An interview with Richard Thomas, author of the excellent book PARA-NEWS - UFOs, Ghosts, Conspiracy Cryptids, and More - a collection of essays and interviews (with Nick Redfern, Nick Pope, and others) that first appeared on Binnall of America, UFO Mystic, and other venues. Interviewed by Henry Baum, author of the conspiracy novel, The American Book of the Dead.

Henry Baum: In your book, you frequently raise the specter of Alex Jones and his ideas on eugenics, the New World Order, and so on. Personally, I take some issue with Alex Jones for a few reasons, and I wonder if you could address them. The main thing that leaps out about Alex Jones is that he never raises the UFO issue - you actually interview someone at Infowars who seems pretty disinterested in the whole subject. This seems like a fairly impossible assertion to make - it's pretty clear that there is something going on with the UFO issue, if only because the government explanation for many sightings is so suspiciously stupid. If that's the case, and there is also a conspiracy to bring about a New World Order, then the two cannot be separated. When you look through at the NWO through the lens of the UFO issue then the NWO makes more sense - not just a way to aimlessly enslave us, but perhaps to make the population more controllable in the event of first contact. Do you think that's a possibility?

Richard Thomas: I’ve been following Alex Jones off and on since about 2000 when I saw him in an episode of Jon Ronson’s Secret Rulers of the World series for Channel Four. He’s had a big impact on the way I see the world and interpret world events. However, I do agree that he is missing a huge piece of the puzzle by not looking at the UFO topic in more depth. That said, trying to get the average person to accept that the Bilderberg Group really does exist is hard enough … so I can understand why Alex Jones doesn’t cover the topic as much as UFO researchers would like him to.

More recently, however, I have noticed that Alex is talking about UFOs a lot more on his radio show. Here you can listen to him and David Icke talk about Project Blue Beam.

I myself believe that the globalists will use any crisis be it real or manufactured to further their goal of a one world government, be it global warming, terrorism, Colonel Gaddafi, or yes, UFOs.

A lot of UFO researchers tend to romanticize what they call “Disclosure”, the day when the world is finally told the truth (whatever that is) about what the US government and others really know about UFOs. I’m more cautious. I think if Disclosure ever really does occur (and that’s a big if) we have to be careful that the existence of extraterrestrials or whatever isn’t used as a justification to turn the world into a giant police state. Rahm Emanuel said "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" and his words sum up the mentality of the globalists perfectly.

HB: I guess another way of saying this is that what he sees as nefarious might actually have a purpose. Granted, the way they're going about globalization is a total nightmare. I just can't shed the feeling that they have a grander plan than just profit or enslavement. I mean if you have a billion dollars, what's 2 billion? Maybe they're just addicts, I don't know. But I also think all that profit might be going to black projects - sort of like the arks in the otherwise-terrible "2012" movie. That's not a way of excusing them, but just saying that there's more purpose to this than enslavement for the hell of it. Of course. Hitler had a "purpose" too, so there's a lot to be wary of. In sum: do you think it's possible that a one world government could - in the very long term - potentially be positive?

RT: No, I don’t. Lets say just for the sake of argument that the globalists have a higher purpose of some kind for what they’re doing. Maybe they know about a fleet of marauding alien spaceships heading for Earth like in the film Independence Day or something like that, and the reason they want a world government and world army is so that the Earth will be able to defend itself against the alien invaders. That doesn’t change the fact that we’ll still be living inside a giant dictatorship created in stealth … maybe we would be better off under the aliens, lol.

But seriously even if the globalists were honest and open about what they were doing, and openly said they wanted to create a world government but it's okay because it’s going to be a democratic one, I would still be very against the idea. I don’t believe something the size of a world government could function as a democracy and it wouldn’t be long before it became a dictatorship. Which is why I believe a world government and even the European Union are bad ideas to begin with.

HB: I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit because the globalists have really tipped their hand about the kind of world they want and it's a bad one. But for the sake of argument - say there was disclosure of an alien that was totally benign. Given the state of the world, releasing this info could be apocalyptic. If people get this upset about sharia law and illegal immigrants, what will the American public - let alone Middle Eastern terrorists - do with a literal alien? Seen through the lens of disclosure, the Patriot Act makes more sense. Not just to stop terrorism in 2011, but to keep an eye on the total global freakout that could be coming. I'm not longing for a police state or anything, but supposing 1% of what we know about the UFO is true - that amounts to a massive amount of world-changing information. Everything that's happened - 9-11, the war in Iraq, and so on - takes on a new meaning. So I wonder if those romantics about disclosure would trade some of their liberty for the big reveal if it meant finally getting some answers to the UFO enigma.

What's always troubled me is that people like Bush Sr. or Dick Cheney are the ones who are more likely to know the story behind UFO secrecy. There's a strange alignment between UFO secrecy and right wing ideology. Do you think it's possible to have disclosure without the world turning into a police state - given the impact it would have on religious ideology and technology?

RT: Well it depends what we’re told. Not everyone is convinced we’re dealing with aliens from outer space. But if we are I suppose if they were “totally benign” and no threat it is possible to have Disclosure without the world turning into a police state. But if they‘re not, no I don’t think it looks good. After 9/11 many people were willing to give up their civil liberties to fight a couple Islamic terrorists, imagine what they would be willing to do to combat a threat from outer space. But this is all just speculation.

HB: I also wonder about Jones' ideas on Christianity. In his Bohemian Grove video, he points out that the men are sinister because they worship "the occult." He's even targeted Peter Joseph of "Zeitgeist" for being part of the New Age conspiracy, as if Christianity is the one true faith. If you watch "Zeitgeist" or "The God Who Wasn't There" it's pretty clear that the story of Christianity is fabricated. So Alex Jones believes in many conspiracies except one of the biggest: the fabrication of the Jesus story. Personally, I'd rather there be a universal religion than saying this one book (which advocates stoning heretics, among other things) is the be all end all of religious principles. What's your view of spirituality as it pertains to the NWO, or even to UFOs?

RT: There’s no question that early Christianity was hijacked by the Roman Empire. Christmas is as about as Christian as Halloween, December 25 was an important day to pagans. But I still celebrate it and I believe everyone has the right to believe, think, say, or do as they please as long as they don’t knowingly lie or physically try to hurt anybody else.

HB: Finally, I wonder about things like population control. Studying population growth is not the same thing as advocating genocide, nor is advocating birth control. Planned Parenthood isn't evil - as he says in "Endgame" (which you reference). The Bilderberg conference might be totally sinister, but on the surface a bunch of powerful people all getting together to discuss the state of the world makes sense - why wouldn't they do that? I'm not even going to get into Global Warming science, as that's so loaded. I guess I never see in him any possible solutions - just a lot of paranoia about people who are looking for solutions. Certainly, some of these people are evil, but not all. Plainly our world is disordered, so people looking for a (lowercase) new world order might not all be dangerous.

I'm beginning to sound like a fat-cat apologist. It absolutely pisses me off that Obama and Bush are so identical and the wealthy elite are profiting off the backs of everyone else and raping the planet. They really seem to be sowing the seeds of disorder, rather than sustainability. If you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention. Jones' answer is to support Ron and Rand Paul - which I don't see as feasible. Giving corporations even more power via deregulation isn't the solution - i.e. Big Business isn't any better than Big Government. So I'm wondering what your ideal system would be, politically or economically.

RT: Well my main problem with the Bilderburg Group is that most people have never even heard about them. I don’t think that many powerful people should be allowed to meet in secret once a year and nothing be said about it in the media. Thankfully because of the hard work of dedicated researchers and activists around the world that is starting to change.

I get what you’re saying about birth control etc, but there’s no question that population reduction seems to be a big part of the globalist agenda. You just have to look at the comments of people like Prince Philip or Ted Turner and others.

"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation." - Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, in the foreword to If I Were an Animal

"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal." - Ted Turner, founder of CNN

"And I actually think the world will be much better when there's only 10 or 20 percent of us left." - Dr. Eric Pianka, University of Texas biologist

What kind of system would I like?

First I think its important to stress I don’t believe in Utopia. There’s no such thing, you’ll never have a perfect world and every attempt at creating one has always led to mass slaughter and tyranny. I think we need to recognise that first.

I think the founders of the United States had some good ideas. Things like a written constitution that protected the freedom of speech and other rights of the people, and an educated, informed public who could understand what that constitution said. Now, of course, even the early United States had its problems, slavery being a big one. But I think that’s a good place to start. But if readers want to disagree with me … great … it’s called freedom. Hopefully we can all agree on that.

See also: RichardThomas.Eu

The American Book of the Dead.com

The reason that the "Ground Zero mosque" issue is so troubling is that it's trumping up the fear of the other. If this is the reaction to the basically-inconsequential building of a cultural center in downtown New York, how in the hell will people react to something like UFO disclosure? What would Fox News do with President Obama revealing that UFOs have been sighted by the military for years. If he's considered a Muslim Marxist now, what would he be considered then - an alien? Don't underestimate people's desire for paranoia. If he can be called the new Hitler, people will believe anything.

If a Republican president revealed the same thing, you'd get a similar reaction from the left-wing base, with people wondering what sort of nefarious plan might be on the horizon - like a false flag alien attack. This is already talked about in conspiracy circles, and for such an insane idea as earth being visited by extraterrestrials, every lunatic idea would be given a voice in the mainstream, much as the media is legitimizing the voices of people who say things like Muslims are evil. If we're being tested for tolerance and how we might react to a radical idea like UFOs, we're failing.

Nevermind first contact and an alien landing on the White House lawn. Like every debate it would become a mess - some would say it's CGI, psy-ops, survivalists would stockpile more guns and possibly turn to violence, the intensely religious would go more batshit - including Middle-Eastern terrorists who would find a new reason to hate us. It would be an invitation to devolve into every paranoid fantasy. Every conspiracy theory would then be legitimized. Even if the alien race appeared benevolent, you would have countless news reports beginning with, "Some say the aliens are here to eat us. Experts weigh in."

I've thought before - hey, people can handle this idea, they can adapt, but now I'm not so sure. People's reaction to the "War of the Worlds" broadcast wasn't entirely absurd - after all, the radio show was purporting to be a report of an actual invasion. But the media turns fiction into non-fiction by treating all points-of-view as carrying equal weight. Witnessing the debate about the "mosque" in New York, I'm beginning to wonder if humans are a long way from being able to absorb this type of information. The media turns normal things into hysteria - because it gives a louder bullhorn to the hysterical than the nuanced. It would turn something abnormal like UFOs into something potentially apocalyptic. Even if the media were smart and careful, large groups of people would do this all on their own. Until we have a better media, and less reactionary people, I wonder if this issue can truly be made public.

So I put this question out there. Is it possible to have UFO disclosure without it devolving into total lunacy and hysteria?

Cross-posted at The American Book of the Dead.

Why the new atheism tends to get on my nerves. A piece by Julian Sanchez called Agnosticism and the Varieties of Certainty counters the idea that atheism is really just agnosticism - i.e. it's not a fundamentalist belief that God doesn't exist, because that can't be proven either. His basic premise is that because God can't be proven, it's not worth believing. Different than: God could exist.

To the extent that it is a meaningful question, I have no reason to expect that science either eventually will, or even in principle could answer it. But I am not sure why I am supposed to care, except insofar as it’s interesting to mull over, if you go for that sort of thing. Suppose I allow that it is a genuine mystery—radically uncertain, even. It’s outside the realm about which we can talk meaningfully or offer evidence. So what? If there were some part of the world about which we couldn’t even in principle gather information, would I have to declare myself a basilisk agnostic because, after all, they might be there?

Trouble is God isn't a thing like a basilisk. Here's a basilisk, by the way, a mythical serpent.

God is (potentially) everything - including good and evil. It's not an entity that answers prayers like a fact-checker. God is consciousness, time, space, beyond our current understanding. To suggest that concept is not worth exploring - because it can't be proven - is sort of a slap in the face of scientific inquiry. When have scientists ducked from a good challenge (don't answer that)? So, taking spiritual questions out of life doesn't make life more concrete, it makes it less so.

I will admit that I am a weirdo who believes that what we imagine has the potential to be real. A mythical creature doesn't exist in Newtonian reality. But maybe...one day. We won't need a helmet to access virtual reality. We'll be able to project it with our minds (possibly). If matter is just energy, perhaps the energy of thought can one day become material. And once the imagined becomes real - everything becomes imagination.

That's a science fiction story, though, and won't fix my TV if it breaks.

He goes on:

I don’t know why there’s something instead of nothing, if the question is even intelligible, any more than I can prove I’m not a brain in a vat. These are interesting facts to reflect on in an epistemology seminar. They have very little to do with my ordinary assertions about how to get to The Passenger or whether the details of any particular cosmology seem persuasive, or whether praying to Mecca or confessing to a priest seems like a sensible thing to do.

Keep religion out of it. Religious ritual has little to do with the debate about the possible existence of God, which is a far cry more important than something to merely be debated in an epistemology seminar. No, the debate doesn't give you directions to some place on the map, but neither does art or music. The question of God is fundamental to human existence - proven, of course, by the interest in the new atheism. Obviously, it's a vital topic. But the premise of much atheism seems to be that God is too unknowable to even bother thinking about, let alone believing. What separates us as humans is the ability to think about these topics, so depriving us of this seems to trivialize a fundamental aspect of being human.

It's also telling that he says, "I don’t believe in...psychic powers either." So he discounts all anomalous phenomena? There's a whole host of puzzling and fascinating information about general esoterica. If he's discounting all instances of anomalous phenomena, how are we to believe it when he discounts all evidence of God? Again, these types of topics are currently unprovable, but unprovable today doesn't mean unprovable tomorrow. Saying otherwise is a sort of arrogant view that what we know today is all we will ever know. But that has never been the case with human knowledge and progress. To not keep looking - and to not acknowledge that it's worth looking for - is anti-knowledge as well as anti-theism.

He ends, "There’s still no reason to treat God talk as anything more than another bit of human storytelling." That would suggest that storytelling is a triviality - which is why it seems like the new atheists suck the fun and magic out of - not just God - but life itself. It's the condescension that gets to me: God is just a story. There's no such thing as just a story. Yes, but you can say - God was invented, just like a work of art. Until you can answer me why a particular work of art came to being, where in the dreamworld of the imagination it came from - not just the how, but the why - God is an inspiring topic and worth investigation. That's my belief - not: God exists. But: God is worth exploring.

Cross-posted at The American Book of the Dead.