Norman Finkelstein: Israel Isn’t a Jewish State. It’s a Lunatic State

Okay, here’s a bit of politics and it’s going to be highly controversial. Norman Finkelstein is a Jewish-American scholar and critic of Israel and its slow motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. In this video from YouTube, he gives his perspective as a Jew on Israel. He states very clearly that it isn’t a Jewish state, but a lunatic state. A type that goes against everything he believes is Jewish. He points to how proud Jews were that four of the leading intellectuals that created the modern world were Jewish – Einstein, Marx, Freud, and some would say Jesus – were all Jews. Jews surged with pride at this fact. The life of the mind loomed large for Jews. Standing behind a perimeter fence to target double amputees has nothing to do with a Jew or Jews. This is why he doesn’t believe that Israel constitutes a Jewish states according to what he grew up to understand as a Jew.

He’s not alone. This is why many Jews have taken part in the protest marches waving placards with the slogan ‘Not In My Name’ and ‘Not Again For Anyone’. Among those attacking Netanyahu for his war crimes are Holocaust survivors, who clearly deserve to be listened to because of their experience of genocide. Not that you would know this from right-wing news organisations like GB News and various internet commenters, who want you to believe that the only people marching against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza are fanatical Muslims with a genocidal hatred of the Jews and the desire to turn Britain into a Muslim state under sharia law.

What Are UFOs: Part 2

Is the Psycho-Social Hypothesis Failing the Stress Test?

This is my response to the second part of CJ’s searching investigation of what UFOs are, published on his blog yesterday. In this piece, CJ explains his dissatisfaction with the Psycho-Social Hypothesis. As he explains, the psycho-social hypothesis or model means different things to different people, but it roughly states that the UFO experience is shaped by social stresses and anxieties. My view of the phenomenon is slightly different, following that of the small press magazine Magonia. This was for a long time Britain’s leading sceptical UFO magazine, with slogans like ‘Hard on Ufology, hard on the causes of Ufology’ parodying Blair’s slogan on crime. It was based very much on the psycho-social model, which to them meant that UFO encounters were internal, psychological events prompted in many cases by an external object or phenomenon. The imagery experienced in these encounters was drawn from popular culture and folklore. Thus, in the ancient and medieval worlds, people encountered fairies, angels, gods and demons. In our modern, scientific age these have been replaced by spacecraft and aliens.

CJ makes it clear that he is certainly not an opponent of the PSH, and that he shares many of the views of Jean-Michel Abrassart. Dr Abrassart is a sceptical Belgian psychologist and UFO researcher who presented a fascinating talk on UFOs to ASSAP at their weekly online Zoom meeting last week. He showed research from a Belgian perspective that UFO narratives are shaped by culture. Belgium is a multilingual country with three different linguistic groups: the Flemish, who speak a form of Dutch; the Walloons, who speak French, and a small, German-speaking enclave. His research showed that stories of UFO encounters were sometimes confined to particular ethnicities and did not cross over to the others despite all of them sharing and occupying the same country.

CJ did not take aim at the whole Psycho-Social Hypothesis but just one aspect: that mentioned above – the theory that UFO flaps appear in response to social anxieties. He also notes that many UFOs are indeed misidentified astronomical phenomena. Jean-Michel showed how many of the flaps followed the 18-year Saros or Metonic cycle. This is when the Earth and Moon adopt the same positions to each other after that number of years, and has been used to predict eclipses since the days of ancient Greece.  It also allows one to test some UFO sightings, by returning to the location with the witness when the Moon appears in the same position as the original sighting. While it sounds ridiculous that people could misidentify such a familiar sight as the Moon, there is certainly corroborating evidence on this side of the North Sea. Magonia mentioned decades ago the case of a group of British coppers who began to believe that their car was being pursued by a UFO. They knew that in reality the object above them was the Moon, but had to stop their vehicle for a moment to be sure.

CJ then goes to show how many of the classic flaps correlate with the social anxieties of the time. The sightings of Martians in the 1950s were a response to Cold War anxieties. That of the 1970s was spurred by the emerging awareness of the ecological crisis, while the dark, sinister encounters of the ‘90s reflected the predominance of paranoia and conspiracy theories in popular culture. But these flaps don’t always reflect those fears.

There was definitely more than element of paranoia in 50s Ufology, following the writings of Donald Keyhoe who was convinced that the UFOs were preparing to invade. The American Air Force general, Kolman von Kebizcy also called for America to prepare for an invasion from Mars following the 1952 mass sightings of UFOs over Washington D.C. But it was also the era of the Contactee, people who believed they had met aliens and been given messages to impart to the rest of humanity. These were generally greetings of interplanetary brotherhood and warnings about the threat of nuclear weapons, which also reflected contemporary concerns about the threat of nuclear annihilation. In some of the messages, these were a threat to the planet itself and would throw it out of orbit if used. Other aliens warned that they put not only humanity but the whole universe in peril, and were forcing the other intelligent beings of the cosmos to act. These encounters and their messages from benevolent but concerned aliens resemble the plot of the film The Day The Earth Stood Still, which was based on an SF short story, ‘The Return of the Master’.

The 1970s were another decade of great social anxiety. The report, Limits to Growth, had been published arguing that in the very near future the Earth would become massively overpopulated. Humanity would use up the planet’s resources leading to the collapse of civilisation. The Club of Rome had published its findings that the world’s flora and fauna were also threatened. This led to the foundation of various Green parties in western Europe, along with campaigns by newly formed environmental groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, now the Worldwide Fund for Nature, to save the whale and the tiger. Popular children’s television shows like Newsround covered these issues for their young viewers along with the threat to the Ozone layer from aerosols. There were also numerous UFO encounters, of which one of the best known is probably the abduction of Travis Walton, an American logger. This was later filmed in the 90s as Fire in the Sky. It was also the decade Steven Spielberg released his blockbusting Close Encounters, with its final scenes in which short, spindly aliens emerge from the alien mothership to meet a group of human scientists. All the people they have taken over the decades come out of the craft with them to rejoin their families. Finally, they depart, taking the film’s ordinary joe hero, Roy Neary, with them. This has undoubtedly had a massive impact on UFOs in popular culture worldwide. There were comic book adaptations and spoofs in film and television, including Britain’s own long-running comedy show, The Goodies. And the film’s slogan, ‘We Are Not Alone’, became a catch-phrase for UFOs and aliens generally. I don’t, however, recall the aliens encountered in this period giving messages about the ecological crisis. This appeared more in the 90s.

Then there was the 90s and the explosion of UFOs and conspiracy culture. The latter partly had its roots in controversies over Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the resulting Gulf War. Many on the left believed that, instead of being a war of liberation to free the country from a murderous dictator, it was instead a ‘resource war’ to steal those nations’ oil. In America protesters marched chanting ‘Gosh, no, we won’t go! We won’t die for Texaco’. These fears and anxieties were fanned still further by George Bush Senior’s statement about creating ‘a new order’. To many, this recalled Adolf Hitler and his declaration of the same thing, as well as conspiracy theories about the founding of America by the Freemasons, as shown in the Eye in the Pyramid on the dollar bill and the slogan ‘Novo Ordo Saecularum’ – New World Order.

It also roughly coincided with the publication of two books which together helped to shape the emerging abduction narrative. These were Above Top Secret by the British violinist, Tim Good, and Communion, by the American horror writer Whitley Streiber. Good’s book claimed that America had secretly made contact with the aliens and there were secret bases all over the world, plus a group Above Top Secret, the Majestic 12, set up to supervise these encounters. Streiber’s book claimed that he had been repeatedly abducted and examined by Grey aliens. The two, and the many other similar books that they inspired, founded the abduction mythology in which America had done a secret deal with the aliens to allow them to kidnap and experiment on humans, including sexually, resulting in the creation of half-human hybrid children. This myth became a social panic, with abduction researchers like Bud Hopkins and Leo Sprinkle taking their experiencers on popular talks shows like Oprah. It exerted a very strong influence on the X-Files, whose heroes, FBI agents Scully and Mulder, were on the trail of a secret conspiracy to create human-alien hybrids in preparation for a hostile alien invasion.

So what about today? The past few years have also been a period of acute social stress. This was most pronounced with the Covid pandemic and lockdown. The virus itself was sufficiently terrifying to many ordinary people, following as it did films about scientists battling deadly germs which threatened to destroy humanity. I think one of these in the 90s was Outbreak, while a similar film, The Satan Bug, was released in the 70s. There was also stress caused by the government’s response of locking down society and industry to prevent the spread of the disease. Inessential businesses were shut down and the public were allowed out only for essential activities like shopping and a day’s exercise. People naturally worried about their jobs and businesses. There were also some truly damaging conspiracy theories, in which it was claimed that the vaccines offered against the disease contained mind control chips, or that the real purpose of the lockdown was to allow the World Economic Forum to seize power and create the one world superstate.

And this is where it gets interesting. If UFOs and other paranormal encounters are produced by social stress, then we should have experienced another wave of sightings of alien spaceships, ghosts and other supernatural beings. But we haven’t. CJ has gone through the stats. People are not seeing more alien spaceships. At the same time, the male suicide rate hasn’t risen and there hasn’t, mercifully, been an increase in self-harm either. Nor are people turning to religion or the paranormal.

Not that you would know it from the press. CJ states that magazines and newspapers, including New Scientist, have been telling their readers that the stressed population is indeed turning to religion and the paranormal, and encounters with aliens and spooks have very definitely risen. The gentlemen and ladies of the Fourth Estate have duly contacted CJ to confirm their views, only to close the interviews when he disappoints them by stating plainly that this isn’t happening. I think we can be confident this is correct. Not only is he a very diligent researcher himself, but he is assisted by Becky, who did her PhD analysing the Society for Psychic Research’s Census of Hallucinations to show that the core ghost phenomenon did not change in the 19^th century. It has been said the Victorian period saw changes in ghost imagery and narratives in popular culture. For example, ghosts generally appear solid, but Victorian artists drew them as transparent simply to show they were ghosts. This may present another challenge to the Psycho-Social Model if real ghost experiences don’t match those in popular culture, as in shows like Scooby Doo or Rentaghost.

This poses the question of what is going on here. Is the Psycho-Social Model totally invalid, despite apparently holding true for previous flaps? Or perhaps the psychological and social mechanisms that create flaps during times of stress are actually more complex than previously thought, and require a number of subtle factors that have been absent during the Covid outbreak? Or perhaps this follows a continuing trend of cultural exhaustion that some have claimed is being experienced elsewhere in society and the arts.

One of these is Stephen E. Andrews, a former bookseller and the author of 100 Science Fiction Books You Must Read. On his YouTube channel, Outlaw Bookseller, he reviews and discusses literature and bookshops, especially Science Fiction. In one of his videos he discusses hauntology, a cultural phenomenon in which the arts turn back to the past and previous tropes and images. He argues that this is occurring now in Science Fiction, as authors use the same old plots and ideas, and that this is also part of a general trend in wider literature and the arts. Here’s a link to one of his videos on hauntology.

Why you “prefer the Science -Fiction Books with the old covers”: HAUNTOLOGY & SCIENCE FICTION #sf (youtube.com)

Apart from the issue identified by CJ, the 20^th century was a period of immense social and political change. This included the collapse of the European empires and the rise of America and the Communist Soviet Union to superpower status, as well as the shock in domestic culture of the emergence of the teenager and youth culture, feminism and the promise and threat of new technology like the atomic bomb, genetic engineering and information technology. These trends were reflected in the arts and literature, including Science Fiction. Aldous Huxley predicted a future in which babies would be grown in hatcheries in Brave New World, published in the 1920s. But this began to look like it could become reality in 1962 with the experiments of the Italian biologist Daniele Petracci. Petracci was experimenting with gestating human embryos outside the womb. One of these had even progressed to developing eyes and limbs before the experiment ended. And the second half of the 20^th century saw other scientific advances that seemed similarly threatening of promising. These included household robots, holidays in space and flying cars. These have not materialised, with the exception of flying cars. The Outlaw Bookseller considers that scientific advance is accelerating, but looking at books such Paul Milo’s Your Flying Car Awaits about the failed predictions of the 20^th century, it could seem instead that scientific and technological invention has slowed down. Some of this is due to the problems tackled being far more complex than scientists in the 50s and 60s believed, as in aging. It could be that in the absence of the spectacular social and technological change promised in previous decades, western society has settled down to a pattern and that some of the changes previously regarded as shocking are now viewed as part of traditional western society. There is still a suspicion towards parts of youth culture, for example, but Mods, Rockers and Punks no longer cause quite the alarm they did when they first emerged, and indeed are frequently the subject of affectionate nostalgia. Perhaps it isn’t just social stress that is required for UFO flaps, but specific social stresses about new social phenomena, and that society has become used to many of the old threats and concerns. In the absence of lunar and Martian colonies, for example, space travel seems almost routine. The exploration of space, and the possibility of alien life are still the subjects of immense interest. And any number of books, films and TV stories are still coming out about invasion by hostile aliens. But they’ve become an accepted part of the media landscape, and so the element of novelty that may have been part of the impetus behind previous decades’ flaps are absent. And so, although society was gripped by tension during the Covid outbreak, this did not lead to people turning to the paranormal, or meeting a helpful spaceman offering advice.

For further information, see: https://jerome23.wordpress.com/2024/05/07/ufos-cjs-angle-part-2/

Fairies, Aliens and Folklore: A Response to CJ’s ‘What Are UFOs?

A few days ago the mighty CJ put up a piece on his website asking the question ‘What Are UFOs?’, in which he took aim at elements of the psycho-social interpretation of the phenomenon. CJ’s a long-term member of ASSAP, one of Britain’s leading paranormal research organisations. Unlike the Society for Psychical Research, which concentrates on laboratory research, ASSAP was set up to investigate paranormal phenomena in the field, whether they be ghosts, fairies, crop circles, time slips or flying saucers. CJ’s been investigating such phenomena since the 1980s, following very strict scientific protocols, and has a wealth of practical experience.

At the heart of his essay are two questions. One of these is on the nature of folklore itself. What is it? Does it include popular superstitions like not putting your shoes on the table or crossing on the stairs? Where does folklore begin and literary, composed culture end? For example, when football fans start singing Beatles’ songs on the terraces, does it become a piece of folklore? What are the authentic features of traditional fairy encounters, and, indeed, is there are a single class of being that comprises the fairies?

In fact, these are questions folklorists themselves have been discussing for a very long time. Books on folklore, such as Linda Degh’s Legends, often begin with that very question. And what counts as folklore is very wide. Folklore can be thought of as any popular custom. The folklorists of the 19^th century viewed it in terms of an ancient, timeless popular culture arising from a particular ethnic group, preserved in the rural customs of agricultural communities. There was supposed to be a distinction between this timeless, popular culture, the authors of which were unknown, and literary culture produced by the educated upper classes.

This distinction between elite, educated culture and that of the masses has more or less collapsed. The more you examine folksong and folk literature, the less it seems to be the timeless remnant of ancient beliefs and practises. The Marshfield mumming play, in which the hero fights an enemy, is killed, but restored with a pill from a doctor, has been one of those folk customs whose origins have been claimed to lie back with the dying and rising gods of pagan antiquity. Research back in the 90s by contrast claimed that similar plays dated no earlier than the 18^th century, and were commonly performed at local fairs. Similarly, songs and dances travelled across Europe, taken from one country to another by itinerant musicians from quite an early date. A 16^th century writer, for example, remarked on English musicians going to fairs to hear the latest tunes and catches from other performers in Germany. Instead of autochthonic expressions of the essential soul or spirit of a particular ethnic group or locality, people were swapping tunes and songs across countries and continents. Musicologists have suggested, for example, that there are African elements in western sea shanties. As for their connection to particular areas, that was frequently just where folksong collectors like Cecil Sharpe happened to pick them up. While he marked them down as coming from Suffolk, Yorkshire, Somerset or wherever, this didn’t mean that the songs were exclusive to those areas.

Nor is folklore restricted to rural communities. The focus on them by the early researchers no doubt was part of the reaction of some parts of educated society to the rise of science and the machine age in the 19^th century. This was felt by some intellectuals as a threat to traditional western culture and its metaphysical assumptions. And so scholars investigated the ancient traditions and stories of rural communities, collecting stories of witches, ghosts, giants and fairies as well as rustic tunes to preserve this popular, pre-industrial culture and its basis in the supernatural against the new, scientific materialism.

At the same time, other scholars questioned this focus on the countryside and asked whether towns didn’t have their folklore as well. Yes, they did, and there was a burgeoning interest in what became known as urban legend in the ‘90s, following the publication years earlier of Jan Harold Brunvand’s books on phantom hitch-hikers and so on. And the actual subject matter of folklore can be more or less anything that has entered popular culture. One book on folkloristics covers subjects as diverse as Navajo Indian pottery figures for tourists, American barn types, and jokes and humour in American gay culture. These latter have a deeper social purpose than just amusement. They were often told to subtly find out whether the person being talked to was gay or not. Some jokes would be only understood by other gays. If the person told the joke smiled and laughed, it could be assumed they were a fellow member of the community. And new forms of urban folklore were emerging all the time. One example of this was the photocopylore that turned up in offices and workplaces, in which someone had photocopied or faxed a particularly remarkable or humorous piece and pasted it up in the office. Several of these, I remember, were jokes at the expense of American football players on scholarships at universities, as well as the general drudgery of office life.

And this is where UFOs come in. The second question of CJ’s critique is whether fairies really can be identified with today’s UFOs and aliens. This is based on the books of Fortean writer John Keel and the American-French astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallee. They noted in their books – UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse by Keel, Passport to Magonia by Vallee- that UFO encounters often followed the same motifs as fairy lore. UFOs and their occupants. They suggested that UFOs and their alien pilots are the 20^th century successors to traditional fairy beliefs. But the imps and goblins of previous centuries have had to change with the times. In modern, technological society people no longer believe as they did in fairies. These have therefore been replaced by the imagery of Science Fiction and space travel.

Some of the motifs of traditional fairy lore do indeed seem to fit the UFO phenomenon. Evans-Wentz in his classic The Fairy Faith in Western Europe, quotes ‘an old Irish mystic’ as saying that the fairies are an older race, who come from the stars. Some of the UFO aliens reported from Scandinavia and also from Italy certainly resemble the short gnomes and goblins of western European fairy tales. And some of their activities also resemble those of past supernatural entities. The abduction phenomenon, in which people are forcibly taken aboard alien craft and raped to produce half-human hybrids, is very similar indeed to medieval tales of demons having sex with sleeping mortals, and even jinn in the Islamic world. One Arab story has three maidens made pregnant by a jinn, who enters their house through a gap into elsewhere opening in their bedroom wall. He is accompanied by a number of lights. And just like the aliens, who take their progeny away from those who bore them, so this jinn takes back into his world his children by the girls.

There are several problems with the identification of today’s aliens with fairies. One of these is with the collection and recording of such traditional narratives, that CJ identifies as a problem. He states in his article that European fairy lore is very much a literary phenomenon, influenced and shaped by writers like Shakespeare, and that we have difficulty knowing what ordinary people really believed about them. This is a fair point. Jeffrey Burton Russell in his history of witchcraft in the Middle Ages discusses fairies and their origins as it affects the later development of witch beliefs. Roman civilisation had a number of supernatural beings below the gods and their messengers, the daimones. These included tree spirits, the dryads, and lamias, part-women, part snakes. Belief in such beings persisted after the fall of the Empire into the 7^th century in Spain until they were somehow replaced by the fairies. He identifies the latter’s origins in the Latin fatare, ‘to enchant’, and states that there seems to be little difference between supernatural fairies and witches when they first appear on the continent.

It is suggested that fairies are ultimately based on the three fates that are believed in Greek folklore to appear at a child’s birth to cast its destiny. Other historians have suggested that there was an international fairy cult stretching over Europe and the Middle East, whose remains have sometimes survived to the present as in Romania. In the west under pressure from the witch hunters the fairy cult’s central beliefs were distorted. In the original fairy belief, young women left their bodies to meet the Queen of the Fairies and enjoy a round of singing, dancing and the company of the young men they fancied. Under the pressure of the witch-hunters’ interrogation, however, this became the witches’ sabbat, in which they flew to meet the Devil and instead of a pleasant feast, ate foul food among other lurid horrors.  In this manner, the elite concerns of the witch hunters served to transform traditional folk beliefs.

Western fairy lore has been the source and subject of literary romance since the Middle Ages. Medieval authors wrote and sang tales of the quests of heroic knights, assisted by benevolent fairies like Oberon, and these tales remained popular after the end of the Middle Ages. By the 17^th century authors started writing their own fairy stories as conscious literary inventions, and this has carried on down the centuries with much-loved tales like Peter Pan and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter tales. These have shaped to a greater or lesser extent the popular image of fairies. It was Shakespeare, apparently, who added the gossamer wings. As for their size, Oberon is described as about the size of a child of three or older. He’s small, but not tiny. And sometimes glimpses of popular beliefs about the fairies can be seen. For example, church records from 12^th century Exeter record the local bishop forbidding the local people from putting small objects, including bows and arrows, in their barns for the elves to play with.

CJ also talks about the differences between various kinds of fairy creature, such as barguests and other spectral entities. Are they of the same type as brownies, goblins and so on? These creatures may be very different from each other, and so it is reasonable to ask whether they refer to the same types of supernatural entity.

Keel and Vallee, however, did not argue that there was a simple equivalence between fold fashioned fairies and UFOs. To begin with, fairies were not the only supernatural creatures modern UFOnauts resembled. Vallee in one of his later books discusses the similarity between UFOs and their pilots and the pagan gods of the Ancient Near East. Keel also discusses medieval demonology. While demons are supernatural, they were also generally considered a separate set of beings than the fairies, although sometimes the two were identified with each other. Keel and Vallee also didn’t think that UFO aliens were literally fairies either. Rather, the phenomenon that took the form of fairies, demons, angels and other supernatural beings in the past now took the form of spacecraft and aliens in the UFO mythology. They saw them therefore as ‘Ultraterrestrials’ – beings from beyond our reality. Vallee considers that they come from parallel universes, a view that he has incorporated in his SF novels such as Fastwalker.

The investigation of the links between fairy beliefs and UFO lore does not end with the views of Keel and Vallee, however. Their books provided the foundations for the Psycho-Social Hypothesis, which goes further than this. It maintains that there is little or no objective reality to UFO encounters. They are primarily internal, psychological experiences that take their imagery from contemporary culture. In the past this was the myths about gods, demons and fairies. Today the content and imagery are taken from Science Fiction. These experiences may be sparked by a real phenomenon, such as a misidentified sighting of Venus or aircraft and the content generated by poorly understood psychological or neurological phenomena, such as sleep paralysis. Back in the ‘90s there was considerable interest in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as the source of such illusory encounters, and it does seem that it can explain some. Those suffering from it may experience hallucinations that do draw on contemporary culture and folkore. One poor fellow who had it used to see a witch, complete with cauldron, in his kitchen during attacks. But this explanation seems to have fallen from favour in recent years, possibly because there is no single explanation for UFO encounters.

But although the imagery is that of aliens and space travel, behind them lies traditional fairy motifs. Thus, Joe Simonton’s encounter with small aliens while out prospecting in the Rockies also follows one convention of traditional fairy lore. In fairy tradition, precious fairy objects taken from their owners by the heroes become, in the light of day, perfectly ordinary and worthless. Fairy gold, for example, becomes a pile of leaves. Simonton found the aliens cooking pancakes. He was offered one, and took it back to be analysed. It was then found to contain nothing more exotic than flour and salt. Back in the 90s the lawyer and TV host Clive Anderson had a pair of ufologists on his late night show, Clive Anderson Talks Back. These two blokes described their encounters with aliens. As proof these were genuine, the aliens had given one of guys a rock, which he duly produced. Cue audience laughter. A rock could provide convincing proof of the reality of the phenomenon, if it was made of some exotic material from one of the planets, say regolith from the Moon or Montmarillonite from Mars. But this, however, was just an ordinary stone.

There is a wider point about the Psycho-Social Hypothesis. As it rejects a supernatural or paranormal basis for the experience, it does not matter whether the material generating the experience is based in authentic folklore or not. The fairy literature behind encounters with aliens resembling fairies may be literary, such as the small, winged aliens who asked a British housewife baking Christmas cakes back in the 70s if they could have one, but this does not affect the nature of the experience itself. Not all ufologists, whose views have been influenced by the PSH go so far as to deny that there is a paranormal element to the UFO experience. Jenny Randles stated in one edition of her small press UFO magazine, Northern UFO News, that there was a paranormal element to the experience which was using the motifs of traditional fairy lore and SF. Kevin McClure, another long term writer and researcher of the world of the strange and paranormal, came to a similar view. There was a genuine paranormal phenomenon behind the experiences, which was using traditional supernatural tales and SF to communicate with us. This was the basis for his extremely short-lived magazine, Alien Scripture, with its subtitle ‘Who is talking to us and why?’

CJ states that theGareth essay is just one of a projected series in which he will discuss what UFOs are. In part 2 he intends to examine other features of the phenomenon. This should be interesting. Although the Psycho-Social Hypothesis has established itself as a major alternative explanation to the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis for UFO experiences, there are definitely questions to be asked about it. One is that sometimes paranormal encounters do not resemble established folklore or literary tropes. Gareth Medway argued this in article published by Magonia back in the ‘90s. I think Gareth’s a priest or leading member of one of the new pagan religions in Britain. He was also the author of The Lure of the Sinister, a book that cast a very sceptical eye on the various Satanism scares that have occurred over time and that were causing hysteria and distress then with rubbish stories of the terrible abuse of children in Satanic orgies. In his article, he discussed a paranormal vision a man experienced out riding one evening. This fellow reported seeing something like a fist rising up from the ground. He had no explanation for the vision and was genuinely confused by the experience. The next evening, just as he was out riding again, he experienced the same vision. Gareth argued from this that if such encounters were based on folklore and popular culture, then the vision should have conformed to the contemporary imagery of the time. But it didn’t. And I’ve no doubt that there may be other problems with the Psycho-Social Hypothesis and other explanations for the UFO phenomenon waiting to be investigated.

I look forward to what CJ says in part two.

For further information, go to:https://jerome23.wordpress.com/2024/05/06/what-are-ufos/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3VCjJDO6tTcifznYHpDoUhHXVnYjQBpMeFnIJ4RLeGnxPDmefDSqsdsa4_aem_AYHr2BLRWzM6VP4g4Sb2M1eQvTF1mH6xUlD3z77kKpYv3RzWOrKnNgEtXrRJu121Y_Fi291mnyBHGQ194PTYrRv4

Bernie Sanders Explains Why It Is Not Anti-Semitic to Criticise Netanyahu’s War Crimes In Gaza and Demand He Be Held Accountable

Yay for Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Senator for Vermont. If we lived in a just universe, he’d be in the Whitehouse now, just as Jeremy Corbyn would be in 10 Downing Street. He’s a secular Jew, but he understood the hardships and problems of America’s ordinary working Joes and Joannas. Clips of his presidential campaign showed him being embraced, and comforting all kinds of people, including theologically conservative, blue-collar Christians from the American south, worried about unemployment, healthcare and the destruction of the domestic industries that were their livelihoods.

In this video, addressed to Benjamin Netanyahu, Bernie tells him clearly not to insult the intelligence of the American people, and states, over and again, that it is not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas to

point out that in a little over six months that his extremist government has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and wounded over 78,000, 70 per cent of whom are women and children.

point out that his bombing has destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving almost a million people, half the population, homeless

To note that his government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, electricity, water and sewage.

To realize that his government has annihilated Gaza’s healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing 400 healthcare workers.

To note that his government has destroyed all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no educational opportunities.

To agree with virtually every humanitarian organisation in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which so many thousands of children face malnutrition and famine.

He states clearly that anti-Semitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people. But please, he says to Netanyahu, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use anti-Semitism to distract attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts.

It is not anti-Semitic to hold you (Netanyahu) accountable for your actions.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi Says Why ‘the Wrong Kind of Jews’ Are Supporting Palestine and Gaza

This is a video from Double Down News, one of the left-wing internet news channels that got our right-wing, establishment media so rattled. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is the head of the Jewish Voice for Labour, and another victim of the anti-Semitism smears and witch-hunts. I think she has been purged from the Labour party because she dared to criticise Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. She states here quite clearly that she is the wrong type of Jew, the Jews who aren’t shown on the media giving their support to the Palestinians despite the fact that there are thousands of them and more across the world. Instead the media goes to the Chief Rabbis, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and, heaven forfend, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, all of whom have support for Israel written into their DNA, instead of talking to anti-Zionist Jews like herself. The media presents Jews as the frightened victims of the police guarding Jewish no-go zones. Instead, the opposite is almost true. Jews are demonstrating for Palestine like other, reasonable people. They include Holocaust survivors and the children of Holocaust survivors, concerned that what was done to them will not be inflicted on another people. As for being scared and frightened, she is scared and frightened because she, and people like her, have been abused and silenced. But what is going on in Gaza is not religious, it is an attack on people by settler-colonialism, which is perpetrating human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing and plausible genocide. As for the chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ she states that this is about Palestinians being between those borders, with the implication that this does not mean the extermination of the Israelis.

She is given hope by the many people marching and demonstrating for Gaza across the world, including America, and trying to shut down arms factories. Many of them are Jewish, such as the young man she met today. He had family in Israel, and it was the first demonstration he’d been on, but it was the first time he felt empowered to do so.

The video concludes with her appealing to people to support Double Down News as a way of avoiding right-wing media bias.

The video shows Jewish demonstrators, including Holocaust survivors, marching and holding placards making their opposition to the genocide in Gaza very clear.

Open Britain on the Threat of Farage Becoming Tory Prime Minister

‘Dear David,

We need to talk about Farage. Again.

In a terrifyingly matter-of-fact interview with the Sun’s Harry Cole, Steve Bannon, the architect of Donald Trump’s polarising presidency, gave Farage a glowing endorsement and set out how he would go about succeeding Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.

Bannon believes that Farage could soon ride a wave of populist sentiment all the way to Number 10, especially if the Tories take a drubbing in the next election. (Spoiler: They’re going to.) His strategic advice? Take a page from the MAGA playbook and stage a hostile takeover of the Conservative Party.

And now, in his most recent email to his supporters, Farage has given his strongest hint yet at a potential return to frontline politics.

The prospect of Farage at the helm of a radicalised Tory party, steering the UK down a path of increased nationalism and xenophobia, is deeply troubling. At Open Britain, we’ve been warning about this possibility for some time now. With these brazen comms, it’s starting to look less like a potential distant nightmare and more a well-planned future reality. The 2029 election may seem a long way off, but the foundations for the profound political shift it could bring are being laid now.

We cannot afford to be complacent. It’s essential we spend the next five years growing, organising, mobilising, and fighting for the values that define us as a nation – openness, tolerance, and unity. We need to counter the siren song of populism with a positive vision of a Britain that works for everyone and secure the functional democracy needed to deliver it.

The next five years will be a pivotal period in our history. The decisions we make – and the policies the next government implements – will shape our country for generations to come. Will we succumb to the politics of division and fear in a country that is a democracy in name only, or will we stand together and build a brighter, more inclusive future with a democracy that works for everyone?

It’s up to all of us to get involved, speak out, and make our voices heard. There are more than a quarter of a million of us in Open Britain. We have the potential to be a powerful force for good. Together, we can ensure that the UK remains a beacon of democracy and hope in an increasingly uncertain world.

Let’s do exactly that.

All the best, The Open Britain Team‘

Why am I not surprised the Sun has interviewed Steve Bannon, who was praising the prospect of Farage taking the reigns of government? Way back in the early part of this century, when the Scum got into trouble for printing a cartoon showing pigs demonstrating against being compared with Arabs, Private Eye reminded its readers that Rupert Murdoch’s mighty organ already had 19 judgements against it for racism by the former Press Complaints Commission. It’s probably no surprise then, that they’re backing the man who used to sing Hitler Youth Songs when a boy at public school.

Richard Burgon’s Online May Day Rally with Palestinian Ambassador

I’ve resigned from the Labour party, but Richard Burgon is still one of the few Labour MPs I respect. Considering the ongoing barbarity of the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, I have absolutely no hesitation in putting up the notice for this event.

‘Dear Friend 

Please join me, the Palestinian Ambassador and others for a May Day Rally for Palestine. We must continue the urgent call for an immediate ceasefire and to stop arms sales to Israel.

The rally is taking place online on Wednesday, May 1st at 6.30PM. 

Register your attendance for the rally by clicking here.

I hope you can join me in showing solidarity with Palestine at this critical time for the Palestinian people this May Day. 

May Day Rally for Palestine – Click here register 

Solidarity,

We Own It Celebrate Starmer’s Declaration that He Will Renationalise the Railways and Their Members Who Campaigned for It

‘Dear David,

Labour has just announced that they will take our whole railway into public ownership over the next five years.

And they’ve gone beyond just pledging it – they’ve outlined a detailed plan to make it happen.

We’ll have to make sure they carry out this plan after the election, but this is HUGE – and your campaigning made it happen.

Labour’s pledge only affects England but whether you are in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, you helped make this happen.

Over the last few years, you’ve campaigned and won victories to take several rail services into public hands.

✅ TransPennine Express – renationalised in May 2023

✅ ScotRail – renationalised in April 2022

✅ Southeastern – renationalised in October 2021

✅ Transport for Wales Rail – renationalised in February 2021

✅ Northern Rail – renationalised in March 2020

NOW the rest of our railways will come into public hands where they belong – to work for passengers, not overseas shareholders.

This is YOUR win!

YOU won this – with your online actions, donations, protests, social media sharing, and talking to friends and family.

With your help, we were able to commission polling that shows that 67% of people want rail in public ownership!

We have been able to use today’s announcement as an opportunity to spread the message, with Johnbosco on BBC Radio Sussex and Times Radio.

YOU can quite rightly feel pleased and proud of these victories but there’s still work to do!

Labour is not planning to create a publicly owned ROSCO (ROlling Stock COmpany) to take on new fleets when needed. Currently, private rolling stock companies are extracting hundreds of million per year from our railway. Read our blog ‘Riding the ROSCO gravy train’ on our website.

YOUR campaigning can continue to make a difference.

The cost of travelling by rail has increased substantially in real terms since privatisation. And it’s no wonder: over £30 billion has leaked out of the system in the last 3 decades, mostly going to line shareholders’ pockets.

Under public ownership, we could be saving enough to bring down bills by 18% instead of hiking them every year.

YOU are passionate about public ownership, not only of public transport, but also water, NHS, energy, Royal Mail – and other public services. Public services should be run for people not profit.

So THANK YOU SO MUCH for all you do to fight for public services in public ownership. Whether you donate or not, every action you take adds strength to our movement. Together we can win so much more.

Public ownership is talked about as a solution much more these days: YOU DID THAT!

In solidarity,

Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate, Imogen and John – the We Own It team.’

Starmer’s announcement is welcome, but I’m not entirely convinced. He’s still convinced, like all Thatcherites, that private enterprise is the solution for everything and state ownership and management is utterly dreadful and inefficient. I’m not surprised that he’s said that he isn’t going to create a state-owned rolling stock company, as nationalising anything runs very much against his grain. And I really don’t trust him to honour his promise, not after he’s broken so many in the past. But it’s a start.

Related to this, the Groaniad has put up a piece with a headline that was is needed is complete rail nationalisation. Exactly. And we could have had that, along with the nationalisation of the other utilities and the NHS, and so much more, if Jeremy Corbyn had got into No. 10. And the reason he didn’t was partly because the left-wing press joined the confected lies and smears of the right-wing press that Jezza was a terrible anti-Semite for not backing the Israeli state’s brutal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Over the past few years the Groan has published a number articles supporting policies that were very much part of the Corbynist platform. It’s too bad they didn’t do it when he was head of the Labour party.

Also related: the Torygraph has also, apparently, published an article with a headline quoting Starmer as saying that if he loses his seat, he’ll work in a Kentish Town bookshop. I don’t know which bookshop he means, as I didn’t read the article, but I look forward to him serving customers behind the counter.

Rather than high-tailing it into the House of Lords which is where failed politicos and their donors usually end up.

Labour & Palestine’s May Day Rally

This is another message that came a few days ago. It had another item asking people to sign a form letter to their MPs supporting an early day motion from Zarah Sultana calling for Britain to stop selling arms to Israel. I think I was too late for this to be practical, but if people think otherwise and want me to put it up, I will.

EVENT: May Day Rally for Palestine!

Online, Wed. May 1, 18.30 : Register here // Share here // RT here

Announcing: H.E Ambassador Husam Zomlot // Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP.

Plus: John McDonnell MP, Beth Winter MP, Louise Regan (Palestine Solidarity Campaign & NEU,) Maryam Eslamdoust (TSSA General Secretary,) Gawain Little (GFTU GS,) Jess Barnard (LP NEC member,) Mish Rahman (LP NEC member,) Hugh Lanning (L&P) & Palestinian guests.

Demand a #CeasefireNow, an end to arms sales to Israel & justice for Palestine.

Hosted by Labour & Palestine in association with Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas. Free event but solidarity donations essential towards streaming & hosting costs – please donate £20 or what you can afford here.‘

Wednesday’s Events Bulletin from the Stop the War Coalition

One of the events mention on the bulleting was yesterday, so I’m afraid I’ve missed posting about that in time. However, the other events are still a few days away if anyone wants to sign to them.

‘Event Bulletin – 17/04/24

This Sat: Israel, Iran & the Threat of Wider War

The threat of the war in Gaza spilling over into a wider Middle East war has never been greater.  The tense relationship between Tehran and Tel Aviv is stretched to breaking point. Israel’s missile strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus led to the first ever direct attack by Iran on Israel. Western powers leapt to condemn Iran’s actions yet they conspicuously failed to condemn Israel for its provocations.  Pressure is being put on Netanyahu to avoid further escalation but he is hardly a leader known for his restraint. The world is on tenterhooks as it awaits Israel’s response. And while we wait Israel continues its slaughter in Gaza, continues to use hunger as a weapon of war, and the UK, along with the US, continues to supply Israel with arms.  Join us on Saturday evening for a discussion with eminent commentators, Trita Parsi (Responsible Statecraft), John Rees (Stop the War), Kate Hudson (CND) and Maryam Eslamdoust (TSSA) who will be examining how we got to this point and where we might be headed next.

Click Here to Register

Tomorrow – Palestine & the Unions: The Next Steps for the Movement

The global movement against the genocide in Gaza is having an enormous impact. The pressure on governments to stop arming Israel is huge and we must keep it up. Tomorrow (18 April), we’re bringing together representatives from across the UK and beyond to discuss how trade unionists can continue to deliver effective solidarity to the Palestinian people.

Susan Abdul Salaam from the New Union of Jerusalem will be joining us live as will president and founder of the Amazon Labor Union, Chris Smalls, from the US. PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote, RMT President Alex Gordon, Stop the War’s Andrew Murray and Frankie Leach from Unite’s EC make up an esteemed line-up. Join us for this crucial discussion.

Register Here

National Demonstration: Stop Arming Israel – Ceasefire Now!

Saturday 27 April, 12 noon

Central London, Assembly Point TBA

The next National Demonstration for Palestine will be on Saturday 27 April in Central London. If you haven’t already, please start organising to ensure the highest turnout possible. We’ll have flyers for the demo in our London office from tomorrow. If you can flyer please click below.

I Can Flyer for 27th National Demo‘