July 25, 2010 - Rich Dolan

[Hoffmeister]

July 25, 1010 - Rich Dolan

ehhhh.... it sucks that you're leaving, i'd say you're probably the person in the paranormal field who has the most similar views on the topic to myself. Also, I think you were the host who had the best dynamic with Gene. I havent heard the end of the show yet so don't know why you're leaving, but hope you come back one day mate.

This show was the best one for a long time.

 

[cottonzway]

July 25, 1010 - Rich Dolan

Great show. Dolan is one of my favorite guys to listen to as we have a lot in common in terms of our outlook on life. We share some poltical leanings in that Rich is a Ron Paul/Lew Rockwell type of Libertarian. Right off the bat we are going to get along with those similar views.

I have read both his books and thought they were excellent. There is too much content to try to gather it all in, but it gives a good synopsis of the UFO phenonmenon. I agree with Rich that if there is any technology we have recovered that is not "ours" that it is likely in the private aerospace industry at this point. A companies like SAIC and Booz/Allen/Hamilton would be a good place to consider in those regards.

I am sad to see Paul go. I know we had had our differences here, but I enjoy what he adds to the show. I also happen to think he offered a lot in this episode, creating a really good dialog with Rich that was interesting to listen to. I was kind of expecting both Paul and Nick to be a lot more critical of Rich on other issues that are a bit outside of the paranormal topic in general. Such as Rich's view on globalization and was really shocked that neither of you guys were more critical of his comments about David Rockefeller. I happen to think there is validity to Rich's comments as someone like Rockefeller would likely be in the "know" on a topic like this seeing as influential he is to the various military contractors that could have this type of technology because he sits on the boards of financial institutions that could direct money into black budget funding.

I do have a few questions for Paul based off this episode. You have been very vocal on supporting the concept of a "one world government" but in this episode you discussed how we are becoming a police and surveillance state as well. If that is the case, wouldn't a move to more centeralized power in terms of laws, policies, and economics create an enviroment that those types of negative scenarios could be expanded? Wouldn't the checks and balances that sovereign nation states create make it more difficult to move towards a society that is more totalitarian and less free? In general we seem to disagree with this concept, but I was curious how your comments here could still support your ideology of globalization (i.e. a one world government). Thanks.

 

[Capnkumquat]

July 25, 1010 - Rich Dolan

This show puts the Paracast right back on target. I wish that Paul Kimball was the permanent cohost, and that the guests could all be as intelligent, thoughtful, well spoken as Richard Dolen. Both knew the material, had huge amounts of background knowledge, and when they disagreed on something, they did so in a civil, and intelligent way.

Thanks for a good, intelligent show.

 

[CapnG]

Good show, highly enjoyable. Shame about Paul departing but all things being equal, he's under no obligation and his contributions to the show have ben welcomed. Thanks, Paul.

Oh hey look it's DDA! Haven't seen your posts in a while man, good to know you're still around.

As for Dolan's idea that "they" are waiting for us to leapfrog to a minimum level of development at which point we will become more as peers, he forgot to mention that all the while they too will have been advancing, thus we will never ever be able to catch up. Perhaps development of this type follows an S-curve, such that the next 100 years will see a vast increase in technology and intelligence, and then things will slow down to a trickle. If that's true then it would imply ET's have stalled out somewhere too, but again I go back to the idea that even 100 years difference equates to a monumental scale difference no matter what. And given the timescale of the universe, the chances that they would only be slightly ahead of us is so incredibly remote as to be non-existant. Rather than a few hundred or even a thousand years ahead, they are equally likely to be millions or hundreds of millions of years beyond us. We would truly be the ants that Kaku mentions. Looking for radio waves or laser beams in space is laughable if that is the case.

Civilizations do crap out every once in a while though. Look at what happened to us during the dark ages. Now imagine that for a million years or so. There's also the chance they may have destroyed themselves, accidentally or deliberately and had to rebuild. That'd probably slow them down a bit. There's even the remote possibility that there's a sort of "tipping point" in the pursuit of knowledge, where once a civilization has solved all the major riddles about the universe they find the remaining ones are so inscruitable and complex that they may take millenia to unravel.

So I'm with Kaku on this - frail, error prone Et's are not visiting this Earth, and if there ARE here they are essentially godlike and beyond our capability to fully comprehend or detect. Perhaps everything from UFO's to FairyFolk are simply alien versions of "cat toys" like I use with my cat to entertain myself. My cat can't even begin to comprehend the world around him from a human standpoint , and similarly IMO, we could never be able to bridge the human - advanced ET gap.

Actually, wouldn't that support the notion of the frail, error prone ETs? After all their not really the aliens themselves, they're just proxies, limited in their design by the environment their interacting with. They could be regarded as no more important (and therefore ultimately as disposable) to the intelligence controlling them as a box of tissues is to us.

 

[Paul Kimball]

July 25, 1010 - Rich Dolan

I do have a few questions for Paul based off this episode. You have been very vocal on supporting the concept of a "one world government" but in this episode you discussed how we are becoming a police and surveillance state as well. If that is the case, wouldn't a move to more centeralized power in terms of laws, policies, and economics create an enviroment that those types of negative scenarios could be expanded? Wouldn't the checks and balances that sovereign nation states create make it more difficult to move towards a society that is more totalitarian and less free? In general we seem to disagree with this concept, but I was curious how your comments here could still support your ideology of globalization (i.e. a one world government). Thanks.

I have no problem with big government, when properly constituted - after all, what is a government but the purest expression of the will of the people? My problem comes when government is infected with the virus that is unrestricted capitalism and greed, which I believe is at the root of all of our problems.

Short anecdote. I was in a bar having a few drinks with some friends this past weekend, discussing Debord and other Marxist theorists, and one of my pals, who is a good, salt of the earth business-type, honest but never going to make it to the top, asked me how I could be a communist? I said, first, I'm not a communist - I just think that there's a lot we can learn from Marxism - and second, when we live in a society where under 5% of the population control over 95% of the wealth, the real question is why we aren't all Marxists?

If it makes you feel better, I have John Stuart Mill's On Liberty right next to The Communist Manifesto on my bookshelf.

The goal should be to provide the best standard of living for all citizens, and to view us all as human beings, as opposed to the false national boundaries, or divisions based on race or religion or whatever, that have been foisted on us to keep us from realizing who the real enemy of the people is.

In short, the answer isn't less government, which is the individual equivalent of isolationism - the answer is more government, open government, with an active and involved citizenry. It begins with a better educated citizenry. Spending less money on bombs and tanks, and more on teachers, would be a good start. Or, to paraphrase my favourite Marxist, Billy Bragg, it's time to stop wasting money on smart bombs, and spend it on making smarter people.

And someone please tell Sarah Palin and the rest of the Bible-thumpin' Republicons, that Jesus was a Marxist!

---------- Post added at 10:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:04 PM ----------

Both knew the material, had huge amounts of background knowledge...

Ahh, the benefits of my nine years of misspent youth in university.

---------- Post added at 10:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:05 PM ----------

ehhhh.... it sucks that you're leaving, i'd say you're probably the person in the paranormal field who has the most similar views on the topic to myself. Also, I think you were the host who had the best dynamic with Gene. I havent heard the end of the show yet so don't know why you're leaving, but hope you come back one day mate.

This show was the best one for a long time.

Thanks, Hoff, and everyone else. I've enjoyed it, but it was never meant to be a full-time gig.

 

[Paul Kimball]

July 25, 1010 - Rich Dolan

I wanted to add that my political views have always been a bit of a moving target - how can one not be flexible, and look at all points of view? But I've always had them!

From my days as a musician:

Turned

Caught, in the undertow of today,
you start to drift away
got no place left to stay.
Turned, from that which you have known,
to that which you've been shown
your world's no longer your own.
Listen, when their words come out,
don't know what they're about
but you follow 'cause they shout.

You can't tell right from wrong,
you don't know what's going on,
You can't see wrong from right,
all you see is black and white.

March, just another face in the crowd,
you chant their "truths" out loud
while you wrap your mind in a shroud.
Raise, your hand up in a fist,
and yell about what you've missed
you're told it's time to resist.

You can't tell right from wrong,
you don't know what's going on,
You can't see wrong from right,
all you see is black and white.

Lift, their flag high in the air,
convinced that you are there
to fight for your fair share.
Darkness, creeps up on our fair land,
you grasp it with your hand
it's all you understand.

Jefferson

Half-turned sods of hallowed ground,
tabled, filed under lost and found,
weighted down and then strung up
a pleasant walk to the scaffold.

Hangman's noose on a threadbare throat,
he mouths some words but none come out,
That's all right, no-one's listening...
That's okay, no-one's listening.

Chorus:
We're all gone away, lost again
watching monuments twist in the wind,
Jefferson was a passing phase
now it all hangs on the turn of a phrase.

Placebo cure for the rotting ghost,
those with the least told that they have the most,
bargained away and then discarded...
a pleasant walk to the graveyard.

Repeat Chorus.

Open hole swallows a fish-tail mind,
deposits the same by the no exit sign...
entrance come and gone, no-one's here,
entrance come and gone, no-one's here.

[Both songs from the 1993 Tall Poppies EP Fields of Addiction]

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

Actually, wouldn't that support the notion of the frail, error prone ETs? After all their not really the aliens themselves, they're just proxies, limited in their design by the environment their interacting with. They could be regarded as no more important (and therefore ultimately as disposable) to the intelligence controlling them as a box of tissues is to us.

Well that was sort of my point - the idea that reported ET occupants ("the grays") are the "real" thing - the ETs themselves- is dubious IMO. But the opposing view (that the grays are the real deal) doesnt make sense to me either!

Going with the avatar/proxie theme, why is it that we don't see ET's who look like truly versatile/functional shapes like a squid or something? Why would they look so "human?" at all? Frail bipedal humanoids seem hardly an ideal functional form. Why would they need heads at all? or why just 2 arms? And if the grays ARE proxie synthetic forms meant to mimic humans, then why not make them look more human and easier to relate to? Gray aliens seem to me to be the equivalent of shoddy wooden-doll mannequins. If Ets have the technology to travel the starts you'd think they could put together a more convincing human imitation than a clay-looking skinny "gray" We can certainly create far more realistic looking human puppets even with our pathetic Earth-bound technology

So to me you have a sort of catch 22 situation - large UFOS and grays as we have come to know them imply a scenario where you have an organic pilot who needs room to move around in and operate just as a pilot would in a plane. "Piloted" probes are sort of an oxymoron. Consider that unmanned drones are already much smaller than normal UFOs and have no need to accommodate any form of occupant. So if UFOs have discreet "occupants" (and not simply robotic appendages that emerge to interact with the physical world when needed) then that would imply the occupants are unique, organic beings with a need to move around and function. But that would mean that the Grays (or pick your ET de-jour) are the real deal themselves. But if that's the case then why do they just HAPPEN to look so damn human? Are we to conclude that the "grays" are natural, organic, independent evolved beings who just happen to look like tiny chinese boys with giant almond eyes?

If reports of the grays depicted them as detaching from the skin of a UFO or plopping out from small pods of something it would make for a more compelling case that they are artificial proxies or drones. But the clear narrative that has developed over the years shows the Grays as ACTING like traditional human pilots. The widespread version of the UFO phenomena we have come to know now seems horribly outdated and retro. It's a 20th century hold-over from the pre-nano-tech super computer robotic drone world we now live in.

 

[CapnG]

If Ets have the technology to travel the starts you'd think they could put together a more convincing human imitation than a clay-looking skinny "gray" We can certainly create far more realistic looking human puppets even with our pathetic Earth-bound technology

Maybe the point is to make them look "alien" to us. Or maybe they just don't care and figure "close is close enough". Last time I checked we carved duck decoys out of wood and then painted them, we don't make ultra-realistic, interactive mecha-ducks.

So if UFOs have discreet "occupants" (and not simply robotic appendages that emerge to interact with the physical world when needed) then that would imply the occupants are unique, organic beings with a need to move around and function. But that would mean that the Grays (or pick your ET de-jour) are the real deal themselves. But if that's the case then why do they just HAPPEN to look so damn human? Are we to conclude that the "grays" are natural, organic, independent evolved beings who just happen to look like tiny chinese boys with giant almond eyes?

If we're working under the proxy/uber-intelligence model, then all that could simply be for show, ie it's sort-of what we expect "aliens" to be like and anything that doesn't fit will simply be dismissed as part of the overall weirdness of the encounter/abduction/sighting/whatever.

If reports of the grays depicted them as detaching from the skin of a UFO or plopping out from small pods of something it would make for a more compelling case that they are artificial proxies or drones. But the clear narrative that has developed over the years shows the Grays as ACTING like traditional human pilots.

But you're thinking in HUMAN terms, thinking of how WE would do it. Consider that just because something is organic that in no way means it's something that has evolved naturally. The greys could very well be 100% synthetic lifeforms, not robots in the mechanical sense but literally constructed and programmed beings down to a DNA level. I think the key word in your comment is "acting". After all, we have no idea of what they are doing AFTER either they themselves or the human witness leaves the scene. For all we know they could plug into the ship like Borg drones and "switch off" when their task is complete.

 

[Gareth]

I cant remember the persons name... Rich has brought him up a number of times in the past... the guy who was found with two gun shot wounds in the head and was classed as a suicide?

Well dont we need more info on this before concluding that it was definitely foul play? Weve all heard those stories about people who try to commit suicide and survive despite shooting themselves in the head.

Maybe this guy tried and failed but still had enough awareness and motor function to take a second shot.

 

[Brian Now]

This was an interesting listen. I'm not really into the conspiracy zeitgeist or the history of Ufology, but the conversation made even those topics interesting. Sorry to hear Paul Kimball is leaving.