5/17/11: NEWSFLASH! Kenn Thomas interview tonight at 8:30 central time on Badlands radio.
5/14/11: Kenn Thomas wrote a new foreword to the recent re-issue of Jim Keith's Casebook on the Men In Black--a oretty good one, too. "The impulse to control and suppress knowledge, energies and realities that somehow pose a threat to the status quo is perhaps America's strongest legacy from the 1940s through the 1960s. It famously spawned a popular culture that stretches now from those cool old 1950s sci-fi movies to the tour de farces of today, where the absurd Men in Black take their place among a pantheon of cartoon heroes..." Available from AUP.
5/7/11: Two lite left opinion spots on the interweb recently ran essays attacking conspiracy theorists; Alternet bemoans the "more lax personal morality" of this imaginary category of people and the writer at Salon has problems with the "hundreds of little confusing bits of information" they seem to require when looking at and thinking about the world.
Steamshovel asked Konformist Rob what he thought about it and he replied:
What is telling about both the Alternet and Salon hit jobs on conspiracy theory is they are both written from a supposed liberal perspective. This is no surprise, as what is left of liberalism (which fortunately isn't very much) has devolved in less than four years into a pathetic group of lapdogs and apologists for Barack Obama. This is what I warned about and expected with the 2008 takeover of the Democratic Party by the Obama Koolaid Kult. As liberalism has bottomed out in its depraved bankruptcy, it stands for nothing but defending a man who stands or nothing. The end result is any criticism of the political establishment (which, at its best, is what conspiracy theory is all about) that Obama now heads is considered a swipe at their naked emperor.
The good news is that even most fervent former supporters of Obama, after countless betrayals, see Obama for the backstabbing fraud he is. Even if they "support" him, it is merely cynically tactical of the "best of the worst" sort. Sadly, they are being shut out and marginalized, although hopefully that will radicalize them beyond the current frame of debate.
In any case, Obama has sanctioned the criminal theft by Wall Street, embraced the neocon military vision, and proposed austerity when a New Deal is needed. And what do the yuppie scum who have taken over liberalism get their panties wet over? Questions from a second-rate Reality TV game-show host with a bad hairpiece about Obama's birth certificate. Frankly, I think Obama should thank Donald Trump for letting him off so easy...
Rob later noted:
I actually have to agree with the argument that showing the [bin Laden death] photos won't silence the conspiracy theories. Certainly photos of Osama's supposed recent death won't sway me much in the age of Photoshop. Indeed, you could make the argument that the whole Birther conspiracy and the release of the alleged COLB was a dry run to test the public response, and they can cite the skepticism on the validity of that to argue releasing the photos will settle nothing...
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1/11: Comic book personality Stan Lee recently received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame that more fittingly belonged to Jack Kirby. Because of a pending court battle between Kirby's estate and Disneycorp -- which purchased for billions of dollars the Marvel comics creations/licensing properties that clearly were mostly the product of page-rate earner Kirby's hard work and brilliant mind -- even some of Kirby's fans and admirerers have soft pedaled their dismay. To gain a better appreciation for the powerhouse of creativity that is Jack Kirby, check Rob Steibel's daily blog, Kirby Dynamics, at kirbymuseum.org/blogs/dynamics. Kenn Thomas' interview with Jack Kirby from 1976, with new introductory remarks, appears in the current issue (#35) of Jack Kirby Collector, available from twomorrows.com.
1/30/11: Uncle Icke? Gary Trudeau's Hunter S Thompson figure, Uncle Duke, comes to the same question David Icke did thirty years later.
1/31/11: Price breakdown on Volume 5, Number 7 of David Childress' World Explorer Magazine: "$5 USD; 5 Euro; 4 Fetish Stories..." Another paramag, Nexus, has stopped distribution in North America.
2/1/11: Paved with good intentions...Tim Beckley has let loose with another one, including contribution from Steamshovel's Kenn Thomas.
Available now on Kindle from amazon.
2/2/11: Long time Steamshovel correpsondent Drew Hemphill has had his research cited extensively in a new article by Dan Eden (Gary Vey) who had exposed James Hurtak's ties to Project HAARP and the NSA: naturalresonancerevolution.blogspot.com
2/3/11:
Comics Journal reports on one Mickey Mouse aspect of the American
involvment in the Egyptian conniption.
2/8/11: The Octopus pops out of memory hole waters just in time for the Reagan remembrances:
"The Octopus Conspiracy: One Woman’s Search for Her Father’s Killer"
2/26/11: The current Middle East mayhem as H. L. Mencken might have viewed it, by Steamshovel ally and CEO of the fabulous book publishing alternative, Dissdent Books, Nicholas Towasser:
H.L. Mencken in Tahir Square: Democracy or Destruction?
3/11/11: Respected long-time researcher Bill Kelly has a new petition for JFK assassination files. He makes the point that no hearings have been held on the subject since 1997, "despite new and critically important information accumulating on the assassination...Many relevant documents have been destroyed or have not been declassified and released to the public by government agencies despite the JFK Act and Freedom of Information Act requests." Kelly asks for signatures at
and adds "I personally ask that you compose a very short letter to the Oversight Committee Chairman, Representative Darrell Issa, stating that you have signed the Petition for open hearings on the JFK Act, and request to be personally informed by e-mail when these expected hearings will be held so that you may make plans to attend, view them live on CSPAN and review their proceedings...You may FAX your letter to FAX Number (202) 225-3974."
3/12/11: Skylaire Alfvegren, the Fortean who focuses on that small section of the Fortean phenomenal world located in the American southwest, gets interviewed on The Church Of Mabus Radio Show late Saturday/early Sunday April 2 & 3, with the archives broadcast later at: Paranormal Radio
4/9/11: The Tim Leary episode of The Outer Limits: "Expanding Human" because the classics never get old!
4/4/11: Feral House has posted an excerpt at its pre-order site for the new book JFK & UFO here: JFK & UFO: Military Industrial Conspiracy and Cover Up from Maury Island to Dallas
Steamshovel Press is best reached via e-mail at k23thomas@yahoo.com
"And in December 2012, the gods will return from their long journey and appear again here on Earth. At least that is what the Mayan calendar, and Mayan written and oral lore, would have us believe. The so-called gods-in other words, the extraterrestrials-will come again. We're in store for a 'god shock' of major proportions."
Ah, it's good to have Erich Von Daniken still out there promoting his "paleocontact" theory. Chariots of the Gods? First appeared in 1968 and since then entire generations of enthusiasts for this material, as well as many Carl Sagan skeptical scientist types condemning it, have come and gone. Von Daniken himself suffered years in jail on tax fraud charges-- not pursued in court until after the publication of his first book-- and over the years has been caught up short over several projects promising proof of the idea that primitive man encountered advanced extraterrestrials. About these things these days he seems contrite, even self-deprecating, while still standing four-square behind the overall thesis.
In Twilight of The Gods, von Daniken sets out again to offer proof of it in the strata of the Puma Punku remains in the Bolivian Andes, a few miles southwest of the city of Tiwanaku, by legend constructed in a single night by space gods. The place contains enormous, precision cut stone blocks, apparently machine tooled by a culture that created an astronomical calendar reflecting 15,000 years of history.
Why do few people know about this, asks Von Daniken? "Is there some sort of conspiracy going on?" As a matter of fact, the space gods theory lately has been getting much more attention with the appearance of cable TV shows like Ancient Aliens, upon which Von Daniken has recently appeared, along with the likes of Christopher Dunn, the engineer who has done much work pointing out similar anomalies in the ruins of ancient Egypt; and David Hatcher Childress, whose publishing house for this kind of thing virtually makes him Von Daniken squared. Von Daniken's endurance in the popular paraculture does, in fact, speaks to the ongoing value of the questions he raises, and he does underscore again in this book the question mark in the title of his most famous.
Many scoff at the idea as unscientific, although scientists as respected as DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick have accepted and even championed the idea of "directed panspermia" as scientifically sound. Von Daniken's critics also have called him racist, or at least willfully ignorant of the authentic accomplishments of ancient human civilizations. Few doubt, however, that space god theory is at least an entertaining way to speculate. Witness, for instance, the enormous hardback reprint of Jack Kirby's comics series The Eternals, originally called Return of the Gods before legal fears stepped in. Kirby took Von Daniken's ideas in directions never intended, as do almost all of Von Daniken's readers and supporters.
Jack Kirby's take on Van Daniken, later retitled.
The full series available in hardback.
More than just entertainment, Von Daniken's ongoing presence in pop culture is an occasion to learn and review little known facts about parapolitical history. Von Daniken begins Twilight of the Gods with "World Ice Theory" the proto- Nazi occult belief of Hans Horbiger Welteislehre. In 1894 Welteishire invented a new type of valve essential for compressors still in widespread use today, no small accomplishment in the history of technology. But Von Daniken condemns Nazi racism and describes moon hoax theories as "anti-Americanism", but mentioning that Paperclip Nazis he knew like Werner Von Braun who worked on the moon program as all "honorable men." Thus, Twilight of the Gods returns students of conspiracy to a familiar modern moral quagmire, giving the book a dimension not found in the discussion it renews on the mysteries of Tiwanaku and other aspects panspermia that academia just wants to ignore.
Stanton Friedman is a very similar personality, a long-time UFO investigator who has outlasted his many critics in the public arena. Friedman spent the mid 1950s getting degrees in Physics from the University of Chicago--a classmate to Carl Sagan!-- and fourteen years working as a nuclear physicist. His interest in UFOs began in the late 1950s and has spent decades rooting out information from witnesses and archives, famously coining the situation as "the cosmic Watergate," a catch phrase the dates the era of his largest popularity. Newbies to UFOlogy may yet still be impressed by his hard science background, but he's more impressive to enthusiasts of the subject for his long list of hard-researched UFO books. Among them: Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience; TOP SECRET/MAJIC, and Crash At Corona: The Definitive Study of the Roswell Incident. His last most recent book was entitled Flying Saucers and Science, and this current one, co-authored with educator Kathleen Marden, niece of the earliest of modern abductees, Betty and Barney Hill, is called Science Was Wrong.
The book catalogs in an almost Fortean way the long list of scientific developments initially derided and dismissed by the scientific community. This includes air travel itself, of course, but also meteors, X-Rays, the telegraph, space exploration, germ theory--it's a long, sad list. Friedman, in fact, underscores the damage done not only from neglect of new discoveries, such as the slow governmental response to HIV/AIDS, but also by misguided official response to notions such as Social Darwinism, which led to the Eugenics movement in Germany and America. The connection to UFOs is obvious, of course, but the book does not get bogged down in, say, the particulars of the Roswell debate where Friedman often finds himself. Rather, it draws broader conclusions about the responsibility of scientists to get ahead of the UFO phenom, whatever it is. Whether one is a UFO believer or not, this is an essential ethical argument connected to that topic, science in general and the necessity of historical review. Whether or not the Roswell crash story breaks open one day, Friedman's role in bringing this debate before audiences for decades makes him an indispensable public figure.