Podcast: July 7th 2005 (Download MP3)

Topics:

Issue #1. Science Magazine’s 125 things we do not know

Issue #2. Science or Fiction

Issue #3. Tom Cruise, Scientology, and Psychiatry

Issue #4. CT Warning on e-scams

Issue #5. Ramada Inn in Stratford Haunted

Issue #1. Science Magazine’s 125 things we do not know

Issue #2. Science or Fiction

Issue #3. Tom Cruise, Scientology, and Psychiatry

Issue #4. CT Warning on e-scams

http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/m-news+article+storyid-11362-PHPSESSID-a1104ec6564ee7dc737d8d7c02128eeb.html Connecticut AG Warns Bogus Job Offer Via Email Is Scam To Obtain Personal Financial Information

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today issued an urgent warning June 2nd about a scam ? disguised as a job offer ? to obtain personal, financial information via email.

Blumenthal's office has learned that unsolicited emails and a website by a so-called "Baltia Capital Investment" advertises job openings for "escrow agents." The job purports to offer "a perfect part-time opportunity for anyone looking for extra income or willing to build a career in the field of finance and investment."

The supposed job requires no experience in finance ? only that applicants have a bank account. Baltia claims the escrow agents must allow investors to deposit money in their private, personal bank account, upon which the escrow agent keeps a percentage of the money, forwarding the balance to another account.

Consumers should be aware that Baltia ? or any entity that obtains personal bank account information ? can use this information to access the consumer's money.

"This scam preys on the American dream," Blumenthal said. "These con artists ? like many others ? enjoy the anonymity of the Internet, exploiting people who are most vulnerable economically. Consumer education is the best ? and often the only ? protection against such scams. The rule of protection against these frauds is plain and simple: Do not disclose personal, confidential information to any unsolicited or unknown person."

Blumenthal said that, in similar scams, the so-called employer seeks bank account information in order to "pay" employees with counterfeit checks. The checks often exceed the amount supposedly owed to the employee and the scammer asks the employee to return the excess money after the check clears. However, by the time the bank discovers the check is counterfeit, the victim might have already wired the money to an untraceable scam artist.

Blumenthal said anyone who has been victimized by this or similar scams should contact the U.S. Secret Service at 202-406-5572. Consumers should forward any email relating to an advanced fee fraud to the Secret Service at for email or send it by mail or fax to:


U.S. Secret Service
Financial Crimes Division
950 H. Street, NW
Suite 5300
Washington, D.C. 20223
Fax: 202-406-6930
Consumers may also forward emails to or contact the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Click here for email or visit the FTC for website.

Issue #5. CT Warning on e-scams

Issue #5.Ramada Inn in Stratford Hosts Paracon 7

This Ramada Inn in Stratford has become a regular haven for nonsense of all kinds.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1349&dept_id=415613&newsid=14745192& PAG=461&rfi=9

Paranormal investigators look for a 'smoking gun'

Nicholas Roesler traveled from his usual haunts in Wisconsin to Stratford to talk about his favorite subject, those meddling visitors from another planet that seem obsessed with humanity.

Roesler is the Agent-In-Charge (AIC) of the UFO Investigation Division of the Smoking Gun Research Agency, which held its 7th annual ParaCon, or Paranormal Conference, in Stratford last weekend.

He spoke at the public library and the Ramada Inn on Friday and Saturday with a number of other featured AIC's and guest speakers who hawked books and collectibles related to aliens, the supernatural, monsters, and other unexplained phenomena.

"I've see things I can't explain," Roesler said. "That's what got me interested in the whole subject."

Agent? Is that like Agent Mulder on the "X-Files?" "Something of that nature, yes," Roesler confirmed. But the television program is fiction. Roesler deals with actual unidentified flying objects and real life alien abductions, he said.

Aliens must have a fondness for cheese, also tacos. "Wisconsin has the highest number of UFO reports in the United States, save a three-county area in New Mexico," Roesler said.

No, not Roswell, N.M. Do some research and you'll find out that the gray aliens long ago moved on from Roswell.

Roesler has done a bit of research, himself. "I have a fair degree of exposure to the whole subject," he said. He also admires anyone else who's done his homework

Chris Carter, "X-Files" producer, is one of them. The first three or four seasons of the show relied on documented reports, according to Roesler.

Another is director Steven Spielberg who hired the late J. Allen Hynek, the world's leading authority on UFOs at the time, as his technical advisor for the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Of course, next Wednesday Spielberg will release his version of "The War of the Worlds" in which the aliens will behave more like the shark in "Jaws" than like the cute gnome in "E.T., the Extraterrestrial." This time the technical advisor will probably be Dale Dye, the military technical adviser for "Saving Private Ryan" and many other major films.

John Nowinsky, who runs the SGRA out of his home in Westport, said it started with three people in 1996 and now it has 12 active investigators, like Roesler, and 300 on its mailing list. "We've been getting a huge surge in interest in the last couple of years," he said.

Why? Because people are searching for confirmation that they're not crazy. Nowinsky said people are frequently called "kooks" when they claim to have encountered aliens or ghosts. "We tell them they're not the only one who's had that kind of experience," he said.

What are ghosts? The souls of people who died?

Nowinsky said sometimes a ghost is the postmortem imprint of a person on the spiritual energy of a house or place, but sometimes it's the actual soul of a dead person. He agreed that the second explanation clashes with the Christian view that a person's soul is judged after death but said his concern is documenting the phenomena, not explaining it.

If you happen to have a ghost problem, don't call Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd. Call John Zaffis Jr., a well-known paranormal investigator who has appeared on television and is the nephew of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who made a career out of it.

Zaffis, a Stratford resident, is bald, bespectacled and goateed, leading to a moment of confusion when a ghost enthusiast mistook a bald, bespectacled, goateed reporter for him. His picture in the ParaCon program wasn't very good.

Stratford is a hotbed of hauntings, almost as much as Wisconsin is with flying saucers. In fact, Zaffis finds people often mistake ghosts and demons (yes, demons) for gray aliens. He said it is far rarer that someone mistakes an alien for a ghost, but it happens.

Four months ago, a "young lady" he didn't identify claimed she was awakened to find her bed surrounded by grays. Zaffis said he didn't see anything himself, but determined she had actually encountered demons. He called in a nondenominational priest from Bridgeport named Larry Edward to perform an exorcism and got rid of them.

In case you were wondering, demons aren't really as entertaining as in "The Exorcist." Zaffis said there's no heads spinning around or green pea soup ejections.

A guy who has seen both sides of the alien/spirit nexus is Rod C. Davis. He said he saw a UFO near Roosevelt Forest when he was a teenager growing up in Stratford in the 1960s. Now he lives in Las Vegas, teachi ng people how to communicate with the spirit world, like John Edwards on TV.

Davis, an author like Zaffis and other paranormal and alien investigators, said encountering space aliens is said to be communicating with "the outer state," but with spirits it's "the other side."

He drove out to Archuleta Mesa in New Mexico where UFO experts claim there is an abandoned gray alien base, hidden by the U.S. government. Returning to Las Vegas he claimed he experienced an unaccounted-for absence of time. The obvious explanation would be meddling grays, but he's convinced it was a psychic experience instead.

There was one E.T. present, and that was Navy Electronics Technician 1st Class Mark Mihalko, who supervises sonar repairs at the sub base in Groton. "I was into a little bit of everything," said Mihalko, referring to the gamut from A to G (aliens to ghosts), but the SGRA has installed him as its AIC for the Cryptozoology Division.

That's the study of undiscovered or believed to be extinct animals. Think of Bigfoot, the abominable snowman of the Himalayas, and the Loch Ness monster.

"I've been told there have been Bigfoot sightings in Connecticut," he said, not the big fellow himself, but footprints, up in Bristol.

He said he's a freelance writer and would like to make a little money at this.

"We're all looking for the smoking gun," said Davis, something you can sink your teeth into that proves that UFOs, ghosts, and monsters are real.

The truth is out there.