loving the aliens

 

The above photo is a still from footage taken by my late father TN Healy in the early hours of 23rd June 2006 of the best documented UFO sighting in Irish history.

At the time I dubbed the event variously "The Kilcullen Incident," and "The Lights Of June."

The sighting as filmed here was from Kilcullen my home town, but the lights themselves were actually above the Wicklow Mountains.

Cards on the table: I do not tend to believe in UFOs as alien space craft. Most of the more dramatic testimonies are heavily influenced by Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters movie from 1977 and by the same director's ET released in 1982.

With regard to more genuine, level headed testimonies where the people aren't just lying to get attention, in my opinion the explanations are normally naturalistic and earth bound.

Senior Irish army officers assured me back in 2006 that the objects we had filmed were army parachute flares.

Their explanation was moderately compromised by a more senior army officer who insisted based on technical observations that the objects could not be army parachute flares.

The UFOs we filmed resemble The Phoenix Lights which were seen and filmed  above Arizona in 1997.

I have since seen army parachute flares for myself and no longer believe the Kilcullen incident involved army parachute flares.

A case can be made that the Irish army officers who swore to me we'd filmed army parachute flares were in fact coyly trying to conceal early Irish army experiments with drone technology which they would have considered top secret at the time.

The disingenuous swine.

Old and dear friends of course.

But never mind that.

They certainly didn't.

We should also note that the day after the most widespread UFO sighting in Irish history, a book on UFO sightings in Ireland was launched in Dublin.

All this comes to mind again because we're at the twentieth anniversary of the Kilcullen Incident and, lo, aliens are back in the news big time.

In America, Internet broadcaster and Preacher Perry Stone claimed a month ago that a secret meeting had taken place involving high level government officials and faith leaders in which the government types warned the faith leaders that the forthcoming release of government files on UFO's would damage people's faith.

Pending the actual document release, this sounded to me like hokum with a peculiar atheistic spin. Darwinian atheists who cannot explain the origin of life and refuse to accept that God made us, will sometimes now posit what they call panspermia, ie that aliens seeded us on a primitive earth.

The helpless little Darwinians get uncomfortable when we ask who made the aliens, and start proclaiming an infantile cosmology of multiple universes where anything that can happen does happen.

I had occasionally been mildly entertained by Perry Stone's apocalyptic maunderings but his propagation of nonsense notions about secret meetings and alien species living among us, finished me with Perry Stone.

The alien species living among us gag, I would suggest, comes from the movie The Men In Black and  not from any revelation by the FBI.

I wonder could the document release and Perry Stone's attendant gushings have been timed to coincide with yet another Stephen Spielberg alien film release.

Spielberg's film with a plot concerning the disclosure of government information on aliens, and entitled Disclosure, was released on 12th June 2026.

US gov document and footage disclosures as presaged by Perry Stone actually took place on May 8th, May 22nd and June 12th 2026.

Hmmm.

I'd more readily believe Stephen Spielberg was controlling the government than that aliens are.

But that's just me.

The notion that the plot of a Spielberg film or that the existence of aliens from outer space might threaten people's faith in God seems to me to be false.

Certainly the current tranche of FBI files might shake Professor Richard Dawkins' purported faith in panspermia, but they won't convince anyone of serious mind that aliens are real.

The only way your faith could be challenged by the above mentioned cretinism, is if in viewing the FBI files and then going to Spielberg's movie, you suddenly found yourself unable to believe in a supreme being who would permit such drivel on the planet earth.

But there is a cosmic battle.

And we must face the drivel head on.

As for the latest Spielberg alien movie, it does centre on a not too original idea, that aliens visited earth in pre history, seeded life on the planet, and inspired our religious conceptions of reality.

Yawn.

Gene Roddenberry who created the Star Trek franchise should sue for plagiarism. The notion of aliens being the origin of religious belief on earth first becomes prominent in Western culture with his 1960s Star Trek television series. Producer script writer, Gene Roddenberry believed this was a credible theory and included it in several Star Trek episodes and later in film projects.

In September 1967 one episode of Star Trek (Who Mourns For Adonais) featured aliens as the source of classical human belief in the Greek Gods. In October 1967 another episode (The Apple) features a planet whose inhabitants worship a computer called Vaal. There is a seditious scene where Captain Kirk orders his star ship to bombard Vaal and thereby kills him, forcing the hitherto infantilised inhabitants to grow up, as it were, and take responsibility for their own lives. I might comment that the notion of killing God seemed to excite Gene Roddenberry almost as much as it did the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche before him.

As the 1960s, and the first incarnation of Star Trek came to an end, the author Erich Von Daniken who had served jail time for fraud and embezzlement, published Chariots Of The Gods postulating alien visitations to earth as the root of religions. The profits from his first book of nonsense enabled him to pay his embezzlement debts.

It has been suggested that Von Daniken got his idea for aliens seeding the human race from Darwinian atheist Carl Sagan who is said to have outlined such ideas in the early 1960s.

I think it more likely that Van Daniken enjoyed a few episodes of Star Trek while whiling away those long Summer evenings in jail.

From the 1980s onwards, Aliens as the source of religious experience also figured in the claimed abduction experience of horror movie writer Whitley Strieber, whose book Communion purporting to be a true account of his own personal abduction by aliens, was published in 1987. It was to be the first of several books in which he elaborated on his nonsense claims over the next twenty five years. L Ron Hubbard eat your heart out.

highlights from the latest speech by PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP on the conflict with Iran

"We sank their navy. We sank their airforce. We sank their tanks. We sank everything really. They're so defeated they don't know what to do. They keep calling me trying to surrender.  But the English for 'I surrender' sounds to them very like 'Allah U Akbar,' and they keep getting the two mixed up. Every time they shoot down one of our helicopters they get even more confused. They don't know who's in charge. They're not sure who gave the order to blow up the helicopter or what he was using since all their planes and ships and tanks are at the bottom of the ocean and their mobile phones keep blowing up.  It might have been the guy in charge of one of their proxy armies. The Janitor in their government office just inherited responsibility for the Houthis in Yemen and he's liable to do anything. Then there's the guy who runs the canteen. He's just been put in charge of Hezbollah in Lebanon. He's a dangerous cookie. They're just confused because they don't know who's in charge. They're not sure who's on First, who's on Second or who's on Third. That and the exact English word for 'I surrender' is what's causing the problems. They're completely beaten. We've given them hell. They just want to make a deal but I'm not going to make just any deal. If only President Bush hadn't removed Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That was a completely unnecessary war by the way. If Bush hadn't gotten us mixed up in Iraq, we could now be fighting Iran as well as a nuclear armed Iraq with Saddam in charge and showing just how easy it is to win. This was a major lost opportunity. It's all President Bush's fault really."

the unbearable lightness of rashers eggs and chips

 The May month flapping its glad green leaves like wings, as Thomas Hardy used to say.

Wandered into a cafe in Kildare town with my little dog.

A group of four men and a woman sitting in conversation.

I register them instinctively.

They are of middle years, hardy but not yobs.

The woman recognises my dog and calls to her by name.

She must have met me before.

The men set up a view halloo repeating the dog's name and clicking their tongues at her.

I'm wondering how long it will go on but it's all good natured and there is no sense of threat.

Presently they get tired of calling my dog and return to their discussion.

They are castigating the Catholic church.

I sit there quietly with a rueful expression on my face.

I'm here for a rasher, egg and chips, not for fiery public discourse.

My food arrives and I tuck in.

The woman is saying: "We all owe Gay Byrne a lot. Gay Byrne dragged the Catholic church out of the shadows."

She is talking about a now deceased RTE broadcaster, a peculiarly oleaginous man who presented an interminable low rent chat show for an infinite number of years.

"Bishop Casey had a mistress and was sending her money," continues the woman. "Gay Byrne exposed all that."

The group also reminisce happily about Father Michael Cleary who they claim fathered a child with his housekeeper.

I'm sitting there munching my provender but kind of fascinated by the adjacent chat because the science of discussion has always been of interest to me and I can't help wondering could I ever convince this group of anything.

The ghost of Aristotle appears at my shoulder and whispers: "The finest end of reason is to dispute well."

I always take this to mean that it is necessary to remain civil or we end up just shouting at each other.

"Okay Aristotle," I murmur, "but an equally fine end of reason is to identify the truth and stand for it."

Still I reminded myself that under no circumstances was I going to get into an argument in the cafe.

More as a spiritual exercise than anything else, ruminating through a mouthful of rasher, I began to consider how I might answer their various points if, heaven forbid, I was debating with them. I suppose I'd try answering the Bishop Casey thing just by saying: well, she was really good looking and damn the torpedos. Who among us wouldn't have an affair with that if she hove into view gibbering about gossamer wings and whatnot? And it looks like a setup. A bunch of Americans approach Bishop Casey and say 'Oh this poor stunningly beautiful girl is inconsolable after a relationship break up. She needs somewhere to heal.' And they move her into the house of the Bishop of Kerry. And Bishop Casey, the big countrified goose, thinks its Christmas. You know the Catholic church is a power brokerage. Countries and mafias and other actors routinely seek to subvert it. The Russians would do it for a project. Devil worshippers would do it for a larf. The possibility of a set up regarding Bishop Casey is not insignificant. As regards Father Cleary, I'd probably make much of the fact that those attacking him waited until he was dead. I'd point out that the psychiatrist Ivor Browne who said Father Cleary was his patient, broke his oath of confidentiality to reveal details of their supposedly confidential consultations. For some of us that would completely invalidate Ivor Browne's testimony. It would in a court of law. Moreover the supposed genetic match between the housekeeper's child and Father Cleary was obtained using methods more dubious than the oath breaking psychiatrist's oath breaking accusations. People wishing to vitiate Father Cleary's reputation had deceived an elderly senile relative of his into unknowingly giving a genetic sample from her own body to them. Why on earth would we trust such people? The laboratory claiming a match between the young man and Father Cleary was entirely unsupervised in its testing. And RTE the employers of the great Byrne were later convicted in the libel court in an unrelated case for paying an African teenager to claim another priest, Father Kevin Reynolds, fathered a child with her. Let's just say RTE has previous for framing Catholic priests any which way they can.

But even if, in my wildest dreams, I was going to challenge the people in the cafe, these lines of approach seemed a bit too punchy. I'd prefer some insight that would have a resonance which might actually reach them in the heart and not get me beaten up.

Hmmm.

I have no intention of saying anything to them anyway.

I'm walking out that door with a benign smile and nothing more.

I finished my meal, paid my bill and walked over to the group.

"Isn't it strange," I said smiling, "that for centuries people tried to draw the Irish people away from the Catholic church and they couldn't do it? And you guys left for Gay Byrne and RTE."

The woman and four men were silent.

"Just think," I said, "they shot us, they imprisoned us, they tortured us, they made it illegal to be a Catholic, they made it illegal for us to own land, and they still couldn't terrorise us into abandoning the ancient church. And you guys left for Gay Byrne and RTE and Independent Newspapers and the Irish Times and because Bishop Casey had a fling with a good looking woman."

One of the men looked up sharply.

"I know plenty of priests who had flings," he shot out.

"And I know plenty of priests who died for Ireland," I rapped back not recognising my own voice.

The little group hung their heads.

It was the darndest thing.

"God bless you all," I said and left.

no truth in the rumour

 

There is no truth in the rumour that Millennium Films the outfit behind the movies Olympus Has Fallen, London Has Fallen and Angel Has Fallen, films I always deemed to have Jihadi sympathies due to the gleeful way they depicted terrorist attacks on Western targets, there is absolutely no truth in the rumour, I tells ee, that the same Millennium Films are now producing a picture called Mark Steyn Has Fallen in which commentator Mark Steyn defends fellow commentator Tucker Carlson's click baiting promotion of a teenage pseudo radical with a Hitler fetish advocating genocide of the Jews, and then goes on to support Vladimir Putin's smash and grab on Ukraine, and then goes on to attempt to derail President Trump's liberation of Iran. The rumour of a movie on the matter is categorically false. Mark Steyn is doing all these things in real life.

second blood heelers the mission

 

There is a little known dive bar in a side street near Pennsylvania Avenue improbably close to the pulsing heart of American power in Washington DC.

The place is earthy but discreet.

The world weary clientele knows when to look the other way.

At the bar a striking male figure, knocking back whiskey sours, attracts little attention.

President Donald Trump, for it is he, mutters to himself: "What in heaven possessed God to make a man like Mark Steyn?"

He is referring to an internet commentator who formerly championed Mr Trump but has now turned Turk on him over the Iran war just as he had earlier turned Turk on President Bush in order to facilitate Mr Trump's own accession to the Presidency.

A jaunty Richard Crenna like voice rings out from across the bar.

"God didn't make Mark Steyn. I did."

President Trump looks up to see James Healy played by Richard Crenna, standing behind him.

"You? How did you make him?"

"Well he stole a quite sublime joke referencing Sunset Boulevard from my blog. I mean this was really top class stuff, Trumper. The original had me being told by an acquaintance that my mild mannered critiques of the dysfuncts in Islamic culture had cost me readers, 'You used to be big,' the person says. And I reply: 'I'm still big. It's the internet got small.' Steyn thought that it was so funny that he used it with himself in the Gloria Swanson role. You have to admire his taste. And as if that wasn't enough he then started plagiarising neologisms from my website, to wit the words maunderings and moronification which had gilded my more serious cultural analyses and were considered by some to be the finest additions to the English language in half a century."

"By some?"

"Me n the dogs n the budgie n the parrot like em."

"That hardly amounts to you making him," ventured President Trump delicately.

"Well they were lynchpin moments in his career," answered me peevishly, downing a Furstenberg snakebite.

"Why is he attacking me ?" asked President Trump.

"Could be a whim," sez I. "The internet loves clicks. Could be principle. I thought he was a man of principle. I'm normally right about these things. It could be his judgement has gone a bit off. Sometimes even great Homer nods as they say in the staff room at the Simpsons cartoon. The one thing I wouldn't like would be if someone had got to him. You know he was a man of influence so he was certainly a target for even State actors but also none State actors among the Jihadis and elsewhere. And they're not short of money, resources or spite. Vexatious entities at least twice have tried to destroy him through the courts and that didn't work. Maybe some of them infiltrated someone into his entourage who's been slipping Steyn the occasional amphetemine without his knowledge. His writing goes haywire and Steyn never even suspects he's a junkey. It's a nifty way to destroy a person. And you save money on the assassins bullet.  There's people who do those sorts of things Mr President. I've met them."

"It sounds a bit far fetched to me."

"Things happen to people of influence Mr President. Breitbart is conveniently dead. Jordan Peterson is prey to endless medical issues and is out of the ball game. And Steyn's gone doolally. Either someone's got to him or I was wrong about him being a decent man in the first place. Now which of those is most likely?"

"So what do I do about him?" wondered the Prez wearily.

"Leave him alone," advised James. "He's wandering around Ukraine at the moment trying to undermine their war effort. His internet site has haemhorraged readers since he started trying to come up with  his own neologisms. The closest he got was sodbollocking. I ask you.  Ho hum. Leave him alone. That's my advice. If the Ukrainians don't kill him, you'll find him working at a garage in Montana in a few months time and you can arrest him then quietly with no trouble. The worst thing you could do is confront him. If you confront him, you'd better bring a lot of body bags, I mean legal writs for plagiarism and ear muffs to drown out his endless wearisome iterations of sodbollocking."

kilcullen easter

 

the lambing time

evanescent leaves

provincial poets stitching worn out rhymes

into patchwork quilted semaphores of praise

all of these

mist like matting on muddy fields

old men rejoicing in  campaniles

heart breaking heart mending threnodies

everything that breathes is on its knees

for the coming of the lord

peace

heelers agonistes

 

Sitting on the edge of the bed, racked by pain.

My eyes turn to a photo of a tree hung on the wall.

The photo was taken by an aunt.

Sometimes when I look at it the pain ebbs a bit.

So it is today.

As the pain ebbs I feel an intimation.

My pain is caused by resentment.

"Oh for heavens sake God," I cry aloud, " if that's the case, I won't be able to write anything."

In my heart, I imagine I hear God replying: "Do you want to write anything or do you want to walk?"

obitcheries

 

The actor Chuck Norris has died. He had an appealing manner and easy charisma. He is unique among action movie heroes in that during fifty years of continuously making films, he never made a good one. The closest he came was Lone Wolf McQuade, a nasty piece of work whose opening credits with a wolf filmed in silhouette and a marvellous music score from Francesco De Masi, are laden with a poetic sensibility redolent of great art. The director of that movie was an exploitation veteran styling himself Steve Carver who later unsuccessfully sued Chuck for purportedly using elements of the movie in a TV series called Walker Texas Ranger. The poetic sensibility shouldn't surprise since a lot of the exploitation guys are poets who chose wrong.