Bohemian Grove Part 2

Part 1 incase you missed it http://ultparanormal.blogspot.com/2012/04/bohemian-grove-part-1.html

part 2
Protests and controversiesWith its combination of wealth and power, Bohemian Grove's secrecy has been a target for protest for many years. The Bohemian Grove Action Network of Occidental, California organizes protests and has aided journalists who wish to penetrate the secrecy surrounding the encampment. Over the years, individuals have infiltrated the Grove then later published video and claimed accounts of the activities at Bohemian Grove.Infiltrations In the summer of 1989, Spy magazine writer Philip Weiss spent some seven days in the camp posing as a guest, which led to his November 1989 article "Inside Bohemian Grove". He wrote about uninhibited behavior he witnessed: "You know you are inside the Bohemian Grove when you come down a trail in the woods and hear piano music from amid a group of tents and then round a bend to see a man with a beer in one hand and his penis in the other, urinating into the bushes. This is the most gloried-in ritual of the encampment, the freedom of powerful men to pee wherever they like..."Weiss noticed "hundreds of cigars whose smokers had ignited them in defiance of the California Forest Service's posted warnings."
On July 15, 2000, controversial paleoconservative filmmaker Alex Jones and his cameraman, Mike Hanson, walked into the Grove. With a hidden camera, Jones and Hanson were able to film the Cremation of Care ceremony. The footage was the centerpiece of Jones' documentary Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove.Jones claimed that the Cremation of Care was an "ancient Canaanite, Luciferian, Babylon mystery religion ceremony," and that the owl statue was Moloch. The Grove and Jones' investigation were covered by Jon Ronson in Channel 4's four-part documentary, Secret Rulers of the World. Ronson documented his view of the ritual in his book, Them: Adventures With Extremists, writing "My lasting impression was of an all-pervading sense of immaturity: the Elvis impersonators, the pseudo-pagan spooky rituals, the heavy drinking. These people might have reached the apex of their professions but emotionally they seemed trapped in their college years."
Also filmed for The Order of Death was Jones' return to the entrance of the Bohemian Grove in 2005 where he filmed a protest organized by the Bohemian Grove Action Network that took place at the Grove's entrance on Bohemian Highway, only to discover a majority of the protesters engaging in an "occult counter-ritual" known as the Resurrection of Care, supposedly a counter-ritual against the Cremation of Care. Jones' narration for the film lambasted the protesters' actions and motivations from a religious standpoint. In 2005, Chris Jones (no relation) walked into the Grove when hired as an employee, and videotaped the Owl Shrine in daylight, even venturing inside the hollow statue.He also got footage of effigies, the lakeside, and select camps; as well as stealing a membership list. Chris Jones said he was propositioned for sex several times by the Grovers. Alex Jones included Chris Jones' video in "The Order of Death".
On January 19, 2002, 37-year-old Richard McCaslin was arrested after his nighttime infiltration of the Bohemian Grove, where he set several fires. He was heavily armed and wearing a skull mask and outfit with "Phantom Patriot" written across the chest.
Actor/writer Harry Shearer (This Is Spinal Tap, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons), who has attended at least one Bohemian Club event, wrote and directed The Teddy Bears' Picnic, a parody of Bohemian Grove mock pagan pageantry and drunken revelry.
Women
Though no woman has ever been given full membership in the Bohemian Club, the four female honorary members were hostess Margaret Bowman, poet Ina Coolbrith (who served as librarian for the Club), actress Elizabeth Crocker Bowers and writer Sara Jane Lippincott. Since Coolbrith's death in 1928, no other woman was made a member. These honorary members and other women guests have been allowed into the Bohemian "City Club" building and as daytime guests of the Grove, but not to the upper floors of the City Club nor as guests to the main summer encampment at the Grove. Annual "Ladies' Jinks" were held at the Club especially for spouses and invited guests.In 1978 the Bohemian Club was charged with a discrimination lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing over its refusal to hire women employees. In January 1981 Judge Robert Kendall issued a decision supporting the practices of the Club, noting that club members at the Grove "urinate in the open without even the use of rudimentary toilet facilities" and that the presence of females would alter club members' behavior.On October 17, 1981 the Department of Fair Employment and Housing countered the Kendall ruling by ordering the Club to begin recruiting and hiring women as employees. In 1986 the Bohemian Club went to the California Supreme Court over the issue, arguing that their freedom of association was being harmed; the Court found against the Club and denied a review in 1987, forcing the Club to begin hiring female workers during the summer encampment at the Grove in Monte Rio.This ruling became quoted as a legal precedent and was discussed during the 1995-1996 floor debate surrounding California Senate Bill SB 2110 (Maddy), a proposed bill concerning whether tax-exempt organizations (including fraternal clubs) should be exempt from the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

LoggingOutside of the central camp area which is the site of the old-growth grove, but within the 2,712 acres (10.98 km2) owned by the Bohemian Club, logging activities have been underway since 1984. Approximately 11,000,000 board feet (26,000 m3) of lumber equivalents were removed from the surrounding redwood and Douglas fir forest from 1984 to 2007. In 2007, the Bohemian Club board filed application for a nonindustrial logging permit available to landowners with less than 2,500 acres (10 km2) of timberland, which would allow them to steadily increase their logging in the second-growth stands from 800,000 board feet (1,900 m3) per year to 1,700,000 board feet (4,000 m3) over the course of the 50-year permit. The board had been advised by Tom Bonnicksen, a retired forestry professor with more than 35 years of experience in the field, that they should conduct group selection logging to reduce the risk of fire burning through the dense second-growth stands, damaging the old-growth forest the Club wants to protect. The Bohemian Club stated that an expansion of logging activities was needed to prevent fires, and that money made from the sale of the lumber would be used to stabilize access roads and to clear fire-promoting species like tanoaks and underbrush. The California Department of Fish and Game, have instead recommended single-tree logging to preserve the habitats of murrelets and spotted owls in senescent trees. Philip Rundel, University of California, Berkeley professor of biology said that redwoods aren't very flammable and "This is clearly a logging project, not a project to reduce fire hazard". Reed F. Noss, professor at the University of California, Davis, has written that fires within redwood forests do not need to be prevented, that young redwoods are adapted to regenerate well in the destruction left behind by the fires typical of the climate.
After controversy raised by opponents of the harvesting plan, the club moved to clearly establish their qualification for the permit by offering 163 acres (0.66 km2) to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in Missoula, Montana for a conservation easement. A further 56.75 acres (229,700 m2) were written off as not being available for commercial logging, bringing the total to 2,316 acres (9.37 km2) and thereby qualifying for the permit. Opponents and their lawyers interpret the relevant law as counting all timberland and not just that actually subject to the logging permit. They state that if the total of timberland is counted, 2,535.75 acres (10.2618 km2) are owned by the club, so the permit should not be granted.
On March 10, 2011 Judge René A. Chouteau rejected the Non-Industrial Timber Management Plan (NTMP) that Cal-Fire had approved. The suit, brought by the Sierra Club and the Bohemian Redwood Rescue Club, sought to have the NTMP annulled. The ruling calls on the Bohemian Club to draft a new NTMP that offers alternatives to its proposed rate of logging. At present the Bohemian Club is not allowed to log any of its property.　
　
"The Bohemian club! Did you say Bohemian club? That's where all those rich Republicans go up and stand naked against redwood trees right? I've never been to the Bohemian club but you oughta go. It'd be good for you. You'd get some fresh air."—President Bill Clinton "The Bohemian Grove, that I attend from time to time—the Easterners and the others come there—but it is the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine, that San Francisco crowd that goes in there; it's just terrible! I mean I won't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco." —President Richard M. Nixon on the Watergate tapes, Bohemian Club member starting in 1953.

The Bohemian Grove today is still as secret as it has been since the beginning

Alien life,ufos,planets!

The Great British Scareship Mystery Of 1909

On the night of 23 March 1909, a police constable named Kettle saw a most unusual thing: 'a strange, cigar-shaped craft passing over the city'¹ ofPeterborough, Cambridgeshire. His friends were sceptical, but his story was corroborated, to an extent, by Mr Banyard and Mrs Day, both of nearby March, who separately saw something similar two nights later. In fact, these incidents were only the prelude to a series of several dozen such sightings throughoutApril and especially May, mostly from East Anglia and South Wales. As the London Standard noted in May, there seemed to be common features to the various eyewitness accounts:

Many people are unaware of UFO incidents prior to the 1947 UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico.  There were many great flaps prior to 1947.  The "Battle of Los Angeles" of 1942 is probably the most well known.  There are others however..    This article written by Brett Holman is about the the Great Scareship Mystery of 1909.  There were very few aircraft in the air at this time on earth period which makes this incident unique in modern UFO lore.  Enjoy!
-Mort Amsel

  

With few exceptions they all speak of a torpedo-shaped object, possessing two powerful searchlights, which comes out early at night.²

So, what was torpedo-shaped and capable of flight in 1909? An airship, of course. The press (metropolitan and provincial) certainly assumed that the most likely explanation for these 'fly-by-nights' was an airship or airships, generally terming them 'phantom airships', 'mystery airships', 'scareships' or something similar.But whose airship? Where was it from? There were actually very few airships operating in Britain at this time. The first edition of Jane's All the World's Air-ships, first published in 1909, listed just two, with several in the process of being built or bought. One of these was a small army airship, Baby, while the other belonged to the pioneer aviator E. T. Willows. These two small, underpowered aircraft could hardly be responsible for the mystery airship sightings, some of which took place on the same night but at widely separated locations. And although several sightings took place in and around Cardiff, near Willows' base, he was actually in London at the time, exhibiting one of his airships.

A more sinister origin for the phantom airships seemed likely. For in 1909, the world's most powerful airships were all German. Count Zeppelin's monster aircraft were as long as a battleship, could stay aloft for hours or even a day at a time, and could carry a dozen men (or an equivalent load of bombs). No other country had anything nearly so impressive; nor did any aeroplane have remotely the same performance. More importantly, the Anglo-German antagonism was now in full swing. The famous dreadnought panic ('we want eight and we won't wait') had taken place just a few months earlier; and since then certain sections of the press had been obsessed with hunting German spies, who were apparently everywhere. One of the most popular plays on the London stage in 1909 was Guy du Maurier's An Englishman's Home, which dramatised an invasion of Britain by a thinly-disguised Germany -- by now such a cliched plotline that P. G. Wodehouse felt able to parody the genre in his short story, "The swoop!" German periodicals boasted that the Zeppelin would give the British what was coming to them. So it seemed plausible that Germany was sending over its new weapons by night to spy on Britain, or even to practice navigation and bombing techniques for the war-to-come. And Conservative newspapers such as the Daily Mail did not hesitate to use the 'fact' of German aerial espionage as a cudgel with which to beat the Liberal government, for its slow progress in forming a military wing. The Wright brothers were then in London trying to sell their aeroplane to the War Office, which showed little enthusiasm, while reports came in from Germany about the wild popular enthusiasm there for Zeppelins as the answer to the Royal Navy. Little wonder then, if nervous people saw things.

Some of the sightings themselves did support the idea that Zeppelins were responsible. For example, a Mr. Egerton Free of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, saw a long sausage-shaped airship manoeuvring over the cliffs for a few minutes at dusk. It hovered at 600 feet for a few minutes, and then departed in a north-easterly direction. The next day, Free found 'a curious object', a sort of piston weighing 35 lb and stamped with the words 'Müller Bremen Fabrik'.³ This was taken to mean that it was made in a factory in Bremen, Germany, and the War Office was reported to have confiscated it. But -- aside from the fact that investigations failed to turn up any such factory -- we now know that it was virtually impossible for German airships to have visited Britain in 1909. No German record has ever been found of such flights, which would have been would have been hazardous in the extreme for the underpowered and slow airships of that time. Also, while Essex and Norfolk were likely enough landfalls for airships crossing the North Sea from Germany, South Wales was not. And the mystery airships were almost universally seen to be carrying searchlights, which they played on the landscape below -- a common enough device in drawings of airships at this time (see image above), but not at all common in practice, and not conducive to secrecy, either.

This is all very curious. But it gets curiouser, and indeed, curiouser. The first 'curiouser' comes from the fact that 1909 was not the last year that Britain was visited by phantom airships. A well-publicised incident at Sheerness, Kent, in October 1912, where engine sounds were heard traveling overhead, led to questions being asked in Parliament. And this was followed by dozens of sightings of mystery airships in February 1913, exceeding the 1909 visitations in number and geographic spread, and at times witnessed by crowds of thousands of people. When war came, so did another spate of sightings; in August 1914, the War Office even sent one of its precious few aeroplanes to conduct a fruitless aerial search of the Lake District for the airship rumoured to be based there, and non-existent airships continued to be spotted into 1916.

The second 'curiouser' is because Britain was not the only country where mystery airships were seen. Other times and places where something comparable (multiple and often widespread sightings of non-existent aircraft) occurred include:

• Russia: 1892, 1912-3
• United States: 1896-7, 1904-10, 1914-8
• Canada: 1896-7, 1914-7
• South Africa: 1899, 1914
• France: 1903, 1912
• Denmark: 1908
• New Zealand: 1909
• Australia: 1909
• Sweden: 1909
• Belgium: 1913
• Netherlands: 1913
• Germany: 1913
• Romania: 1913
• Austria-Hungary: 1913
• Norway: 1914-6

Forget about old, weird America -- there's clearly an old, weird world thing going on here. A veritable Scareship Age, in fact, 1892-1918. Later instances could be adduced (the Scandinavian ghost flyer of 1932-4, the Battle of Los Angeles in 1942, the Scandinavian and Greek ghost rockets of 1946) but clearly, activity peaked during the years of flight's infancy.

Many of these episodes can be correlated with wars or war scares. For example, the South African sightings of 1899 took place after Boer officials were warned to be on the lookout for (non-existent) British airships, while those of 1914 were commonly thought to be (actually existing) aeroplanes from neighbouring German South-West Africa, although the range was far too great for this to be possible. Germany's own phantom airships included a supposed Russian airship and an airship crashing in flames into a forest, perhaps seen as the beginning of another Echterdingen miracle.

But others have little to do with war. In particular, the American waves before the First World War were not fearful reactions to foreign aviation developments, but joyous affirmations of native technical genius. For easily the most common explanation given for the presence of an airship was that some lone inventor had been tinkering away for years in a barn, and was now taking his machine out for a series of test flights. For example, the mystery aircraft seen by thousands of New Englanders in December 1909 was reputed to belong to a local businessman, Wallace E. Tillinghast, who told a journalist that he had flown it from Worcester, Massachusetts to New York City (and once around the Statue of Liberty!) But just as with the British phantom airships, the popular explanation does not hold water, for no evidence in support of any of these rumoured inventors has ever subsequently come to light. And the large number of simultaneous (or nearly so) sightings makes it impossible to believe that so many secret aircraft were out and about on the same night. For example, on 23 December 1909, an airship-with-searchlight was reported to have flown off into the west from Marlboro, Massachusetts in the late evening; while another was seen to do the same thing from Southbridge, 40 miles away -- while yet another was seen late that night over Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island. (By the way, night flights were a extremely hazardous undertakings for aeroplanes at this time, the first (known!) one took place in Argentina the following March, though I think Zeppelins had already performed this feat.)

So, this is where Joseph Corn's idea about the essential difference in the popular response to aviation between Britain and America comes into play. Americans were essentially optimistic about the coming of flight. In seeing airships that weren't actually there, they were affirming their faith in the beneficial nature of aviation, and in their nation's ability to master it. But when Britons saw airships that weren't there, they were projecting their fears of foreign invasion and domination onto the night sky. Very early on, it seems, the British learned to associate aircraft with danger, not opportunity.

Rest of article here

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/1937/227/The_Great_British_Scareship_Mystery_Of_1909.html?currentSplittedPage=2

source
http://airminded.org/2006/12/22/the-scareship-age/

Bohemian Grove part 1

Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre (1,100 ha) campground located at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, California, belonging to a private San Francisco-based men's art club known as the Bohemian Club. In mid-July each year, Bohemian Grove hosts a two-week, three-weekend encampment of some of the most powerful men in the world.

The Bohemian Club's all-male membership includes artists, particularly musicians, as well as many prominent business leaders, government officials (including many former U.S. presidents), senior media executives, and people of power. Members may invite guests to the Grove although those guests are subject to a screening procedure. A guest's first glimpse of the Grove typically is during the "Spring Jinks" in June, preceding the main July encampment. Bohemian club members can schedule private day-use events at the Grove any time it is not being used for Club-wide purposes, and are allowed at these times to bring spouses, family and friends, though female and minor guests must be off the property by 9 or 10 p.m.
After 40 years of membership the men earn "Old Guard" status, giving them reserved seating at the Grove's daily talks, as well as other perquisites.
The Club motto is "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here," which implies that outside concerns and business deals are to be left outside. When gathered in groups, Bohemians usually adhere to the injunction, though discussion of business often occurs between pairs of members.Important political and business deals have been developed at the Grove.The Grove is particularly famous for a Manhattan Project planning meeting that took place there in September 1942, which subsequently led to the atomic bomb. Those attending this meeting, apart from Ernest Lawrence and military officials, included the president of Harvard and representatives of Standard Oil and General Electric. Grove members take particular pride in this event and often relate the story to new attendees.

The tradition of a summer encampment was established six years after the Bohemian Club was formed in 1872. Henry "Harry" Edwards, a stage actor and founding member, announced that he was relocating to New York City to further his career. On June 29, 1878, somewhat fewer than 100 Bohemians gathered in the Redwoods in Marin County near Taylorville (present-day Samuel P. Taylor State Park) for an evening sendoff party in Edwards' honor. Freely flowing liquor and some Japanese lanterns put a glow on the festivities, and club members retired at a late hour to the modest comfort of blankets laid on the dense mat of Redwood needles. This festive gathering was repeated the next year without Edwards, and became the club's yearly encampment. By 1882 the members of the Club camped together at various locations in both Marin and Sonoma County, including the present-day Muir Woods and a redwood grove that once stood near Duncans Mills, several miles down the Russian River from the current location. From 1893 Bohemians rented the current location, and in 1899 purchased it from Melvin Cyrus Meeker who had developed a successful logging operation in the area. Gradually over the next decades, members of the Club purchased land surrounding the original location to the perimeter of the basin in which it resides.
Writer and journalist William Henry Irwin said of the Grove,
You come upon it suddenly. One step and its glory is over you. There is no perspective; you cannot get far enough away from one of the trees to see it as a whole. There they stand, a world of height above you, their pinnacles hidden by their topmost fringes of branches or lost in the sky.
Not long after the Club's establishment by newspaper journalists, it was commandeered by prominent San Francisco-based businessmen, who provided the financial resources necessary to acquire further land and facilities at the Grove. However, they still retained the "bohemians"—the artists and musicians—who continued to entertain international members and guests.

Membership and operation

The Bohemian Club is a private club; only active members of the Club (known as "Bohos" or "Grovers") and their guests may visit the Grove. These guests have been known to include politicians and notable figures from countries outside the U.S. Particularly during the midsummer encampment, the number of guests is strictly limited due to the small size of the facilities. Nevertheless, up to 2,900 members and guests have been reported as attending some of the annual encampments.
The membership list has included every Republican and some Democratic U.S. presidents since 1923, many cabinet officials, directors and CEOs of large corporations including major financial institutions. Major military contractors, oil companies, banks (including the Federal Reserve), utilities (including nuclear power) And national media (broadcast and print) have high-ranking officials as club members or guests.

Camp valets
Camp valets are responsible for the operation of the individual camps. The "head" valets are akin to a general manager's position at a resort, club, restaurant, or hotel. Service staff include female workers whose presence at the Grove is limited to daylight hours and to central areas close to the main gate. Male workers may be housed at the Grove within the boundaries of the camp to which they are assigned or in peripheral service areas. High-status workers stay in small private quarters but most workers are housed in rustic bunkhouses.
Facilities
The main encampment area consists of 160 acres (0.65 km2) of old-growth redwood trees over 1,000 years old, with some trees exceeding 300 feet (90 m) in height.
The primary activities taking place at the Grove are varied and expansive entertainment, such as a grand main stage and a smaller, more intimate stage. Thus, the majority of common facilities are entertainment venues, interspersed among the giant redwoods.
There are also sleeping quarters, or "camps" scattered throughout the grove, of which it is reported there were a total of 118 as of 2007. These camps, which are frequently patrilineal, are the principal means through which high-level business and political contacts and friendships are formed.
The pre-eminent camps are:
Hill Billies (Big Business/Banking/Politics/Universities/Media/Texas Business);
Mandalay (Big Business/Defense Contractors/Politics/U.S. Presidents);
Cave Man (Think Tanks/Oil Companies/Banking/Defense Contractors/Universities/Media);
Stowaway (Rockefeller Family Members/Oil Companies/Banking/Think Tanks);
Uplifters (Corporate Executives/Big Business);
Owls Nest (U.S. Presidents/Military/Defense Contractors);
Hideaway (Foundations/Military/Defense Contractors);
Isle of Aves (Military/Defense Contractors);
Lost Angels (Banking/Defense Contractors/Media);
Silverado squatters (Big Business/Defense Contractors);
Sempervirens (California-based Corporations);
Hillside (Military—Joint Chiefs of Staff);
Idlewild (California-based Corporations)
The central spaces for recreation and entertainment are:
Grove Stage—an amphitheater with seating for 2,000 used primarily for the Grove Play production, on the last weekend of the midsummer encampment. The stage extends up the hillside, and is also home to the second largest outdoor pipe organ in the world.
Field Circle—a bowl-shaped amphitheater used for the mid-encampment "Low Jinks" musical comedy, for "Spring Jinks" in early June and for a variety of other performances.
Campfire Circle—has a campfire pit in the middle of the circle, surrounded by carved redwood log benches. Used for smaller performances in a more intimate setting.
Museum Stage—a semi-outdoor venue with a covered stage. Lectures and small ensemble performances.
Dining Circle—seating approximately 1,500 diners simultaneously.
Clubhouse—designed by Bernard Maybeck in 1903, completed in 1904 on a bluff overlooking the Russian River; a multi-purpose dining, drinking and entertainment building; the site of the Manhattan Project planning meeting held in 1942.
The Owl Shrine and the Lake—an artificial lake in the middle of the grove, used for the noon-time concerts and also the venue of the Cremation of Care, that takes place on the first Saturday of the encampment. It is also the location of the 12:30 p.m. daily "Lakeside Talks." These significant informal talks (many on public policy issues) have been given over the years by entertainers, professors, astronauts, business leaders, cabinet officers, CIA directors, future presidents and former presidents.

Symbolism and rituals
Since the founding of the club, the Bohemian Grove's mascot has been an owl, symbolizing knowledge. A 40-foot (12 m) hollow owl statue made of concrete over steel supports stands at the head of the lake in the Grove; this Owl Shrine was designed by sculptor and two-time club president Haig Patigian, and built in the 1920s. Since 1929, the Owl Shrine has served as the backdrop of the yearly Cremation of Care ceremony.
The Club's patron saint is John of Nepomuk, who legend says suffered death at the hands of a Bohemian monarch rather than disclose the confessional secrets of the queen. A large wood carving of St. John in cleric robes with his index finger over his lips stands at the shore of the lake in the Grove, symbolizing the secrecy kept by the Grove's attendees throughout its long history.

Cremation of Care
The Cremation of Care ceremony was first conducted in the Bohemian Grove at the Midsummer encampment in 1881, devised by James F. Bowman with George T. Bromley playing the High Priest. It was originally set up within the plot of the serious "High Jinks" dramatic performance on the first weekend of the summer encampment, after which the spirit of "Care", slain by the Jinks hero, was solemnly cremated. The ceremony served as a catharsis for pent-up high spirits, and "to present symbolically the salvation of the trees by the club..." The Cremation of Care was separated from the Grove Play in 1913 and moved to the first night to become "an exorcising of the Demon to ensure the success of the ensuing two weeks." The Grove Play was moved to the last weekend of the encampment.
The ceremony takes place in front of the Owl Shrine, a 40-foot (12 m) hollow owl statue made of concrete over steel supports. The moss- and lichen-covered statue simulates a natural rock formation, yet holds electrical and audio equipment within it. For many years, a recording of the voice of club member Walter Cronkite was used as the voice of The Owl during the ceremony. Music and pyrotechnics accompany the ritual for dramatic effect.

Each year, a Grove Play is performed for one night during the final weekend of the summer encampment. The play is a large-scale musical theatrical production, written and composed by club members, involving some 300 people, including chorus, cast, stage crew and orchestra. The first Grove Play was performed in 1902; during the war years 1943–1945 the stage was dark. In 1975, an observer estimated that the Grove Play cost between $20,000–30,000, an amount that would be as high as $130,000 in today's dollars.

Roswell Part 4

PART 1 LINK BELOW
http://ultparanormal.blogspot.com/2012/03/roswell-ufo-incident-part-1.html
PART 2 LINK BELOW
http://ultparanormal.blogspot.com/2012/03/roswell-ufo-incident-part-2.html
PART 3 LINK BELOW
http://ultparanormal.blogspot.com/2012/03/roswell-ufo-incident-part-3.html

PART 4 IS HERE 
UFO community schism

By the publication of The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell in 1994, a serious split had emerged within the UFO community as to the true sequence of the events and the locations of the alleged alien crash sites.The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), two leading UFO societies, were at odds over the various scenarios presented by Randle/Schmitt and Friedman/Berliner, so much so that several conferences were held to try to resolve the differences. One of the issues under discussion was where, precisely, Barnett was when he saw the alien craft he was said to have encountered. A 1992 conference tried to achieve a consensus among the various scenarios as portrayed in Crash at Corona and UFO Crash at Roswell, but the publication of The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell in 1994 "resolved" the Barnett problem by simply ignoring him and citing a new location for the alien craft recovery, including a new group of archaeologists not connected to the ones the Barnett story cited.

"Alien autopsy" footage

 Alien autopsy

Film footage claimed to have been taken by a U.S. military official shortly after the Roswell incident, and purportedly showing an alien autopsy, was produced in 1995 by Ray Santilli, a London-based video entrepreneur. The footage caused an international sensation when it aired on television networks around the world. In 2006, Santilli admitted that the film was mostly a reconstruction but continued to claim that it was based on genuine footage now lost, and that some frames from the original remained. The story was retold in the comedy film Alien Autopsy, released in 2006.

Air Force and skeptics respond to alien reports

[Air Force reports on the Roswell UFO incident

 Air Force reports on the Roswell UFO incident

In the mid-1990s, the United States Air Force issued two reports that, they said, accounted for the debris found and reported on in 1947, and that also accounted for the later reports of alien recoveries. The reports identified the debris as coming from a top secret government experiment called Project Mogul, which tested the feasibility of detecting Soviet nuclear tests and ballistic missiles with equipment on high-altitude balloons. Accounts of aliens were explained as resulting from misidentified military experiments that used anthropomorphic dummies, accidents involving injured or killed military personnel, and hoaxes perpetrated by various witnesses and UFO proponents.

The Air Force report formed a basis for a skeptical response to the claims many authors were makingabout the recovery of aliens, though skeptical researchers such as Philip J. Klass and Robert Todd had already been publishing articles for several years raising doubts about alien accounts before the Air Force issued its conclusions.While books published into the 1990s suggested there was much more to the Roswell incident than the mere recovery of a weather balloon, skeptics, and even some social anthropologists instead saw the increasingly elaborate accounts as evidence of a myth being constructed. After the release of the Air Force reports in the mid-1990s, several books, such as Kal K. Korff's The Roswell UFO Crash: What They Don't Want You To Know, published in 1997, built on the evidence presented in the reports to conclude "there is no credible evidence that the remains of an extraterrestrial spacecraft was involved."

Critics identified several reasons for their contention that the Roswell incident had nothing to do with aliens:

Problems with witness accounts

 Witness accounts of the Roswell UFO incident

Hundreds of witnesses were interviewed by the various researchers, a seemingly impressive figure, but a comparable few were true "witnesses" who claimed to have actually seen debris or aliens, critics point out. Most "witnesses" were in fact repeating the claims of others, and their testimony would be inadmissible hearsay in an American court, says Korff. Of the 90 witnesses claimed to have been interviewed for The Roswell Incident, says Korff, the testimony of only 25 appear in the book, and only five actually saw the debris. Of these, five handled the debris.

Karl T. Pflock, in his 2001 book Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe, makes a similar point about Randle and Schmitt's UFO Crash at Roswell. Some 271 people are listed in the book who were "contacted and interviewed" for the book, and this number does not include those who chose to remain anonymous, etc., meaning more than 300 "witnesses" were interviewed, a figure Pflock said the authors frequently cited. Of these 300-plus individuals, said Pflock, only 41 can be "considered genuine first- or second-hand witnesses to the events in and around Roswell or at the Fort Worth Army Air Field," and only 23 can be "reasonably thought to have seen physical evidence, debris recovered from the Foster Ranch." Of these, said Pflock, only seven have asserted anything suggestive of otherworldly origins for the debris.

As for the several accounts from those who claimed to have seen aliens, critics identified problems with these accounts ranging from the reliability of second-hand accounts (Pappy Henderson, General Exon, etc.), to serious credibility problems with witnesses making demonstrably false claims or multiple, contradictory accounts (Gerald Anderson, Glenn Dennis, Frank Kaufmann, Jim Ragsdale), to dubious death-bed "confessions" or accounts from elderly and easily confused witnesses (Maj. Edwin Easley, Lewis Rickett).

Pflock, writing in 2001, noted that only four people with firsthand knowledge of alien bodies were interviewed and identified by Roswell authors: Frank Kaufmann; Jim Ragsdale; Lt. Col. Albert Lovejoy Duran; Gerald Anderson.Duran is mentioned in a brief footnote in The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell and never again, while the other three all have serious credibility problems, said Pflock.

A basic problem with all the witness accounts, charge critics, is that they all came a minimum of 31 years after the events in question, and in many cases were recounted more than 40 years after the fact. Not only are memories this old of dubious reliability, say the critics, they were also subject to contamination from other accounts they may have heard.

Finally, the shifting claims of Jesse Marcel, whose suspicions that what he recovered in 1947 was "not of this world" sparked interest in the incident in the first place, cast serious doubt on the reliability of what he claimed, critics charge.

In The Roswell Incident, Marcel stated: "Actually, this material may have looked like tinfoil and balsa wood, but the resemblance ended there." And, "They took one picture of me on the floor holding up some of the less-interesting metallic debris...The stuff in that one photo was pieces of the actual stuff we found. It was not a staged photo." Timothy Printy points out that the material Marcel positively identified as being part of what he recovered is material that skeptics and UFO advocates agree is debris from a balloon device.

After that fact was pointed out to him, Marcel changed his story to say that that material was not what he recovered.Skeptics like Robert G. Todd argue that Marcel had a history of embellishment and exaggeration, such as claiming to have been a pilot and having received five Air Medals for shooting down enemy planes, claims that were found to be false, and his evolving Roswell story was another instance of this.

Contradictory conclusions, questionable research, Roswell as a myth

Critics point out that the large variety of claimed crash flights suggest events spanning many years have been incorporated into a single event and that many authors uncritically embrace anything that suggests aliens, even when accounts contradict each other. Said Karl Pflock, a one-time advocate of an alien incident at Roswell: "[T]he case for Roswell is a classic example of the triumph of quantity over quality. The advocates of the crashed-saucer tale... simply shovel everything that seems to support their view into the box marked 'Evidence' and say, 'See? Look at all this stuff. We must be right.' [emphasis in original] Never mind the contradictions. Never mind the lack of independent supporting fact. Never mind the blatant absurdities."

Kal Korff suggests there are clear incentives for some to promote the idea of aliens at Roswell, while many researchers are not doing competent work: "[The] UFO field is comprised of people who are willing to take advantage of the gullibility of others, especially the paying public. Let's not pull any punches here: The Roswell UFO myth has been very good business for UFO groups, publishers, for Hollywood, the town of Roswell, the media, and UFOlogy ... [The] number of researchers who employ science and its disciplined methodology is appallingly small."

Gildenberg and others said that, when added up, there were as many as 11 reported alien recovery sites and these recoveries bore only a marginal resemblance to the event as initially reported in 1947 or recounted later by the initial witnesses. Some of these new accounts could have been confused accounts of the several known recoveries of injured and dead from four military plane crashes that occurred in the vicinity from 1948–50.Others could have been recoveries of test dummies, as suggested by the Air Force in their reports.

Charles Ziegler argued that the Roswell story has all the hallmarks of a traditional folk narrative. He identified six distinct narratives, starting with The Roswell Incident (1980) and a process of transmission via storytellers with a core story that was created from various witness accounts, and was shaped and molded by those who carry on the group's (the UFO community) tradition. Others were sought out to expand the core narrative, with those who give accounts not in line with the core beliefs repudiated or omitted by the "gatekeepers." Others retold the narratives in new forms, and the process would repeat.

Recent developments

Pro-UFO advocates dismiss Roswell incident

One of the immediate outcomes of the Air Force reports on the Roswell UFO incident was the decision by some prominent UFO researchers to view the Roswell incident as not involving any alien craft.

While the initial Air Force report was a chief reason for this, another was the release of secret documents from 1948 that showed that top Air Force officials did not know what the UFO objects being reported in the media were and their suspicion they might be Soviet spy vehicles.

In January 1997, Karl T. Pflock, one of the more prominent pro-UFO researchers, said “Based on my research and that of others, I'm as certain as it's possible to be without absolute proof that no flying saucer or saucers crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell or on the Plains of San Agustin in 1947. The debris found by Mac Brazel...was the remains of something very earthly, all but certainly something from the Top Secret Project Mogul....The formerly highly classified record of correspondence and discussions among top Air Force officials who were responsible for cracking the flying saucer mystery from the mid-1940s through the early 1950s makes it crystal clear that they didn't have any crashed saucer wreckage or bodies of saucer crews, but they were desperate to have such evidence ..."

Kent Jeffrey, who organized petitions to ask President Bill Clinton to issue an Executive Order to declassify any government information on the Roswell incident, similarly concluded that no such aliens were likely involved.

William L. Moore, one of the earliest proponents of the Roswell incident, said this in 1997: "After deep and careful consideration of recent developments concerning Roswell...I am no longer of the opinion that the extraterrestrial explanation is the best explanation for this event." Moore was co-author of the first book on Roswell, The Roswell Incident.

Shoddy research revealed; witnesses suspected of hoaxes

Around the same time, a serious rift between two prominent Roswell authors emerged. Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt had co-authored several books on the subject and were generally acknowledged, along with Stanton Friedman, as the leading researchers into the Roswell incident. The Air Force reports on the incident suggested that basic research claimed to have been carried out was not carried out,a fact verified in a 1995 Omni magazine article.Additionally, Schmitt claimed he had a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and was in the midst of pursuing a doctorate in criminology. He also claimed to be a medical illustrator. When checked, it was revealed he was in fact a letter carrier in Hartford, Wisconsin, and had no known academic credentials. At the same time, Randle publicly distanced himself from Schmitt and his research. Referring to Schmitt’s investigation of witness Dennis’s accounts of a missing nurse at the Roswell base, he said: "The search for the nurses proves that he [Schmitt] will lie about anything. He will lie to anyone ... He has revealed himself as a pathological liar ... I will have nothing more to do with him."

Additionally, several prominent witnesses were shown to be perpetrating hoaxes, or suspected of doing so. Frank Kaufmann, a major source of alien reports in the 1994 Randle and Schmitt book “The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell” and a witness whose testimony it was charged was “ignored” by the Air Force when compiling their reports,was shown, after his 2001 death, to have been forging documents and inflating his role at Roswell. Randle and Mark Rodeigher repudiated Kaufmann’s credibility in two 2002 articles.

Glenn Dennis, who testified that Roswell alien autopsies were carried out at the Roswell base and that he and others were the subjects of threats, was deemed one of the “least credible” Roswell witnesses by Randle in 1998. In Randle and Schmitt’s 1991 book “UFO Crash at Roswell,” Dennis’s story was featured prominently. Randle said Dennis was not credible “for changing the name of the nurse once we had proved she didn't exist.” Dennis’s accounts were also doubted by researcher Pflock.

Photo analysis; documentaries; new claims

UFO researcher David Rudiak, and others before him, claimed that a telegram that appears in one of the 1947 photos of balloon debris in Ramey's office contains text that confirms that aliens and a "disk" were found. Rudiak and some other examiners claim that when enlarged, the text on the paper General Ramey is holding in his hand includes key phrases "the victims of the wreck" and "in/on the 'disc'" plus other phrases seemingly in the context of a crashed vehicle recovery. However, pro-UFO interpretations of this document are disputed by independent photoanalyses, such as one facilitated by researcher James Houran, Ph.D., that suggest the letters and words are indistinct. Other objections question the plausibility of a general allowing himself to be photographed holding such a document, raise issues with the format of the memo, and ponder the logic of Ramey having in his possession a document he, as Rudiak argued, has sent, which says "...the wreck you forwarded..." yet is supposedly addressed to the Headquarters of the Army Air Force in Washington, not the Roswell Army Air Field.

n 2002, the Sci-Fi Channel sponsored an excavation at the Brazel site in the hopes of uncovering any missed debris that the military failed to collect. Although these results have so far turned out to be negative, the University of New Mexico archaeological team did verify recent soil disruption at the exact location that some witnesses said they saw a long, linear impact groove. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who headed the United States Department of Energy under President Clinton, apparently found the results provocative. In 2004, he wrote in a foreword to The Roswell Dig Diaries, that "the mystery surrounding this crash has never been adequately explained—not by independent investigators, and not by the U.S. government."

On October 26, 2007, Richardson (at the time a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. President) elaborated when he was asked about releasing government files on Roswell. Richardson responded that when he was a Congressman, he attempted to get information on behalf of his New Mexico constituents, but was told by both the Department of Defense and Los Alamos Labs that the information was classified. "That ticked me off," he said "The government doesn't tell the truth as much as it should on a lot of issues." He promised to work on opening the files if he were elected as President.

In October 2002 before airing its Roswell documentary, the Sci-Fi Channel also hosted a Washington UFO news conference. John Podesta, President Clinton's chief of staff, appeared as a member of the public relations firm hired by Sci-Fi to help get the government to open up documents on the subject. Podesta stated, "It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the true nature of the phenomena."

In February 2005, the ABC TV network aired a UFO special hosted by news anchor Peter Jennings. Jennings lambasted the Roswell case as a "myth ... without a shred of evidence." ABC endorsed the Air Force's explanation that the incident resulted solely from the crash of a Project Mogul balloon.

Top Secret/Majic (2005 edition)

Stanton T. Friedman continues to defend his view that the Majestic 12 documents, which describe a secret government agency hiding information on recovered aliens, are authentic. In an afterword dated April 2005 to a new edition of his book Top Secret/Majic (first published in 1996), he responds to more recent questions on their validity and concludes "I am still convinced Roswell really happened, [and] that the Eisenhower Briefing Document [i.e., Majestic 12] ... [and others] are the most important classified documents ever leaked to the public."

Witness to Roswell (2007)

In June 2007, Donald Schmitt and his investigation partner Tom Carey published their first book together, Witness to Roswell. In this book, they claim a "continuously growing roster of more than 600 people directly or indirectly associated with the events at Roswell who support the first account - that initial claim of the flying saucer recovery." New accounts of aliens or alien recoveries were described, including from Walter Haut who wrote the initial press release in 1947.

A new date was suggested for a crash of a mysterious object—the evening of Thursday, July 3, 1947. Also, unlike previous accounts, Brazel took debris to Corona, where he showed fragments to local residents in the local bar, hardware store and elsewhere, and to Capitan to the south, while portions of the object ended up at a 4 July rodeo. Numerous people are described as visiting the debris field and taking souvenirs before Brazel finally went to Roswell to report the find on July 6. Once the military was alerted to the debris, extensive efforts were undertaken to retrieve those souvenirs: "Ranch houses were and [sic] ransacked. The wooden floors of livestock sheds were pried loose plank by plank and underground cold storage fruit cellars were emptied of all their contents."

The subsequent events are related as per the sequence in previous books, except for a second recovery site of an alien body at the Foster ranch. This recovery near the debris field is the same site mentioned in 1991's UFO Crash at Roswell. The authors suggest that Brazel discovered the second site some days after finding the debris field, and this prompted him to travel to Roswell and report his find to the authorities.

Neither Barnett nor the archaeologists are present at this body site. While noting the earlier "major problems" with Barnett's account, which caused Schmitt and previous partner Randle to omit Barnett's claim in 1994's The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, the new book further notes another site mentioned in the 1994 publication. This site closer to Roswell "turned out to be bogus, as it was based upon the testimony of a single, alleged eyewitness [Frank Kaufmann] who himself was later discovered to have been a purveyor of false information."Jim Ragsdale, whose alien account opened that book and who was claimed to have been present along with some archaeologists, is not mentioned in the new book.

The book includes claims that Major Marcel saw alien bodies, a claim not present in the previous books mentioned. Two witnesses are cited who say Marcel briefly mentioned seeing bodies, one a relative and another a tech sergeant who worked with Marcel's intelligence team.

Much additional new testimony is presented to support notions that alien bodies were found at the Foster ranch and at another main crash site along with a craft, then processed at the base in a hangar and at the hospital, and finally flown out in containers, all under very tight security. The book suggests Brazel found "two or three alien bodies" about two miles east of the debris field and describes the rest of a stricken alien craft along with the remainder of the crew remaining airborne for some 30 more miles before crashing at another site about 40 miles north/northwest of Roswell (but not the same site described by Kaufmann). The authors claim to have located this final crash site in 2005 where "an

additional two or three dead aliens and one live one were discovered by civilian archaeologists," but offer no more information about the new site.

Walter Haut, as the Roswell Army Air Field public affairs officer, had drafted the initial press release that went out over the news wires on the afternoon of July 8, 1947, announcing a "flying disc". This was the only direct involvement Haut had previously described in public statements and signed affidavits. The book presents a new affidavit that Haut signed in 2002 in which he claims much greater personal knowledge and involvement, including seeing alien corpses and craft, and involvement in a cover-up. Haut died in 2005.

Another new first-hand account from MP Elias Benjamin describes how he guarded aliens on gurneys taken to the Roswell base hospital from the same hangar. Similarly, family members of Miriam Bush, secretary to the chief medical officer at Roswell base, told of having been led into an examination room where alien corpses were laid out on gurneys.In both accounts, one of the aliens was said to be still alive. The book also recounted earlier testimony of the Anaya family about picking up New Mexico Lt. Governor Joseph Montoya at the base, and a badly shaken Montoya relating that he saw four alien bodies at the base hangar, one of them alive. Benjamin's and Bush's accounts, as do a few lesser ones, again place aliens at the Roswell base hospital, as had the Glenn Dennis story from almost 20 years before. The book notes that Dennis had been found to have told lies, and therefore is a supplier of unreliable testimony, but had nevertheless told others of incidents at the Roswell base long before it became associated with aliens in the late 1970s.

Walter Haut controversy

The publishing of the Walter Haut affidavit in Witness to Roswell, wherein Haut described a cover-up and seeing alien corpses, ignited a controversy in UFO circles.While many embraced his accounts as confirmation of the presence of aliens from a person who was known to have been on the base in 1947, others raised questions about the credibility of the accounts.
UFO researcher Dennis G. Balthaser, who along with fellow researcher Wendy Connors interviewed Haut on-camera in 2000, doubted that the same man he interviewed could have written the affidavit he signed. "[The 2000 video] shows a man that couldn't remember where he took basic training, names, dates, etc., while the 2002 affidavit is very detailed and precise with information Haut couldn't accurately remember 2 years after he was video taped." Witness to Roswell co-author Don Schmitt, he notes, admitted that the affidavit was not written by Haut, but prepared for him to sign, based on statements Haut had made privately to Schmitt and co-author Tom Carey over a period of years. And further, notes Balthaser, neither he nor Carey were there when Haut signed the affidavit and the witness' name has not been revealed, casting doubt on the circumstances of the signing.

He had further questions about what he saw as problems with the 2002 account. If the cover-up was decided at a meeting at Roswell, he asked, "why was it necessary for Major Marcel to fly debris from Roswell to General Ramey’s office in Ft Worth, since they had all handled the debris in the meeting and apparently set up the cover-up operation?" He also wondered which Haut statements were true: a 1993 affidavit he signed, the 2000 video interview, or the 2002 affidavit.

Bill Birnes, writing for UFO Magazine, summarizes that whatever disagreements there are about the 2000 video and the 2002 affidavit, "I think Walter Haut's 2002 affidavit really says it all and agrees, on its material facts, with Walter's 2000 interview with Dennis Balthaser and Wendy Connors. Dennis said he agrees with me, too, on this point."

A comparison of the affidavit and interview shows that in both Haut said he saw a craft and at least one body in a base hangar and also attended a Roswell staff meeting where General Ramey was present and

where Ramey put a cover-up into place.

Birnes also says that Carey told that while Haut may not have written the affidavit, "his statements were typed, shown to him for his review and agreement, and then affirmed by him in the presence of a witness... The fact that a notary was present and sealed the document should end any doubt as to the reality of its existence."

Julie Shuster, Haut's daughter and Director of the International UFO Museum in Roswell, said that Schmitt had written the affidavit based on years of conversations he and Carey had had with him. Writing in the September 2007 MUFON newsletter, she said she and Haut reviewed the document, that "he did not want to make any changes," and in the presence of two witnesses, a notary public from the museum and a visitor, both unidentified, he signed the affidavit.

In April 2011, the FBI posted a document from 1950 on their website written by agent Guy Hottel which discussed a report forwarded by an investigator from the Air Force of three alien craft and their occupants having been recovered in New Mexico. The memo stated that "three so-called flying saucers" were recovered, each circular in shape with raised centers, each about 50 feet in diameter. Three occupants of "human shape," each about three feet tall, were found in each craft, and all were dressed "in metallic cloth of a very fine texture." The memo said that reports were "high-powered radar" had affected the alien crafts' control systems, causing them to crash. No date was mentioned, though the memo was date-stamped March 22, 1950, and no location more specific than "New Mexico" was mentioned. The memo stated that "no further evaluation was attempted" by the person who supplied the information.

Numerous sources connected the memo to the Roswell UFO incident of 1947.

Other sources said the memo had been in the public domain for years and was revealed as a hoax as far back as 1952 in an article in True magazine.They said the hoax was perpetrated by several men who were peddling a device purported to be able to locate gold, oil, gas or anything their victims sought, based on supposed alien technology. The two men, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, were convicted of fraud in 1953.

Area 51 (2011)

Annie Jacobsen,author of Area 51

The book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen, based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in Area 51, dismisses the alien story. Instead, it suggests that Josef Mengele was recruited by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to produce "grotesque, child-size aviators" to be remotely piloted and landed in America to cause hysteria in the likeness of Orson Welles' 1938 radio drama War of the Worlds, but that the aircraft crashed and the incident was hushed up by the Americans.

Jacobsen writes that the bodies found at the crash site were children. Grotesquely but similarly deformed, aged around 12, each under five feet tall, with large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes. They were neither aliens nor consenting airmen, but human guinea pigs. The book was sharply criticized for extensive errors in an essay by two scientists at the Federation of American Scientists.