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My Conversation with a TV Producer about Smithsonian Conspiracies

2/28/2014

Before we begin today, I thought I’d share an odd blog post I saw this morning. Joe Rose, the onetime America Unearthed guest who later claimed that the show misrepresented his views on Mithraism, is presenting for your consideration a leather re-bound copy of Philip Ainsworth Means’s The Newport Tower, complete with Scott Wolter’s own penciled-in annotations! That’s not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that Rose, who is a bookbinder by trade, explains that he now considers Wolter a “fringe history revisionist” and is apparently upset with him, despite having been “practically on retainer” as Wolter’s personal bookbinder. (Note: It must be nice to be able to affording having your entire fringe history library leather-bound, though it ruins the value of the books as artifacts.)

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TV Documentaries Plan to Explore More Conspiracy Claims about Smithsonian, Megalithic Yard

2/27/2014

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Before we get into today’s topic, I wanted to share the official press release announcing the release of Cthulhu in World Mythology. According to the press release, in addition to the eBook now available, a PDF version will be on sale next week, with the print version set to go on sale later in March. I’m really looking forward to seeing it put together as a print book.

Now on to today’s television news.

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Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Last Part)

2/26/2014

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Today I’m concluding my look at the Italian journalist Peter Kolosimo’s early ancient astronaut book Not of This World (1968; English trans. 1970).

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Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Pt. 3)

2/25/2014

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After yesterday’s dramatic revelation that Peter Kolosimo was passing off the work of H. P. Lovecraft as an esoteric account of the true ancient alien history of the world, I had to add Not of the This World (1968; English trans. 1970) to my permanent library so I could have it for reference even after I have to return the copy I’m currently reading to the library. As we move into the second half of the book, things aren’t getting any better.

This has to be the most gloriously awful ancient astronaut book I’ve ever read. Picking apart its stew of fact, fiction, and fantasy is a lot more fun than slogging through the rather dull derivatives of modern writers.

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Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Pt. 2): In Which the Cthulhu Mythos Is Taken as Real!

2/24/2014

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I am so glad that I decided to read Peter Kolosimo’s early ancient astronaut book Not of This World (1968, English trans. 1970). It is a veritable black hole of fact, sucking in all of the major themes that I talk about in my own work: racism, mistranslation, fabrication, conflating science fiction and fact, and H. P. Lovecraft. Yes, Lovecraft. I was shocked to discover that Kolosimo not only knows of Lovecraft but actually uses his work as factual evidence for ancient astronauts. No more can ancient astronaut theorists deny that they had any inkling Lovecraft lay behind so much of their work since they all cite Kolosimo, who in turn explicitly discusses Lovecraft, apparently considering him to be a secret source of occult history.

I’ve never seen anything like this, and I can’t believe I wasn’t aware of this bizarre attempt to, in Kolosimo’s words, “support” Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos by martialing all manner of “facts” to prove the reality of the Old Ones. He goes so much farther than Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels ever did in Morning of the Magicians, and he is much more explicit about seeking support in science and science fiction for a Lovecraftian ancient alien invasion.

Holy crap.

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Review of America Unearthed S02E13 "The Spearhead Conspiracy"

2/23/2014

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I’m not quite sure how to give background on an idea that is not already an established part of fringe history. The focus of America Unearthed S02E13 “The Spearhead Conspiracy,” a spear point in Hawaii allegedly connected to Mexico, occurred too recently (2009) to have a great deal of scholarly material, and the question of a Polynesian connection to Mesoamerica is obviously not beyond the realm of possibility. Archaeologists, have in the past used Hawaii as an ethnographic comparison and model for the Maya in terms of the obsidian trade, and a highly controversial claim holds that the Mapuche of Chile—though not Mexico—share a word for obsidian with Polynesians from Easter Island.

Therefore, I am going to write about the history of extraordinary claims about Polynesia since the spine of this episode is a rather simple test of where the obsidian used in the spearhead originated.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S06E16 "Aliens and the Red Planet"

2/22/2014

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The Red Planet: Mars. If you’re reading this, I assume you know a good deal about the background of ancient astronaut claims for prehistoric alien activity on Mars: how Percival Lowell saw what he thought were canals on Mars—but were actually an optical illusion—and then extrapolated from that an advanced Martian civilization; how H. G. Wells used this to create the War of the Worlds; and how that in turn influenced innumerable science fiction stories like Edgar Rice Burrows’s John Carter novels. This in turn fed back into the science-mythology of pseudoscience where the occupants of UFOs became the proverbial little green men from Mars.

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Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Pt. 1)

2/21/2014

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As part of my research for my upcoming anthology of ancient texts related to ancient astronautics, fringe history, and other weird topics, I had to confirm as much as I could about the apocryphal quotation from the Mayan books of Chilam Balam appearing in Peter Kolosimo’s Not of This World (1968; English trans. 1970): “Creatures arriving from the sky on flying ships … white gods who fly above the spheres and reach the stars (ellipses in original).” In so doing, I was doing some research on Kolosimo, whose real name was Pier Colosimo. The book in which the fabricated quotation appears, an early example of ancient astronautics, won one of Italy’s highest literary prizes, and Kolosimo, a journalist, went on to run Italy’s Association for Prehistoric Studies.

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Greek Archaeologist: Government Suppressing Truth, Destroying Evidence Europeans Evolved Separately

2/20/2014

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Fringe historians are claiming that the Greek government is conspiring to suppress the truth that white people evolved independently in Europe and are not descended from groups that evolved in Africa. Nephilim researchers have seized upon this as another example of an academic conspiracy to prevent the truth about human history from coming to light, which they are happy to provide you for a fee.

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What the CW's "Star Crossed" Accidentally Got Right about Alien Encounters

2/19/2014

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Last night I watched an encore presentation of the CW’s new teen alien soap opera Star Crossed, which had premiered Monday night to lackluster ratings. Let me confess here that I am probably not the target audience for Star Crossed. I am at the tail end of the network’s 18-34 target age group, and last I checked I am also not female. Judging by the advertising and the title, the network is emphasizing a Twilight-style romance and seems to be targeting women.

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<<Previous

My Conversation with a TV Producer about Smithsonian Conspiracies

TV Documentaries Plan to Explore More Conspiracy Claims about Smithsonian, Megalithic Yard

Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Last Part)

Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Pt. 3)

Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Pt. 2): In Which the Cthulhu Mythos Is Taken as Real!

Review of America Unearthed S02E13 "The Spearhead Conspiracy"

Review of Ancient Aliens S06E16 "Aliens and the Red Planet"

Review of Peter Kolosimo's "Not of This World" (Pt. 1)

Greek Archaeologist: Government Suppressing Truth, Destroying Evidence Europeans Evolved Separately

What the CW's "Star Crossed" Accidentally Got Right about Alien Encounters

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