In memoriam : RI Obituaries

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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby Hammer of Los » Tue Dec 10, 2013 11:08 am

...

I just read those amazing words from Doris Lessing.

Made me cry.

Thanks JD.

They're on page 2 so I'll quote them again.

viewtopic.php?p=527351#p527351

“At the risk of boring you, I must repeat, I am afraid, repeat, reiterate, reemphasize, it is not a question of your arriving on Planet Earth as you leave here. You will lose nearly all memory of your past existence. You will each of you come to yourselves, perhaps alone, perhaps in the company of each other, but with only a vague feeling of recognition, and probably disassociated, disorientated, ill, discouraged, and unable to believe, when you are told what your task really is.

You will wake up, as it were, but there will be a period while you are waking which will be like the recovery from an illness, or like the emergence into good air from a poisoned one. Some of you may choose not to wake, for the waking will be so painful, and the knowledge of your condition and Earth’s condition so agonizing, you will be like drug addicts: you may prefer to continue to breathe in oblivion. And when you have understood that you are in the process of awakening, that you have something to get done, you will have absorbed enough of the characteristics of Earthmen to be distrustful, surly, grudging, suspicious.

You will be like a drowning person who drowns his rescuer, so violently will you struggle in your panic terror.

“And, when you have become aroused to your real condition, and have recovered from the shame or embarrassment of seeing to what depths you have sunk, you will then begin the task of arousing others, and you will find that you are in the position of rescuer of a drowning person, or a doctor in a city that has an epidemic of madness. The drowning person wants to be rescued, but can’t prevent himself struggling. The mad person has intermittent fits of sanity, but in between behaves as if his doctor were his enemy.

“And so, my friends: that’s it. That’s my message to you. It’s going to be tough. Every bit as tough as you expect.”


Sorry again JD for all my craziness.

And to everyone else.

Oh, and thanks Doris.

...
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby justdrew » Wed Dec 11, 2013 1:41 am

:hug1:

:partyhat today, it's a wizard hat
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby coffin_dodger » Wed Dec 11, 2013 5:35 am

Hammer of Los wrote:...

I just read those amazing words from Doris Lessing.

“At the risk of boring you, I must repeat, I am afraid, repeat, reiterate, reemphasize, it is not a question of your arriving on Planet Earth as you leave here. You will lose nearly all memory of your past existence. You will each of you come to yourselves, perhaps alone, perhaps in the company of each other, but with only a vague feeling of recognition, and probably disassociated, disorientated, ill, discouraged, and unable to believe, when you are told what your task really is.

You will wake up, as it were, but there will be a period while you are waking which will be like the recovery from an illness, or like the emergence into good air from a poisoned one. Some of you may choose not to wake, for the waking will be so painful, and the knowledge of your condition and Earth’s condition so agonizing, you will be like drug addicts: you may prefer to continue to breathe in oblivion. And when you have understood that you are in the process of awakening, that you have something to get done, you will have absorbed enough of the characteristics of Earthmen to be distrustful, surly, grudging, suspicious.

You will be like a drowning person who drowns his rescuer, so violently will you struggle in your panic terror.

“And, when you have become aroused to your real condition, and have recovered from the shame or embarrassment of seeing to what depths you have sunk, you will then begin the task of arousing others, and you will find that you are in the position of rescuer of a drowning person, or a doctor in a city that has an epidemic of madness. The drowning person wants to be rescued, but can’t prevent himself struggling. The mad person has intermittent fits of sanity, but in between behaves as if his doctor were his enemy.

“And so, my friends: that’s it. That’s my message to you. It’s going to be tough. Every bit as tough as you expect.”

...


Thanks for bringing that quote to my attention again, Hammer - it's comforting to know that other people have experienced it, too (and that some are able to communicate it to others so perfectly).
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Wed Dec 11, 2013 6:08 pm

Colin Wilson: 26 June 1931 – 5 December 2013

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Invitations from the Outsider - On the Passing of Colin Wilson
Posted by David Metcalfe at 10:48, 10 Dec 2013
http://www.dailygrail.com/Forteana/2013 ... lin-Wilson

The Goblin Universe's Colin Wilson Dies
Posted by Loren Coleman Friday, December 06, 2013
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2013/ ... nObit.html

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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby justdrew » Wed Dec 11, 2013 7:56 pm

awwww. Colin Wilson :cry:

there was a period in which I think he wrote every book published in England.

great fellow
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby slimmouse » Sun Dec 29, 2013 5:16 am

I missed this thread the first time round, but typed in Lloyd Pyes name in order to find a thread to put this.

Ive kinda had one eye on this story for a number of years now, and wish to hell I knew more about DNA,.

I say this, because if what Pyes wife is claiming is true, then it sounds like Pye was onto something pretty serious anthromorpologically speaking, at least with regards to the "Starchild" skull.

Another "controversial" character ( in this case, one who challenged the well established, powerful orthodoxy of mainstream science) dead of an extremely aggressive form of Cancer.

Trailer for the interview...

Amy Vickers was an archaeology student in Australia when she first learned about an unusual 900 year old skull known as the Starchild Skull. In 2004 she joined the Starchild Project, the team investigating the skull and coordinating independent research into this unusual specimen. She has helped to develop websites and videos for the project, worked to coordinate research on the skull, and is now the CEO of the project. Research into the skull has found everything from non-human DNA to alien fibers inside the bone. Lloyd Pye who spearheaded the Starchild Skull research recently passed. Lloyd Pye will always be known for his Intervention Theory that challenges Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution, by offering a fact-based explanation of how life and humans came to be on Earth, often in the face of overwhelming evidence. We'll discuss Lloyd's legacy, which includes the "forbidden" subjects of hominoids and aliens. Amy also discusses the latest updates with the Starchild Skull as she is now leading the charge. Later, we talk about modern humans and the domestication of animals and the development of farming. Crops seem to have been genetically altered to work with the human digestive system.



Link .

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/20 ... 131227.php
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby MacCruiskeen » Fri Mar 14, 2014 9:11 pm

Tony Benn died today. Very saddened to hear of his passing -- he seemed indestructible. (I have strong childhood memories of my father laughing out loud and cheering him on whenever he faced down some Tory oaf during a TV debate.)

Here he is in a BBC studio five years ago -- at the age of 83 -- simply refusing to take no for an answer:



Benn was not just intellectually tough and wonderfully witty and apparently ageless, he was one of the last real socialists left in what Blair and his grinning cohorts made out of the Labour Party.

R.I.P., Tony Benn - a righteous hater of bullshit and cruelty, and a rare reminder that integrity is possible, even in politics.

A short tribute by Jonathan Cook





Tony Benn on YouTube

The older you get, apparently, the more you abandon the daft socialist ideas of your youth to become sensible and conservative. There will never be a greater retort to this miserable myth than the life of Tony Benn.
Because somehow he became more defiantly, inspiringly, stroppily, youthfully socialist every year up to 88.[..]

Even more remarkable is that as he became younger with age, so did his audience. In a time when socialist groups despair at how to attract the under-50s, Benn regularly packed out a tent that held 3,000 people at Glastonbury. ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/com ... 93658.html
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Sun Mar 16, 2014 8:56 pm

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Alien implant proponent Roger Leir has died
by Sharon Hill • March 16, 2014

A familiar face to those who watch UFO shows has passed away. Dr. Roger Leir was a podiatrist and a researcher of ufology with a specialty in “alien implants”. His website announced his death on March 15.

http://doubtfulnews.com/2014/03/alien-i ... -has-died/
http://www.citizenhearing.org/witnesses_roger.html
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Mar 16, 2014 10:43 pm

As you say MacC

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RIP Tony Benn - greatest UK politician ever! (As if this is a competitive category, right?)

“What power have you got?”
“Where did you get it from?”
“In whose interests do you use it?”
“To whom are you accountable?”
“How do we get rid of you?”

www.thenation.com/blog/178853/tony-benn ... -democracy
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue Mar 18, 2014 2:01 pm

^^Thanks for that, Jack. Those are five great questions, especially the last one. Memorising them is well worth ten seconds of anyone's time.

Michael Rosen sums up the media's response to his death:

Saturday, 15 March 2014

Media do Tony Benn

"...and as his followers prepare for his funeral, it seems as if we have just seen the death of the last ever socialist. As all agree, it's goodbye to a very nice but also a very silly example of this extinct species. Tim Plonker, Media News, somewhere in the heartland."

[off screen aside: "The point is we've got to keep making it clear that everyone loved him but no one agreed with him..." "Yes, that's it, Tim. I think we did that, cheers."]

http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.de/201 ... -benn.html
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Fri Mar 21, 2014 3:06 pm

Steve Moore 1949 – 2014

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[photo by Etienne Gilfillan]

‘I was born at the full moon atop a crescent-shaped hill, the main mineral found (t)here being selenite, and I have a slightly rough-edged crescent birthmark on my left forearm … so I was obviously destined to be either a werewolf or a lunatic.’ Steve Moore, 2011

We’re deeply sad to announce that Steve Moore, author of Somnium and a regular contributor to Strange Attractor Journal, passed away over the weekend, under a beautiful Spring full Moon.

Steve was a warm, wise and gentle man, with a surreal sense of humour and an astoundingly deep knowledge that covered history, the I Ching, forteana, magic, oriental mysticism, martial arts cinema, science fiction, underground comics and worlds more.

Steve was amongst the earliest members of the Gang of Fort, who launched Fortean Times magazine in the early 1970s, and later edited its scholarly journal Fortean Studies. He was also the author of a great many influential comics and short stories for publications including 2000AD, Warrior, Dr Who magazine and, most recently, the Hercules series for Radical Publishing. At the time of his death he was working on a number of new projects, including his ongoing, privately published Tales of Telguuth and The Bumper Book of Magic, with his lifelong friend Alan Moore.

In 2011 Steve gave a rare interview to Aug Stone of The Quietus, while Alan Moore’s book and album project, Unearthing, explored Steve’s life, their friendship and their magical relationship in great detail.

Steve and Strange Attractor had recently been discussing a paperback edition of Somnium, as well as a collected Tales of Telguuth, and we hope to be able to make these available, in Steve’s honour, in the near future.

‘Pay attention to his spectacles, refracted light turning the puzzled eyes beyond the lenses into abstract clots of pearl and white. Just change the point of view a little, move an inch or so to one side or the other and the optical illusion fails… There’s nobody there, was never anybody there except a fluctuation in the visual purple, a perceptual misunderstanding, trick of moonlight.’
Alan Moore, Unearthing

Steve Moore 1949 – 2014

http://strangeattractor.co.uk/further/s ... 1949-2014/
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby semper occultus » Fri Mar 28, 2014 8:43 am

James Schlesinger

James Schlesinger was a CIA director who later, as Defence Secretary, told Army chiefs to ignore Nixon if he ordered a nuclear strike

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10728003/James-Schlesinger-obituary.html

27 Mar 2014

James Schlesinger , who has died aged 85, was a hardline American Secretary of Defence from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Nixon and Ford ; he subsequently became the country’s first Secretary of Energy, under President Carter.

During Nixon’s last days in the White House at the height of the Watergate crisis, when some were doubting the President’s mental stability, Schlesinger reportedly instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to check with him before carrying out any of Nixon’s orders regarding nuclear weapons. He also drew up contingency plans for an emergency military deployment in the event of an impeached Nixon refusing to step down.

According to one Washington insider, Schlesinger wanted to resign, but could not bring himself to do so — explaining that he suspected that Nixon’s aides may have been contemplating a military coup in order to cling to executive power.

When he was eventually fired in late 1975 by Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, Schlesinger blamed differences with the White House over his insistence on higher defence budgets, and disagreements with his former Harvard classmate , the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, over strategic arms talks with the Soviet Union.

But a crucial reason for Schlesinger’s dismissal apparently went unreported: Ford could not stand what he saw as his overbearing arrogance. In May 1975, when Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge forces had boarded and captured the crew of the unarmed American freighter Mayaguez, Ford ordered retaliatory strikes. Schlesinger disagreed with the order and told Ford that the strikes had been carried out when in fact they had not. When Ford found out, he let the incident go — but finally dismissed Schlesinger for his imputation a year before that the American top brass had contemplated a military coup against Nixon.

A tweedy, pipe-smoking economist and academic, Schlesinger had first come to national attention in February 1973, when Nixon appointed him Director of the CIA, after Richard Helms, the previous director, had been fired for refusing to block the Watergate investigation. With no previous experience of intelligence, and untainted personally by Watergate, Schlesinger’s first words on taking office were reportedly: “I’m here to make sure you don’t screw Richard Nixon.”


James Schlesinger: US government official who served Nixon and Ford and became the most unpopular director in the CIA's history

www.independent.co.uk

To measure the varied but turbulent career of James Schlesinger in the highest reaches of US government, consider these few facts. He was surely the most unpopular director of the CIA in its history – even though he held the job for just three months. As Defense Secretary he insulted President Richard Nixon to his face, and survived. In 1975 he was sacked from that post by Gerald Ford, Nixon's successor, for arrogance and insubordination. Two years later he was named America's first secretary of energy by Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, but was forced out of that job for basically the same reasons.

No one ever doubted Schlesinger's brains. It was the way he used them that jarred. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in New York City, he attended Harvard (where he was a classmate of Henry Kissinger) and graduated summa cum laude. He then spent a year in postwar Europe on a travelling fellowship before returning to Harvard to take an MA and then in 1956 a PhD, in economics.

A spell teaching at the University of Virginia followed, before he moved to the Rand Corporation, where he rose to become director of strategic studies. At Rand he caught the attention of Nixon's campaign and joined the new administration in 1969 as deputy budget director.

His ascent was swift. By 1971 he was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, the regulatory agency for the country's developing civil nuclear industry. Never one to suffer fools, Schlesinger was already displaying the abrasive managerial qualities at the AEC that were the hallmark of his career. He was also a proven Nixon loyalist, and in February 1973 the President named him CIA director to replace the sacked Richard Helms.

Helms had refused to do Nixon's bidding as the Watergate crisis began to deepen, and the paranoid President saw the agency as an enemy. Schlesinger's mandate was, in own words, "to cut it down to size" – and he did so with a vengeance. Not only did he sack seven per cent of its staff, turning the axe in particular on the old guard of the clandestine operations division. Schlesinger also ordered senior CIA officers to tell him about earlier illegal activities they knew or suspected.

It was a licence for savage bureaucratic score-settling – and, some say, may have hastened Nixon's end by encouraging disgruntled employees to leak details of his own efforts to bring the CIA into the Watergate cover-up. Mercifully for the CIA, the Schlesinger purge ended when Nixon moved him to the Pentagon in June 1973.

But the style had been established. A rising young CIA Soviet analyst named Robert Gates – later destined to follow in Schlesinger's footsteps as head of the Agency and Secretary of Defence – wrote in his memoirs of how the new director was "crude, demanding, arrogant and dismissive of experience." With his uncombed hair and shirt-tail hanging out, Gates noted drily, Schlesinger "was most definitely not 'old school.'"

At the Pentagon, Schlesinger was a better fit. His background at Rand and the AEC made him an expert on nuclear strategy. A classic conservative defence hawk, he argued that now the Soviet Union had achieved nuclear parity with the US, military spending had to rise. His rough ways made him one of the few Pentagon bosses to dominate the entrenched military bureaucracy. As one grudging admirer put it, a Schlesinger bad mood "could melt the stars off the shoulders of a four-star general."

In the end he established a good working relationship with the top brass. But Schlesinger did not confine his aggressiveness to the military. He clashed with Kissinger, now Secretary of State, over détente, and, as Nixon sank into the mire of Watergate, became ever more arrogant with the President himself. In June 1974, at a meeting of the national security council, the two disagreed over an arms control proposal, and Schlesinger made a sneering joke about Nixon's negotiating skills. The remark, Nixon noted in his diary, was "an insult to everybody's intelligence, and particularly to mine."

Schlesinger, however, was unabashed, and Nixon was far too weak to sack him. Fearful of the President's erratic mental state, he gave orders that any nuclear policy instructions by Nixon to the joint chiefs of staff must be vetted by him first. As Watergate reached its climax, the Defense Secretary even drew up plans for an airborne unit to be deployed to Washington in the event that Nixon refused to resign.

At first Gerald Ford, too, was cowed by Schlesinger. But his patience snapped, in part due to continued resistance by his Defense Secretary to détente, in part due to his inability to get on with the Democratic Congress. The last straw was when Ford learnt that Schlesinger had ignored orders to carry out strikes against Cambodia in May 1975 in retaliation for the seizure of the US-registered freighter Magayuez. For his insubordination, Schlesinger was finally sacked.

But he was not out of government for long. One of the few top national security officials to serve both Republican and Democratic Presidents, he was chosen by Jimmy Carter as his energy adviser, and in 1977 became the country's first Secretary of Energy, heading a sprawling new department into which the old AEC had been subsumed. But, predictably, the relationship did not last long. After two years, Carter dismissed him in large measure for the same reasons Ford did. Schlesinger was simply too rude, too impatient, and too contemptuous of those who dared disagree with him.

Retirement was not for Schlesinger. He served on many corporate boards, especially in the energy and banking sectors. His intellect and experience earned him positions on various governmental advisory boards on defence and security. To the fury of environmentalists, he also emerged as a prime sceptic about global warming.

RUPERT CORNWELL

James Rodney Schlesinger, economist and US government official: born New York 15 February 1929; Associate professor of economics, University of Virginia 1955-1963; Staff member, then director, Rand Corporation 1963-1969; Chairman Atomic Energy Commission 1971-1973; Director, Central Intelligence Agency 1973; Secretary of Defense 1973-1975; Secretary of Energy 1977-1979; married 1954 Rachel Mellinger (died 1995; four sons, four daughters); died Baltimore 27 March 2014.
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Only a Muppet in Their Game

Postby IanEye » Fri Mar 28, 2014 4:23 pm

*

Image

*


MITRE Mourns Passing of Dr. James R. Schlesinger

BEDFORD, Mass., MCLEAN, Va., March 27, 2014—The MITRE Corporation mourns the passing of Dr. James R. Schlesinger, chairman of the Board of Trustees. Dr. Schlesinger was a member of MITRE's board from 1985 until the present.

"Jim was a remarkable man, a visionary leader, and a dedicated public servant who made a difference in the lives of many people over the course of his long and distinguished career," said Alfred Grasso, president and CEO of The MITRE Corporation. "He was a long-time supporter of MITRE and will be greatly missed."

These sentiments were echoed by the Honorable Charles S. Robb, the current vice chairman of the board, who now assumes the role of chairman: "Jim Schlesinger will be best remembered for his dedicated service to our nation's security at the highest and most sensitive levels. To those of us at MITRE, he will be remembered as well for his droll wit and sage counsel. He was truly one of the great leaders of our time."

Dr. Schlesinger's career in government began in 1969 and included appointments as Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy, and Director of Central Intelligence. In 2002, he was appointed by U.S. President George W. Bush to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. In recent years, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense and was a member of the Defense Policy Board. MITRE will dedicate its newest building in Northern Virginia to Dr. Schlesinger, with ceremonies to be conducted upon completion of construction.

About The MITRE Corporation

The MITRE Corporation is a not-for-profit organization that operates research and development centers sponsored by the federal government. Learn more about MITRE.

.
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Re: In memoriam : RI Obituaries

Postby elfismiles » Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:13 pm

Lucius Shepard R.I.P. (1947-2014)

I just learned a couple of hours ago that Lucius Shepard, one of our greatest short story writers, passed away on March 18 at the age of 66. If you’ve never read his collections, particularly THE JAGUAR HUNTER and THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, then you’re missing out on some of the most evocative and challenging American short stories of the past thirty years. Despite the fact that they never appeared in THE YEAR’S BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (and perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising), many of his tales were finely honed dark jewels: “The Jaguar Hunter,” “How the Wind Spoke at Madaket,” “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,” “A Spanish Lesson,” “The Ends of the Earth,” “The Black Clay Boy,” and “The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter” are all REQUIRED reading. Rest In Peace, Lucius.

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Posted by Robert Guffey

http://cryptoscatology.blogspot.com/201 ... -2014.html
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