Our Father Who Art In Space


Let's talk about religion and ETs – or advanced beings (ABs) if you will.

Author Paul Von Ward is apparently a member of the exopolitics crowd. In his book, We’ve Never Been Alone: A History of Extraterrestrial Intervention, he takes the exopolitical stance that otherwordly beings are here, no argument about it, so we better start thinking about mankind’s relationship with those visitors.

Von Ward accepts evidence of AB reality through the works of such writers as Zecharia Sitchin, the whole ancient astronauts were the basis for the gods/God shtick.

Yup, YHVH was only an alien with superior technology that he used to control his faction of humans. Apparently in ancient times advanced beings showed up and each one had his own share of the mankind market. They fought among themselves and then left, leaving behind the structure of what Von Ward calls “god-cults.”

The reason why many nations and religious groups are fighting among themselves, says Von Ward, is because of the ABs’ meddling in our affairs in the dim past.

I wouldn’t mind it if he presented his argument mainly as speculation. The trouble I have with the exopolitics crowd is their evidence is dubious. Yes, there are strange things in this world, UFOs in the sense of unidentified phenomena, but to take a leap of faith and say it’s all part of a grand scheme by aliens/ABs as Von Ward and others lay out – sorry, I don’t buy it.

Just because someone claims he was contacted by otherwordly beings, receiving messages warning mankind to avoid great disasters – that’s at best an anecdote without any hard evidence to back it up.

Saying something doesn’t make it so.

By the way, I’m a genius.

Yeah, That'll Work


Anyone in favor of skeptocracy, government by skeptics?

That concept popped into my head the other day. After all, skeptics are supposed to stress rationality over emotion. Dealing with facts, not opinion, should lead to better government.

In the previous issue I talked about Elevatorgate, an incident from last year that proved how skeptics are all on the same page when it comes to The Truth. Rebecca Watson, of skepchick.org, was at a conference where she spoke about sexism and skepticism. She claimed a male conference attendee hit on her in an elevator when she was returning to her room. She hated being regarded as a sex object – even though she appeared semi-nude in a couple of Skepchick calendars.




Her take on the incident whipped up a storm of controversy among the skeptical community. Atheist Richard Dawkins wrote a satirical piece involving a letter to a fictional Muslim woman, a victim of severe oppression in another country, telling her that her problems were nothing compared to poor Rebecca’s.

Rebecca responded by saying that she would never again endorse any of Dawkins’ books. So there!

Another skeptical blogger thought Rebecca was blowing the elevator incident way out of proportion, adding the letter “T” to her last name when referring to her. How rational.

Skeptics are supposed to deal with facts, looking beyond ad hominem attacks and cheap shots. Rebecca in an YouTube video advised that instead of hitting on her, lonely men should invest in inflatable love dolls.

I wonder if Rebecca was in power if she would set up a Junior Anti-Sex League like in George Orwell’s novel 1984.

Anyone in favor of skeptocracy?

Another Year On Paper


February 2012 marks 18 years I’ve been zining about offbeat topiX. I can’t remember the eXact date of that freezing winter night when I sat down at a computer and roughed out a short four page issue, Ray X X-Rayer #1.

It was a way to get through the drudgery of the long winters around here. But as time has passed neither winter nor zining has become easier.

Back in those early years I was reviewed in Factsheet 5, the leading publication for zine reviews. That exposure did generate a few readers but nothing like the hundreds I have with my blog.

I think print zines suffer from the Poet Syndrome: for every 100 people who write poetry, only one reads poems by others on a regular basis.

So as another winter drags on − despite its relative mildness – I’m still putting out a zine, albeit in a much shorter form, one double-sided sheet, two pages total, for those who prefer paper over photons.

All four of them.

Stromy Relationships


A girl has finally joined the boys club.

The Liberty Net is a long-existing group of amateur radio operators who meet weekly to discuss “current events” from the perspective of angry white men who think the New World Order / The Illuminati is taking over mankind.

Sometimes it sounds like the guys are falling all over themselves because Nissa wants to be in their treehouse. Of course, one woman in the group reflects on how most voices in the areas of both ham radio and conspiracy theory are male.

I’ve only heard Nissa a few times but from what she says I don’t detect that streak of racism evinced by others in the net.

The other night a new commenter said he hoped the mainstays of the group weren’t engaging in racism when talking about President Obama. The commenter said he didn’t like the policies of the president but there was no reason to attack the POTUS based on just his race.

A LibNetter replied that Obama could be as white as a ghost and they would still criticize him for destroying the great nation of the United States of America. But as usual a couple of others came on later with sharp comments about illegal immigrants and poor minorities, their prejudice thinly disguised.

But this isn’t surprising when you consider that Kevin Alfred Strom has been involved with the Liberty Net. He runs the group’s Website, www.3950.net, and has been instrumental in setting up the live online audio stream with phone patches for the group when they’re on the air.

It’s not that hard to find unflattering articles about him on the Web.

Kevin Strom

Strom once belonged to a neo-Nazi group called the National Alliance. He created a radio program called “American Dissident Voices” to help the NA spread its messages promoting racism and anti-Semitism.

In 1990 Strom married Kirsten Kaiser who eventually left him. She has spoken out about her troubled marriage. They had three children. When the middle one was diagnosed with autism, Strom blamed his wife for the disorder. He took the two “worthy ones” with him, leaving Kaiser with the child that “violated,” if you will, the Nazi eugenics code.

Strom ended up marrying a second time in 2000 but that marriage fell apart after she caught him with digital child porn. In January 2008 during a plea hearing Strom pled guilty to having child pornography images on his computer. He spent 23 months in jail and was released in September 2008 with time served.

Strom maintains that his second wife set him up, that’s he’s really the victim of a politically motivated plot. He says he only pled guilty so that he would spend less time in jail and be re-united with his children sooner. Strom now says he wants to spend time with all of his children, including the severely autistic one.

I wonder what Nissa, the Liberty Net’s only female member, thinks about this. She must have some sort of maternal instinct that would lead her to question why Kevin turned against his autistic child in the first place.

Kevin Strom’s estranged second wife, Elisha Strom, has also generated her share of articles online. Like Kevin she’s ended up spending some time sitting in jail over images on her computer but of cops, not kids.

Elisha Strom

On her blog, I HeArTE JADE (I Love/Hate JADE), she had been sharing images and addresses of members of the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force.

Elisha lives in Virginia and it’s forbidden under that state’s code to publish images and addresses of law-enforcement officers with the intent to harass or intimidate. In July 2009 she was arrested and charged with violating that law in regards to an ATF officer who was also a JADE member.

But she was found not guilty in court, the judge saying there was no evidence that Elisha reasonably knew her actions had put the officer in danger. Elisha had stated that the addresses of the officers were public knowledge, easy to find on the Web.

So she was able to continue her blog, publishing photos of JADE men with cute nicknames like “Longhead,” “Pringle” and “Porn Star.”

When found innocent of the charge, Elisha was quoted by a local newspaper as saying: “Oh, my God, I’m not a stalker.” An interesting statement from someone who follows cops around and photographs them as a “hobby.” Some people in bloggerdom consider her court case a victory for free speech.

So how did JADE attract Elisha’s eye? One of its officers was involved into the child porn investigation of her husband Kevin.

Elisha still shares some of Kevin’s ideals, saying that she is a white separatist.

As for Kevin, on his Website he has referred to her as a “perjurer,” blaming her for his “unjust” jailing.

Rosary Workout





For some people exercise is their religion. But what if you could combine physical and spiritual fitness in one program?

Author Peggy Bowes, a devout Catholic, has the answer. Through her book, "The Rosary Workout," you can discover how to pray and exercise at the same time.

I was completely unaware of this Rosary-exercise combo until I happened to hear Peggy on the radio while dialing through the shortwave band. EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network, has a SW radio outlet. EWTN is a cable TV channel started up by a nun in the 1980s to reach the masses to draw them to the masses (and the collective collection plate). Peggy was a guest on the program, "Blessed 2 Play," described as "spiritual sports radio."

For those of you unaware of the Rosary, it is a set of prayer beads that loops back on itself, a circle with one row hanging from the bottom with a small crucifix. Think of a large O with a tail. The prayer holds a bead between thumb and forefinger, each bead representing a prayer that has to be said in proper sequence.

The saying of the Rosary can taken some time, especially if the person is meditating on the spiritual aspect of the rite which is supposed to be the whole point of the rite. But with practice it can be over fairly quickly. One time I attended a funeral and the priest sped along as he lead everyone in prayer. His rate of utterance was close to what you hear on TV or radio when the ad announcer races through all the disclaimers, twenty-seconds-worth of words said in less than five. I'm not judging that priest; maybe he was running late and had another funeral to attend or a bad bladder.

At amazon.com there's this review of "The Rosary Workout:"

Kneel. Stand. Sit. Stand. Kneel again. "Catholic calisthenetics" is no longer just for church! The Rosary Workout is the real thing: exercise science and authentic Catholic teachings combined to strengthen body and soul and deepen your awareness of God's presence in every facet of your life.

I find this concept of saying the Rosary to regulate exercise a bit disconcerting. I was raised by parents devoted to the Roman Catholic Church. The Rosary was a sacred rite not to be mixed with ordinary secular activities. It was to be used for times of deep meditation or special intervention.

For example, a family needed a miracle: one member was in the hospital, dying from a terminal illness. The rest of the family knelt together in the living room of their home and prayed the entire Rosary, beseeching through the Blessed Virgin Mary for Godly grace.

But to go to the gym and work out on a treadmill while saying the Rosary, getting sweaty while toning your sexy bod? OK, that's not as extreme as an adulterer saying penance while copulating with his mistress but...

For a long time I've been a "lapsed Catholic" (AKA devout atheist). So I'm not upset by this new trend to tap into the yuppie need for a trim body. I just find it strange. Go back five decades in Catholic time and such a proposal would be considered heresy.

But times have changed. During the interview Peggy said her husband wasn't Catholic. In the dark ages that wouldn't have flown. Back in the 1970s you could read in a textbook for Catholic high school students that Catholics should only marry other others of the One True Faith. No unions with non-Catholics. The person of the "lesser faith" had to convert to Catholicism.

So with faith mixing comes exercise-Rosary mixing. But this isn't surprising, considering the severe financial hit the Roman Catholic Church has taken from being on the losing end of lawsuits involving pedophile priests. Of course, the church was reprehensible, covering up the misdeeds of child molesting priests while moving them to another parishes where the priests could easily sin again (and did).

Listening to Peggy Bowes on the radio, she sounds like a very pleasant lady who sincerely believes that her program can benefit everyone, even non-Catholics. Praying the Rosary, she stated, attracts the presence of good angels while driving away the bad ones (demons).

Angels are an important aspect. She wanted to use the concept of nine choirs of angels for her exercise program but in her research she found that some expressed doubts whether it was biblical. Then one day during a beautiful sunset she saw a sign: nine mini-clouds in the sky.

Me, the last few wintry days around here have been generally overcast, dark and depressing. I take that as another sign there is no God.

2012: The Year The World Ends (Again)





It’s another new year in which we’re faced with eschatological excrement of a taurine nature.

In 2011 biblical scholar/radio broadcaster Harold Camping was rapping that the Rapture was happening on May 21. Some of his followers emptied their bank accounts, donating all to the cause: billboards, books, etc. Money gone forever.

Nothing happened.

Camping’s organization said sorry, no refunds.

Then Harold said he was a bit off with his calculations, that all good Xtians would bodily ascend into Heaven on October 21 before the world was destroyed. Again, nothing.

Between his two predictions Harold suffered a mild stroke that affected his speech. This prompted one Xtian Website to pose the question: “Was Harold Camping's stroke punishment from God?”

In the meantime it seems that the only world that is ending is Camping’s.

After such events in 2011 you think we would get some time off from the End Times. No such luck.

This time the target date is 12/21/12, based on the Mayan calendar. There’s been enough buzz about that scenario so I won't rehash it. Instead I want to focus on a lesser known Prophet of Doom: Nancy Lieder of zetatalk.com .

Nancy is one of those believers in Planet X, that rogue orb that will or already has entered our solar system to wreak havoc.

Back in 2003 she said Planet X was here. She told listeners on a radio program that they should put down their pets. After all, it would be hard to feed Fido and Fluffy when everyone was scrounging for food.

I wonder how many prematurely euthanized critters ended up in pet cemeteries due to her failed prediction.

Where does Nancy get her inside info on the cosmic timetable? From a brain implant courtesy of some aliens from the star system Zeta Reticuli, made famous by the Betty and Barney hill abduction.

Nancy has said in Zeta Report videos available via YouTube that through the Zetas she has met many different kinds of aliens. Cartoonish illustrations of these myriad ET types are included in the videos. One time she met a “Beanbag man” with a slug body. Another time she met an eight-foot dinosaur being that had a kind soul like Mother Teresa. Cold blooded doesn’t mean cold hearted, she points out.




Obviously Nancy is in a unique position to predict the future.

And as for her failed 2003 prediction, she stated that it was a “white lie” to fool The Powers That Be. She has stated she won’t reveal the date because that would give the Establishment enough time to declare martial law and hinder survival efforts.

In the meantime some people are connecting her Planet X with the doomsday talk related to the Mayan calendar. So when December 21 rolls around be prepared for a near miss or collision.

Or nothing.

Critical Skepchick Shows Uncritical Thinking


I almost missed this item from last year: Elevatorgate!

Rebecca Watson, leader of a core of skeptical women over at skepchick.org, was attending a conference in Dublin, Ireland during June 2011 and a guy in an elevator hit on her (or so she claims). No, the man didn’t assault her, just asked her back to his room to discuss various issues over a cup of coffee.

Apparently Rebecca didn’t like being a hittee. Her lecture topic at the conference dealt with anti-feminism. It really bugged her the Elevator Guy was “sexualizing” her.

Really. Is this the same Rebecca Watson who posed nude for Skepchick calendars?




It’s too bad that the Elevator Guy got the shaft.

Hey, Dude, Where’s My Brown Dwarf?


Man, don’t you just hate it? Just when there’s proof of something eXtradordinary – BANG! – the Trickster yanks the evidence away.

A while ago I was talking about Tolec, a man who claims to be in contact with the alien races of the Andromeda Council. Tolec has made all sorts of claims about our world shifting into a fourth-dimensional reality.

One sign or proof of this approaching shift, claimed Tolec, was that a brown dwarf star would appear in our solar system. At some point this brown dwarf would ignite into a second sun. Hmmm, I wonder if he ever read the book or had seen the movie, “2010: The Year We Make Contact?”

Obviously a brown dwarf drifting into our neighborhood would be notable. Especially among astronomers. It was supposed to arrive by now so why nothing in the news? Are “They” (shadow government types) suppressing the info?

Not really, according to Tolec. The Andromeda Council had cloaked the brown dwarf. It’s still there, waiting to ignite, but our primitive terran tech can’t detect it.

One wonders who’s really the Trickster in all of this.

Today’s Personal eXpression


The real reason for the season:




So how much loot did you score?

Did you buy enough to keep the economy going, thus enabling the elite 1% to grow even richer?

What's Red And White, Red And White?


There’s an interesting display in one part of town. Throughout the year a homeowner displays a large Confederate flag in his front window, an object usually associated with racism.

But when the happy holiday season rolls around the homeowner adds an eXmas display with his flag. Besides the traditional lights he adds stuffed almost-life-sized dummies of Santa and Mrs. Claus sitting in chairs on his front porch.

Isn’t Santa egalitarian, delivering gifts and love to all of mankind? That apparently depends upon one’s POV.

In the case of the local display under consideration Kris Kringle is the ultimate symbol of so-called racial purity.

Talk about a white eXmas.

Tall Whites


No, I’m not talking about elongated people of Nordic bloodlines but instead aliens, as in extra-terrestrials.

Since there seems to be a “white” theme popping up with my latest posts, I might as well wrap up with this topic.

Back in 1965-1967 Airman Charles Hall served at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada near Area 51. He was trained as a weather observer but ended up observing more than the weather: he encountered ETs who had the general appearance of the archetypical gray but were tall and white.




Hall claims that he saw the ETs and humans, both military and business types, intermingling. The aliens would give humans rides to the Earth’s moon in their scout ships. One time the tall whites offered to give some US Generals a ride to Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons, to prove it was unsuitable as a military base.

The tall whites sometimes communicated by making loud sounds like the whinnying of horses.

Of course, all of this was supposed to be Top Secret but Hall decided to let the world know through a series of books he has written, “The Millennial Hospitality Series.”

If tall white ETS are on this planet, my advice for them is to avoid most parts of the rural Deep South. Not everyone there is a bigot but…

You tall whites might have (more or less) the right skin type but not body form. Southern bigots hate freaks of any type. Talk like a horse whinnying – forget it! Hey, I experienced extreme prejudice down there for just having a northern accent.

Quick! Activate A Three-Name H-Bomb


Beware, New World Order. Al Parker has figured it out.

During the last meeting of the Liberty Net he connected all the dots. He stated that the conspirators decided that the public had to be distracted from any more bad news about politician-businessman Jon Corzine and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

A former New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine was CEO of the investment company MF Global until he resigned on November 4, 2011. He retained the services of a lawyer as federal regulators probed into the matter of missing customer funds amounting to millions of dollars.

Meanwhile AG Holder has his own problems, dealing with investigations into Operation Fast and Furious, a sting operation under the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in which the sale of illegal weapons were facilitated and tracked by the ATF. Most of the weapons were sold to criminal organizations in Mexico to build a case against those groups. In December 2010 there was a gunfight near Rio Rico, Arizona, resulting in the death of a US Border Patrol agent. Two of the weapons found at the scene were traced back to Fast and Furious.

Thursday, December 8th saw Corzine giving testimony to the House Agriculture Committee while AG Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee.

And on that same day there was a shooting at Virginia Tech, a man killing a police officer before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide.

It didn't take Al Parker, a longtime contributor to the Liberty Net, long to figure out the connection between all three events.

The Virginia Tech shooter -- Ross Truett Ashley -- was probably a programmed human time bomb, Parker explained to the other ultra-right-wing ham radio operators. Notice the name, he said. Compare it to other notorious shooters like Lee Harvey Oswald. Not a coincidence.

Apparently the conspirators like to program domestic Manchurian Candidates -- or h-bombs, if you will -- who are known by three names. (Maybe we should keep an eye on country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus.)

Parker claimed that the Virginia Tech shooter was activated to focus news away from the respective Corzine and Holder testimonies. Also, he added, it helped to play on public fears, making it easier to pass stricter gun control laws.

If you looked into the shooter's past, guaranteed Parker, you would find that Ashley had participated in some sort of internship or study, either through the FBI or a local military base. Parker left the impression this is how the shooter was mentally re-wired to go berserk when needed.

But what if the shooter was a regular listener to the Liberty Net? I wonder...


(The archived recording of the last LibNet gathering can be found at www.3950.net. In the upper right-hand corner click on "Liberty Net - 2011-1210." Parker's statements can be found around the 4 hour 30 minute mark.)

Liberty Net: Genocide


There are various ways to describe genocide and the forms it may take. Leave it to the Liberty Net to provide an unique twist on the concept.

Below is an audio excerpt of the last Saturday-night-into-Sunday-morning get-together by the ultra-right-wing ham radio operators. The complete file can be found archived at http://3950.net/ as "Liberty Net - 2011-1203." I heard these statements early Sunday morning (12/4/11) while listening via the Web. This part of the discussion can be found around the 2:58 marker of the original file.

Can't you feel the love?

And don't forget: God doesn't change.