This is an interesting account of events in September, 1997, at New River, Arizona.

Here the same incident is discussed from a broader perspective: Don't Waste Arizona

This article, published 12 Oct 1998, in the Arizona Republic brings the official account up to date.

Grumpy old guy that I am, I can't help thinking this is relevant to discussions of possible responses to disaster scenarios post 01 Jan 2000.

BTW, the Don't Waste Arizona group has a website

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), December 07, 1998

Answers

Eeewww! I'll try that again.

The Don't Waste Arizona group has a website here.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), December 07, 1998.

Here the same incident is discussed from a broader perspective: Don't Waste Arizona http://www.primenet.com/~dwaz/nriver.html

...because there were not enough people of color in New River, and because it was not a "poor" community, environmental justice did not apply. She stated that President Clinton's 1994 Executive Order regarding Environmental Justice was about the failure of federal agencies to respond to concerns of minority and/or poor communities...

What?

Diane

(P.S. While listening to Gary Norths Y2K talk on Art Bell this past weekend, prior to Gary, Richard Hoagland talked about something going down in Arizona today. Is this related?)

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 08, 1998.

Hogbreath was expecting aliens to visit AZ on the 7th of December. He based his prediction on a snippet of a speech by Defense Sec. Cohen played *backwards*...I kid you not).

-- a (a@a.a), December 08, 1998.

Oh no!!

No the "backwards masking" scam again..........

I used to have a few tapes that contained clips of certain songs that when played backwards, had hidden messages. Yup, if you played it backwards for long enough, altered the speed, stretched the imagination, and were determined to find something, eventually you heard something that sounded like satan, or savan or batan or thettan or whatever. Of course, using the same criteria you could "hear" words like banana, boxcar, mud, them, spark and vacuum cleaner.

Never felt better since I rounded up all the tapes and books that I had that were written by paranoid extreme fundamentalists and trashed them all. Cleaning out the basement last weekend, I found another 50 or so books that I trashed.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), December 08, 1998.

Craig, and others:

"Reverse Speech" and "Backward Masking" are two different things.

Reverse Speech is a phenomenon whereby the subconscious mind uses the sounds of speech (not strictly the phonemes of the words themselves) to disgorge repressed thought and emotion. Reverse speech has been used by intelligence agencies as an analytical tool for decades and was independently rediscovered by a Dr. Oates when he was (critically) investigating the "backwards masking" craze. The upshot is that intelligable words and phrases are frequently formed, backwards, in normal speech, and the content of these can almost always be correlated with the meaning/context of what is being said forewards. Like the content of subconscious mind's dreaming during sleep, reverse speech is heavy on metaphor.

I urge you to approach reverse speech with an open mind. Think in terms of the open mind you wish your Y2k-denying friends and relatives had. Go to reversespeech.com, or http://seasurf.com/~radioman/speech.html

You can test it yourself. If you laugh it off without a thorough investigation, you are no better than someone who believes it without evidence. Reverse speech is very, very important. It is very significant. Check it out, and make an informed determination.

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), December 08, 1998.

Actually, there are a lot of ideas that and intelligent person can decide to reject a priori. I no longer read mass mailings promising to make me rich. I don't pay any attention to people who claim to have found ways around the second law of thermodynamics, or to violate conservation of energy.

Reverse speech is one of them. Given an hour to think on it, I doubt I could predict accurately what an arbitrary short sentence would sound like played in reverse. And my subconscious, without any experience in hearing reverse speech, is supposed to be able to compose it on the fly, and integrate it with my forward speech, so that both will be intelligible?

What's going on here is like the bible code - there's so much ambiguity that you can always find something that fits your preconceived notion of what should be there.

-- Ned (entaylor@cloudnet.com), December 08, 1998.

Ned, I would not dispute your right to reject any idea a priori. But I can't say it demonstrates intelligence, particularly.

As for your objection that the subconscious mind's production of backward speech is miraculous because you can't do it consciously, I can only ask whether you can close your eyes and, using the power of consciously directed imagination, reproduce the vividness and detail of your dreams - not to mention their rich, spontaneous, symbolic drama. Your assertion that the subconscious mind has no experience hearing reverse speech, and therefore cannot be able to produce it, is unfounded. Reverse speech appears before forward speech in child development. Our subconscious minds are exchanging information in this way all the time.

Think about this. It's big.

This is nothing like the Bible Code. The BC has been shown to work with virtually any text - it's a question of seeing what you look for. Such is not the case with reverse speech, as you will discover, if you ever decide to give it your attention. If you don't, you can huff and puff, but never disprove it. I'll admit it seems improbable on it's face, but since there is nothing to compare it to, your rejection has no basis in experience, much less in fact.

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), December 08, 1998.

This is just a humorous aside. I have no comment about reverse speech. I'm going to check out those two web sites.

Having been in the radio biz in the past, I did a few Sunday morning/public affairs/talk shows in the mid 1980's on "back masking". I've played all the usual, "accused" songs forwards and backwards like "Stairway To Heaven" and "Another One Bites The Dust".

The humor here is when a friend and I, for one of these talk shows, went looking for these "backwards messages" in well-known songs that no one ever accuses. For example, one part of Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock 'n Roll" backwards sounds like "The Bible is the main rock". One part of "In The Air Tonight" by Phil Collins backwards sounds like "How tough for satan my idol. Evil, evil, evil." Again, sounds like.

In "Oh Darling" by the Beatles, at the beginning when "Oh darling, please believe me" is sung, it comes out backwards as "And he lives here in Oz". In Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel", the part where he sings "the desk clerk's dressed in black" comes out backwards as "I'm the sad, sad satan". Or so it sounds.

The only thing I ever came across in all this that was a bit spooky is that in both the studio AND live version of "Stairway To Heaven", you can hear the alleged backwards message, even though it seems to me that something has to be phrased and intoned a certain way forwards for it to come out a certain way backwards.

This subject was mostly entertainment to me. It reminded me of an inkblot test--what you hear has a lot to do with your background, experiences and concerns. I am going to take a look, though, at those two sites on reverse speech.

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), December 09, 1998.