Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2009

Gary Mckinnon is bringing the Disclosure project into the public eye

Gary Mckinnon's hacks confirm the findings of "Disclosure" A colleague pointed me in this direction. Listen to the following statements from pilots, astronauts, high level engineers, high ranking military officers and scientists from all around the world - most of whom came forward as Disclosure witnesses, about two years ago. The evidence for Identified Flying Object (IFO) activity seems very strong. And if these beings aren't friendly we are toast. Extraterrestrial technology seems to be way beyond ours. One reliable witness saw a huge craft emerge from the water and travel upwards at an estimated speed of 7000 miles per hour. After reading about the disclosure project, I put the case to a class of 16 postgraduate students. We had a mock trial. We put UFOs / IFOs on trial. One practicing lawyer acted for the defence and another for the prosecution. We had one expert witness: currently a lieutenant in the army. Two people out of the 17 in the class had actual

Buckminster Fuller's beautiful prayer

EVER RETHINKING THE LORD'S PRAYER Thinking as best I may of all humans who have in all time dwelt upon our planet Thinking swiftly of all those I have known family, friends, unfriendlies, antisocials, successful and unsuccessful,exalted and tortured And thinking of planet earth as I have come to know it by direct experiencings, and 36 encirclings, thousands of continental criss-crossings, and millions of local to and fro-ings And thinking of our planets bigness to meat almost negligible magnitude our planet of only one small star in our galaxy of 100 billion stars which is only one of the now-known billion such galaxies And trying to think omni-inclusively on behalf of all histories earthian humans I say in my thoughtsever reminding myself as I progress in thinking that I am speaking only on behalf of all individuals present and pastand to come I say Our God Who art in we even even we who know most intimately of our own weaknesses, failures, faults and outright sins our selfishness

Afghanistan in 1976 was alright

... and then Zbigniew Brzezinski messed it up. Do you remember those days when cover after cover of Time and Newsweek and the whole establishment pack of the British press commended the equivalent of "the brave Taliban" and their fight against the Soviet backed regime. Do you remember when the CIA under Zbigniew Brzezinski funded brave Islamic extremists" in their quest to bring fundamentalist Islam to the poor benighted Afghan women and girls  who were living then in an increasingly secular and modern Afghanistan ? I rode through Afghanistan in 1976 and there was no war and the women did not wear Hijabs and Kabul was a nice city to be in. The government behaved in asimilar way to the Indian government under Indira Ghandi during the Emergency . Afghanistan was trying to play legitimate regional Soviet interests off the long distance strategic opportunism of the US. Half the highway we drove over and that crossed the country was paved by the Soviets and ha

Is the Cygnus bubble a Dyson sphere?

Picture from the Mount Wilson Observatory Is the amazing solar system sized bubble in Cygnus discovered by Dave Jurasevich of the Mount Wilson Observatory , a Planetary nebulae or is it a Dyson sphere or a dyson Bubble ? In fact it is not a Dyson sphere or a Dyson bubble. Astronomers and physicists can tell the difference. But the bubble inspires speculation. What if it were a Dyson sphere in construction? From an article in the New Scientist on the dog day of 23rd July: "Giant Soap Bubble Found Floating in Space" It seems far too symmetrical. There are a number of ways we are supposed to detect extraterrestrial life. One, of course is from radio signals like the "WOW" signal , never to be repeated, emanating from the Chi Sagittarii star group. But another way was suggested by Dyson's thought experiment: Instead of radio signals look for Dyson spheres , which are artificial mega structures that enclose the orbit of a star, fabricated from the material of t

Letter from Phil - 1974 Nairobi

Dear Granny and Grandpa, Mom is writing a letter to you so I decided to as well since I have not written to you for a long time. School started last Tuesday (today is Friday) and since I have missed a week of it already I had a lot to catch up on. Dad, me and a man called Jaimie went, in our Landrover, travelling all over - Serengeti, Lake Victoria and Northern Kenya - visiting Oxfam projects. First Garba Tulla, which was the last place we went to on the first three day leg. Garba Tull is a very small town in the North of Kenya where the wind blows all the time and the sun is very hot. It is almost desert land. Here I drank smoked camel's milk in my tea. The Somalis who live there are a very beautiful people. In Isolo, a much larger town 100K or so from Garba Tulla, we visited an orphanage where huge pots of maize were being cooked to feed all 300 of them. We bought gum Arabic and visited people's houses. One child of a small family was living off tea without milk or sugar or a

From Mom - Eve Hall in Pretoria jail, 10th April 1963

Darling Mom and Dad, I've just got this wonderful opportunity of getting a letter sent off to you! How are you darlings? Thank you a thousand times for the telegram, it was a wonderful surprise! I think of you a lot darlings, and hope that I haven't caused you too much worry. I am well, healthy, slim, and very, very homesick! I long for Tony and the children all the time, and I must admit that time has gone very slowly - still another three months and the whole nightmare will be over and I will be with my darling boys again. It is difficult to be a hero when you are alone, and in the middle of it all, but that is natural. I am counting days, and nights.! I saw To last Sunday, for 1/2 an hour, thjat is what I live for at the moment: I was transferred from Pietersburg, back to Pretoria, alone. They seperated us., one is still in Nylstroom. I have a lot to read, I am studying and I get a lot of fresh air here. I don't get any work to do here, so during the day I walk around, b

Letter from Andy (10 years old)

1972 Dear Phil, How is boarding school, are you feeling lonely? We had a lovely trip back from Munich. We stopped at Cairo for 24 hours. On the second day we toured Cairo with other people in a bus and we went inside the pyramid of Giza, and went inside it. After that me and Chris rode on a camel. Nairobi has changed a lot since we were last here. I am in bed sick. Me and Chris are in different classes. Chris's teacher is a man, and my teacher is a woman. On Saturday we went to the game park with our friend and would you believe it! We were strolling with our friend near the hippo pool close by, then suddenly, while we were srolling on the bank of the river, I saw a crocodile a foot or two away from us and I screamed to the others and we ran, (they saw it too), to the car. We saw many lions and lionesses and hippos. Yesterday Chris went horse-riding with my friend, and I was sick so mum and dad took me to an animal orphanage. Love Andy, to Phil xxxx Pictures of camels and pyramids

The pieces of my parent's story are all gradually falling into place

It's clear to me that neither granny nor grandpa nor mom nor dad (while mom was alive) wanted to dredge up the painful memories of separation and loss that the war inflicted on all of them. I find it hard going to hold and contemplate these wartime letters written by auntie Elisa, (who was sent to Aushwitz) and Granny Regine (who was sent to Treblinka) in my hands. It's hard to read the letters granny carefully treasured and kept in a red wallet from Grandpa - where he repeats over and over again, Mien Liebling this and Mein Leibling that, referring constantly to Babylein. It's difficult in practical terms too, because I don't speak German. But they have to be read. I am a member of the first generation that has enough distance from these traumatising events and experiences, I hope, to be able to look the bad stuff right in its damn face. I forget that this was everyone's trauma and still is. 6 million Jewish people died. That makes an awful lot of bereaved relativ

Hank Chase - The real Texan deal

Mom and dad had a new friend, a Texan Maoist - at least he was in those days. He was a young man in his early twenties called Hank Chase, who came to see us at the Upanga flats at the flat we had taken over from Augustino Neto the future president of Angola and his wife Maria Eugénia. Hank wore close cut drainpipe jeans with boots and an open collar red checked shirt. At that point we were studying at the American School in Dar-es-Salaam. To my shock, the next day he appeared in my geography lesson and drawled away in his Texan accent: "I'm supposed to be teaching you about geography, but I am not going to do that. Instead I am going to tell you how the United States stole Texas from Mexico." And he proceeded to tell us about the traitor Santa Anna and how the Alamo was merely the death of a few obnoxious colonial adventurists and how the treaty ceding Texas was forced out of Santa Anna at gunpoint in 1836. According to Hank the US had messed with both Mexico and Texas. I

Badminton on a Matumi lawn

Matt Taibbi's expose of Goldman Sachs

At the suggestion of my wise colleague, David, I've been reading the fabulous expose of Goldman Sachs published in this months issue of rolling stone. I highly recommend it to everyone who wants to understand both the subprime financial crisis and to those who want to understand how these inflationary bubbles are manipulated for profit. Moreover, I did not realise that Goldman Sachs was the number 1 contributer to Barak Obama's campaign.

Phil Andy Chris, Standard Flats, 1972 Dar-es-Salaam

Andy, Phil and Chris, Lido Hotel, South Africa 1963

Nairobi, Ngong Flats 1967: Andy, Chris, Whizzy and friend

You can't rationalise God into existence.

Eastern rite mass at minus 15 I was to scout out a Catholic church for my wife to attend in Kiev . But instead of a cosy building, in 1990 I found myself standing in the snow at -15 C, on the steps of the “Museum of Scientific Atheism and Religion”. It was an open air Mass being held in front of of the former Eastern rite Catholic church of St Alexander’s , under the auspices of a young priest, towards the end of winter. In what seemed like a great act of spite and cultural vandalism, the great religious building had been divided up and partitioned by the Soviets into exhibition halls, narrow corridors and small offices. The dome of the church remained, but it had been roofed off from the rest of the building. In a fundamental way, Soviet atheism, through its continued low level persecution of religious people, and atheist education system, almost succeeded in separating the Ukrainian people from an essential part of their cultural identity - their religion. But Glasnost started the

Uncle Wilhelm Göbel and Heini Göbel

Uncle Wilhelm with his big brother Heini Perhaps this is the saddest picture I will ever put on my blog. It is a picture of Wilhelm saying goodbye to his brother before being sent to die in the war. He has just turned 19. He a few months older than my son John is right now. He disappeared in Russia in 1944. The picture is meant for his mom and sisters Lisa and Tini. I found it in my grandmother's things. Granny said Wilhelm loved and doted on Heini . When the war started he was only 14, a sweet and sensitive boy granny always said, who wouldn't harm anything, but by 1944 Hitler was on the defensive in the Soviet Union and so Wilhelm , like many other young German boys, was sent to die on the Russian Front. There are other pictures of him, but he looks a little too despondent in them in his uniform, slightly too large for him. He is wearing a sprig of Edelweiss on his left breast pocket (obscured in this picture). The Edelweiss he wore he must have sent to granny, because

Hall Family July 1976 Golfe Juan

All of us here: shell-shocked and happy, having driven from New Delhi to Golfe Juan. . We drove from New Delhi to the Punjab where we visited the Golden Temple and from there we drove through Pakistan where dad got gout in his big toe and mom had to take over driving for a spell. From there we drove through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan to Kabul. . From Kabul we drove through Afghanistan , crossed into Iran and drove to Tehran. And from there we went to the Caspian Sea. We drove back to Tehran and then into Turkey to the Black Sea where we took a ferry to Istanbul sleeping on the deck. We saw dolphins. In Istanbul we saw the Blue Mosque and Haga Sophia . From Istanbul we drove on to Greece and Thessaloniki and then into what was then Yugoslavia. . We drove to Belgrade and I thought of Natasha and Jelena Pejic as we did so. Then on we went to Zagreb and to Trieste where I listened to Bob Marley "Natty Dread" for the first time. Then on into Italy. In

Grandma Betty Hale (Hall) and her two families.

This is a stunning picture probably taken by David. . For the first time we see our two great grandparents and Betty's sister and her kids. Dad (Tony Hall) is in front of his dad (John Hall) on the right. I would love to know the names of the Hales. It looks like they are in Durban. . This must have been a year or so before Grandpa John divorced Granny Betty and married Nola, who he met as his private secretary in Switzerland . When they divorced dad was sent to boarding school in Pretoria, aged 6. . Dad looks pretty happy here as a little kid eating his ice-cream. . Much later when we were the same age as dad is in this picture and we wanted a treat, he used to sing us a Jermy Taylor song and mom would join in: . Ag Please Daddy . Ag please daddy wont you take us to the drive in All six seven of us eight nine ten. We wanna see thet fliek about Tarzan and the Ape men And when the show is over you can bring us home again. Popcorn Chewing Gum peanuts and Bubblegum Ice Cream Candy

Eve Hall Zimbabwe 20th March 1989

Eve Hall 1940

Play list 1.

1. Natacha Atlas 2. Saudi Wedding 3. Alan Price 4. Screamin Jay Hawkins 5. Graham Parker 6. Steve Harley 7. Harry Nilsson 8. Randy Newman 9. John Martyn 10. Dylan

Richard and Lisa Steinhardt: Dates, immediate family and addresses

Mrs. Regina Steinhardt was sent from Prague to Theresienstadt to Treblinka.

Heini's description of the moment Granny Steinhardt was taken away by the Nazis . She was probably taken on July 20th 1942

The bitter aftertaste of radical secularism in Mexico

Earlier during that week in 1994 I had a conversation with the dean of humanities. "Hall," he asked me, smiling, "What do you think of the holocaust?" "It was terrible crime." I replied. "Hall," he said, "you know you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." I was horrified. Who was I working for? Who were these people? A secret organisation called "the Owls" controlled the university. It was hard at work in my department. In exchange for a waiver of tuition fees one of the teachers had been recruited by the Owls and it was part of his job to report on his colleagues. And now, I found myself standing in a huge dimly lit hall. Heavy red velvet drapes hung from either side of the stage. Staff, students and parents were on their feet, intoning the university song. They were singing about avenging the death of three murdered students. Hanging down over the stage was a drape – in the middle, the black emblem of a

Where is the mythos in secularism?

To say: "Praise him, praise him."can be off-putting. But again it's not really about flattery. It's the reverse. People who get to know about "Godness", "Goditty" and God are merely expressing how they feel. "Praise him." is not actually a command, but an expostulation. Quite an everyday use of language: "My God, wow wee. Look at that view."That's sort of thing. As for Karen Armstrong's focus on "belief" and her post facto reconstructive etymology: "Logos" or "Mythos". It doesn't wash for me because it's an authentically false distinction, if you know what I mean. Just as the post-feminist narrative of nursing and the position of women in society on a TV programme I saw tonight was false - something to cringe over in twenty years time - like 1980s hairstyles. Today my 16 year old daughter was confirmed in the Catholic faith. Everyone had their own pew; everyone was dressed in their S

60s and 70s: Hall-Steinhardt family photos

Guardian: Seumus Milne on Privatisation

The corporates and the rich and the old Establishment have got this country sewn up and voting really won't change much. To the extent that we can claim Democracy is a sham and window dressing in Britain we can use the issue of continued privatisation to prove our case. We don't want it, but we've got it. Vote Labour, vote against privatisation and what do you get? More privatisation. How many of us, when we voted for Labour , were actually casting a vote for more privatisation? Very few. How many of us were voting for The Post Office to be privatised at the last general election? Not many Labour voters, I guess. So who is pushing this privatisation agenda? Seumus Milne in an insightful article in the Guardian today says: "What exactly is going on? ... the passion for all things private goes far beyond that. ...the ideology [behind privatisation] is driven by powerful vested interests...Decades of lobbying politicians, the civil service, corporate-funded thinktanks