Monday, June 25, 2007

Ghost Hunting

Ghosts in GA- My old haunt_ Henry_Allen

Meta-Film Mini Documentary about Ghost Hunting. This is an early short version of what will eventually be an hour long film about ghost hunting.

The final version will feature more attention to detail within the scientific aspects of the field.

Chapter Two, and Three will feature more paranormal subjects such as EVP, ITC (instrumental transcommunication), and UFOs.


Directed By Colin Michael Quinn
Georgia State University Film School Project
Spring 2007

Hometown Tales - The Horror of Andersonville

Published: June 22, 2007 03:06 am print this story email this story comment on this story

Andersonville filled with numerous ghostly encounters
From Staff Reports
AMERICUS TIMES-RECORDER (AMERICUS, Ga.)

ANDERSONVILLE, Ga. — Haunted stories have an affect that send a tingling sensation up the spine. But sometimes these tales of ghosts, haunted houses and spooky cemeteries are recorded as actual accounts experienced by ordinary people and by those who investigate these tales of horror.

The City of Andersonville has been marked as one of the many cities that is filled with numerous encounters of the supernatural. One of the sites that has been recently investigated is the St. James Pennington Church.

On June 16, a team of paranormal investigators from the group Southern Paranormal Researchers (SPR) of Prattville, Ala., visited the church to experience any form of anomalous phenomena. St. James Pennington Church was founded by Brother Jimmy Lawrence in 1927. The church is a log cabin that has been relocated and restored by the Andersonville Guild. The SPR learned of the church from the website of the Shadowlands Haunted Places where numerous stories have been recorded of different encounters with the supernatural in Andersonville.

SPR uses a wide variety of investigative methods to help determine what type of haunting is present, if any, and how the particular haunting will be dealt with after it has been identified. The group does extensive research of the particular location that is being investigated before hand and compiles a complete report outlining the investigation and the results obtained. The group has experience in investigating historical sites, hotels, inns, private residences and demonic and dark energy.

The findings at the St. James Pennington Church were described by the SPR director, Shawn Sellers, as slim. Equipped with cameras and the basic equipment used in these types of investigations, Sellers said the group spent a total of eight hours at the church.

“This is a site that we will like to further investigate. During our time at the church, we picked up an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) but we have not figured out quite what was being said,” said Sellers.

Sellers along with another member of the team took pictures within the church and did pick up an image of the late pastor of the church. According to Sellers, he took several shots from different angles but did not pick up anything. However, the other member took shots focusing on the same angle and the image of the pastor appeared in one of the photos. The photo showed the silhouette of what seemed like the pastor’s nose bleeding.

“When we do these investigations, we use a variety of equipment — from cameras to personal interviews. We did a thorough investigation for eight hours and seemed to be a little skeptic when nothing appeared on audio or video. But the photograph proved that there was a presence in the church. We also picked up orbs or ghosts that are seen in the form of balls of light. It gives hope and proof for what we do and we will be back in the future to further investigate the area.”

For more information, visit www.southernparanormalresearchers.com or theshadowlands.net.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

White People For Peace

Thought I'd share this. Thanks to imagine for calling it to my attention. Henry_allen

Friday, June 8, 2007

GETTING A LIFT FROM AZERBAIJAN

Giving them anti-missile radar is a great idea - look at what they've done with Viagra. Henry_Allen
Azerbaijan amenable to anti-missile radar
MOSCOW (AP) — Officials in Azerbaijan, a nation with a huge oil reserves and a record that has been criticized by human rights advocates, on Friday welcomed Moscow's call to use a Russian-leased radar installation in their country as the cornerstone of a proposed U.S. anti-missile system.

Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijan's foreign minister, said in the capital of Baku that the proposal "can only bring more stability into the region because it can lead to more predictable actions in the region."

Novruz Mamedov, head of the Azerbaijani presidential administration's international relations department, told Russia's Rossiya TV that "such cooperation can have a very strong and positive impact on the situation in the world as a whole.

"If such countries as Russia and the U.S. cooperate, they will have common interests and it will prevent tensions," he said.

For weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S. plan to build a missile interceptor base in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic, saying the system was aimed at Russia's strategic arsenal.

Then on Thursday, Putin caught President Bush off guard by urging that the Soviet-era radar installation at Gabala, in northeast Azerbaijan, be used instead as part of a joint U.S.-Russian missile shield. On Friday, he suggested the missile intercepter base could be in Turkey or at sea.

A Russian military expert said the Gabala installation was built to track U.S. bombers and submarine-launched missiles from the Indian Ocean.

The Bush administration has said it seeks to counter future missile threats to Europe from Iran, which Washington fears is developing nuclear weapons.

Azerbaijan, a former Soviet nation of 8.5 million about the size of Maine, is on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, flanked by Russia to the north and Iran to the south. It is one of the countries in Central and South Asia that the U.S. has turned to since the Sept. 11 attacks, despite their mixed records on human rights and democracy.

The government in Baku has contributed 150 soldiers to the war in Iraq and 20 to coalition military forces in Afghanistan.

According to a Council of Europe report last year, Baku has served as a refueling stop for CIA aircraft shuttling terror suspects to secret prisons.

The country has rich oil and natural gas deposits — Baku was one of the first oil boomtowns in the 19th century. But according to government statistics, nearly one-fifth of the population lives in poverty.

Azerbaijani authorities have been criticized by rights groups and the U.S. government for their hostility to independent and opposition journalists.

Human Rights Watch says that over the past year or so, authorities have prosecuted and imprisoned seven journalists, mostly on charges of criminal libel and "insult." Journalists are also attacked and threatened with violence, the group said.

The State Department's human rights report for 2006 said the Azerbaijani government engages in the arbitrary arrest and detention of political opponents.

The country is also the site of one of the "frozen conflicts" left over from the post-Soviet era. Azerbaijan and Armenia are at odds over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that is inside Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year war.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Maury Island UFOs, 1947

The book (Thomas, Kenn: "Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy" GA: IllumiNet, 1999)was from my former publisher at IllumiNet Press, who died under mysterious circumstances. The first major editor to have a field investigator on hand was my late coworker Ray Palmer. While Roswell is the case of this period most discuss, Maury Island contains everything from crashed saucers, men in black, silencings, dead investigators -- all the UFO mythos of subsequent years san abduction. That it took place at the Summer Solstice, the "dog star" days is worth of comment as well. Henry_Allen

The Maury Island incident is said to be an early modern UFO encounter incident, which allegedly took place shortly after the sighting of the original flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold. It is also one of the earliest reported instances of an alleged encounter with so-called "Men in black". Opinions remain divided as to the case on whether it was genuine or a hoax.


The incident took place shortly after June 21, 1947. On that date, seaman Harold Dahl, out scavenging for drifting logs, claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island (which is now a peninsula of Vashon Island, in Puget Sound, near Tacoma, Washington, United States). Dahl, his son, and their dog were on the boat. Dahl claimed to have taken a number of photographs of the UFOs, and reported that one UFO shed some type of hot slag on to his boat. The slag, he said, struck and killed his dog and injured his son.

The next morning, Dahl reported, a man arrived at his home and invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner. Dahl accepted the invitation. He described the man as imposing at over six feet tall and muscular, and wearing a black suit. The man drove a new 1947 Buick, and Dahl assumed he was a military or government representative.

While the two men ate, Dahl claimed the man told him details of the UFO sighting, though Dahl had not related his account publicly. The man also gave Dahl a nonspecific warning which Dahl took as a threat that his family might be harmed if he related details of the sighting.

Some confusion and debate over Dahl's statements have occurred. Dahl would later claim the UFO sighting was a hoax, but has also claimed the sighting was accurate, but he had claimed it was a hoax to avoid bringing harm to his family.

Investigation

In spite of the threat Dahl had reported the incident to his immediate superior, Fred Crisman, who had long claimed to have experience with unusual phenomena (and who was later linked to the John F. Kennedy assassination)[1]. Crisman gathered more of the slag, then called in the press, who in turn called in Kenneth Arnold to investigate the incident.

Albert K. Bender seized on Dahl's story, and printed it in his newsletter. In 1953, Bender claimed three men in black visited him, and warned him to stop his UFO research.

Arnold, realizing the story was beyond his capacity to investigate, called in the United States Army Air Corps, which dispatched two investigators. The investigators were largely unimpressed with Crisman and with his evidence, but agreed to take some of the slag with them for further inquiry.[1] The plane carrying the two investigators and the UFO evidence crashed shortly after leaving Tacoma, killing both men.[2] In April 2007 it was reported that the crash site had been found and some material recovered. [3] [4]

Capt. Edward Ruppelt, chief of Project Blue Book in the early 1950s, wrote that he was convinced that the entire sighting story was a hoax.

Hoax Claims

To some in the UFO community, the Maury Island Incident is still highly controversial, dismissed by many as a complete fabrication by the wildly imaginative and conspiracy-obsessed Crisman, while others think it may be among the most important encounters in modern times.[citation needed] Others speculate that the incident, although clearly a hoax, was employed by the US government to draw public attention away from claims hazardous waste from a breeder reactor located in Hanford was being secretly and unlawfully dumped on Maury Island.

References

1. ^ Randles, J: "MIB: Investigating the Truth Behind the Men In Black Phenomenon", page 33. Piatkus, 1997
2. ^ Randles, J: "MIB: Investigating the Truth Behind the Men In Black Phenomenon", page 33. Piatkus, 1997
3. ^ B-25 wreckage found after 60 years, listed as carrying a UFO
4. ^ Wreckage from secret 1947 mission found

* Ruppelt, Edward J: "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" Doubleday, 1956.
* Thomas, Kenn: "Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy" GA: IllumiNet, 1999
* Mcnerthney, Casey (April 23, 2007). Is strange rock from UFO or just a piece of poppycock?.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved on 2007-05-05.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Saturday, June 2, 2007

LOYAL OPPOSITION?

nsurgents destroy major bridge in northern Iraq

Sat Jun 2, 2007 2:11AM EDT

KIRKUK, Iraq (Reuters) - Insurgents destroyed a major bridge that connects the Iraqi capital Baghdad with the northern cities of Kirkuk and Arbil early on Saturday, police said.

They said the insurgents used explosives to destroy the Sarha Bridge, near the town of Tuz Khurmato on the Chinchal river, some 150 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad. The blast severely damaged the bridge, forcing motorists into detours and traffic jams.

Several bridges have been targeted in Iraq, most notably the popular Sarafiya bridge which was destroyed in April in a truck bombing that sent large sections of the steel structure crashing into the Tigris in central Baghdad.

Many Iraqis believe insurgents target bridges to physically separate Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim areas in central Iraq, but some say the attacks are meant to frustrate people who have to endure time consuming detours into dangerous areas.

The Iraqi government recently imposed restrictions that ban trucks from traveling on all but two of the capital's 13 bridges in fear of another major attack.


consortiumnews.com

Dem Consultants: Calculations of War

By Brent Budowsky
May 30, 2007

Editor's Note: Since 2002, Democratic consultants have been whispering in the ears of party leaders to give George W. Bush what he wants on the Iraq War as a way to avoid accusations that they are "soft" or "unpatriotic" or "against the troops." The results of those calculations can now be measured in the growing lists of dead and wounded as well as in the Democrats' plummeting poll numbers.

In this guest essay, political analyst Brent Budowsky traces this thinking and its consequences:
Now we read in the Boston Globe how John Kerry, preparing to campaign to be Commander in Chief, voted in 2002 for the Iraq War after his political consultants informed the would-be leader of the free world that he would not be “politically viable” unless he voted yes.

This followed the disclosure that Bob Shrum advised John Edwards to send young men and women to die as a way of improving his weak national-security resume in 2002.

Why Democratic officials listen to this is beyond me.

Here are the presidential campaigns that Bob Shrum lost: 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004. Here are the presidential campaigns Mr. Shrum won: none.

Nice work, if you can get it.

By the way, Republican consultants are no better. They loved the Iraq War when they could use it to run television ads, accusing Democrats of being unpatriotic. Now they are reduced to gibberish about “surrender dates” while their members run to the White House and whine to the President, waving their polls, then vote for it again.

From the moment of the Democratic victory in the congressional elections of 2006, many of these Democratic consultants told party leaders that it would be wrong to make a powerful and principled stand against the Iraq War policy.

The majority consultant view was summed up early in the Democratic Congress by Celinda Lake, quoted in the Washington Post as believing that Democrats were not elected to solve the Iraq War, and that waging a politically heroic fight for change would be a distraction.

Think about it, folks: The Democratic 2000 nominee for vice president (Joe Lieberman) is one of America’s leading neoconservative theoreticians in favor of the war. The Democratic leaders in 2002 joined Messrs. Cheney and Perle in advocacy of the war.

The Democratic nominees for president and vice president in 2004 (John Kerry and John Edwards) both supported the Iraq War in 2002 after hearing the voice of the consultant class. They then lost an election they should have won through vacillation on the war, made famous by the quote about what one voted for before one voted against.

From the beginning, at every stage, Democrats did better in elections, to the exact degree that they spoke out strongly. In 2002, they voted for the war and lost. In 2004, they moved daintily in opposition and did better, but lost again. In 2006, they took their strongest position yet, and won, and Democrats in Congress surged ahead of the Republican Congress and Republican President in early 2007 opinion polls.

Enter the Democratic consultants.

Here, again, is their handiwork. We entered 2007 with one of the most unpopular presidents in history and one of the most unpopular Republican Congresses in history. Now, after a few short months of not fighting courageously for change, the Democratic Congress shows up in polls as equally unpopular as George W. Bush.

Great work.

Here are some truths that you haven’t read yet in the Washington Post or The Hill or seen on the cable talkies, though you will.

The Democratic consultant class likes the Iraq War because it gives Democrats the chance to play pretend with non-binding actions, issue talking points about how they fought to change the policy, then lose everything in the end, at which point they can blame the Republicans for the war.

The majority view of Democratic consultants is they don’t want to win a change in policy, because then they have ownership. They want to look like they tried, then lose, and then blame Republicans for the war.

Morally speaking, this is dead wrong; in politics, this is half-right. Here is something else you have not seen from the pundit class, but it’s true, and you will. There is a gigantic difference in the objective political interest between Senate Democrats and House Democrats.

With 21 Senate Republicans running for reelection, the Democrats will pick up seats. There is a chance the Democrats pick up many seats, based purely on the math.

The Bob Shrum award for lack of courage and principle on war votes, coupled with an uncanny ability to lose elections, goes to the Senate Republicans. They support a war that few privately believe in, and commit political hari-kari by doing so. Anyone who believes “we can work this out in September” is dreaming.

On the House side, with an overwhelming majority of Americans loathing this war, the vulnerability is in the freshman class of new Democrats and those Democrats who won narrow victories. Their objective interest politically is doing far more than the current Congress for troops and vets and offering principled opposition to the hated status quo.

Projecting current trends, it is very possible that Democrats increase their margin in the Senate while losing control of the House. Remember where you heard it first.

Here’s my view, as an unyielding opponent of the war policy and unyielding supporter of troops and vets: Who cares about the politics? War is a moral and patriotic matter that should be decided on the grounds of high principle and high honor.

We have just ended one election, which neither party now honors with regard to Iraq, and the next election is about a year and a half away.

Here is the state of play, rounding off the numbers. Seventy percent of the American people disapprove of the current policy; disapprove of President Bush; disapprove of Republicans in Congress; and now disapprove of the Democratic Congress.

It is America versus Washington.

On matters of patriotism, honor, war and peace, reasonable people can disagree about the policy. What is extraordinary and unique in my experience is that on this matter the truth is that 98 percent of Democrats in Congress, 70 percent of Republicans in Congress, perhaps 100 percent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly oppose the current policy in private but then act to continue it in public.

On the most authoritative poll, in Military Times, the president’s popularity among active-duty troops in the military is under 40 percent. Think about it.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps makes an urgent appeal for life-saving equipment in 2005, which is 90 percent held in contempt, i.e. ignored, by the very politicians who vote for a war they don’t believe in, then give Memorial Day speeches proclaiming their love for the troops.

Who do they think they’re kidding?

It is America versus Washington, and what Washington insiders don’t get is this: When 70 percent disapprove of them all, and they issue talking points proclaiming their own greatness, all this does is make Americans disapprove of them even more strongly.

On all issues involving the war and the troops, we have the most educated Americans in history. They cannot be fooled; politicians who insult them, with obviously untrue talking points, do so at their peril.

Here’s my advice: First, tell the truth. Second, support the troops and vets in ways that are far more comprehensive and honorable than what either party is doing today. Third, fight like hell to change the policy.

When Washington begins to respect America, Americans will no longer feel 70 percent disrespect for both parties in Washington.

The way to win the election in 2008 is to respect the election of 2006.

Brent Budowsky was an aide to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen on intelligence issues, and served as Legislative Director to Rep. Bill Alexander when he was Chief Deputy Whip of the House Democratic Leadership. Budowsky can be reached at brentbbi@webtv.net. (A version of this story originally appeared at The Hill.)