David Braden, initiator of 3D Networking

One particularly interesting proposal is what Braden calls the Self-help Corporation. Today's economy does not have any place for people that aren't directly involved in making more and more profit for the corporate players. At first, these were only the people who did not have the right skills, but more and more people are being laid off because the corporation that employed them is cutting costs. It is nothing for a huge corporation to buy its competition and then start "slimming down", laying off thousands of people who thought they had secured stable employment. Thus, the ranks of those who don't fit keep swelling.

Braden's self-help corporation (this link is to an abbreviated description) is a way of balancing the needs of these individuals against the focus on profit which is a characteristic of the corporations and which does not allow giving someone a job simply because they need to make money to live.

"The self-help corporation is a simple, practical and economical way to alleviate the resulting poverty. It does not require public consensus, expensive government programs or massive charitable fundraising. One can be started now, by anyone, anywhere in the world.

Poor people are poor because they do not have skills that can be marketed in the “market economy” or their labor is valued by the market economy at a level that does not provide them adequate resources for a decent standard of living. They are not, however, without skills and resources. In particular, they possess the skills and available labor to produce basic necessities."

The question is whether such an idea has real transformative potential. Will people actually come together in solidarity and contribute their money or their skills to make it possible for a whole group to take care of basic necessities in a way that's much more economical than today's 'everyone for themselves' way of doing it.

The vision is growing and it's becoming more focused. A part of this process is documented in a discussion around The Story of How Humans Came to Live in Peace and Plenty on the "open money" Ning group.

Here is a recent version of that story...

How Humans Came to Live in Peace and Plenty – Version 3.0

(original here)

There came a time in our community when we grew tired of arguing over who was right and who was wrong. Despite all the arguing there were still hungry people and the environment kept declining. What we needed was more places for people and creatures to fit.

Then we came to realize that the market could not solve all our problems. The market is wonderful for what it does – a spur to innovation – producing better and better goods and services – more and more efficiently. But the market did not provide a place for everyone to fit. When there was more of us than the market needed we were laid off – the market did not value clean air and clean water and the diversity of ecosystems. Anything that is abundant has no value to the market.

Then we came to realize. If people are abundant in the eyes of the market does that mean we have nothing to contribute? And if clean air and water and plants and animals, fish and fungi are abundant does that mean that they have nothing to contribute? What else would we like to be abundant? What if food, clothing, shelter, education and health care were abundant? Would they then have no value?

Then we came to realize. If we cannot rely on the market for those things we want in abundance, we can create new ways of doing things for those things that do not fit in the market. We can design a way to recognize the value in people and creatures that the market does not value. We can find a way for those people and creatures to contribute their gifts to the flow of value and receive value in return.

And we called out to government to help us find the way – and government said, “We are not elected to interfere with business.” And we called out to the captains of industry to help us find a way – and industry said, “Our only mission is to make a profit.” And we called out to the foundations and the universities that they support to help us find a way – and academia said, “We do science and education – we do not design the world”.

And we came to realize that we would have to find the way ourselves.

And so, our community came together – people from government – people from industry – people of charity and seekers of knowledge – we came together to discover what we could do to make our community a better place to live. And we found that we could produce an abundance of food, clothing, shelter, education and health care by creating integrated systems of production. Those who did not fit in the market and those who wanted to work at a slower pace, and those who had made their mark in the market, began to contribute their skills in exchange for shares in the community investment enterprise. And the enterprise produced abundance by finding a place for many different creatures. And we became whole, our economy and our lives in balance, and we live together in peace and plenty.

examples:

A Community Investment Enterprise in a US City

Economics of Integrated Production

Grass Powered Greenhouse

The Upward Spiral

Bill Mollison

Greening the Desert

Michael Pollan

To follow the developing story in more detail, go to the original post here and read all those comments...

The Peak Oil scenario was first announced in 1956 by a petroleum geologist - M. King Hubbert - who was at the time working for the Shell Oil company. Hubbert's prediction was that oil production would peak in the US between 1965 and 1970 and that internationally, the peak of production would be reached around the year 2000. Hubbert's peak, as the inexorable winding down of oil production has also been named, is universally recognized as a threatening reality, but is the theory based on actual physical principles?

North Sea oil rig - Image Minerals UK

There certainly is a shortage of production and transformation, enough to have driven prices above the $100-a-barrel level for crude oil. Those oil price increases have elevated the profits of oil companies to undreamed-of heights. Shell's profit for 2007 is a record 31 billion Dollars, Exxon Mobil "shattered its own record as the world's most profitable publicly traded corporation" with a yearly profit for last year of 40.6 billion Dollars and Shevron, the second largest US oil company saw its yearly profit increase to 18.7 billion Dollars. (LA Times, 2 Feb. 2008)

The German Energy Watch Group tells us in a report released in October 2007, that Peak Oil is here now, that "world oil production has peaked in 2006". Official industry and government data on oil reserves do not support that conclusion, but Energy Watch has made its own estimates to support a result that it has been actively looking for.

Not everyone agrees that we are running out of oil. Peter Jackson, who conducted a study of world oil supplies for Cambridge Energy Research Associates says oil output will continue to rise over the next decade.

Peak Oil artificial?

My argument is that there is no actual physical shortage of hydrocarbons. There is indeed a drop in oil extraction, but it seems that this is more a forced reduction of output, rather than a consequence of having exhausted liquid hydrocarbons as a resource.

Certainly the result of going to war in Iraq, an ambition that predates 9/11, was not to have more oil flowing from that country's wells, regardless of the widespread belief that Bush ordered the invasion of that country to "secure US oil interests in the Middle East". The actual result is that Iraq produces less oil than before the invasion.

Meanwhile, there are reports that oil reserves in the US are more than two trillion barrels, more than the combined total of non-US world oil reserves. The oil is combined with rock in what's called oil shale, but extraction would be more than profitable with a price tag of 100 dollars per barrel. (See The U.S. Govt’s Secret Colorado Oil Discovery)

In 2000 I worked in the Gulf of Mexico for two different OSV companies that provided support services to the "oil patch". The two companies did very different work for the oil companies so I got to get an eye full.

The first thing that I'd like to expose is the fact that nearly all of the new wells in the gulf are immediately capped off and forgotten about. I saw well after well brought in only to see them capped off and left. Oil or natural gas it didn't matter. I asked a couple of petroleum engineers what exactly was going on and I was told by both (they worked for different companies) that there was no intention of bringing that oil to market until the "price was right".

Dennis Meredith as quoted in Energy: Are Oil And Natural Gas Renewable?

Lindsey Williams in his book The Energy Non-Crisis tells a tale of lies and deception, a tale that suggests that the 'peaking' of US oil production some 40 years ago was less a question of lack of resources than of national policy.

There is also a series of eight videos on YouTube where Lindsay explains what he found out while a chaplain for the Alaskan Alyeska pipeline project.

Renewable oil

Thomas Gold says that hydrocarbons are not the result of the degradation of living organic matter from prehistoric times. In his book The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels Gold presents convincing evidence that hydrocarbons are formed deep in the crustal rock of the earth from hydrogen gas transformed into methane and subsequently into liquid and solid hydrocarbons by the action of bacteria, heat and pressure.
Methane and other hydrocarbons are also found on other planets, which have never had, to our knowledge, any higher life forms that could have left the raw materials for the formation of those hydrocarbons.

According to George Crispin's article Peak Oil Theory vs. Russian-Ukrainian Modern Theory on Lew Rockwell's site, Gold's theory of continuous production of oil inside the earth's crust has been proved out by Russian deep well drilling. These wells find oil where, according to the old theory of oil as a fossil fuel, there should be none.

Joe Vialls, a former oil exploration expert, has come to the same conclusion. In his article titled Russia Proves 'Peak Oil' is a Misleading Zionist Scam he gives much more information on the discovery of non fossil oil by Russia in different oil fields by super deep drilling methods.

Other hydrocarbons

Methane or 'natural gas' is a clean burning hydrocarbon that is native to the earth. According to Gold's theory, it is the precursor of oil and indeed, methane is found together with oil. It comes out of just about any drill hole, but is normally burned or 'flared off' like it was a nuisance. Yet, there is more methane available than we could easily use.

The process of methane production and depositing has not stopped. It is going on right now. According to the article Raining hydrocarbons in the Gulf, a steady build-up of methane deposits has been observed in the Gulf of Mexico.

The ocean bottom seems to be covered with thick strata of frozen methane. All we need to do is find a way to harvest it and we have a clean burning fuel. This article - China and India Exploit Icy Energy Reserves - gives an idea of the magnitude of the unused resource:

Quote: Methane, trapped in an icy cage of water molecules, occurs in permafrost and, in even greater quantities, beneath the ocean floor. It forms only under specific pressure and temperature conditions. These conditions are especially prevalent in the ocean along the continental shelves, as well as in the deeper waters of semi-enclosed seas (see graphic).

World reserves of the frozen gas are enormous. Geologists estimate that significantly more hydrocarbons are bound in the form of methane hydrate than in all known reserves of coal, natural gas and oil combined. "There is simply so much of it that it cannot be ignored," says leading expert Gerhard Bohrman of the Research Center for Ocean Margins (RCOM) in the northern German city of Bremen.

Accordingly, both China and India are developing ways to harvest the gas.

Where does that leave us?

Should we now sit back and enjoy the ride, knowing that oil and natural gas are plentiful? Hardly so. There are serious issues of pollution connected with burning hydrocarbons for energy and that is why everything possible should be done to develop energy technologies that do not rely on combustion. The bulk of our energy should come from other resources that are not combustion-based and not polluting.

Solar, wind and hydroelectric power generation are the more 'conventional' alternatives. But much research is being done by 'lone nut' inventors into other forms of energy generation. No one is getting rich with government or industry funding. As a matter of fact, most are starving back-yard experimenters who have a hard time making ends meet, not to talk about expensive laboratory equipment or help with experimentation, product development and marketing. This is the big neglected potential of our time. Perhaps no wonder, with so many billions to be made by selling those scarce hydrocarbons...

But even without help, there has been some progress. Not as much as there should be, to be sure. Check out PesWiki, a huge resource collaboratively compiled which documents those ongoing efforts. You might want to start with their "top 100" listing, but don't leave it at that. There is much more.

There are some real alternatives just over the horizon

On of the commenters (kenneth, 22 feb. 2008) to this article brought it home to me that I skimped in listing the real alternatives to oil and other hydrocarbons that are in development. I did mention PESWiki and its Top 100 energy technologies listing, which collects information about new energy production methods that are in some stage of development, but let's expand a bit on that here.

My own favorites in this somewhat confused area are

- vortex based technologies that use the energy concentrating properties of vortex flow both in water and air for harvesting energy. Two examples are given in Water Vortex Drives Power Plant

- on-demand hydrogen production from water. The hydrogen economy is not taking off for only one reason: The great difficulty of transporting and storing hydrogen. Hydrogen can be produced 'on demand', by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. In this way, one can simply take water as fuel and bypass the storage and transport problems. The hydrogen obtained can be used to increase the efficiency of current internal combustion engines or as a stand-alone technology for energy production. Emerging technologies to obtain hydrogen from water are described on this PESWiki page.

- permanent magnet applications. The power of magnets is thought to be static and thus not available for use in energy generating applications. But much research is going into overcoming this limitation. Granted, there have been setbacks, such as the botched demonstration of Steorn, but research is quietly continuing. This PESWiki page describes various magnet motor developments.

Although these are my personal favorites, there are many other technologies being developed by huge numbers of researchers. I can't mention them all, but you can find them on the net if you just do some searching.

And yes, I do have a proposal

Tax the energy multinationals and use the money to forward this kind of research, not fusion or other never-delivering boondoggles. Let's give the small guys a break. They deserve it. And we might get some real progress on energy independence in the bargain.

See also:

Seafloor Chemistry: Life's building blocks made inorganically

Titan Has More Oil Than Earth
"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material — it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Ralph Lorenz, a Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan."

If there are abundant hydrocarbons on Titan, both gaseous and liquid, that kind of tends to blow holes in the theory of oil as a fossil fuel, doesn't it?

Why Exxon Won't Produce More
. . . If you want to understand why Exxon won't produce more, it helps to listen in to ExxonMobil's presentation to analysts in New York City in early March. Halfway through the three-hour meeting, Exxon management flashed a chart that showed the company's worldwide oil production staying flat through 2012. . . .

Yet even with prices at the pump near all-time highs, Exxon isn't planning on producing any more oil four years from now than it did last year. That means the company's oil output won't even keep pace with its own projections of worldwide oil demand growth of 1.2% a year. . . .

"We don't start with a volume target and then work backwards," Instead, he said, his team examines the available investment opportunities, figures out what prices they'll likely get for that output down the road, and places their bets accordingly. "It really goes back to what is an acceptable investment return for us."

-- Exxon Chairman Rex Tillerson

As if profiting from energy wasn't enough, now the insanity has spread into food: Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis
Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution. The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn. Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m. Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser.

John Scott Russell, a Scottish engineer living in the 19th century, was the first to observe and describe such a solitary wave in a channel of water:

"I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped - not so the mass of water in the channel which it had put in motion; it accumulated round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed. I followed it on horseback, and overtook it still rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles an hour, preserving its original figure some thirty feet long and a foot to a foot and a half in height. Its height gradually diminished, and after a chase of one or two miles I lost it in the windings of the channel. Such, in the month of August 1834, was my first chance interview with that singular and beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation''.

John Scott Russell's Soliton Wave Re-created in 1995 by scientists at - Heriot-Watt University.

The Coanda effect, named after its discoverer, the Romanian Henri Coanda, is the tendency of a flow of liquid or gas to adhere to and follow a curved surface. Sails and airplane wings make use of this effect to efficiently convert air flow (wind) into forward motion of the boat or lift for the airplane.

Historically, Viktor Schauberger had observed how trouts are able to stand still almost without any effort in fast-flowing mountain streams and he noted how they would, at the first sign of danger, accelerate like an arrow shot from a bow, not downstream, but against it. They do this by passing water through their gills and expelling it along the sleek body. Schauberger called itt "the secret of trout propulsion" and modeled technical propulsion systems after it. One of his implementations of the principle was called a repulsine and this page shows some designs and early implementations. Unfortunately, most of Schauberger's hardware and unpublished notes were lost in the 1950s.

How a soliton in air or water and an application of the coanda effect may combine into a useful propulsion force is also the subject of a very interesting article Mike Emery recently forwarded. Tom at montalk.net describes in this article how toroidal solitons - we know them as smoke rings - and the adhesive qualities of fluids could be put to good use in aeronautic and marine engineering applications.

Coanda Soliton Effect

(Original at montalk.net :: (CC) 20 July 04)

Solitons are toroidal waves of energy showing very little dispersion over long distances. Smoke rings, for example, keep their shape for several feet whereas ordinary smoke diffuses immediately and drifts away. Far from a mere curiosity of nature, solitons have tremendous aeronautical and marine engineering applications.

Bad Coanda Example

The Coanda effect was unknown to me until seven years ago, when in an issue of UFO Universe Magazine, it was mentioned in relevance to Nazi saucer research of the late 30’s and early 40’s. In the article, an illustration of the effect was given as follows: one holds a pie plate at a slight angle beneath running water and observes it flowing over the edge, curling around and adhering to the surface beneath for a few millimeters before dropping down into the sink. The adhering tendency of water, or any fluid, to a curved surface is known as the Coanda effect.

I tried this and the experiment was very unconvincing. The adherence seemed more to be an example of capillary action or surface tension than the mysterious Coanda effect. In Rex Research catalogs an info packet on the Coanda effect was listed, but I neglected to purchase it at the time due to disinterest stemming from the failed experiment. Why could it possibly have failed?

Better Coanda Example

Many years later I ran into the effect again, this time outside a campus lounge. The lounge was separated from the lobby by rounded 2’ diameter columns with large glass panels between the columns. There was a half inch gap between a column and its glass panel, with air rushing outward from the gap. Placing my hand a full quarter turn around the column from the gap, I could feel the air current still reaching my palms. This could only mean the film of air followed the column’s surface for a considerable distance, unequivocally demonstrating the Coanda effect. How this relates to solitons will be explained shortly.

Encounter with Solitons

In ninth grade, the science teacher pulled out a metal coffee can that looked like a drum with a hole cut in the bottom. When he pinched and released the balloon material stretched across the top, a puff of air would shoot out the bottom which could hit anyone in the back row. Because it was merely air, the puff could not be seen. I had fun shooting my dog across the room with it, as he would bark madly and run in circles from the invisible disturbance. It wasn’t until I put smoke in my own version (from burnt paper, not cigarettes, mind you!) that I saw the puffs for what they were: solitons. In this case, they were smoke rings.

Many household items produce solitons, such as empty milk jugs when punched from the sides, or tupperware bowls with holes in the lid and the tupperware bowl I filled with colored water and immersed in my bathtub. The resultant soliton traveled slowly from one end to the other before disintegrating as it hit the wall. I tried making solitons of air in water, but none would result.

Why the first Example was Bad

This in accord with the lounge column Coanda effect revealed what was wrong with the illustration given in UFO Universe Magazine. Apparently the fluid must be of the same density as the medium in which it exists for the effect to work best. Water over the pie plate existed in air, and thus the effect was barely noticeable. Air solitons in water also did not work. Only colored water in water, or air films in air would produce these effects.

Stan Deyo Combines Coanda with Solitons

A year later I ordered a videotaped lecture by Stan Deyo entitled The History of Free Energy and Antigravity from the Adventures Unlimited catalog. To my surprise, Stan spent considerable time on the topic of smoke rings. However, he took it beyond merely that.

In the video, he described a model boat he had built. It combined the Coanda effect and soliton phenomena to produce produce propulsion in water radically efficient relative to simple boat and propeller. The boat paradoxically shot water, beneath water, in the direction it would be propelled. On the bottom front side was a thin slit situated above a hump in the hull, from which water was ejected. The slit and hump looked like a shark’s mouth and chin. Water pumped from the slit would curl around the hump and travel toward the back, forming a thin moving film across the bottom surface, almost like a fluid conveyor belt. At the rear was another hump and intake port which sucked the water back in. Thus, the entire bottom half of the boat acted like a tank tread, with water coming out the front, traveling to the rear, and getting sucked back in.

The whole boat, in essence, did not drag across the water, but rolled across it. The wheel itself was a thin film of water which curled around the hump in a Coanda like fashion. Normal boats and their propellers are analogous to horses and ploughs in dirt, requiring considerable energy dispersed in the form of a wake or in ploughed ground. Deyo’s boat, however, rolled across the water, leaving no wake, and thus indicates extreme efficiency. A bullet dragging through dirt stops soon, but a ball rolling across ground can go the distance.

Next, Deyo showed black and white government footage of the AVRO craft, supposedly the fed’s investigation into the advantages of saucer shaped air crafts. In the footage, the craft could barely lift more than a few feet off the ground. Scientists were puzzled, as the jet engine should have been more than adequate to navigate to the skies. Stan pointed out that because the jet engines blew down, a soliton shape emerged and the whole thing acted as one giant smoke ring whose preferred direction was down. The craft flew at the balance point between the soliton’s thrust and that of the jet engine against the ground. The whole experiment was passed off to the public as a failure, ending rumors that the government was responsible for discs being sighted. Of course, the AVRO craft was a failure…until its engines were reversed. Then it took off faster than Clinton’s pants.

That is where his lecture ended on this fascinating topic, but my mind was still racing full speed ahead.

Deyo’s Ideas Extended

The same principle can be applied to a submarines, I reasoned, shaped like a lemon or football which shoots water out the front tip, curls it to the back, and sucks it back in. The submarine would be encased in a moving layer of water, rolling through the ocean with barely any resistance. Because the surface area of water moving backwards is so large compared to the amount being shot out to the front, the entire thing would move forward. Unbelievable speeds would be possible with such a submarine since it would roll, not drag, through it. A stationary observer would see any ripples in the submarine’s fluid skin standing still with respect to the ground, meaning there is really no drag except for fluid friction between the fluid skin and hull—which is considerably less than drag in normal submarines.

Now, the submarine example is similar to Deyo’s boat, except in addition to the bottom tread of water, there is a top half. If one were to make the submarine more plump and bring its ends closer together, one would see two treads in the submarine’s cross section. This cross section is identical to that of a soliton.

In other words, Deyo’s boat and the “yellow” submarine are mechanical equivalents of solitons. If a soliton can go through air or water for long distances with only minute initial input of energy and travel at such speeds, imagine what a self powered motorized soliton could do. Even if speed were limited due to turbulence, the energy efficiency of such a craft would be ludicrous.

Other Examples of Solitons

At certain novelty shops or toy stores, little things called “snakes” are sold, which are water filled balloons with a long hole down the middle. If you try holding it vertically with your hand around it, the thing drops right out and hits the floor, no matter how hard you try to grab onto it from the sides. The Snake is an amusing example of a soliton.

In a recent science news story, an artificial intelligence computer simulation of evolving sea creatures was made and allowed to run for a while. Many creatures evolved whose shape and function was that of a soliton, rotation their skin around their bodies from front to back. This is physically very difficult to do, but the programmers did not incorporate physical limits in their simulation. This merely illustrates that solitons are indeed exemplary of efficiency.

This principle may also be applied to sleek cars or bullet trains, which could blow a film of air out the front, curl it over the top, and suck it in the back. A bystander on the road would feel no wind as the car drove by since the film of air on the car would blow backwards with velocity opposite to the car’s. A feather dropped in front of the soliton car as it sped down the highway would quietly rise up, then quickly drop down to its previous position as the car passess…without being blown about as expected. Such a car could achieve greater speed down the road than any other without the soliton mechanism…perhaps alerting the cop who drops his jaw to his chest, then the donut into his coffee without ever realizing the connection.

Solitons and Some UFO’s

Looking at some antigravity patents I got from Rex Research which I had ordered years earlier, I came across one particular patent (sorry, don’t have the patent or number handy) showing a doughnut shaped disk with arrays of ion needles on its skin. The arrays of needles worked on the principle of ion wind (heavily researched by Townsend Brown in his later years after the feds placed a gag order on his original antigravity work). Air molecules in the vicinity of the needles would become negatively ionized, then repelled, creating wind. In principle, the doughnut shaped craft would create a flow of wind around its hull, going in the top and jetting out the bottom. Unfortunately, the patent holder did not know (or perhaps did not reveal) soliton principles. His craft would have met the same fate as the publicly displayed AVRO craft. However, reversing the needle direction would create a solid state, disc shaped craft that would roll through the air at tremendous speeds and make almost no noise, giving off a faint blue or orange glow due to high voltage necessary for ionic propulsion. Sound familiar, folks?

- - -

Related:

A cousin to the Coanda effect is the Magnus effect. A rotating drum in the wind will transform wind power into forward motion, similar to a sail but more efficiently for comparable surface area. This has been used for propulsion of a ship by Anton Flettner, a German engineer, and by Jacques Cousteau in a similar manner with his turbosail.

First published on Four Winds, the story was taken up by the ALCUIN AND FLUTTERBY blog of Alcuin Bramerton and from there it found its way into Nexus.

The audio signal of a southern England TV station was hijacked during the early evening news broadcast now 30 years ago by a voice identifying itself as "a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command". The news broadcast was drowned out for about 6 minutes. The message was prophetic and it advocated peace, but from all appearances no one seems to have listened. As happens so often, we tend to lose the rare pearls in the din of all the noise...

Extraterrestrial television hijack - England - November 1977

(Original here)

In southern England (UK), on the evening of the 26th November 1977, it is said that an advanced extraterrestrial, using technology not available on Earth at that time, hacked into a major UK television news bulletin on ITN and delivered a six-hundred word statement, live, in English, to the viewers. The statement lasted three minutes and forty seven seconds. The sound file is now accessible on YouTube here.

The full text of the ET's statement is detailed below. The total sound-hack lasted for about six minutes. A UK Government agency tried to block the signal, but failed. Thousands of people telephoned the TV station and the police. The TV authorities themselves issued three apologies on air. The full texts of those apologies are detailed below. The authorities called it a "rogue transmission" and a "hoax". The source of the "hoax" was never identified.

The ET called himself Vrillon and stated that he was a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command. The videoclip was put on YouTube on Monday 23rd July 2007. The total package on this clip lasts nine minutes and eleven seconds.

The full text of the ET Vrillon's November 1977 message was follows:

"This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth."

"We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world, so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disasters which threaten your world, and the beings on other worlds around you. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments."

"Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. All your weapons of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is now past, and the race of which you are a part may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill."

"Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning New Age to you all. You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution."

"Hear now the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides operating in your world. They will suck your energy from you - the energy you call money - and will put it to evil ends giving you worthless dross in return."

"Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves on to the path of evolution. This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years, as you too have watched our lights in your skies. You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your Earth than your scientists admit."

"We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fears, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth. We of the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the planes of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos."

The full texts of the TV authorities' three apologies for the ET's "rogue transmission" were as follows. The first two were parts of ITN television news bulletins later in the same evening, and the third was broadcast on Independent Radio that evening.

(1) "We understand that viewers in some parts of the region are receiving a breakthrough in sound. We're sorry about this, and we're doing our best to rectify the fault."

(2) "Finally, back home, engineers are trying to trace the source of what they call a 'rogue transmission' which lasted about six minutes during ITN's early evening news bulletin. It affected viewers in the Berkshire and Hampshire area served by the Hannington transmitter. They heard a voice which cut across what I was reading. The voice said: 'Earthlings, lay down your arms. This is a message from outer space.' Well, thousands of viewers telephoned television, police and ITN here. A spokesman for the Independent Broadcasting Authority said: 'This is the first incident of its kind in Britain.' Winchester police said some people were frightened by the hoax message. They said they sent an officer to calm down one woman. Well, I hope nothing's interrupted this bulletin wherever you are this evening. From all of us here, goodnight."

(3) "The Independent Broadcasting Authority is at a loss to explain the mysterious message that broke into a Southern Television news broadcast. The slow, deep voice proclaimed, in part: 'All your weapons of evil must be destroyed. You only have a short time to learn to live in peace.' The station was immediately besieged by worried telephone callers demanding an explanation. But as the information officer for the Broadcasting Authority, John Ginnery, says, there could be several different causes of the message: 'Well, we don't know for sure that it was a pirate call. We know that there were some voices over saying certain things of which we haven't got an exact record. We've had a lot of accounts, obviously, a lot of people have been phoning us and other people about it. We simply don't know what it was. Broadcasts, of course, are monitored at an operations centre, but there there was simply a mumble and there was some picture distortion. We had a lot of reports in, but as I say, we simply don't know what it was.' Independent Radio News, it's three minutes past twelve."

The "Vrillon" 1977 Television Hijacking Incident audio on YouTube