Witness 1985 Quotes

Two other highly vocal FMSF Advisory Board members are Dr Elizabeth Loftus and Professor Richard Ofshe. Loftus is a respected academic psychologist whose much quoted laboratory experiment of successfully implanting a fictitious childhood memory of being lost in a shopping mall is frequently used to defend the false memory syndrome argument. In the experiment, older family members persuaded younger ones of the (supposedly) never real event. However, Loftus herself says that being lost, which almost everyone has experienced, is in no way similar to being abused. Jennifer Freyd comments on the shopping mall experiment in Betrayal Trauma (1996): “If this demonstration proves to hold up under replication it suggests both that therapists can induce false memories and, even more directly, that older family members play a powerful role in defining reality for dependent younger family members." (p. 104). Elizabeth Loftus herself was sexually abused as a child by a male babysitter and admits to blacking the perpetrator out of her memory, although she never forgot the incident. In her autobiography, Witness for the Defence, she talks of experiencing flashbacks of this abusive incident on occasion in court in 1985 (Loftus &Ketcham, 1991, p.149) In her teens, having been told by an uncle that she had found her mother's drowned body, she then started to visualize the scene. Her brother later told her that she had not found the body. Dr Loftus's successful academic career has run parallel to her even more high profile career as an expert witness in court, for the defence of those accused of rape, murder, and child abuse. She is described in her own book as the expert who puts memory on trial, sometimes with frightening implications. She used her theories on the unreliability of memory to cast doubt, in 1975, on the testimony of the only eyewitness left alive who could identify Ted Bundy, the all American boy who was one of America's worst serial rapists and killers (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991, pp. 61-91). Not withstanding Dr Loftus's arguments, the judge kept Bundy in prison. Bundy was eventually tried, convicted and executed.

Our gain in net worth during the year was $613.6 million, or 48.2%. It is fitting that the visit of Halley’s Comet coincided with this percentage gain: neither will be seen again in my lifetime.” -1985 letter

Whiting, Fred L., Roswell Revisited. 1990, Fund for UFO Research, POB 277, Mt. Rainier, MD 20712 Send SASE for free summary and list of publications. Stringfield, Leonard, Roswell and X-15: UFO Basics, MUFON Journal, #259, Nov. 1989, pp. 3-7. Friedman, S.T., 1991 Update on Crashed Saucers. MUFON Conference Proceedings, July 1991, Chicago, IL. Available from MUFON, 103 Oldtowne Road, Seguin, TX 78155. Send SASE for info. O'Brien, Mike, Springfield, MO, News Leader, Sunday, Dec. 9, 1990, pp. F 1-4. Randle, Kevin and Schmitt, Donald, UFO Crash at Roswell. Avon, NY, (pb), July 1991. Friedman, S.T., MJ 12 articles in International UFO Reporter, Sept./Oct. 1987, pp. 13-10; Jan./Feb. 1988, pp. 20-24; May/June 1988, pp. 12-17; March/April 1990, pp. 13-16; MUFON J. 9/89. p. 16, MUFON Conf. Proc. 1989. Friedman, S.T., Flying Saucers, Noisy Negativists and Truth, MUFON Conf. 1985, UFORI, see item #3. Keel, John, FATE, March 1990, January 1991. Weiner, Tim. Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget, Warner Books, 1990, p. 273. Extremely well referenced, researched and indexed. Copyright, 1991. Stanton T. Friedman COMMENT Stanton Friedman, a true blue scientist, lets it be known that he seeks only bottom-line, verifiable information from his sources -- names of witnesses, place names, dates, old records -- anything evidential that would convince a hard-nosed skeptic. If

WITNESS (by Earl W. Wallace & William Kelley, story by William Kelley, 1985) A boy who witnesses a crime is a classic setup for a thriller. It promises nail-biting jeopardy, intense action, and violence. But what if you push the story much further, to explore violence in America? What if you show the two extremes of the use of force—violence and pacifism—by having the boy travel from the peaceful Amish world to the violent city? What if you then force a good man of violence, the cop hero, to enter the Amish world and fall in love? And then what if you bring violence into the heart of pacifism?

I wonkily pitched a tent and in the name of ‘homely’ décor affixed to its interior an enormous poster of (who else?) Alien Sex Fiend. The greatest thrill that weekend was interviewing Half Man Half Biscuit – the folk-rock wits from the Wirral whose surreal-pop masterpiece Back In The DHSS had dominated the indie village in 1985 – in the back of their fag-fumed Transit van. The Smash Hits Glastonbury Team 1986 lasted one night out in the field before heading off mid-Saturday night for a delicious meal and a fluffy bed in a nearby swish hotel, photographs of which then became ‘a dream sequence’ printed in ver Hits, pretending we’d been (as if!) lying in the swamp for days.

Sometimes I almost believe her soul looks out of the photograph, almost clears the sill Of the eyes & comes near; though it does not ever Move, it holds me while I look at it. But even today, I can’t conceive of a soul Without seeing a woman’s body. Specifically, Yours, undoing the straps of an evening dress In a convertible, & then lying back, your breasts Holding that hint of dusk mixed with mint And the emptiness of dusk. Someone put it Crudely: to fuck is to know. If that is true, There’s a corollary: the soul is a canary sent Into the mines. The convertible is white, & parked Beneath the black trees shading the river, Mile after mile. Your dress is off by now, And when you come, both above & below me, When you vanish into that one cry which means Your body is no longer quite your own And when your face looks like a face stricken From this world, a saint’s face, your eyes closing On some final city made entirely Of light, & only to be unmade by light Again—at that moment I’m still watching You—half out of reverence & half because The scene is distant, like a landscape, & has Nothing to do with me. Beneath the quiet Of those trees, & that sky, I imagine I’m simply a miner in a cave; I imagine the soul Is something lighter than a girl’s ribbon I witnessed, one afternoon, as it fell—blue, Tossed, withered somehow, & singular, at A friend’s wedding—& then into the river And swirled away. Do I chip away with my hammer? Do I, sometimes, sing or recite? Even though I have to know, in such a darkness, all The words by heart, I sing. And when I come, My eyes are closed fast. I smile, under The earth. They loved fast horses. And someone else Will have to watch them, grazing on short tufts Of spring grass beside the riverbank, When we are gone, when we are light, & grass. . — Larry Levis, from “A Letter,” Winter Stars (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985)

Awakening is the first glimpse that “things” or “reality” are not what we thought. Awakening is an ongoing process throughout recovery. To begin, we generally require an entry point or trigger—anything that shakes up our old understanding or belief system of reality, of the way that we thought things were (Ferguson 1980; Whitfield 1985; 2003). Because our True Self is so hidden, and because our false self is so prominent, awakening may not come easily. Nonetheless, it often happens. I have witnessed this process in hundreds of children of trauma. The entry point or trigger may range across a wide spectrum. It may start with hearing or reading someone describe their own recovery or own True Self, or being “sick and tired” of our suffering, or beginning to work seriously on another life problem in counseling or therapy. For others, it may be attending a self-help meeting or an educational experience, reading a book or hearing about it from a friend.

An iron law of business is that growth eventually dampens exceptional economics.” -1985