As a federal court
prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan's
conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination,
a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling
her story: She heard two guns firing during the
1968 shooting and authorities altered her account
of the crime.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that,
despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only
gunman firing shots when Senator Kennedy was
murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles
hotel.
"What has to come out is that there was another
shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes said in an
exclusive interview with CNN. "The truth has got
to be told. No more cover-ups."
Her voice at times becoming emotional,
Rhodes-Hughes described for CNN various details of
the assassination, her long frustration with the
official reporting of her account and her reasons
for speaking out: "I think to assist me in healing
-- although you're never 100% healed from that.
But more important to bring justice."
"For me it's hopeful and sad that it's only coming
out now instead of before -- but at least now
instead of never," Rhodes-Hughes told CNN by phone
from her home near Vancouver, Canada.
Sirhan, the only person arrested, tried and
convicted in the shooting of Kennedy and five
other people, is serving a life sentence at
Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga,
California.
The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles is set to
rule on a request by the 68-year-old Sirhan that
he be released, retried or granted a hearing on
new evidence, including Rhodes-Hughes' firsthand
account.
At his 1969 trial, Sirhan's original defense team
never contested the prosecution's case that Sirhan
was the one and only shooter in Kennedy's
assassination. Sirhan testified at his trial that
he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice
aforethought," and he was convicted and sentenced
to death, which was reduced to life in prison in
1972.
After the trial, Sirhan recanted his courtroom
confession.
In the recent federal court filings, state
prosecutors led by California Attorney General
Kamala Harris argue that even if there were a
second gunman involved in the Kennedy shooting,
Sirhan hasn't proven his innocence and he's still
guilty of murder under California's vicarious
liability law. Sirhan's new legal team disputes
that assertion.
Their current battle has prosecutors and Sirhan's
new lawyers engaging directly the merits of new
evidence -- as well as witness recollections such
as Rhodes-Hughes' account -- never argued before a
judge.
Prosecutors under the attorney general are
contending that Rhodes-Hughes heard no more than
eight gunshots during the assassination. In court
papers filed in February, Harris and prosecutors
argue that Rhodes-Hughes was among several
witnesses reporting "that only eight shots were
fired and that all these shots came from the same
direction."
Sirhan's lawyers are challenging those assertions.
In a response also filed in federal court in Los
Angeles, the defense team led by New York attorney
William Pepper contends that the FBI
misrepresented Rhodes-Hughes' eyewitness account
and that she actually had heard a total of 12 to
14 shots fired.
"She identified fifteen errors including the FBI
alteration which quoted her as hearing only eight
shots, which she explicitly denied was what she
had told them," Sirhan's lawyers argued in
February, citing a previously published statement
from Rhodes-Hughes.
The FBI and the California attorney general's
office both declined to comment to CNN on the
controversy over Rhodes-Hughes' witness account
since the matter is now being reviewed by a
federal judge.
Rhodes-Hughes was a television actress in 1968 who
worked as a volunteer fundraiser for Kennedy's
presidential campaign.
The FBI report indicates that Rhodes-Hughes was
indeed inside the kitchen service pantry of the
Ambassador Hotel during the crucial moments of the
Kennedy shooting, but she contends the bureau got
details of her story wrong, including her
assertions about the number of shots fired and
where the shots were fired from.
Rhodes-Hughes, now 78, tells CNN she informed
authorities in 1968 that the number of gunshots
she counted in the kitchen pantry exceeded eight
-- which would have been more than the maximum
Sirhan could have fired -- and that some of the
shots came from a location in the pantry other
than Sirhan's position.
Robert Kennedy was the most seriously wounded of
the six people shot inside the hotel pantry on
June 5, 1968, only moments after the New York
senator had claimed victory in California's
Democratic primary election. The presidential
candidate died the next day; the other victims
survived.
The Los Angeles County coroner determined that
three bullets struck Kennedy's body and a fourth
passed harmlessly through his clothing. Police and
prosecutors declared the four bullets were among
eight fired by Sirhan acting alone.
Rhodes-Hughes tells CNN the FBI's eight-shot claim
is "completely false." She says the bureau
"twisted" things she told two FBI agents when they
interviewed her as an assassination witness in
1968, and she says Harris and her prosecutors are
simply "parroting" the bureau's report.
"I never said eight shots. I never, never said
it," Rhodes-Hughes told CNN. "But if the attorney
general is saying it then she's going according to
what the FBI chose to put into their report."
"There were more than eight shots," Rhodes-Hughes
said by phone. She says that during the FBI
interview in her Los Angeles home, one month after
the assassination, she told the agents that she'd
heard 12 to 14 shots. "There were at least 12,
maybe 14. And I know there were because I heard
the rhythm in my head," Rhodes-Hughes said. She
says she believes senior FBI officials altered
statements she made to the agents to "conform with
what they wanted the public to believe, period."
"When they say only eight shots, the anger within
me is so great that I practically -- I get very
emotional because it is so untrue. It is so
untrue," she said.
Contacted by CNN for comment, Sirhan lead attorney
William Pepper called the alleged FBI alteration
of Rhodes-Hughes' story "deplorable" and
"criminal" and said it "mirrors the experience of
other witnesses."
Other witnesses also mentioned more than eight
shots
Law enforcement investigators have always
maintained that only eight shots were fired in the
RFK assassination, all of them by Sirhan. His
small-caliber handgun could hold no more than
eight bullets.
But released witness interview summaries show at
least four other people told authorities in 1968
that they heard what could have been more than
eight shots. The following four witness accounts
appear not in FBI reports but in Los Angeles
Police Department summaries:
-- Jesse Unruh, who was speaker of the California
Assembly at the time, told police that he was
within 20 to 30 feet behind Kennedy when suddenly
he heard a "crackle" of what he initially thought
were exploding firecrackers. "I don't really quite
remember how many reports there were," Unruh told
the LAPD. "It sounded to me like somewhere between
5 and 10."
-- Frank Mankiewicz, who had been Kennedy's
campaign press secretary, told police that he was
trying to catch up to the senator when he suddenly
heard sounds that also seemed to him to be "a
popping of firecrackers." When an LAPD detective
asked Mankiewicz how many of the sounds he'd
heard, he answered: "It seemed to me I heard a
lot. If indeed it had turned out to have been
firecrackers, I probably would have said 10. But
I'm sure it was less than that."
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-- Estelyn Duffy LaHive, who had been a Kennedy
supporter, told police that she was standing just
outside the kitchen pantry's west entrance when
the shooting erupted. "I thought I heard at least
about 10 shots," she told the LAPD.
-- Booker Griffin, another Kennedy supporter, told
police that he had just entered the pantry through
its east entrance and suddenly heard "two quick"
shots followed by a slight pause and then what
"sounded like it could have been 10 or 12"
additional shots.
An analysis of a recently uncovered tape recording
of the shooting detected at least 13 shot sounds
erupting over a period of less than six seconds.
The audiotape was recorded at the Ambassador Hotel
by free-lance newspaper reporter Stanislaw
Pruszynski and is the only known soundtrack of the
assassination.
Audio expert Philip Van Praag told CNN that his
analysis establishes the Pruszynski recording as
authentic and the 13 sounds electronically
detected on the recording as gunshots.
"The gunshots are established by virtue of my
computer analysis of waveform patterns, which
clearly distinguishes gunshots from other
phenomena," he said in an e-mail. "This would
include phenomena that to human hearing are often
perceived as exploding firecrackers, popping
camera flashbulbs or bursting balloons."
Van Praag's Pruszynski recording findings are now
a major point of controversy among new evidence
being argued between the two sides in the Sirhan
federal court case. Harris contends that his
findings amount to an "interpretation or opinion"
that is not universally accepted by acoustic
experts.
CNN initially reported on Van Praag's audio
analysis in 2008 and then with additional details
in a BackStory segment in 2009.
Shots fired from two different locations
California prosecutors have argued that witnesses
heard shots coming from only one location, but
Rhodes-Hughes tells CNN that while the first two
or three shots she heard came from Sirhan's
position several feet in front of her, she also
heard gunshots "to my right where Robert Kennedy
was."
According to the autopsy report, the coroner
concluded that the senator's body and clothing
were struck from behind, at right rear, by four
bullets fired at upward angles and at point-blank
range. Yet witnesses said Sirhan fired somewhat
downward, almost horizontally, from several feet
in front of Kennedy, and witnesses did not report
the senator's back as ever being exposed to Sirhan
or his gun.
In his analysis of the Pruszynski sound recording,
Philip Van Praag found that five of the gunshots
captured in the tape were fired opposite the
direction of Sirhan's eight shots. Van Praag also
concluded that those five shots -- the third,
fifth, eighth, 10th and 12th gunshots within a
13-shot sequence -- displayed an acoustical
"frequency anomaly" indicating that the alleged
second gun's make and model were different from
Sirhan's weapon.
Despite the fact her FBI interview summary
indicates Nina Rhodes-Hughes was inside the
kitchen pantry during the assassination, she was
never called to testify at Sirhan's 1969 trial or
at any subsequent inquiry over the years.
Rhodes-Hughes says she made a point of telling two
FBI agents in 1968 that she would be willing to
make herself available to appear as a witness
anywhere at anytime and to testify "that there
were more shots."
"They never wrote that down," she says of the FBI
agents who conducted the interview in her Los
Angeles home. She also says that when the pair of
agents departed following their visit, they forgot
to take along their attaché case and,
minutes later, had to return to her residence and
retrieve it.
Rhodes-Hughes says that, in the months following
the June 5, 1968 assassination, she and some
others who had been at the Ambassador Hotel
refused news media interviews so as to avoid
interfering with preparations for Sirhan's trial.
It wasn't until the 1990s that Rhodes-Hughes was
asked whether she would ever be willing to testify
under oath -- an invitation coming not from a
prosecutor or law enforcement official but from
author Philip H. Melanson, a chancellor professor
of policy studies at the University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth.
At Melanson's request, Rhodes-Hughes reviewed her
1968 FBI interview summary for the first time and
found it contained more than a dozen inaccuracies.
She provided Melanson with a statement, but the
professor died some years later and Rhodes-Hughes
once again missed her opportunity to testify.
Before his death, Melanson published
Rhodes-Hughes' statement in "Shadow Play," a book
he co-authored with William Klaber in 1997 and one
of several Melanson wrote on the Robert Kennedy
assassination.
Rhodes-Hughes recounted the Kennedy shooting and
her initial contact with Melanson in a 1992
interview on "Contact," a local TV program carried
at the time in Vancouver by Rogers Cable.
Defense attorney William Pepper calls
Rhodes-Hughes' recollections "significant
verification" of new assassination evidence that
the Sirhan legal team is currently presenting. "It
provides further verification of a dozen or more
gunshots and mirrors the experience of other
witnesses which confirms the existence of the
cover-up efforts," he told CNN.
"Along with all of the other evidence we have
provided, one wonders why it has taken so long for
this innocent man to be set free, a new trial to
be ordered or, at least, a full investigatory
hearing to be scheduled," Pepper said. "Nothing
less than the credibility and integrity of the
American criminal justice system is at stake in
this case."
Sirhan Sirhan's current legal team is doing
something his original lawyers never did. They are
asserting that Sirhan did not shoot Kennedy.
Sirhan's original defenders had decided at the
outset that Sirhan was the lone shooter. Because
Sirhan's initial lawyers presented a diminished
capacity case in 1969, they never pursued
available defenses. Evidentiary conflicts, and
issues such as a possible second gun, simply were
not addressed at Sirhan's 1969 trial. Most of the
original prosecution's evidence was stipulated by
the original defense team, which agreed that
Sirhan had killed the presidential candidate.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes opposes freedom for Sirhan
Sirhan, whom she regards as one of two gunmen
firing shots inside the Ambassador Hotel kitchen
pantry. "To me, he was absolutely there," she
said. "I don't feel he should be exonerated."
Rhodes-Hughes insists the full truth of Robert
Kennedy's murder has been suppressed for decades,
and says she hopes that it will now finally come
out and that the alleged second shooter will be
identified and brought to justice.
"There definitely was another shooter," said
Rhodes-Hughes. "The constant cover-ups, the
constant lies -- this has got to stop."
Source: CNN
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-04-28/justice/justice_california-rfk-second-gun_1_
sirhan-sirhan-federal-court-assassination?_s=PM:JUSTICE
- CROATOAN OR BUST
DEPARTMENT -
New Clue
to Fate of Roanoke Lost Colony
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A new look at a 425-year-old
map has yielded a tantalizing clue about the fate
of the Lost Colony, the settlers who disappeared
from North Carolina's Roanoke Island in the late
16th century.
Experts from the First Colony Foundation and the
British Museum in London discussed their findings
Thursday at a scholarly meeting on the campus of
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Their focus: the "Virginea Pars" map of Virginia
and North Carolina created by explorer John White
in the 1580s and owned by the British Museum since
1866.
"We believe that this evidence provides conclusive
proof that they moved westward up the Albemarle
Sound to the confluence of the Chowan and Roanoke
rivers," said James Horn, vice president of
research and historical interpretation at the
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and author of a
2010 book about the Lost Colony.
"Their intention was to create a settlement. And
this is what we believe we are looking at with
this symbol — their clear intention, marked on the
map ..."
Attached to the map are two patches. One patch
appears to merely correct a mistake on the map,
but the other — in what is modern-day Bertie
County in northeastern North Carolina — hides what
appears to be a fort. Another symbol, appearing to
be the very faint image of a different kind of
fort, is drawn on top of the patch.
The American and British scholars believe the fort
symbol could indicate where the settlers went. The
British researchers joined the Thursday meeting
via webcast.
In a joint announcement, the museums said, "First
Colony Foundation researchers believe that it
could mark, literally and symbolically, 'the way
to Jamestown.' As such, it is a unique discovery
of the first importance."
What happened to settlers?
White made the map and other drawings when he
traveled to Roanoke Island in 1585 on an
expedition commanded by Sir Ralph Lane. In 1587, a
second colony of 116 English settlers landed on
Roanoke Island, led by White. He left the island
for England for more supplies but couldn't return
again until 1590 because of the war between
England and Spain.
When he came back, the colony was gone. White knew
the majority had planned to move "50 miles into
the maine," as he wrote, referring to the
mainland. The only clue he found about the fate of
the other two dozen was the word "CROATOAN" carved
into a post, leading historians to believe they
moved south to live with American Indians on
what's now Hatteras Island.
But the discovery of the fort symbol offers the
first new clue in centuries about what happened to
the 95 or so settlers, experts said Thursday. And
researchers at the British Museum discovered it
because Brent Lane, a member of the board of the
First Colony Foundation, asked a seemingly obvious
question: What's under those two patches?
Researchers say the patches attached to White's
excruciatingly accurate map were made with ink and
paper contemporaneous with the rest of the map.
One corrected mistakes on the shoreline of the
Pamlico River and the placing of some villages.
But the other covered the possible fort symbol,
which is visible only when the map is viewed in a
light box.
Map played critical role
The map was critical to Sir Walter Raleigh's quest
to attract investors in his second colony, Lane
said. It was critical to his convincing Queen
Elizabeth I to let him keep his charter to
establish a colony in the New World. It was
critical to the colonists who navigated small
boats in rough waters.
So that made Lane wonder: "If this was such an
accurate map and it was so critical to their
mission, why in the world did it have patches on
it? This important document was being shown to
investors and royalty to document the success of
this mission. And it had patches on it like a
hand-me-down."
Researchers don't know why someone covered the
symbol with a patch, although Horn said the two
drawings could indicate the settlers planned to
build more of a settlement than just a fort.
The land where archaeologists would need to dig
eventually is privately owned, and some of it
could be under a golf course and residential
community. So excavating won't begin anytime soon.
But it doesn't have to, said Nicholas Luccketti, a
professional archaeologist in Virginia and North
Carolina for more than 35 years.
Archaeologists must first re-examine ceramics,
including some recovered from an area in Bertie
County called Salmon Creek, he said.
"This clue is certainly the most significant in
pointing where a search should continue," Lane
said. "The search for the colonists didn't start
this decade; it didn't start this century. It
started as soon as they were found to be absent
from Roanoke Island ... I would say every
generation in the last 400 years has taken this
search on."
But none have had today's sophisticated technology
to help, he said.
"None of them had this clue on this map."
Source: MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47288500#.T6PublLcCIA
-- FRIEND OR FOE
DEPARTMENT -
BEFORE HER UNTIMELY DEATH, A CONTROVERSIAL
ABDUCTEE DECLARED THAT THE EVIDENCE WAS IN
. . .
More Foe Than Friend - Is It Time We
Formed an Alien Resistance?
By Sean Casteel
For many in
the UFO community who deeply desire a more
reassuring explanation for the UFO phenomenon
than the evidence may present, Karla Turner
continues to be a problematic, even tragic
figure in the many years since her death in
1996 from a dangerous form of breast cancer
she contracted right after an abduction
experience. Turner was an outspoken voice for
abductees' rights and never wavered in her
belief that the aliens were an evil, invasive
force that intended no good with their medical
experiments and frightening mind control
capabilities. To this well-educated, gifted
woman, the UFOnauts were wickedness
personified, simply evil in the "flesh."
The publisher, "The Conspiracy Reader," is
adamantly determined that Karla Turner's voice
continues to be heard from beyond this time
and place and that her message is still
proclaimed in an era when alien abduction is
no less rampant and no less traumatic for the
experiencers than when Turner first began
writing about what was happening to her and
her family. This is more so the case
considering that so many stand deeply-rooted
today in the Exopolitical movement, where a
sort of pseudo-hip "spiritual
blissfulness" regarding the true character of
the "visitors" outweighs rational thought in
light of what at least some of the evidence as
to their nature seems to indicate. This can no
doubt be considered a "theme book" which
utilizes not only Turner's searingly painful
research, but added background material from a
stable of writers, which includes Timothy
Green Beckley, Tim R. Swartz, Brad and Sherry
Steiger and myself, resulting in a rather
hefty, large format, 285-page collection
of shocking, mind-warping accusations
against those who seemingly hold us in some
form of cosmic slavery that has gone on
unabated possibly since antiquity if not from
the start of our very existence here.
This innovative book, "Evil Empire of the ETs
and the Ultra-Terrestrials," opens with a
fascinating narrative by seasoned
UFO/paranormal author Tim Beckley, who first
hung out his journalistic shingle in the field
over forty years ago. In a section which
he justifiably titles "Strange Brew," Beckley
- who has long heralded the paranormal vs
interplanetary genesis for the UFO enigma -
relates the harrowing tale of a succession of
tormented travelers who encountered strangely
morphing ships and shape-shifting beings while
driving the open highway, turning their
sojourns into hellish nightmares. In one
case, a married couple, Bob and Jackie Blair,
told their story to a newspaper reporter in
Sauk Centre, Minnesota.
"They had been experiencing unexplainable
phenomena for three days," the newspaper
states, "for 900 miles across three states,
and when they stopped in Sauk Centre,
Minnesota, hardly anyone believed them."
The pursuit had begun in Montana when what the
Blairs at first took to be stars in the night
sky turned out to be nine small ships and one
large one. Things turned hostile quickly when
the couple's car was shot with needle-like
shavings of silver metal that penetrated the
couple's windshield. The shavings ruined the
truck's new paint job and when Jackie touched
them they caused her fingers to break out in
blisters; Bob had a similar blister on his
wrist. The reporter says that their fingers
glowed from the unknown substance they had
touched and Bob exclaimed, "We might be dying
right now! We don't know what it is. We have
to get to a doctor."
The incident is dead on creepy as the couple
says that a group of attacking "individual
things" were "shaped like about eight-inch
people with V-shaped heads, wings on their
backs," like prehistoric birds. They were said
to be exceedingly hostile and went into attack
mode several times, cloaking the scene in a
dense fog. "It was like a backwards tornado
coming from the mouth of the leader of the
ships. It was like a ray that he was sending
down with this funnel. He did it five times,
than left," Bob said.
This is a classic example of the kind of
mental and emotional agony often left behind
after a UFO encounter.
"And you know we're not dealing with men from
Mars," says Beckley, who was once a strong
believer in the interplanetary origins of the
UFO phenomenon but has wavered from this path
in recent years. Not knowing or understanding
what has happened is hard to bear, especially
in a case where one is forced to wonder
whether some kind of life-threatening injury
has been incurred. How could Bob know whether
the blisters he and his wife had were somehow
a sign of something fatal? What doctor could
have treated an alien-induced sickness?
Beckley's chapter provides the entire
eye-popping scenario of the Blairs along with
another terrifying highway encounter that
happened to a young woman named Mickie and her
girlfriend, which is so blatantly bizarre that
it would appear that they were almost on an
acid trip, though Beckley says they swore to
him in a face to face interrogation that they
never touched the stuff. At one point in
their drive across country a monster "dog"
appeared in their back seat complete with
glowing red eyes, scaring the bejesus out of
the two women. Beckley believes this adds
considerable weight to the Ultra-Terrestrial
concept that other realities are merging with
our own in many close encounter cases, placing
the abnormalities outside the realm of
wandering spaceships and alien occupants into
a totally different conceptual dimension
My own contribution is called "The Shadowy
Universe of Alien Thought Control," and deals
with such unsettling possibilities as the
mental co-opting of world leaders in
government, religion and economics and the
open hostility of the alien presence. In an
interview I did with researcher and political
activist Michael Brownlee, he argues quite
convincingly that if anyone else were to
abduct members of our citizenry by the
millions or over-fly and disable our nuclear
missile sites, we would regard it as an act of
war and respond accordingly.
Why is it we give the aliens a free pass in
those terms? One answer may be that we are
humiliatingly outgunned and outmanned, and the
authorities simply can't go public with a
situation they can neither influence nor
control. However, efforts like the Star Wars
Space Defense program, begun under President
Ronald Reagan, seem to be a step in the right
direction, Brownlee said, and he knows
personally people in the defense industry who
are continuing to work to develop adequate
technology to fight back against the aliens'
superior weaponry.
There is also new material in "Evil Empire of
the ETs and the Ultra-Terrestrials" by veteran
authors Brad and Sherry Steiger, whose chapter
is called, simply enough, "Hostile Encounters
With Alien Intelligences." One can always
count on the Steigers to produce some of the
very best writing on this subject available
anywhere, and their chapter certainly no
exception.
"The Not-So-Friendly Face Of ET Encounters" is
offered here by writer and Emmy Award-winning
producer Tim R. Swartz, who never fails to
deliver an in-depth and thorough examination
of the topics he writes about.
Sandwiched in between all the fascinating new
material is of course Karla Turner's "Into The
Fringe," which set new standards for honesty
and bravery in the face of the dark mystery of
alien abduction. Turner had no patience for
people who said the negative baggage that
accompanies abduction was because of the
abductee's failure to be open to the
experience's beauty and worth. Like Brownlee,
she protests most vigorously the tendency to
"blame the victim," to say the fault lies in
humanity and not in the fascistic, iron-grip
of the aliens. No amount of New Age positive
thinking can change the fact that people are
being subjected, completely involuntarily, to
a series of medical, psychological and
emotional procedures that leave them cowering
in fear and with no readily available cure or
solution.
Even the late Budd Hopkins, who told me more
than once that he hesitated to call the aliens
"evil" because it would an over-simplification
that he felt would be counterproductive,
nevertheless equated alien abduction with
rape, simply because it was not an experience
freely chosen and could not be stopped by any
human method of resistance.
For an article she wrote for Tim Beckley's now
defunct magazine "UFO Universe," which is
further elaborated on in the recent Global
Communications book "Round Trip To Hell In A
Flying Saucer," Karla Turner created a
checklist, a breakdown of the most basic
elements of alien abduction that puts the
matter in its proper perspective quite
succinctly. We present a portion of the
checklist here.
* Aliens can alter our perception of our
surroundings.
* Aliens can control what we think we see.
They can appear to us in any number of guises
and shapes.
* Aliens can take us - our consciousness - out
of our physical bodies, disable our control of
our bodies, install one of their own entities,
and use our bodies as vehicles for their own
activities before returning our consciousness
to our bodies.
* Aliens can be present with us in an
invisible state and can make themselves only
partially visible.
* A surprising number of abductees suffer from
serious illnesses they didn't have before
their encounters. These have led to surgery,
debilitation, and even death from causes the
doctors can't identify.
* Some abductees experience a degeneration of
their mental, social and spiritual well-being.
Excessive behavior frequently erupts, such as
drug abuse, alcoholism, overeating and
promiscuity. Strange obsessions develop and
cause the disruption of normal life and the
destruction of personal relationships.
* Some abductees report being taken to
underground facilities where they see
grotesque hybrid creatures, nurseries of
hybrid humanoid fetuses, and vats of colored
liquid filled parts of human bodies.
* Abductees report seeing other humans in
these facilities being drained of blood, being
mutilated, flayed, and dismembered, and being
stacked, lifeless, like cords of wood. Some
abductees have been threatened that they, too,
will end up in this condition if they don't
cooperate with their alien captors.
* Aliens have forced their human abductees to
have sexual intercourse with aliens and even
with other abductees while groups of aliens
observe these performances. In such
encounters, the aliens have sometimes
disguised themselves in order to gain the
cooperation of the abductee, appearing in such
forms as Jesus, the Pope, certain celebrities,
and even the dead spouse of the abductee.
* It becomes clear," Turner writes, "from
these details that the beings who are doing
such things can't be seen as spiritually
enlightened, with the best interests of the
human race in mind. Something else is going
on, something far more painful and
frightening, in many, many abduction
encounters."
There is an understandable need, she
acknowledges, for humans to believe in the
power of good.
"We need for the aliens to be a good force,"
she admits, "since we feel so helpless in
their presence. And we need for some superior
force to offer us a hope of salvation, both
personally and globally, when we consider the
sorry state of the world."
The aliens understand that we hope for them to
be benevolent creatures, she reasons, and they
use that desire for goodness to manipulate us.
What better way to gain our cooperation,"
Turner asked, "than to tell us that the things
they are doing are for our own good? Looking
at the actions, the results of alien
interference, such as on the list above, there
is a great discrepancy between what we desire
from them and what they are doing to us."
Turner also detailed the consistent patterns
of deception that make up a great deal of the
abduction experience. People sometimes report
that they were treated kindly by the aliens,
and were told that they were "special" or
"chosen" to perform some important task for
the benefit of humanity. Given such a positive
message, the abductees may ignore the fear and
pain of their encounters and insist to
themselves and others that a higher motive
underlies the abduction experience. They may
only recall, in some cases, a benevolent
encounter and have no memory of any negative
action.
But intensive research now shows us something
much different.
"We know, for instance," Turner writes, "that
'screen memories' are often used to mask an
alien abduction. Such accounts abound, in
which a person sees a familiar yet
out-of-place animal, like a deer or owl, a
monkey or a rabbit, and then experiences a
period of missing time. The person often
awakens later to find a new, unexplained scar
on his body.
"Uneasiness about the encounter will persist,
however, and far different memories may start
to surface in dreams or flashbacks, and then
the person seeks help to explain the
uneasiness. Quite often, hypnotic regression
is used to uncover the events behind the
'screen memory,' and that is when the typical
alien abduction surfaces. However, from
several recent cases, it is apparent that
these recovered memories may well be yet
another screen, masking events that are much
more reprehensible."
So, according to Turner, abductees can't trust
their screen memories nor can they trust the
recovered memories which may come later. It
quickly becomes a wickedly complex hall of
mirrors in which the truth perishes somewhere
in the many reflected surfaces. If things like
forcible sexual intercourse and all the other
forms of victimization can be defended in
moral terms, we are a long way from
understanding how.
Turner's voice was not the only one shouting
to be heard with this unhappy truth, and many
abduction researchers and hypno-therapists
agree with her overall negative take on the
experience, though they may not express it in
those same exact terms. Ann Druffel, for
instance, has written extensively about
methods for resisting alien abduction, one of
which involves invoking the name of Jesus
immediately after an experience begins.
But it is Turner who remains the most eloquent
spokesperson for resistance from among the
abductees, and we can only wonder if her voice
was silenced by her death from cancer as a
deliberate act of the aliens, who were intent
on enforcing some form of damage control to
counter the "bad press" she was giving them.
Such a thing is unknowable of course; the
vagaries of when an illness like cancer
presents itself may have nothing to do with
aliens, even in Turner's case.
Nevertheless, reading "Evil Empire of the ETs
and the Ultra-Terrestrials" will help to keep
Turner's dissenting voice alive and perhaps
aid in your own coming to terms with
experiences that continue to bewilder and
frighten you. If you have a difficult time
making it all fit into a rosy, glowing
picture, you are certainly not alone.
The great bard Shakespeare once famously
wrote, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our
stars, but in ourselves." But perhaps, in the
case of alien abduction, the fault originates
somewhere out there in the stars after all.
[If you enjoyed this article, visit Sean
Casteel's "UFO Journalist" website at
www.seancasteel.com
to read more of his work and to purchase
his books.]
- LIFE FROM ABOVE
DEPARTMENT -
'Egg-Shaped'
Globule Could Be 'Evidence of Life on Mars'
An 'egg-shaped' object, which was found inside a
Martian meteorite that fell to Earth last year,
could be final proof of life on the Red Planet.
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe has asserted that
the globule from the rock named Tissint is rich in
carbon and oxygen and insisted that they could
only have been produced by living organisms.
He said that they could not have been caused by
contamination when they fell to Earth.
"It is impossible to understand how carbon-rich
particles of such uniform sizes and shapes got
inside a rocky matrix if they are not relics of
some algal species," the Sun quoted Prof
Wickramasinghe, 72, who is famous for
controversial ideas such as that the flu virus and
even life itself was brought to our planet by
comets, as saying.
"Tissint was collected weeks after it fell, and
terrestrial contamination seems unlikely. In any
case the structures we found were on newly
fractured surfaces, from the interior of the
meteorite."
The meteorite was named after the village where it
came down in the Sahara desert in Morocco last
July.
It was most likely blasted from Mars when it was
hit by an asteroid millions of years ago.
A piece of it was examined at the Buckingham
Centre for Astrobiology and Cardiff University.
"All the indications are that structures such as
we have found are evidence of life on Mars," PhD
student Jamie Wallis, who was working with Dr
Wickramasinghe, said.
"The spheres are probably remnants of
polysaccharide shells surrounding algal type
cells," Wallis added.
In 2009, a NASA team claimed they had photographed
Martian organisms inside another meteorite that is
kept in London's Natural History Museum.
Their electron microscope showed a bumpy surface
resembling a fossilised colony of microbacteria in
a rock that fell from the sky in Nakhla, Egypt, in
1911.
The team from NASA's Johnson Space Center examined
the space rock to support their claims in 1996
that Martian bugs had been found in a meteorite,
ALH84001, found in Antarctica where it had been
lying for thousands of years.
That discovery, which NASA later officially
backtracked from, was considered so important that
President Clinton addressed the nation on TV.
Earlier this month, another group of scientists
claimed that the first two Viking probes that NASA
landed on Mars in 1976 discovered life but failed
to recognise it.
Source: ZeeNews
http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/egg-shaped-globule-could-be-evidence-of-life-on-mars_772160.html
- MOTHER MAY WE
DEPARTMENT -
Does Earth
Herself Create UFOs, Ghosts, and Fairies?
By Diane
Tessman
Are we standing on a gigantic alien? Did this
enormous, living, breathing alien create us? Do we
live and die on her back? Of course, Mother Earth
is not an alien, she is the least-alien of all of
us. She is Earth!
We humans give lip service to the fact that Earth
is a living planet, but then we do not dig into
the astounding implications. We do not take time
from our busy schedules to truly perceive that if
she is a living mind, she must have a dream-state
just as we do. She must have a subconscious.
Our ancestors understood that Earth has a dynamic
mind and spirit which must be recognized; they
possessed beliefs such as Earth being a large
terrapin on whose back we sit. They worshipped
her; perhaps they were wise.
New agers embrace nature spirits and most use the
word "Gaia" to describe Earth's living
consciousness. However, even many new agers get
caught up in the fun of crystals, gemstones,
fairies and such, but do not recognize the fact
that Gaia herself might be the creator of UFOs and
their occupants as well as the creator of fairies,
nature spirits, and even the creator of paranormal
events like ghosts. Most new agers (and most
of us), look to space or time as the source of
UFOs, and to the human subconscious as somehow
mixed up in creating fairies and paranormal
events.
However, what if Mother Earth dreams? Why do we
not think of this? It is because we don't take
time to perceive that she truly is a living
consciousness?
In depth knowing (as in "gnosis"), that Earth is a
living creature begins strangely enough, with
insight into alien intelligence. We try to imagine
the intellect, intelligence, and enlightenment of
various aliens: Are they logical like Mr. Spock?
Are they vicious with no moral compass like the
creature in Alien? Are they Time Lords like Dr.
Who, very civilized, somewhat confused, and
near-masters of time, all-time, and no-time?
Ask yourself then: What is the intelligence,
intellect, and enlightenment of this huge creature
called Earth? Oh, you say she is not that
kind of creature. She does not truly feel, she
does not truly think. She is a rock with soil in
some places, H2O in other places, and far too many
humans for her own good. No doubt you call her
"it."
But you agree that life in outer space will come
in different forms; you wonder if silicon might be
a building block for life instead of carbon. Yet
you wonder if this wondrous planet who gave us all
life and also created billions of varied, living
species - is truly an entity?
Where did our intelligence come from? Where did
the intelligence of the Barn Swallow and the
Redwood Tree-come from?
If you are Christian or another religion, you
might feel that God or your deity created life. If
I have a deity, it is Earth, and I can prove she
created life here, because here we are.
How often do you hear that God saved the day while
Mother Earth sent that tornado? Maybe Mother Earth
saved the day and God sent the tornado.
My point is, we are brought up to be prejudiced
toward our planet. She is a witch who brings
tornadoes if she is alive at all. There is a bias
against the female god, thus a bias against the
female planet.
So as we humans emerge from the brainwashed state
imposed on us by religions, let us comprehend what
our planet really is, and who she really is.
She is a being who dreams. She is a being who has
a subconscious state. Her conscious state has
created the wondrous order of the rainforest, with
predator, prey, adaptation, and survival
brilliance. Her conscious state has created the
mighty ocean with its exquisite ecosystems.
Her conscious state is not quite like yours; she
is an alien in that she is not human. She created
humans but she is something and someone much
different. Where is her brain, you ask? It is
everywhere, from the mass minds of swallows to the
long memory of elephants. It is not encapsulated
in one little skull like your brain. Her
intelligence is everywhere, right outside your
window and in Yosemite and in the Sahara.
Perhaps to meet aliens, we need to first be
able to perceive the consciousness of our own
planet.
And what about Earth's subconscious state? Does
she dream? I assume that every conscious mind has
a subconscious level. Every spirit rests and
sleeps.
Does she dream of humans who are shadowy
ghost-beings, perhaps from the 1800s, a century
which of course included her, the Earth.
Does she dream of Yetis and Bigfoot creatures?
Perhaps she has a suppressed wish that she had
created them too? Are her memories of other
man/ape combinations which Homo sapiens eventually
exterminated?
Sometimes ghosts are in a location and other times
they cannot be found. Yetis are seen but then are
not anywhere. Perhaps they are only there when her
subconscious is active.
Earth must enjoy dreaming of fairies, sprites and
trolls. Why not conger them up and dream they are
frightening a few humans! Place a sprite on the
beautiful waterfall, how lovely!
And what of UFO occupants? Well, Earth mostly
likes the humanoid design and, like us when we
dream, she mostly dreams of humanoids. Once in a
while she manifests a reptile.
But what of the aliens' ships? Earth has a
knowingness about what humans have created,
airplanes and such. Earth has a sense of "the
future" and perhaps she tries to show the humans,
her creations, that the future is real. She
dreams of a future reality for all her creations.
In fact, the entire complex system of evolution
was set up by Earth. It may exist on other planets
but we know it exists on Earth. Where did it come
from? God? Science? ("it just happens over time"),
or - the mind of Earth? Why do we sell her
so short?
And of course she would dream of critters in the
sky like flying manta ray UFOs and beautiful
translucent orbs.
I am "selling" this idea as a total answer but as
I have said before, I do feel that UFO occupants
also come from far distant planets, from time
itself, from other dimensions, all of the above
and then some.
However, I am also convinced that the dream-state
of our Mother Planet is something which we have
not begun to even try to comprehend. Carl Jung
touched on it, as have others, and the concept of
a morphic field of consciousness can be applied to
Earth as well as to humans.
Her consciousness and subconscious would be
resonating in her electromagnetic field.
The EM field in our brain is said to be
instrumental in our intelligence. So why do we not
consider that Earth's mighty EM field, the
Aurora Borealis and so much more, that magnificent
EM field which our planet maintains, also contains
her intelligence? Her EM field crackles and
fluctuates, what is encoded in this energy? What
consciousness dwells there?
Yes, it is different from ours. For one thing, it
is so much greater than ours!
However different, we still reflect her. She is
our mother, the creator of our life. How could she
do this without being a living creature herself?
Finally, I don't intend to worry about getting
abducted this summer; I will not cower as I worry
about UFOs and aliens in the warm, soft summer
night which Gaia will have given to me. I will not
expect the worst of aliens to show up, rather I
expect the best of aliens to come out there under
the stars. Perhaps we can all celebrate Planet
Earth's living energy and beauty. I am not
afraid of Earth's summer night, and I demand that
the universe open its secrets to me. On second
thought, maybe a humble request is better than a
demand.
earthchangepredictions.com Come, leap into
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- OUT OF PLACE
ANIMALS DEPARTMENT -
Mysterious
"Primate" Spotted in Mission, Texas
An orangutan-like primate reportedly roams the
streets of Mission, Texas, but no one has been
able to capture an image of it — much less the
animal itself.
Several law enforcement agencies have heard
reports — often rumors — of a large orange- and
red-furred animal that wears a white beard, but
only one has a documented case.
On April 15, the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office
received a call concerning the creature from a
homeowner in the 6200 block of Western Road,
according to information from Sheriff Lupe
Treviño. Jose Garcia spotted the animal
running into an orchard in the southwestern corner
of Mile 5 and Western Road shortly after 10:15
p.m., according to the report. And Garcia told
authorities a family member also saw it, several
days earlier near Mile 3 and Western Road, west of
Mission.
Investigators who went to the scene solicited the
help of John Franz, a Brooks County cowboy, to
help apprehend the animal. Dispatchers clocked in
Franz’s arrival several hours later at 3:29 a.m.
April 16. It’s unclear from the report if anyone
else spotted the creature or if it was caught.
LATEST ENCOUNTER
Tuesday morning, Mission police became the latest
to catch wind of the animal when they received a
report from a student aboard a school bus. The
sighting of a large primate — later described as
the size of a 13-year-old boy — was reported near
Stewart Road and Mile 2, said Cpl. Manuel Casas,
Mission police spokesman. An officer searched the
area, but did not find anything, he said.
Lupe Tijerina, who owns a home just north of the
intersection in Mission, was cutting the grass
outside his home Tuesday afternoon. The
77-year-old said he hadn’t seen or even heard of
the alleged primate roaming his part of town.
“Ah, Chihuahua. Oh my golly,” Tijerina said after
hearing the animal was reportedly the size of a
teenage boy. “That’s scary. We have a lot of
grandchildren and great-grandchildren over here.”
Mission police later corrected the initial
information released and said the sighting had
occurred near Mile 2 and La Homa Road, which
placed the new sighting in Palmview’s
jurisdiction.
Palmview police Chief Chris Barrera said he heard
of reports in Mission, but his office had not
received any calls.
Norma Vargas, 42, works at the H&H Meat Market
at the Palmview intersection where the alleged
orangutan was spotted Tuesday morning. Though she
hadn’t seen the animal, she said, her 10-year-old
son Alberto had mentioned a sighting about two
weeks ago as they drove through a neighborhood
near Mile 6 and La Homa Road and came across a
group of sheriff’s deputies standing outside a
home. Her son asked if she knew why the officers
were looking up at the trees. She said no.
“They’re looking for a monkey who bit his owner,”
she recalled Alberto telling her, and one of his
friends who lives in the neighborhood had spotted
it.
EXOTIC ANIMALS
Indeed, Mission investigators believe a
primate-like animal has been roaming the city for
a few days now.
About two weeks ago, dispatchers received calls
about a spider monkey, Casas said. And while
officers did not catch that animal, they believe
they traced it to a man who was selling them
outside of the Mission jurisdiction.
Police, however, did not have further information
on the spider-monkey case.
The sheriff said his office had not received any
information about a spider-monkey vendor, but said
he was not surprised by the sighting.
Drug runners have been repeatedly caught with
exotic animals of various sorts, Treviño
said. His deputies have found small primates, boa
constrictors and even tigers.
When he headed the High Intensity Drug Trafficking
Area task force in the late 1990s, he participated
in a raid where two caged tigers were found in a
home north of Donna, he said. They belonged to a
trafficker known as “El Diablo.”
“It’s really common on the Mexican side,”
Treviño said about owning exotic animals.
“They feed their informants and traitors to
(tigers).”
Source: The Brownsfield Herald
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/mission-139796-weeks-creature.html