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it’s in my control.

And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.”

If we want to honor the memory of JFK, we can do no better than to live by these words, and to fight what is most assuredly the best fight of our lives. It is the fight to bring truth to this world, to shine light into the darkness, to scatter the forces of evil.