Rights and Raelians: Court Rules Filmmakers Lied About Raelians

On Binnall of America, for my Trickster's Realm column:Rights and Raelians. A federal court recently ruled that two film makers intentionally lied in their documentary about the Raelians. I've been following this story for years, since 2005 when they started their campaign against the Raelians. Now, I'm not a particular fan of the Raelians but that is beside the point. UFO Land has ignored this story, mainly because the Raelians are an embarrassment, I suspect. But that fact doesn't change the religious and political fanaticism of Abdullah Hashem and his partner Joseph McGowen and their libel and slander.

All that's beside the point; Hashem's attack on the Raelians wasn't due to altruistic reasons, but a religious attack. He was deeply offended by the Raelians free spirited sexual views and their interpretations of God/god. That's all it was ever about. One religious fanatic's attack. Last week a court ruled in favor of the Raelians:

U.S. Federal Court Rules Filmmakers Lied About Raelians - PR Newswire - sacbee.com

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A California federal court has found that two vocal critics of the Raelian Movement (www.rael.org) fabricated stories about the organization. The court awarded undisclosed damages to the Raelians, including the return of film footage.

Abdullah Hashem and Joseph McGowen appeared on Fox News and other media outlets in 2005-2006, saying they saw people recruited through sex and that acts of pedophilia took place at a Raelian seminar in 2005.

Raelians have claimed for years that the two men lied about what they reported, and they have now been legally vindicated. On September 15, the federal court issued a final judgment against Hashem, who was also ordered to return all film footage taken at the seminar to the Raelian Movement. A copy of the ruling is available upon request under:

United States District Court for the Eastern District of California: International Raelian Movement v. Hashem (Case No. 2:08-cv-00687-GEB –DAD).

My original blog posts appeared on an old Angelfire blog I had that no longer exists but I did find a draft in my files from 2005:

Raelians Sue

Long time readers of the OrangeOrb know I'm no fan of the Raelians. Their emblem is offensive: a swastika. Oh, not a neo-Nazi white brotherhood kill the Jews and gays and blacks and everyone else un-tall, blond and blue eyed, but still. They've gone through a couple of changes with the design, making it New Agey, all lotus like and mingled with light and love and the ancient meaning of the swastika, but, still . . .

Read the rest at Binnall of America, and do yourself a favor and read the other great columns while you're visting the site.

Esoteric Claims to Fame, Or: My Cousin Was a MIB

Originally posted at Trickster's Realm for Binnall of America.

An item on Lon Sticker’s Phantoms and Monsters about Elvis and his life long interest in UFOs inspired me to write about the time I met Elvis in Los Angles when I was working at the Free Clinic.  (see my post on UFO Mystic.) That was one of my brushes with fame, and esoteric in a round about way, since Elvis had a strong curiosity about UFOs and believed in extraterrestrial life.

Another esoteric brush with fame is, I think, waaaaaaaay cool. It concerns Boris Badenov. Yes, that Boris Badenov! Legend has it that the character actor Akim Tarmioff was the inspiration for the spy character Boris Badenov of the  Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  Here is what a Wikipedia entry has to say about Akim’s inspiration:

Badenov's name is a play on that of the 16th-century Russian Tsar Boris Godunov ("bad enough" vs. "good enough"). His accent and explosive temper are an homage to Hollywood actor Akim Tamiroff, especially Tamiroff's role in The Great McGinty, a 1940 movie directed by Preston Sturges.

Akim (Mikhailovich) Tamiroff, the Russian born character actor who appeared in dozens of films and television shows was often typecast as a Mexican or Greek, among other ethnic characters. He played spies, cops, thieves; all manner of roles.  Among the films Akim appeared in:For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1943, Lord Jim, 1965, Oceans 11, 1960, Topaki, 1964, and dozens more.

Akim was married to my grandfather’s niece, actress Tamara Shayne. My mother lived with them when she was in her late teens (that would be in late 1940s, early 1950s) when she first arrived in Los Angeles from Oregon.  I met them once when I was little; I remember Tamara as being stand offish , but Akim was pretty nice, very funny and playful.

Truly, how cool is it that one of the iconic cartoon characters, Boris Badenov, was based on a family member? (Another fun esoteric synchronistic fact: my mother’s name is a variation of Natasha.) 


Is it fair to say Boris was a MIB? No, it just sounded good for the title. Boris was short, fat, and hardly MIB like in behavior or appearance. He was an Eastern European/Russian spy, bumbling, the bad guy, created during the Cold War, when the spy business was everywhere. It still is; and actually, we’ve come back around to Russian spies recently, with movies like SALT and the plethora of Russian spies on television shows.

I have other claims to esoteric fame, which I'll write about in future columns.

Bruce Rux on BOA

Fantastic job by Tim Binnall at Binnall of America, who interviewed Bruce Rux, author of Hollywood vs The Aliens and Architects of the Underworld -- also, Rux is an actor, playwright, . . . yet he doesn't have a "web presence" as Tim put it, and he's kind of a mysterious figure. Adding to this intriguing aura is the interesting fact Rux works for Wackenhut, which, as any conspiracy esoteric Fortean junkie knows, is a juicy tidbit, since the shadowy MIB like implications of that corporation is well known, as Rux himself happily acknowledges. This is a three part interview; much to think about as Rux and Tim discuss the intentional disinformation planted by government into our media and popular culture.

Be sure you listen to this series of interviews. Great work, and as always, thanks to Tim Binnall for bringing us these great interviews for free.

New Trickster's Realm Column on BOA

My article on My Contact with Flying Saucers, by Contactee Dino Kraspedon, is now up at Binnall of America.

MIBs, Clowns and Helicopters

MIBs, Clowns and Helicopters is the title for my Trickster's Realm column, which will be up sometime this Monday on Binnall of America.

I was searching for an image of a creepy scary clown, hopefully with a paranormal edge, and found these images. I couldn't go on looking, I was getting very creeped out and upset. I don't like clowns. At all.

This isn't that creepy, but it gives me an uncomfortable feeling. It's just so cheesy and dirty and you just know there's something smelly and bad underneath all that supposed wholesomeness.


This is obviously scary and creepy. King's novel (I am a King fan although I haven't read his latest five books or so) IT was a good one, in a nasty awful way.


Now this one is creepy and scary but I also kind of like it in a weird, sick way. It's just so off the wall, and I'm a big fan of pulp fiction, so it doesn't quite send me over the edge into the abyss. Still, I don't want it on my night table!


For guitar picks; this is actually kind of funny, but I still can't get there.


Creepy, sick, scary . . . even though it's vintage cover art (I think, it might be an homage to that, I can't tell) it's too much. I can't deal.


Tragic, exploitative, and all too real; surreal.


Fortean Times Magazine was on to clowns. Ironic arch skeptic Benjamin Bradford wrote the article, though not surprising for FT. I found this image on a blog called The Fortean Critic, but as far as I could tell, it isn't active and only had a couple of posts. You can read the article the blogger wrote here.


Killer Clowns From Space. A cult classic, a fantastic title. I can appreciate it from afar for what it is. But, nope, I can't enjoy it. Too damn creepy.


I think this might be the among the scarier ones, because I don't think it's supposed to be scary. But it really gives off a bad vibe!


That's quite enough, I can't take any more.

So what, you may wonder, do clowns have to do with Vintage U.F.O. stuff? Well, there is a Fortean history of weird paranormal clowns and related beings to UFOs, Mothman, etc. There's also the Trickster element; is it one aspect of this clown stuff? There's a whole dark underbelly to UFO experiences that a lot of people don't address. And, as you'll read in my TR column, I muse on the possible relationships with clowns, MIBS (are they a kind of "clown?") and UFO encounters.

Now, let's see if I can get to sleep tonight. . .

Medusa's Ladder: The Cold War and Altered Minds: Recalling The UFO Device in Retro TV Episodes

Richelle Hawks looks at TV and UFOs in her Medusa's Ladder column for Binnall of America: The Cold War and Altered Minds: Recalling The UFO Device in Retro TV Episodes.

It's a good article; Richelle points out the mind set behind these television episodes that included UFOs or flying saucers:

During the Cold War, the “UFO episode” was practically a tiny archetype to be fulfilled in popular shows—inevitable and perhaps necessary somehow, a token--similar to the “beatnik” episodes of the 60s, in which the squaresville mainstream characters venture very out of place into the smoky stoned beret-laden basements of jazzhouses, or the “very special” preachy social commentary episodes of the 80s, in which a main character loses her virginity, experiments with drugs, or gets abused.

Viewing these UFO episodes of popular shows, in almost every case, a theme of “secrets” (usually military) is revealed, and personal sanity is either compromised or questioned. More generally, there is a sense of mistrust and unreliability, both intrinsic-culturally and personally. These ideas obviously reflect the Cold War mindset. It is important to note too, that in almost every case in these episodes, a mundane (opposed to magical or ‘real’) origin and solution is supplied for the featured UFO mystery.

There’s also a common thread of an induced altered state, or abnormal of mind. The characters who witness the UFOs are either mentally ill, drunk, stupid, immature, exhausted, or otherwise compromised from normalcy. This feature seems to be necessary to telling the story, but whether it mirrors some instrinsic Truth in the UFO experience, is a novel representation of liminality, or is a simple apologist type device, is up for debate.

Be sure to go over there to Binnall of America and read Richelle's column, as well as the other great stuff over there.