American Cosmic


Book Description

More than half of American adults and more than seventy-five percent of young Americans believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life. This level of belief rivals that of belief in God. American Cosmic examines the mechanisms at work behind the thriving belief system in extraterrestrial life, a system that is changing and even supplanting traditional religions. Over the course of a six-year ethnographic study, D.W. Pasulka interviewed successful and influential scientists, professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who believe in extraterrestrial intelligence, thereby disproving the common misconception that only fringe members of society believe in UFOs. She argues that widespread belief in aliens is due to a number of factors including their ubiquity in modern media like The X-Files, which can influence memory, and the believability lent to that media by the search for planets that might support life. American Cosmic explores the intriguing question of how people interpret unexplainable experiences, and argues that the media is replacing religion as a cultural authority that offers believers answers about non-human intelligent life.




A Culture of Conspiracy


Book Description

It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. Films, best-selling books, and television shows talk about plots by the Illuminati or sightings of black helicopters. But American society has changed dramatically since A Culture of Conspiracy was first published in 2001. In this revised and expanded edition, leading expert Michael Barkun delves deeper into America's conspiracy subculture, exploring the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories, the "birther" controversy surrounding Barack Obama's American citizenship, and how the conspiracy landscape has changed with the rise of the Internet and other new media. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread conspiracies, Barkun shows how the web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. By looking closely at the manifestations of these ideas in a wide range of literature and source material, Barkun finds that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millenarian activity and underscores the importance of understanding why this phenomenon is permeating segments of mainstream American culture. Book jacket.




The Total Novice’s Guide To UFOs


Book Description

“You are to be commended on such a great publication and I am humbled that you would even consider adding a few lines from one of my books," --Paul Hellyer Former Canadian Minister of National Defense “. . . this brilliantly produced book not only serves as a superb introduction to the subject but covers some fascinating and important new material for the aficionados.” --Timothy Good, Leading Authority on UFOs and Best-selling Author “I offer my gratitude to you, not only for the “heavy” copy of your book, but also the “light” that the content provides. You and your colleagues can be congratulated for your excellent summary of the history, and probable significance, of the ET presence on Earth. Love & light," --R. Leo Sprinkle, Ph.D., Famed Hypnotherapist and Consultant to Linda Moulton Howe “Also of interest is a chapter that discusses the “Skunk Works” (the advanced aircraft manufacturing division of Lockheed), and the shocking statements made by its former president, Ben Rich. These statements, which were confirmed by the author who was present at Rich’s March 23, 1993 UCLA presentation . . . Readers of this book would do well to consider the staggering implications of Rich’s comments, and their potential transportation and clean energy applications for this world.” --Michael Schratt, Military Aerospace Historian, Artist and Reviewer, Open Minds magazine ARE UFOs REAL? FINALLY, A GUIDE FOR THOSE WITH OPEN MINDS This is the revised and expanded 2nd edition (2015) of the original book written for the novice and for the more knowledgeable as well. 60+ new, color illustrations. New sections document the Hudson Valley triangular craft, Area 51/S4 hangar details, articles by the former Canadian Minister of Defense, the Hon. Paul Hellyer, and disclosures by US Air Force generals, American and Canadian scientists. Join the author, T. L. Keller, on a voyage to otherworldly places and understand the reality of UFOs, alien beings and how they get from wherever they are to planet Earth. This book is part of The Total Novice's Guide series of books intended for those who know little or nothing about a particular subject, have open minds and want to know more. * In this fascinating and informative read, you will be escorted through the Roswell and other incidents involving crashed alien spaceships. Read about Project Galileo, and testimony from government officials, as well as 10 former, military whistle-blowers who have had first-hand experiences with the unknown. * Get the latest inside information on the above-top secret, US government anti-gravity and flying disc program that has been fifty years in the making. * Learn about super secret, Area 51/S4; understand "Missing Time", and the true nature of human abductions. You will learn how alien vehicles travel here; and, more importantly, why they are here. Read how you will be impacted when the reality of UFOs and alien beings becomes known to the world. And it may be just around the corner...




Enemies Within


Book Description

divdivThere is a hunger for conspiracy news in America. Hundreds of Internet websites, magazines, newsletters, even entire publishing houses, disseminate information on invisible enemies and their secret activities, subversions, and coverups. Those who suspect conspiracies behind events in the news—the crash of TWA Flight 800, the death of Marilyn Monroe—join generations of Americans, from the colonial period to the present day, who have entertained visions of vast plots. In this enthralling book Robert Goldberg focuses on five major conspiracy theories of the past half-century, examining how they became widely popular in the United States and why they have remained so. In the post–World War II decades conspiracy theories have become more numerous, more commonly believed, and more deeply embedded in our culture, Goldberg contends. He investigates conspiracy theories regarding the Roswell UFO incident, the Communist threat, the rise of the Antichrist, the assassination of President John Kennedy, and the Jewish plot against black America, in each case taking historical, social, and political environments into account. Conspiracy theories are not merely the products of a lunatic fringe, the author shows. Rather, paranoid rhetoric and thinking are disturbingly central in America today. With media validation and dissemination of conspiracy ideas, and federal government behavior that damages public confidence and faith, the ground is fertile for conspiracy thinking. /DIV/DIV




Dreamland


Book Description

There is a place in the Nevada desert the size of Belgium that doesn't officially exist. It is the airbase where test flights of our top-secret experimental military aircraft are conducted and --not coincidentally--where the conspiracy theorists insist the Pentagon is hiding UFOs and aliens. This is Dreamland--or Area 51. For Phil Patton, the idea of writing a travel account of a place he couldn't actually visit was irresistible. What he found was a world where Chick Yeager and the secret planes of the Cold War converged with the Nevada Test Site and alien landings at Roswell. A think tank for aviation engineering, Dreamland can be seen from a summit outside the base's perimeter, a hundred miles north of Las Vegas. On Freedom Ridge, groups of airplane buffs gather with their camouflage outfits and binoculars. These are the Stealth chasers, the Skunkers, guys with code names like Agent X and Zero, hoping for a glimpse of the rumored raylike shapes of planes like Black Manta and "the mother ship." The most mysterious craft is Aurora, the successor to the legendary U-2, said to run on methane and fly as fast as Mach 6. Scanning the same horizon, the UFO buffs are looking for the hovering lights and doughnut-shaped contrails of alien aircraft. Are they looking at something sinister and mysterious? Imagined? Or more terrestrial than they think? Dreamland shows how much we need mystery in the information age, and how the cultures of nuclear power and airpower merge with the folklores of extraterrestrials and earthly conspiracies. Patton found people who found themselves in the mysteries of the place. John Lear, the son of aviation pioneer Bill Lear--who gave his name to the jet--served as a pilot for the CIA's Air America, but back home, he became fascinated by UFOs and eventually believed in it all: the underground bases, the alien-human hybrids, the secret treaties. But was he a true believer, or part of a disinformation campaign? Bob Lazar seems to know when the saucers will come, and has made three clear sightings at night along Dreamland's perimeter, but is his story real, or a vision of what's possible? Dreamland is an exploration of America's most secret place: the base for our experimental airplanes, the fount of UFO rumors, an offshoot of the Nevada Test Site. How this "blackspot" came to exist--its history, its creators, its spies and counterspies--is Phil Patton's tale. He tunnels into the subcultures of the conspiracy buffs, the true believers, and the aeronautic geniuses, creating a novelistic tour de force destined to make us all rethink our convictions about American know-how--and alien inventiveness.




Lost Secrets of the Gods


Book Description

Are there 10,000-year-old secret societies that still exist today? Was there a race of giants that once inhabited the Americas? Did ancient Egypt and ancient China have heretofore undiscovered ties? Lost Secrets of the Gods delves into these ancient mysteries and many more in articles by some of the world’s most intrepid and knowledgeable researchers. The old paradigms of history are being radically transformed as we discover more evidence of little-known cultures and what they achieved. Many ancient cultures spoke and wrote of visitors that gave them knowledge and helped shape their societies. Who were they, and where did they come from? We now know that many ancient cultures had advanced knowledge of science, agriculture, and astronomy, only some of which has been rediscovered in the last 100 years. Were The Iliad and The Odyssey really about an epic struggle in pre-Celtic Europe? What happened to the Persian army that completely disappeared from Egypt 2,500 years ago? Did the ancients know how to create psychic guard dogs to protect sacred sites? There is much more to history than what has officially been recorded. Lost Secrets of the Gods reveals startling truths and asks fascinating questions traditional historians have long ignored.




After the New Age


Book Description

Its 1976, and Janet Tanhurst is a teenager who feels stifled by life with her strict mother, and the authoritarian church she must attend. Once out of high school, however, Janet is initiated into a fascinating new world of Astrology, Tarot cards, and Spirit Mediums. Next, she encounters the mysterious world of UFOs?a bewildering and sometimes frightening realm encompassing ancient astronauts, alien abductions, and shadowy government conspiracies. As the 1980s arrive, the Christian-dominated Piscean Age seems to be giving way to a long-anticipated Aquarian Age, with its hope for a coming revolution in higher consciousness. There are new paradigms in philosophy and science?promoting a holographic conception of the universe as engaged in a Cosmic Dance?along with the emergence of an introspective type of instrumental music known as New Age. With the help of bookstore owner Whisper Wynn, Janet investigates subjects such as reincarnation, quartz crystals, chakras and the human aura, in addition to an exciting new form of spiritual teaching called channeling. Following movement leaders including Shirley MacLaine and Marianne Williamson, studying enigmatic teachers like G.I. Gurdjieff and Carlos Castaneda, and inspired by medical doctors such as Deepak Chopra and Andrew Weil, she learns about Alternative Medicine and Holistic Health, as well as traditional health practices from China, Japan, and India. She assimilates wisdom from the ancient Celts along with rituals from contemporary Goddess worshippers, in formulating her own unique concept of the Divine that is within us all.




Introduction to Paradigms


Book Description

Introduction to Paradigms is a generic look at the things that help to clear up the crippling reality-paradigm confusion, which we all are susceptible to just in growing up. It demonstrates that: A paradigm is a model of a portion of reality, with fewer dimensions and a manageable size, mass and energy. Paradigms are necessary because they are the solution to the problem of having insufficient human RAM and CPU to be omniscient and deal with reality on a direct perception/knowing basis. The human solution is to create paradigms that do fit our RAM and CPU, so we can change the undesirable elements of existence into desirable ones. Unfortunately, paradigms can be more true or less true, by accident or design, and that's where the rub is. Less true paradigms come about in two ways: Through the incompetence of well meaning paradigm designers or By the deliberate introduction of bias into a paradigm to give inequitable power and money to some who have not earned it. The bias is in the form of a lie in a paradigm or the miss- definition of a word. More money is made today by theft through paradigm bias than by the honest creation of wealth. It is not a victimless crime. The individual members of society as well as the society as a whole lose in wealth, a lowered pursuit of happiness and a lowered survival potential. Paradigm bias is a societal parasite and too many parasites kill the host. Purveyors of paradigm bias are the same as confidence men. One trick they use is to convince you, that what they are telling you is reality when it is a paradigm. Reality, one tends to accept as true, while one questions what is known to be a paradigm. How do you tell the difference and what if you don't? Example: My telling you about a tree gives you my paradigm of a tree, which can be more true or less true. On the other hand, the only way you get the reality of a tree is by seeing it for yourself; climbing it; feeling the trunk, bark and leaves; eating the fruit; chewing on a leaf, twig, bark; smelling the blossoms, cones, leaves, bark and roots; listening to the wind pass through the branches and leaves; standing under the tree when the sun is too hot or when it is raining. Example: The 9/11 suicide pilots believed that what they had been told since early childhood was reality: That they would go to a paradise which was a much nicer place than this world and that they would live forever with seven virgins and seven wives if they died committing a mass murder as they were told. They did what they were told because they did not know the difference between paradigm and reality. Reality is what you experience yourself. Paradigms are anything you received through a communication paradigm such as what some one told you or you read. We are all handicapped to the extent we are victims of the paradigm-reality confusion and prone to be taken advantage of through paradigm bias. More true paradigms require a paradigm designer well acquainted with reality. Is science the answer? Unfortunately, the scientific method applies only to explicate order phenomena that can be repeated and verified by the lowest common denominator of scientist. Science is still in denial of implicate order phenomena known for many centuries. Only a small fraction of the paradigms we need to function on a personal and societal level can be scientifically demonstrated. Peer review is another shortcoming and abuse. The scientific method assumes that those doing the peer review are selfless, high minded scientists, experts in the same domain, who judge according to their knowledge in the pursuit of truth for the good of mankind. Actually, many peers are egocentric and lie to ensure their careers. Example: Tobacco scientists disagree with conclusive studies linking smoki




Culture of Conspiracy


Book Description

What do UFO believers, Christian millennialists, and right-wing conspiracy theorists have in common? According to Michael Barkun in this fascinating yet disturbing book, quite a lot. It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 terrorist attacks have all generated elaborate stories of hidden plots. What is far less known is the extent to which conspiracist worldviews have recently become linked in strange and unpredictable ways with other "fringe" notions such as a belief in UFOs, Nostradamus, and the Illuminati. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread ideas, Barkun shows how this web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. This book, written by a leading expert on the subject, is the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of contemporary American conspiracism to date. Barkun discusses a range of material—involving inner-earth caves, government black helicopters, alien abductions, secret New World Order cabals, and much more—that few realize exists in our culture. Looking closely at the manifestions of these ideas in a wide range of literature and source material from religious and political literature, to New Age and UFO publications, to popular culture phenomena such as The X-Files, and to websites, radio programs, and more, Barkun finds that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millennarian activity. His book underscores the importance of understanding why this phenomenon is now spreading into more mainstream segments of American culture.