Magonia on Right-Wing Tories and UFOs

Going through a stack of old copies of the small press UFO magazine, Magonia, yesterday evening I came across a couple of articles, which mentioned the bizarre attitudes of two right-wing Tory MPs. One of these was a humorous piece about the Eurosceptic politico Teddy Taylor, who was beating his drum against the EU because they wanted to set up a commission to study UFOs. The article was in Magonia 48 for January 1994, titled ‘Watch the skies – and your wallets’ and ran

According to newspaper reports, Eurosceptic Tory MP Teddy Taylor has been looking into a potentially profitable new gravy-train for clued-up ufologists. In a Parliamentary question to Trade and Industry Secretary Michael Heseltine about “unidentified flying objects and aliens in the asteroid belt”, and their “implications for public policy” he has been trying to shake loose information on a ‘fact-finding tour’ (i.e. publically funded bunfight) about UFOs by Euro MPs. Taylor fumes: “These MEPs have been swanning around Europe asking people if they’ve seen one. They’ve come to the staggering conclusion that aliens might exist, but that you can’t be certain.” Amazingly, it appears the European parliament is considering setting up a Euro UFO Observation Centre as an official European Institution. “This may sound fun, but it makes me angry. My constituents have lost jobs because of the EC’s incompetence and nuttery.”

It makes us angry too – if the EC (sorry, EU) is throwing money at UFOs, why is none of it coming our way? We are investigating. You have not heard the last of this. Brussels, be warned!

The second is more serious, and comes from a review of Nick Redfern’s On the Trail of the Saucer Spies: UFOs and Government Surveillance (Anomalist Books 2006) In Magonia 92, June 2006, p. 18. Redfern’s book also claims that various extreme right-wing groups have tried to infiltrate Ufology. This comes from an anonymous individual, who claims that he was a member of Special Branch tasked with combating such infiltration. This is highly debatable, as the extreme right-wing group involved was APEN, which was a hoax perpetrated by a student at Cambridge University. The supposed whistleblower also doesn’t mention real instances of right-wing infiltration, like a conference on conspiracies set up in the 1990s that gave a platform to anti-Semites and Nazis like Eustace Mullins, or how some of them also joined the ‘Witness Support Group’. This was supposed to be a group to support people, who had witnessed UFOs or been abducted by aliens. Its newsletter, Rapport, contained some extremely nasty anti-immigrant ravings by a member of the BNP, who put all his hate into sub-Kiplingesque poetry. The group ended in tragedy when one its members committed suicide after some moron told them they were under CIA surveillance.

But the Magonians also pointed out in the review that one of the leaders of the big British UFO organisation, BUFORA, Patrick Wall, also had very extreme right-wing views and deeply unsavoury connections.

And if we are going on about the far right connections of ufology, then what about BUFORA’s one time President Patrick Wall, often regarded as the most racist and reactionary of all post-War Tory MPs. Wall was associated with a shadowy ‘anti-communist’ movement, the World Anti-Communist League, said to be financed by Saudi Arabia and Taiwan (then under the dictatorship of Chiang Kai Shek), and involved in channelling funds to all sorts of extreme right organisations, and used to channel money for the CIA to help set up the Provisional IRA.

With friends like that, who needs to do any infiltrating?

Actually, if Teddy Taylor was worried about politicians with weird views about UFOs wasting public money, he needn’t have gone as far as the EU. One was much closer to home in the shape of the Earl of Clancarty, otherwise known as Brinsley Le Poer Trench. Trench was a market gardener, who inherited a place in the House of Lords as he was a cousin of an Anglo-Irish lord. He was very racist, anti-immigrant, and a supporter of Ian Smith’s Whites-only government in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He also believed in UFOs, ancient astronauts and that the Earth was hollow and inhabited by subterranean civilisations. In 1979 he organised a debate in the House on UFOs, in which he also asked questions about what the government knew about alien bases in the asteroid belt. Uncovered Editions published the documents from the debate as a book in the 1990s. Trench’s debate was notorious at the time, and one of the countercultural presses published a piece about it, calling it ‘a most visionary and loony debate’.

Finally, why the EU was certainly flawed, membership in it is far preferable to the chaos and economic destruction that’s going to hit this country if the Eurosceptics like Taylor get their way. MEPs spending public money to ask people if they’ve seen alien spacecraft is a small price to pay for jobs, proper funding for industry, access to the single market and working migrants and students bringing their skills and hard work to this country.

Vox Political and Eoin Clarke Refute Smears of Tory Warmongers Against Corbyn

Mike over at Vox Political has produced another excellent blog post utterly demolishing the lies of the Tory warmongers that Jeremy Corbyn supported IRA terrorism, and that his election would somehow leave Britain more vulnerable to atrocities such as the one on Monday night in Manchester.

His piece contains a graphic by Eoin Clarke showing that far from supporting terrorism, Corbyn consistently condemned paramilitary violence and sincerely looked and worked for peace in Northern Ireland. As such, he was respected not only by the Republicans but also by Loyalists.

Clarke’s graphic states, for example:

* In November 1994 Corbyn signed a parliamentary early day motion condemning the Birmingham Pub Bombings committed by the Provisional IRA.

* The same year, Corbyn held several meetings with four Loyalist leaders to discuss the release of Neil Latimer, a member of the UDR, and to be informed that October at the Labour Party’s conference of the ceasefire the following week.

* In October 2015 Ian Paisley’s wife told the Belfast Telegraph that she found the Labour leader courteous and polite, and thought he was a ‘gentleman’.

* In February 1987 the Times apologised to Jeremy Corbyn. Murdoch’s British ‘paper of record’ had smeared him by claiming that he had not phoned the police to warn them of a suspected Provisional IRA terrorist in London. In fact Corbyn had.

* In August 1988 the Irish Times hailed him as ‘a tireless campaigner for the Irish.’ Corbyn had worked to the quash the wrongful convictions of the Guildford Four, and reopen the inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

* Corbyn in fact only ever met Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams after Adams had been elected to parliament, 14 years after the commencement of the Troubles, in Adams’ capacity as an elected MP. He did, however, oppose Thatcher’s ban on broadcasting the voices of elected Sinn Fein politicians, and was keen that Adams’ constituents in West Belfast should not be silenced.

* When Adams visited Westminster in 1996, Corbyn was only one of a number of Labour MPs, who met him. The meetings were solely concerned with reviving the IRA ceasefire. This was achieved several months later. And Bill Clinton, who was then president of the US, had the previous year invited Adams to the Whitehouse. As Clarke’s graphic points out, this places Corbyn’s meeting with Adams firmly within the context of wider attempts by politicians to secure peace in Ulster.

Clarke does admit that there are two incidents, which are controversial, and do require an explanation.

* Shortly after the Brighton bombing of the Tory conference, Corbyn and other MPs met Republicans in Westminster. Corbyn’s motive for doing so was to end the strip searching of female prisoners on remand. However, Clarke states that the meeting was insensitive and wrong.

* In May 1987 Corbyn stood for a minutes’ silence to show respect for eight people, who had been killed by the British armed forces in Northern Ireland at a meeting of Irish sympathisers in London. Although one was entirely innocent, seven were members of the Provisional IRA. The circumstances of their deaths were unclear, and they may have been the victims of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. The European Court ordered the payment of £10,000 each to the eight victims’ families.

* As for Adams himself, Clarke states that it was the Tory government, who began talking to him eleven years before Corbyn became an MP. Adams had been released in prison for the secret talks the Conservatives were holding with Irish paramilitaries following the deaths of 476 people in 1972, the worse year of the Troubles. This was revealed in MI5 files released under the 30 year rule. The files also showed that the Tories considered that Adams genuinely wanted a ceasefire and an end to the violence, and that his answers to questions were ‘reasonable and moderate’.

So while Corbyn did meet with Gerry Adams and other Irish Nationalists, he also worked with Ulster Loyalists. It certainly appears from this that Corbyn wanted to find a fair, peaceful solution to the violence and hatred in Northern Ireland.

Mike’s piece also includes a short video, running just under a two minutes, by the Labour MP Chris Williams. Williams points out that 14 years ago in 2003, Corbyn had warned that ‘the Iraq war will set off a spiral of conflict that will fuel the wars, terrorism and misery of future generations.’ He also warned several times that police cuts would leave the country more vulnerable to terrorism. He also warned that intervention in Libya would lead to it becoming a breeding ground for terrorism. He also objected to selling arms to Saudi Arabia for the same reason. Williams states that Labour has a crystal-clear policy to make Britain safer, unlike the Tories. They intend to undo the cuts to the police force, and have the longer term goal of rethinking this country’s foreign policy. This means not sending more of our courageous young men and women to die in wars no-one invited us to take part in, and destabilising countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. And Williams asks his viewers to challenges the Tories, the rich, the media magnates and the cheerleaders for these wars in voting for Labour. New approaches and responses are required following the evil terrorist atrocity in Manchester, and Labour has precisely done that.

Mike also includes a wonderful little video of Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy refuting Michael Fallon, the Tory defence minister. Guru-Murthy quotes Boris Johnson at him. Boris had said that the Iraq invasion didn’t create the problem of Islamist terrorism – the attack on the Twin Towers occurred before that – but it did sharpen their resentment. Fallon then attacks the quote, believing it was said by Jeremy Corbyn. When Guru-Murthy points out it’s by Johnson, he then flails around trying to claim that it shows that Johnson really concurs with him, that this does not explain terrorism. But the Channel 4 newsman goes on, and quotes Boris as saying that you can’t disagree with the nay-sayers, who say that the invasion has increased Islamic resentment. Even after he’s been told, Fallon continues to state that he’d have to see what Boris Johnson really says for himself, and denies that Britain’s foreign policy explains away terrorism.

Mike comments drily if there’s anyone, who doesn’t agree with Jeremy Corbyn? (Apart, obviously, from Michael Fallon).

And at the very top of the piece is a quote from the former director of MI5, Theresa Manningham-Buller, that the Iraq invasion ‘undoubtedly increased the terrorist threat in Britain’.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/05/27/dont-believe-the-warmongers-on-jeremy-corbyn-get-your-story-straight/

So Jeremy Corbyn was right about the Iraq invasion. He’s been right about the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, and he was right about the cuts to the police force. And he is very right to demand a ban on arms sales to the Saudis.

And while two of his actions in support of the Republicans in Northern Ireland have been insensitive, he is not a supporter of terrorism, as the Scum, Heil and Torygraph would have us all believe.

Go to Mike’s blog and read and watch the full article. Eoin Clarke’s information about Corbyn is in the form of a graphic, so that you can post it elsewhere on line to refute the Tories and their stooges, who still continue with their smears about the Labour leader.

And if you really want to see a just end to the violence in the Middle East, and a sensible policy to eradicate Islamist terror in this country, then vote Labour on June 8th.

If we don’t, if we continue to follow the Thatcherite warmongering of Blair, Cameron and May, it will only lead to worse violence and terror in the Middle East and at home.

The Sacrifice of Isaac: Francis Wheen Spouts Mumbo Jumbo

You may remember that way back in the last decade there was a spate of sceptical books attacking what their authors saw as pseudo-science. These included various New Age beliefs, and very often also Creationism and Intelligent Design. These books included Bad Science, by the Roman Catholic writer and science jounralist, Ben Goldacre, and How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, by Francis Wheen. Wheen’s a left-wing journalist, who has, I believe, written for the Guardian. He is a frequent guest on the News Quiz, a satirical panel show about the news on BBC’s Radio 4. In his introduction he stated that part of his purpose in writing the book was to defend the Enlightenment. These revivals of what he considered irrationalism threatened it. He confessed his admiration for the Enlightenment and its values, including its secularism.

Strange Days and Paranoia, Terrorism and Psychiatric Abuse of Dissidents in the 1970s

Now Wheen is an excellent writer. His book on the paranoia and chaos of the ’70s, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia, is very good. It begins with Nixon and Watergate, and expands to include the fear surrounding Mao and the Gang of Four. He traces the way Mao’s doctrine of guerilla warfare formed the template for that decades western urban terrorists, including the Provisional IRA in Britain, the Rote Armee Fraktion or the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany and the Maoist terrorists in France. These latter emerged following the failure of the 1968 uprising to topple French capitalism, and drew intellectual inspiration and support from radical academics. One of these latter appears to have done little except march around his university campus disrupting the classes of other lecturers he considered to be bourgeois and reactionary. He also discusses the murky events surrouding Harold Wilson’s prime ministership and the preparations to remove him in a coup by those who suspected him of being a KGB agent. One of the most fascinating, and relevant pieces in the book is his description of how Soviet psychiatry came up with a new mental illness that would justify the forcible incarceration of dissidents. This was done under the pretext that they must be insane to challenge the great, Soviet workers’ paradise. The Soviet political abuse of psychiatry strongly influenced the BBC SF series, Blake’s 7. In the series, the totalitarian Federation used mind control, including drugged food and water, and the conditioning, brainwashing and psychiatric brutalisation of dissidents to maintain its brutal and corrupt rule. This particular episode in Soviet history should be particularly alarming and provide a stark warning to people of faith concerning some of the pronouncements made by contemporary atheists. Some of the New Atheists, like the Rational Response Squad, made it clear they thought religion was a psychiatric disorder. Even now some professional neurologists have stated that they look forward to the day when neuroscience will be used to cure radical or dangerous religious beliefs. Blake’s 7’s fictional federation also closed churches. Science Fiction has been described as the literature of warning, and Blake’s 7 provided a fictional treatment of the Soviet psychiatric persecution of dissidents. The Soviet medicalisation of religion as a psychiatric disorder is one that some atheist scientists now seem to be following on their own. They’re either unaware of or unconcerned by their totalitarian predecessors.

Wheen’s Mumbo Jumbo and the Sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis

Much of Wheen’s book on ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ is unremarkable. It tackles some of the bizarre New Age beliefs. It shows his own left-wing views in criticising Thatcherism and her pursuit of the free market. Wheen is, however, an atheist. Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, to which Wheen has contributed, has joked about how Wheen called him an ‘irrational theist’. The book makes it clear that Wheen views religion as not just wrong, but dangerous. It shows the effect of 9/11 and the subsequent jihadi attacks on atheist opinions towards religion in general. Wheen does not consider them the action of just one religion, or even or a movement within that religion, but due to religion as a whole. He specifically blames the patriarch Abraham and the sacrifice of his son, Isaac, for causing suicide bombing. God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is, in Wheen’s view, a demand for the blind faith and for believers to give up their lives in the service of their God. It is the origin of the blind faith of the suicide bombers. He then rants about how Abraham was a barbarian who should be excluded from the tables of civilised people.

This is profoundly wrong. Wheen misses the point about the sacrifice of Isaac completely. His Comments do, however, say volumes about received atheist opinion towards religion. Mostly, this is that many prominent atheists actually aren’t concerned about the basic facts behind religious events and phenomena before they utter their opinions.

Abraham and God’s Mercy: God Unlike Pagan Gods, Does Not Demand Human Sacrifice

For Jews, Abraham is not a symbol of fanaticism and blind faith, but mercy. This is shown by his conversation with the Almighty concerning the number of good people, who would have to be in Sodom before the Lord destroyed the city. This goes down to about ten, showing that even if only a minuscule number of righteous people are present in a place so steeped in evil that the outcry against it goes up to the Lord Himself, God will withhold His anger from it. As for the sacrifice of Isaac, that has to be seen in the context of the pagan religious practices of the Ancient Near East. Human sacrifice was an accepted part of the ancient Near Eastern religions. It’s found in the law codes of the Hittites. In ancient Phoenicia, Canaan and Carthage infant children were burned alive as sacrifices to the pgan gods. The tophets, the sacrificial altars on which these poor mites were killed, have been found in the remains of Carthage itself. The remains of these sacrifices have also been found in ancient Canaan. The point the story of God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac makes is that the Lord does not want people to sacrifice humans to Him. Yes, He rewards the faith that makes people wish to fulfill His commands, even to death, but does not want them to make that sacrifice. Abraham does indeed make the pyre and prepare to sacrifice his son, but this is halted by God sending a ram, caught in a thicket, for the patriarch to sacrifice instead. The whole point of the story is against suicide bombing.

Wheen Ignorant of Scholarship on Ancient Paganism and the Meaning of Isaac’s Sacrifice

Few people are experts in Ancient Near Eastern culture. But you don’t have to be. I remember studying the sacrifice of Isaac in RE (Religious Education) at my old Church of England School. Wheen went to one of the British public schools, which in this case, for transatlantic readers, means that he went to an elite private school. Despite having a very expensive education, he clearly either didn’t study this part of the Bible in RE, or simply wasn’t paying attention when they did. Even if they didn’t study that part of the Bible, Wheen could still have tried to understand it simply by consulting a commentary. There are a number of good commentaries on scripture, some of which are available online. But Wheen didn’t. He simply assumed that the apparent message he read into the text was the correct one. His failure to consult a commentary or what Christians and Jews actually historically believe and say about this event also shows a completely dismissive attitude towards their beliefs. He appears to beleive that traditional Jewish and Christian views of scripture are of so little importance, so automatically wrong, that an atheist should not even remotely consider studying them before making their pronouncements.

The Marxist Origin of Suicide Bombing

As for suicide bombing, although this is now a favourite weapon of militant Islam, it was first used by the Tamil Tigers. As Marxists, they were atheists, who clearly wre not following a divine command, still less of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus Christ. But this is not mentioned by Wheen. Possibly he didn’t know about it. It does, however, show the deep antipathy of part of the atheist Left towards Judeo-Christian religion. There’s also an element of the secularist belief that all religions are somehow the same. If that is true, then therefore all religions must be equally violent. Thus Wheen sought to find the ultimate origin of the contemporary jihadist attacks not in today’s politics, or the violent theology and ideology of the terrorists themselves, but further back in Abraham’s lifetime, so he could blame and disparage all of the three Abrahamic faiths. Wheen’s other book are well worth reading, and much of his book on Mumbo Jumbo is too. Rather than being a product of reasoned thought and careful consideration, Wheen’s views on the sacrifice of Isaac in the Old Testament are merely the product of atheist ignorance and anti-religious bigotry.