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SOTT Focus: SOTT Podcast: Reincarnation Part 1

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In our latest podcast, we discuss the possible reality of reincarnation with Laura Knight-Jadczyk. In part one, Laura discusses evidence that she collected during her years as a hypontherapist. In part two, Laura shares a very personal experience that provided startling evidence to suggest that reincarnation is indeed a reality.

Running Time: 00:30:44

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Star

SOTT Focus: SOTT Reader Meteorite Sighting

Signs Team,

I'm currently living in a town named Chelmsford in Essex, UK. Usually I would be hesitant to give this information out, but I felt that some people here may be interested in the odd report from time to time of strange meteoric activity in the skies over this area of the UK.

Last night on 11th January 2006 at roughly 19:10hours I witnessed a descending meteoric phenomena which, if I were to hazard a guess, was a small meteor breaking up to the NE of my position.

I'd guess no more than 3-6 miles from my position as the view I had was clear enough to see a glittering trail of sparks and colour descending with it, although there was no impact sound, I didn't really expect any. It was in my view for around 1.5 - 3 seconds, so I hadn't seen it descend from a great distance and my view was obscured quickly by other houses.

Wall Street

SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 9 January 2006

Gold closed at 542.20 dollars an ounce on Friday, up 4.3% (and more than 7% for the past two weeks) from $519.70 at the end of the week before. The dollar closed at 0.8239 euros on Friday, down 2.4% from 0.8440 the week before. That puts the euro at 1.2137, compared to 1.1849 at the previous Friday's close. Gold in euros would be 446.73 euros an ounce, up 1.9% from the previous week's 438.60. Oil closed at 64.31 dollars a barrel on Friday, up 5.4% from $61.04 the week before. Oil in euros would be 52.99 euros a barrel, up 3.0% from 51.43 for the week. The gold/oil ratio was 8.43 down 1.0% from 8.51 the week before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow closed at 10,959.31, up 2.3% from 10,717.50 the week before (down when denominated in gold and oil, though). The NASDAQ closed at 2,305.62 on Friday, up 4.5% from 2,205.32 at the previous week's close. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.37%, down two basis points from 4.39 the week before.

Another odd week where the Mainstream Media in the U.S. are trying to push their rosy economic scenario while gold and oil are up sharply, and the U.S. seems to be careening from two disastrous and expensive military defeats while planning several more. Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba? Which will it be? And it is doing this planning with a major constitutional crisis looming (that is, if there is any constitution left to have a crisis).

Speaking of Iraq, lost in the bad news for the U.S. on the battlefield was the news that the International Monetary Fund's prescription for Iraq is working like a charm in producing the classic "IMF Riot":

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SOTT Focus: SOTT Podcast: The Cassiopaean Experiment Pt 1

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For our first podcast of 2006, we discuss the Cassiopaean Experiment. Many of our listeners and readers may not be aware of the association between Signs of the Times and the other Cassiopaea web sites. Others are probably wondering just what the Cassiopaean Experiment is, and how it relates to our daily SOTT news page. In an effort to answer these questions, we begin a multi-part podcast with author, historian, and Signs of the Times founder Laura Knight-Jadczyk. Laura takes us back to the early days of the adventures with Cassiopaea, and sheds some light on just how intertwined the work of Signs of the Times is with the ideas and philosophies of the Cassiopaean experiment, derived through decades of hard work and painstaking research.

Running Time: 00:47:06

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Wall Street

SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 2 January 2006

Gold closed at 519.70 dollars an ounce on Friday, up 2.7% from $505.90 the Friday before. The dollar closed at 0.8440 euros on Friday, up 0.2% from 0.8425 at the end of the previous week. The euro closed at 1.1849 dollars, down from 1.1869 the week before. Gold in euros would be 438.60 an ounce at Friday's close, up 2.9% for the week. Oil closed at 61.04 dollars a barrel, up 4.5% from $58.43 the week before. Oil in euros would be 51.43 euros a barrel, up 4.5% from 49.23 euros at the end of the previous week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.51, down 1.8% from 8.66 the week before. In U.S. stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,717.50 for the week, down 1.5% from 10,883.27 at the previous week's close. The NASDAQ closed at 2,205.32, down 2.0% from 2,249.42 the week before. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.39%, up one basis point from 4.38 the week before.

Since Friday was the last market day of the year, let's look at how the numbers we have been following came out for the year.

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SOTT Focus: SOTT Podcast: The Cathars

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For our final podcast of 2005, the editors of Signs of the Times discuss the Cathars and life in the Languedoc (southern France) in the 11th and 12th centuries with Pierre, a friend from Marseille. The Cathars were an integral part of the flourishing culture of the Languedoc until the Catholic Church began the crusade and the Inquisition in the early 13th century that wiped them out and brought the southwest of France under the control of the Frankish kings of the north.

Running Time: 00:31:57

Download: MP3


Wall Street

SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 26 December 2005

Gold closed at $505.90 an ounce on Friday, up less than 0.1% from $505.50 the week before. The dollar closed at 0.8425 euros last week, up 1.2% from 0.8323 at the previous Friday's close. That put the euro at 1.1869 dollars, compared to 1.2015 the week before. Gold in euros would be 426.24 euros an ounce, up 1.3% from 420.72 euros an ounce the Friday before. Oil closed at 58.43 dollars a barrel Friday, up 0o.6% from $58.06 the week before. Oil in euros would be 49.23 euros a barrel, up 2.1% from 48.23 euros a barrel the Friday before last. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.66 Friday, down 0.6% from 8.71 at the previous Friday's close. In U.S. stocks, the Dow closed at 10,883.27 on Friday, up less than a tenth of a percent for the week from 10,875.59. The NASDAQ closed at 2,249.42, down 0.1% from 2,252.48 the week before. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.38%, down six basis points from 4.44 the week before.

Friday saw the release of the U.S. new housing sales numbers for November. The numbers were surprisingly bad:

Wall Street

SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 19 December 2005

Gold pulled back last week, closing at 505.50 dollars an ounce, down 5.2% from $532.00 last week. The dollar closed at 0.8323 euros on Friday, down 1.7% from 0.8466 euros the week before. The euro, then, was worth 1.2015 dollars at Friday's close, compared to 1.1812 the previous week. Gold in euros, then, would be 420.72 euros an ounce, down 7.1% from 450.39 the Friday before. Oil closed at 58.06 dollars a barrel, down 2.9% from $59.76 at the previous week's close. Oil in euros would be 48.23 euros a barrel, down 4.9% from 50.59 euros the week before. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.71, down 2.2% from 8.90 the previous week. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.44%, down nine basis points from 4.53 the week before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,875.59 on Friday, up 0.9% from10,778.58 at the previous Friday's close. The NASDAQ closed at 2,252.48, down 0.2% from 2,256.73 the week before.

Another strange week. With the price of gold falling more than 5% and oil down about 3%, both markets that are susceptible to short term manipulation, it looks like they want us to keep our heads in the sand for a few more weeks or at least until after Christmas. But the people don't seem to be falling for it completely this time, as holiday retail sales are okay but not great, due to consumer anxiety:

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SOTT Focus: SOTT Podcast: Surviving the Economic Crash

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A reader sent in an interesting article by Dmitry Orlov that compares the former Soviet Union to modern-day America, which is currently falling into an economic abyss. This week, we analyse and discuss the implications of Orlov's article. We also address one of the biggest questions people have about the economic crash: how can I prepare in order to survive the turmoil I see ahead? To answer this question, we expand on Orlov's historical observations to provide a solution that is surprisingly simple - and probably not what most people have in mind...

Running Time: 00:32:28

Download: MP3


Light Saber

SOTT Focus: Can Smoking be GOOD for SOME People?

John Lennon smoking
© David M Spindle
Many people send or give me their "stories" of [alleged] alien interaction. Very early in the Cassiopaean contact, I attended a party given by the owner of a local Metaphysical Book Store. As I was leaving, she gave to me a little folder of about 35 pages, saying that it had been left under a chair after a recent author seminar she had sponsored and held in her store. It had no identifying marks on it as to who wrote it or to whom it belonged, but it was certainly interesting.

This little booklet purported to be a true account of an abductee/contactee whose information, curiously, paralleled the Cassiopaean account of the alien abduction scenario/reality. At one point in this account, the writer claimed that he was told that the anti-smoking campaign and dietary improvement instructions given to many abductees by the Gray aliens who are then seen as "benevolent," was, in fact, due to the influence of the Reptoid aliens; and NOT because they had human interests at heart, but because they were interested in the diet of their food source! In other words, it was exactly the same as when humans put pigs or cows on a diet of corn for a period of time just prior to slaughtering them! Aliens don't like to eat folks who ingest chemicals, junk food, or who smoke cigarettes!

Well, I read this account to our group one night and, when I got to that part, every person in the room who was a smoker reached for their cigarettes and lit up, puffing vigorously as though to demonstrate their poor quality as "food." We all began to laugh hysterically at this semi-subconscious reaction!

Comment: We wish to emphasize a couple of comments from the above article. As Jeremy Narby noted, "Indeed, by one of those curious coincidences, tobacco, curare, and snake venom all fit into exactly the same locks inside our brains." [Narby, 1998] Consider this in relation to Andrew Lobaczewski's remarks about the effect of a psychopath on a normal human:
When the human mind comes into contact with [the psychopathic] reality, so different from any experiences encountered by a person raised in a society dominated by normal people, it releases psychophysiological shock symptoms in the human brain with a higher tonus of cortex inhibition and a stifling of feelings, which then sometimes gush forth uncontrollably. Human minds work more slowly and less keenly, since the associative mechanisms have become inefficient. Especially when a person has direct contact with [a psychopath] who uses their specific experience so as to traumatize the minds of the “others” with their own personalities, his mind succumbs to a state of short-term catatonia. Their humiliating and arrogant techniques, brutal paramoralizations, deaden his thought processes and his self-defense capabilities, and their divergent experiential method anchors in his mind. …
Laura commented as follows:

Now, it seems strange that these same receptors are stimulated by both nicotine and snake venom, though in opposite modes... hmmm... are we close to a "Reptilian" reason for the enormous campaign to stamp out smoking? And, further, are we close to the chemical condition of the "paralysis" induced in alien abductions? (See Delgado.)

We would like to speculate that we are also close to a "psychopathic" reason for the campaign to stamp out smoking. But then, maybe it's one and the same? As J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., author of The Psychopathic Mind, writes:
"The other clinical observation that supports the hypothesis of a reptilian state among certain primitive psychopathic characters is the absence of perceived emotion in their eyes. Although this information is only intuitive and anecdotal, it is my experience in forensic treatment and custody settings to hear descriptions of certain patients' or inmates' eyes as cold, staring, harsh, empty, vacant, and absent of feeling. Reactions from staff to this percetion of the psychopath's eyes have included, "I was frightened... he's very eerie; I felt as if he was staring right through me; when he looked at me the hair stood up on my neck." This last comment is particularly telling since it captures the primitive, autonomic, and fearful response to a predator.

"I have rarely heard such comments as these from the same experienced inpatient staff during highly arousing, threatening, and violent outbursts by other angry, combative patients. It is as if they sense the absence of a capacity for emotional relatedness and empathy in the psychopathic individual, despite his lack of actual physical violence at the moment. ...

"I have found little in the research literature, either theoretical or empirical, that attempts to understand this act of visual predation in the psychopathic process. ... The fixated stare of the psychopath is a prelude to instinctual gratification rather than empathic caring. The interaction is socially defined by parameters of power rather than attachment."
As long as you can be shocked and "frozen in the headlights" by them, they can control you. And it very well may be that smoking is a major defense. As the C's remarked recently:
Some people are born to serve, others are born to be served...
[6 August 05]