reply to post by wylekat
Interesting post.
I recall about 200 pages back in this thread (ie yesterday!), I commented on how people in various places were asserting that
this alleged spaceship was going to appear over the US state of Alabama, whereas the original message said nothing of the kind. Only, as you have also
reported: "We give you the name Alabama".
My original take on it was that this could mean "We name you Alabama", as "giving" a name formally has the same meaning as "naming".
Of course, this is all purely an academic exercise, a matter of whatever conjecture we want to throw around, but I rather like the idea of "in"
phrases, puns, and so forth. I also wonder of cross-cultural effects, misunderstandings and misinterpretations by BG herself of what she claims she
"heard" while "channelling". For example, "Al" as an Arabic prefix works like the definite article in English. So, "Alabama" could be taken as
"The Abama", orrr... "The Obama".
Naturally, anyone could argue that "they" wouldn't have channelled her anything other than plain English, but it could be equally argued: why not?
English already includes words from many languages...pizza, schnitzel, Gorgonzola (I'm hungry btw
), even et cetera, from Latin as we all know,
robot from Czech...telephone (from two Greek words), so like I said, why not?
One other thing I recall reading on her site was that the date of the 14th was significant, but that many would not realize why until later. I am
probably not the only one who didn't realize immediately that as the full moon was on the 14th, then hey presto the moon itself could be the
"spaceship of light".
Now I'm going to rant. Not against
you, wylekat.
Just a general rant. Plenty of others have so why not?
I'll do my best to be civil,
though...
I suppose at the end of the day we have to see if we learned anything from this little debacle. I certainly learned that no matter how many times
some things are said -- like "Alabama"
not being stated in BG's channeled "message" as the "arrival place", like the "2,000-mile-long
spaceship"
not being mentioned, either in BG's original message or the follow-on channelings, like some people apparently being unaware that
the 14th did not end when it was midnight in Honolulu (!!)
, like this thread's title being changed to include the words "hoax" and "fraud"
before the 14th of October was even officially
over... well, I learned that helping people to deny ignorance can sometimes be very hard. Or
better to say, I knew that already as I'm pretty stubborn myself sometimes and slow to change views, but honestly, the amount of ignorance generated
and perpetuated just in this one thread was really staggering, in spite of the efforts of so many members here to counter it. There were a
few
who just wouldn't listen and went on their merry way, ignoring facts put before them or arguing that "such-and-such a person said...." and so on.
I use the word "facts" only advisedly where they refer to things stated by BG on her website, but as it was her words that started the whole thing
then other people's claims of what would happen, where, when and with how big a spaceship, crewed by what manner of life-forms, should only have been
measured and evaluated against that original source. I thought that if you want to confirm what amounts to hearsay of the "I said, she said, he
said" variety then
you go back to the source! A few people chose to ignore that and it was bothersome to say the least. This is why I was
amazed to see the thread's title labeled "hoax" and "fraud" some hours before the stated time frame for the "event" had expired -- that is, the
time frame stated by the source, namely BG in her channeled message (all of which I read and also copied),
not some alternative time put forth
by Lord-knows-who in a youtube video or on some blog, or by squeaky-clean-new members who began popping up on here like mushrooms on a late spring
morning to make their statements that they knew what was really going on and in one case even claimed to be Blossom Goodchild herself. (That user got
banned pretty soon, as I think did another who it seems claimed to be some being on the alleged ship.)
I hope that in future, when we have similar claims and predictions of visiting aliens and the like, which include specific dates, then at least
officially (on ATS I mean) they won't be called hoaxes until the time period has passed. Sure, there may be cases where the person making the
prediction has previously been exposed as a hoaxer and the new revelations can be dealt with p.d.q., but otherwise why not just sit back and wait, if
the time period isn't too long?
On a positive side, I learned some useful stuff. Thanks to other members I now know more about how to find live webcams, I have an even better World
Time reference site than the one I'd used before, I got more insight into the brilliance of some of our members' intellect, I had more than a few
laughs at some of the posts members concocted, and had confirmation that most members here are frankly great people and it's well worth spending time
on here
(End of rant)
Mike
Edit for typos.
[edit on 15/10/08 by JustMike]