According to several eyewitness reports, a bird with a wingspan nearly the width of Mendenhall Loop Road has been spotted in the Mendenhall Valley.

The cryptozoological curiosity stems from a post in the popular Facebook page “Juneau Community Collective,” brought to the attention of the Empire by several readers. The Empire couldn’t track down a clear explanation of what the bird was, but we did talk to some bird experts and did a little digging on similar sightings from around Alaska.

Here’s the original post, from eyewitness Tabitha Bauer:

“Attn; I was just driving by the movie theater in the Valley and there was a huge black bird flying above the road. The wingspan had to be at-least 20 feet, it was almost as wide as the road. I have lived here all my life and have never seen anything like that, it freaked me out. It was not a raven or an eagle. This isn’t a joke. This thing was HUGE, almost the size of a small airplane. Did anyone else see it?”

The sighting was backed up by several others in a long comment thread on the post. Some were poking fun at the idea of a thunderbird or pterodactyl in the valley, but others weren’t so skeptical.

Bauer, recounting the sighting to the Empire a few days after spotting the bird, said it was “like an eagle, but five times as big.” She couldn’t think of any other way to describe the odd encounter.

She spotted it around 4 p.m. on Jan. 16, what would have been dusk. Bauer was driving to the bank, alone in her car.

“Right before the movie theater, I looked ahead of me and it was towards Superbear direction,” Bauer said, referencing the grocery store in the Mendenhall Mall and Gross Alaska Theatre’s Glacier Cinema.

There was rain on her windshield, so she turned on her wipers to clear the view.

That was when she saw a massive, jet-black bird with a short tail flying level with the treetops over Mendenhall Loop Road toward her. Bauer said the bird flapped its wings, soared a little higher, and flew at a fast clip over her car about 50 feet in the air.

“I looked up and right at that point, there was a gigantic, huge black bird flying right above my truck. It was basically following the roadway along the treetops.

“I slowed down to try to get a better look at it. It was heading toward the glacier, the wingspan was almost as wide as the road,” Bauer said, adding, “It was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It was very concerning. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Bauer said that it definitely had feathers, but she couldn’t make out a beak.

“The body of it itself had to have been six to eight feet,” Bauer said. “I know it sounds nuts — I’ve been getting a lot of crap on Facebook about it like I am crazy — but I wanted to post it in case anyone else had seen it.”

Another woman, who asked that the Empire use only her first name, Diane, said she saw something very similar — this time perched, or attempting to perch, in a tree near her house late at night a few years ago.

Diane went out to smoke a cigarette at her Lemon Creek home and noticed that all the birds in the area were excited.

“All you heard was the whooshing sound in my tree. I went inside and grabbed a flashlight. It was so large, I couldn’t even get an outline of what type of bird it was,” Diane said.

Diane noticed downed branches littered her yard in the morning.

“That sounds crazy, but it was huge,” she said. “I don’t even go camping anymore.”


Both of these accounts sound similar to a national headline-making event when a bird the size of a small airplane was seen flying over southwest Alaska in October, 2002.

Residents in the villages of Togiak and Manokotak said the creature, like something out of the movie "Jurassic Park," had a wingspan of 14 feet (4.6 meters) -- making it the size of a small airplane.

"At first I thought it was one of those old-time Otter planes," the paper quoted Moses Coupchiak, 43, a heavy equipment operator from Togiak, as saying. "Instead of continuing toward me, it banked to the left, and that's when I noticed it wasn't a plane."

Coupchiak said the bird disappeared over the hill and he then radioed Togiak residents to tell them to keep their children in.

Pilot John Bouker said he was highly skeptical of reports of "this great big eagle" that is two or three times the size of a bald eagle. "I didn't put any thought into it."

But while flying into Manokotak, Bouker, owner of Bristol Bay Air Service, looked out his left window and 1,000 feet away, "there's this big . . . bird," he said.

"The people in the plane all saw him," Bouker said. "He's huge, he's huge, he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out."

To Nicolai Alakayak, a freight and passenger driver from Manokotak who was flying with Bouker, said the creature looked like an eagle and was as large as "a little Super Cub."

So what could this be? It’s debatable what the biggest bird in Alaska is, but one candidate is the black-footed albatross, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raptor biologist Steve Lewis said. They can have a wingspan of 6-8 feet.

But it’s highly unlikely an albatross would venture into the valley. Strong winds can sometimes blow an albatross inland, but they’re generally ocean-going birds that stick to the coast, Lewis said.

“Over the water there’s a potential to see something that may have wings like an albatross, but wouldn’t be jet black and wouldn’t be over the valley at all,” Lewis said.

The Stellar’s eagle is another candidate. Like the black-footed albatross, those can have a wingspan of 6-8 feet. They generally don’t venture as far north as Juneau, but as recently as the 1990s they were consistently spotted only a few miles from Juneau on the Taku River, near Canada.

A third, and more likely explanation is that the bird was an immature female bald eagle. Those are the largest birds that are frequently in the area, Lewis said. Young bald eagles have bigger feathers than older eagles, he explained, which aid them as they learn to fly and can make them look larger than they are.

Female bald eagles are generally larger than their male counterparts, Lewis added. Their job in a mating pair is to defend the nest, so it helps to be big and imposing to scare off potential nest robbers.

Bauer and Diane were both adamant about the size of the bird, so neither the albatross, Steller’s eagle or immature female bald eagle squares with their account. They’re both too small and the wrong colors.

The Federal Aviation Administration didn’t return calls to this story, but since both eyewitnesses described seeing this thing flap its wings, it’s unlikely it was a glider or a large drone, by their accounts.

Source: Juneau Empire
http://juneauempire.com/outdoors/2018-02-01/impossibly-large-bird-spotted-mendenhall-valley

The linen winding sheet that is the Turin Shroud bears the faint image of a man (both front and back) said to be Jesus Christ and was allegedly used to wrap His body when, after His eventual death on the hill of Calvary, he was washed and laid out in the nearby unoccupied tomb of His uncle, Joseph of Arimathea. The fourteen-foot long piece of new linen cloth was all that remained after his body was found to have mysteriously vanished from the tomb. The morning after his burial, his mother, Mary, and Mary Magdalene went to visit the tomb and found the rock covering the entrance had already been rolled back, and a stranger, who was present in the tomb, told the two women that Christ had returned to God his father.

The women claimed that the stranger was an angel. Whether or not this is true is almost secondary to the existence of the Shroud, it is however a rather neat way to tidy up any loose ends and is one sure way to explain the disappearance of the body. It also created a precedent for notions such as the already mentioned 'Rapture', when true believers and evangelical Christians will be whisked off their feet and lifted bodily into heaven, or possibly even a spaceship Among the many suggestions made is that, the dualist belief aside, Christ did not die on the cross and made his escape with the assistance of friends and the burial was a ruse, or, he did die and the body was simply removed elsewhere.

The reason for its removal would have been entirely pragmatic from the Roman perspective, because as long as the body was accessible then it might be used to foment further unrest. It was for similar reasons that the bodies of Adolph Hitler and also Eva Peron were never allowed to fall into the hands of sympathisers. It has, however, been argued that the story of Jesus' burial is entirely fictitious, because, as a rule, the Romans denied anyone who had been crucified the dignity of a decent and dignified burial. Since crucifixion was, after all, their most severe form of execution reserved for the worst offenders they considered that anyone whose behaviour had, in their view, merited such a punishment did not deserve any respect at all. As a result of this, bodies removed from the cross were normally thrown into a mass grave or pit. If Jesus did escape this fate, then it indicates that either his supporters wielded considerable influence, or he was not dead.

The winding sheet itself first appeared in the public domain when, in 1347, it was displayed in a church in the town of Liray in France. The Shroud had previously been in the charge of the de-Charney family, although there is no explanation of how it came into their possession. Due to the nature of this relic it might be more appropriate to refer to those who possess this artefact as its guardians rather its than owners, this may become relevant as we consider some of the possibilities. A few months after its initial exposition, the bishop of Troyes unequivocally declared it to be a painting and obviously a fake and ordered its destruction. However, for some reason the shroud was not destroyed and stayed hidden with the de-Charney family until circa 1453 when it came under the protection of the Savoy family after being sold, or perhaps bartered would be a better term, for two castles from Duke Louis of Savoy, who, interestingly, was the son of Pope Felix V.

The Savoy's, who still actually retain the legal stewardship/ownership of the shroud, after some consultations and negotiations decided to have it kept in the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin where it lies in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. As most people will be well aware this piece of fabric bears a unique image, both back and front, of the body that it covered, the image is assumed to be that of Jesus Christ. It should be made clear that religions, all religions, like nothing better that relics of their key figures for the purely pragmatic reason that it strengthens belief, and there is no more important a figurehead for Christianity than Jesus Christ.

On the other hand we should keep in mind that at the time when the shroud first appeared superstition was rife and there was a huge and lucrative market in relics and if there was no solid evidence of Christ, then any sliver of wood from the Middle East could be declared as a piece of the 'true cross', or a strand of bramble a part of the crown of thorns. Other than that, and of course multitudes of biblical texts, there is absolutely no remaining physical proof that he ever existed. From this basis it is obvious why the Church should now view the shroud as such a vital element in the canon of evidence offered for public consumption.

Due to the nature of this artefact, proof of its authenticity is vital and there have been no shortage of individuals and organisations eager to, by turns, either prove or disprove its validity. There have been many competing theories and techniques employed in this process, each one making claim and counterclaim as to the authenticity of the cloth and in particular the identity of the image. The tests include microscopic inspection of the cloth, carbon dating and possible DNA profiling of the blood flows from the crucifixion wounds left on the cloth.

Some claim that it is indeed that of the crucified Christ, somehow miraculously imprinted on the virgin material, others aver that it is, in fact, nothing else but a photographic image of Leonardo da Vinci, citing the fact that there is a clear demarcation between the head and the body, then demonstrating that the face is identical to that of certain portraits of Leonardo. I have actually been privileged to witness this technique demonstrated using computers and 'morphing' technology, the match between Leonardo's face and the shroud image is startling. We shall return to the physical appearance of Christ and the issues this raised later.

Although the carbon 14 dating technique employed in 1989 established that the shroud dates from around 1260 to 1380, evidence from the pro-shroud camp has since emerged stating that these tests were flawed and conducted on sections of the shroud that had been repaired in 1534 using material from that era. Although feasible, it sees unlikely that those who took the samples should have done this since they must have been well aware that the repaired sections were of a different date. The only way that this could have happened was if those supervising the removal of the samples had an agenda and wanted it to happen. It is certain that those who are convinced of the shroud's authenticity would have ensured that the main body of the material was sampled.

The image itself has to be contentious since, as we have seen earlier, no one knows with any degree of certainty what Christ actually looked like and the face on The Veil of Veronica looks nothing like the face on the shroud. In fact recent forensic tests using cutting edge techniques which compare points on the eye sockets, nose and lips, indicated that the faces are not of representations of the same person. What is however of supreme importance is how the image on the shroud was produced, and if, as has been suggested in some quarters, the image was produced by a burst of 'radiation', then we are bordering on the edge of a highly advanced technology. Where it becomes problematic is whether this technology was science based or 'miraculous', because in some cases there is no difference except, as always, in the context.

If the image was formed by a mysterious surge of radiation where did it come from? Did it appear due to some miraculous/magical act orchestrated and initiated by God? Because if it did, then if we could determine the source and kind of radiation it was then we are indeed on the way to unravelling at least some of the secrets of the universe, we may even be able to catch a glimpse into God's laboratory. If on the other hand the radiation was not from God, but from a much more earthly, but still remarkable source, then who might have been behind it?

The Knights Templar have been suggested as a possibility and certainly had the money, resources, knowledge and ambition to carry out such a project, but would they have had the patience? We have already seen how modern forensic techniques were used to compare two images ostensibly showing the face of Jesus, but the technology does not stop there. Using computer scanning and imaging techniques a complete three-dimensional image had been created showing a life-like reproduction of the shroud image. So far this is confined to the memory banks of a computer, but it would not be difficult to create a full sized life model of the body.

This, however, brings us back to the physical appearance of Jesus and how he is typically presented to the public both by implication, painted representations and in films and television. He has been portrayed as tall, Aryan, blue eyed, slender, sometimes fair-haired, sometimes dark-haired, but always as physically appealing. In fact there is almost no direct reference to either his stature or his facial appearance. What we do have is an account by the early historian, Josephus Flavius, who was born in 37 AD four years after the crucifixion, and whose version of the life of Christ may be more unbiased than later Christian writers, who, for obvious reasons, would have added their own 'spin' to events. From this it is easy to see that the modern machinations of political spin-doctors an ancient art. According to Josephus, Jesus was long faced, had connate (joined) eyebrows and was 'crooked' i.e. he was a hunchback, and had 'goodly eyes', whatever that means.

This information came from an official document called the 'Acta Pilata' recording the trial of Jesus. The name of this document appears to infer that it gives an account of actions sanctioned by local governor, Pilate, which is typical of the thoroughness of the Roman civil service in keeping records and it was also a trait shared by the Nazi Party during the Second World War. Other accounts of the time add that, not surprisingly since he was of Semitic stock, Jesus had dark skin, was quite small, had his hair in a centre parting, which was a style favoured by the Nazirites, and had sparse beard.

To make matters even more confusing, according to Talmudic sources he was also known as Baalam the Lame. As you can see this is a far cry from the acceptable figure that popular and ecclesiastical culture both portrays and accepts as the norm. In itself this is not surprising since any portrayal of the Son of God would have to be a prefect specimen of humanity, while at the same time being superhuman. When one compares this description with what is depicted on the Shroud and the Veronica, although there are obviously a few similarities it is simply not the same person.


Before proceeding further we should pause to briefly examine the reasons for the promotion of the divinity of Christ, because he was not the first, or indeed only claimant for the role as the Jewish messiah. The use of the term, 'Messiah' derives from the Hebrew word, 'mashiah', which simply means 'anointed'; King David was a messiah as indeed was King Solomon. The use of the word was not merely confined to divine beings or Sons of God, although since the church and state were in fact one, then the ruler was a priest-king who carried out Gods laws on Earth.

Towards the end of Christ's ministry there was another leader who rose to lead the Jews against the rule of Rome, however this man did so in a much more robust fashion; his name was Simon bar Kochba. Bar Kochba, the name in Hebrew (שמעון בר כוכבא) means Son of the Star who, like Jesus, was of the royal House of David, took arms to some effect against the occupying Roman army to the point where he and his followers were driven out of Judea. The population hailed him as a Messiah and treated him as a leader. Although bar Kochba was also hailed as 'Prince of Israel' he was also seen as a direct threat to the fledgling church founded by the followers of Christ.

However, like Jesus, bar Kochba also came to a sad end and was killed along with his followers in a final showdown with the Roman army in AD135. He was the antithesis of Christ in that Jesus was the epitome of peace, or a least that is how he is portrayed, and bar Kochba was a warrior. Is it possible that if taken at face value then bar Kochba could be described as an 'Anti-Christ', since, strictly speaking, as we have already seen with what constitutes an Anti-Pope, anyone who either defies, denies or denounces the teachings of Christ is also by definition an Anti-Christ.

It is also something of a shock to realise that although Christianity is a huge religion founded on the teachings of Jesus, his death attracted little or no attention outside Israel where it went largely unreported. The same is not true of Simon bar Kochba whose guerrilla attacks on the occupying Roman garrison in Judea lead to their eventual withdrawal and created sufficient furore outside the Holy Land to require that an army be sent to remove the threat. Although he is remembered for that he is not honoured as a spiritual saviour, why should this be?

As the teachings of Christ continued to thrive in spite of continued suppression by the Romans, the emperor Constantine eventually came to accept their validity and when the basis for the articles of Christian belief was finally set, began to suppress other competing beliefs such as those of Simon Magus, Mithras and Isis. Following the death of Constantine, his successor, Theodosius, made belief in Christianity mandatory and continued with the suppression of the other faiths, effectively reversing the persecution that Christians had endured for decades. Showing remarkable pragmatism and to ease the transfer, the Christian church began to subsume many parts of the suppressed religions into its own rituals. In the case of Isis, who in her own belief system was known as the 'Queen of Heaven', 'Mother of God' and Star of the Sea', these titles were appropriated and bestowed on Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Belief in Mithras, which was confined to male worshipers, was slightly different, because this faith also had a form of communion where bread and wine in effect became a Eucharist. This was of course not acceptable and the followers of Jesus decided that communion in the Mithraic tradition was an abomination and invented by the devil to confound and confuse good Christians. Interestingly, these precursors of Christ were rationalised by such eminent writers such as C.S. Lewis, creator of the 'Chronicles of Narnia' books, who argued that they were 'rehearsals' for the arrival of Christ.

Such a paradigm raises some fascinating points; not least being that fact that if they were rehearsals then who orchestrated them? It is also fair to comment that the work of C.S. Lewis has been favourably compared as an allegory of the story of Christ. If one considers the background of two other precursors we find that Krishna was born of a virgin and harried by an evil potentate and the Lord Buddha walked on water, attributes that are found united in Christ.

In addition, the existence of John the Baptist caused serious issues within the church, because among certain factions he was also seen as the Messiah and one who predated Jesus by several years. The reasoning went that if John baptised Jesus, who they regarded a false prophet, then logically he was baptising him into his faith and not the other way round, because surely Christ did not require to be baptised into the faith He himself had created. Although the faith in the Baptist was a heresy, it did not stop many followers attaching themselves to John and leaving the country. They eventually established themselves as the Mandaeans (or the Mandæan heresy, sometimes the Johannite heresy, as it was known) and there are still approximately 100,000 believers in this strand of theology existing around the world. In common with the Freemasons, the Mandaeans employ elaborate handshakes and signs within their ceremonies and it is frequently speculated that there is a connection between the two.

There is still one other puzzle relating to the early Christian church and this was created by the 1947 discovery in Egypt of the Nag Hammadi library, which once again introduced the concept of Gnostic Christianity. Like the aforementioned Cathars and Bogomils, this source of information introduced the concept of dualism into Christianity and insisted that Christ could not have died on the cross. One of the gospels from the Nag Hammadi scrolls states that Christ detached Himself from His body and watched the spiritless corpse being tortured. In other words the separation between the divine and the corporeal, and it is from the same source that the hypothesis that Mary Magdalene and Christ had a physical relationship developed. Apocryphal works such as 'The Gospel of Mary' state that Jesus frequently kissed Mary on the lips and to quote from this source, 'loved her more than the rest of the disciples', and, in addition, hints at other forms of affection. Quite obviously this was an anathema and vigorously denied by the Church and efforts made to suppress this highly controversial and dangerous information; the reasons why are not difficult to see.

So, in the absence of evidence to the contrary we are still left with the elevation of Christ to the status of a supernatural being; born of a virgin, able to raise the dead, heal the sick, walk on water, change water into wine and all the other magical and miraculous acts ascribed to Him. The requirement for Him to be supernatural is therefore essential, otherwise you are left with the rather more prosaic but understandable practise of the Roman emperors to elevate themselves as a deity to be worshipped by the population of the Roman Empire.

This was all very well, but even if the population was willing to accept a self-proclaimed deity, it did not also confer the ability to produce miracles and wonders. On the other hand, over the centuries certain royal houses, the Merovingian dynasty in France is a good example, have supposedly had the ability to work magic and heal though what was called 'the healing touch' Such a reputation would of course enhance the reputation of any royal house immeasurably.

As far as belief in the deity worshipped by the Christian faith goes, it is one thing to believe that two thousand years ago the populace was able to accept the reality of a creator God and Christ was not only his Son, but a God in his own right and an avatar as well, however, are we now as ready to accept this paradigm without question? In some areas the answer is yes, we still do, and for almost the same reasons except that no one now expects a human being to be divine, but as we have seen in the case of some cults this remains a fact, although these specious 'gods' do appear to have feet of clay and a conspicuous lack of the ability to work miracles on demand. There are of course exceptions in the form of self styled guru's such as Sai Baba and other eastern mystics, but the miracles, wonders and claims attributed to Sai Baba and others like him, when examined closely simply don't hold water, but that, as they say, is another tale.


Brian Allan has been writing articles and books embracing all kinds of paranormal, esoteric and Gnostic themes for over 25 years. Allan is also the editor of Phenomena Magazine, a FREE monthly publication that looks into the whole realm of the Strange, Profound, Unknown and Unexplained, delving into subjects of the Paranormal, Ufological, Cryptozoological, Parapsychological and Fortean Events.

www.brianjallan-home.co.uk/

www.phenomenamagazine.co.uk

Remember the UFO videos released by the Pentagon late in 2017?  It turns out there are even more videos lurking in the military files.

A man who spent 10 years working on the government's secret study of UFOs says there have been many dramatic encounters with unknown technology that is far more advanced than anything in the U.S. military.

Much of the secret UFO study was carried out in southern Nevada.

A former intelligence officer, saw more of those files than anyone.  His name is Luis Elizondo, and most of us first heard his name last October when he stood on a stage with rock star Tom DeLonge and other government insiders.

"It was in this position that I learned the phenomena is indeed real," Luis Elizondo said.

Until he stepped out on a stage last October alongside rock star Tom DeLonge and other former government insiders, most of the world had never heard of Luis Elizondo, which is how he liked it. Elizondo's government career was spent in the shadows, mostly as a pentagon intelligence officer.

"I was at the top of my game in my career field and I left it all to have this conversation with the American public," he said.

The conversation is about UFOs. For almost 10 years, Elizondo was a central figure in a secret Pentagon program to study unknown aerial threats. These days, he's preparing to relocate to the sleepy beach town of Encinitas, which is where Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy is based.

That organization made public a pair of UFO videos which Elizondo helped to declassify before he left Washington. The videos were recorded by military pilots during encounters with far superior technology. in December, the New York Times reported on Elizondo and the videos, which set off a flurry of mainstream news coverage. Critics questioned whether Elizondo had released the videos on his own, as if he hid them in his lunch pail.

"The Department of Defense made the decision to release them. Released at the unclassified level through the DOD, approved the release for exactly the reason why the request was made. So, it was completely on the up and up," Elizondo said.

One video recorded off San Diego in 2004 capped off a week of encounters between UFOs and the USS Nimitz battle group. Navy pilots got up close and personal with an object they described as a large Tic Tac but which was capable of seemingly impossible movements and acceleration. Critics have come up with many theories about why the video and the chief witness are not legitimate.

"When he tells you, he's seen something go from a near hover or something over the water going 450 knots and all of the sudden it takes off over the horizon in two seconds, you'd better believe he is telling you something he has seen. And by the way that's backed up by three other individuals that were also on that same flight and were backed up by three other individuals that were on the same flight in two other aircraft and then layered by radar operators. It frustrates me when someone says, oh, that's an IR glare or IR fuzz, you know, that's atmospheric conditions," Elizondo said.

Reporter George Knapp: "Or bugs on the windshield?"

Luis Elizondo: "Right. Atmospheric conditions. You cannot lock radar onto, I'm sorry, it's not atmospheric or IR fuzz."

An initial cursory report about the Tic Tac encounter was tossed in a drawer at the Pentagon, but the case was revived after Nevada Senator Harry Reid and colleagues initiated a formal program to study UFO incidents involving the military.

The civilian contractor was Bigelow Aerospace in North Las Vegas. Investigators interviewed 18 witnesses to the Tic Tac case and declared it to be a legitimate unknown.

Reporter George Knapp:  "The Tic Tac, that's not Russian, not Chinese, and not ours, right? It's somebody else's?

Luis Elizondo: "Right, right,

Reporter George Knapp: "From somewhere else?"

"I think even more compelling, if this was a Tic Tac we saw in 2004, that would have been extremely advanced technology and capabilities for 2004. I think everyone agrees it is considered extremely exotic technology today, let alone 2004 but these observations match with previous observations going well before that," Elizondo said.

In other words, there have been other Nimitz type incidents both before and since. There is a second video released by the Pentagon. It shows an object dubbed the Gimbal. It is not related to the Tic Tac case, Elizondo confirmed. Other independent sources told the I-Team the video was recorded off the coast of Florida in 2015.

There are many other dramatic encounters not yet made public.

"The Nimitz is an example of one case, one of many that we looked at," Elizondo said. "When it continues to happen as a pattern, that's when we get to the point where we're increasingly concerned, because it is not an anomaly, now it's a trend."

People familiar with the UFO study say about two dozen UFO videos are being declassified for release to the public in the coming months.  Elizondo says the technology displayed by the UFOs is beyond anything we have, but that scientists think they now understand how it works.  

Source: I-Team, Las Vegas Now
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/news/i-team-secret-ufo-program-recorded-encounters-with
-unknown-objects/948860866

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Almost two dozen Americans who traveled to Cuba have reported experiencing similar symptoms to those suffered by US diplomats serving at the American Embassy.

“Since September 29, the Department of State has been contacted by 19 US citizens who reported experiencing symptoms similar to those listed in the Travel Warning after visiting Cuba,” a spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs told the Miami Herald via email.

At least 24 US Embassy officials in Cuba had reported hearing loud, grating noises before experiencing ear issues, hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues and difficulty sleeping.

Doctors reportedly discovered the diplomats suffered from brain abnormalities, as the white matter in their brains had “developed changes.”

The US has stood by their allegations that Cuba in some way deliberately attacked the American officials — which Cuba has adamantly denied — and earlier this month raised the possibility that a virus was deployed intentionally to infect workers.

Cuba’s defenders have argued the US can’t be certain anyone was harmed intentionally because no proof has been publicly presented.

It was earlier reported that officials believed the Americans were the victims of “sonic attacks.” However, investigations by the FBI and other US intelligence agencies were unable to find any physical evidence for secret sonic weaponry. Yet in October, the Associated Press released recordings of the sounds reportedly heard by embassy staff. The noises, however, were reported only by US, and not Cuban, staff.

A group of neurologists recently reported that mass hysteria could offer a better explanation for the events. The lack of an obvious physical cause and high levels of anxiety reported by embassy staff could account for symptoms, they argued. These neurologists had not interacted with any affected embassy staff.

A third possibility emerged Monday when an article published in IEEE Microwave Magazine suggested the strange symptoms could actually be caused by localized microwave radiation. Such weaponry could directly target individuals while remaining inaudible to others.

In the a study, James Lin, electrical engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, proposed the idea of a microwave radiation pulse weapon. He thinks that the mysterious sounds and symptoms could have been caused by a single microwave pulse to the head.

Microwave radiation is usually undetectable to humans. But when delivered at exactly the right frequency, at exactly the right rate for absorption by the human body and aimed at exactly the right part of the head, a microwave pulse could be heard by an individual target, he wrote.

As microwave energy moves through the brain, it generates a tiny amount of heat. This almost undetectable rise in temperature can “launch an acoustic wave of pressure that travels inside the head to the inner ear,” Lin wrote. This pressure could move the tiny hairs that pick up sound vibrations, causing the targeted individual to hear the pulse as they would any other sound.

The more intense this pulse, the louder it would ring through the ear, causing discomfort, dizziness and nausea. The microwave pulse itself might even cause tissue injuries, Lin writes.

The theory may have some support. Doctors treating the embassy victims have found evidence of brain abnormalities. US officials have no explanation for them, but suspect they may be a symptom of the attack.

The US government has long been aware that Russia had developed microwave weapons, probably sometime in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, it was discovered that the Soviets had been directing electromagnetic and microwave emissions at the U.S embassy in Moscow. This covert beaming caused a wide range of documented physical and mental illness among U.S. personnel, and very likely led to the eventual death of the U.S. Ambassador himself. (Ambassador Walter Stoessel died of a rare blood disease similar to leukemia.)

The discovery quickly led to the initiation of a large and complex research project funded by the CIA and code-named “Project PANDORA,” which was initially tasked to study the effects of the Soviet microwaves on both animals and humans. Typically, the CIA did not inform the embassy personnel of the Soviet’s energy attack on them for many years, while it secretly studied the effects of the beams on personnel and even monkeys that were placed in the embassy.

PANDORA scientists later carried out further studies on monkeys in laboratories thereafter, which significant results. Researchers soon discovered that animal brain waves could be altered directly by ELF fields; their brains would fall in phase with ELF waves. These waves could easily pass through the skull, which normally protected the central nervous system from outside influence.

Rumors about the use of microwave weapons by the US during the first Iraq war surfaced from the March 23, 1991 news-brief, "High-Tech Psychological Warfare Arrives in the Middle East". The article describes a US Psychological Operations (PsyOps) tactic directed against Iraqi troops in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.

The maneuver consisted of a system in which subliminal mind-altering technology was carried on standard radiofrequency broadcasts. The March 26, 1991 news-brief states that among the standard military planning groups in the centre of US war planning operations at Riyadh was "an unbelievable and highly classified PsyOps program utilizing ‘silent sound’ techniques".

The opportunity to use this method occurred when Saddam Hussein’s military command-and-control system was destroyed. The Iraqi troops were then forced to use commercial FM radio stations to carry encoded commands, which were broadcast on the 100 MHz frequency. The US PsyOps team set up its own portable FM transmitter, utilizing the same frequency, in the deserted city of Al Khafji.

This US transmitter overpowered the local Iraqi station. Along with patriotic and religious music, PsyOps transmitted "vague, confusing and contradictory military orders and information".

Subliminally, a much more powerful technology was at work: a sophisticated electronic system to ‘speak’ directly to the mind of the listener, to alter and entrain his brainwaves, to manipulate his brain’s electroencephalograph i.e. (EEG) patterns and artificially implant negative emotional states-feelings of fear, anxiety, despair and hopelessness.

This subliminal system doesn’t just tell a person to feel an emotion, it makes them feel it; it implants that emotion in their minds.

Apparently this ploy was successful as US troops reported that Iraqi troops were giving up en masse.

"They were surrendering in droves, almost too fast for us to keep up with..."

"...two Iraqi majors, both brigade commanders, who gave up their entire units..."

"...one of them gave up to an RPV [remotely piloted vehicle]. Here’s this guy with his hands up, turning in a circle to give himself up to a model airplane with a camera in it."

It appears that the US government is well aware that microwave weapons are a reality and possibly the Cuba incidents are a recent attempt by Russian intelligence to influence or harass US diplomats and civilians using directed energy devices.

The State Department’s latest Cuba travel advisory is at a “level 3,” which advises US citizens to avoid traveling to the Caribbean nation “due to serious risks to safety and security.”

Source: NY Post
https://nypost.com/2018/01/30/american-tourists-suffered-same-strange-symptoms
-as-diplomats-after-visiting-cuba/

THEY PURSUE THE SPHERE
THE BEINGS
"WE HAVE BEEN SEEN"