Nexus - 0109 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Unidentifieds Soviet news agency Tass released many reports of a series of ‘close encounters of the third kind’ which took place in Russia last year. According to reports, scientists had confirmed an alien spaceship carry- ing giant people with tiny heads landed in Voronezh, a city 480km south-east of Moscow, on September 21st. Residents watched a large shining ball hover over a park before landing. Witnesses saw a hatch open in the lower half of the sphere-shaped craft, through which a three-eyed humanoid 3-4 metres tall wearing silvery overalls and bronze boots with a disk on its chest could be seen. According to Sovietskaya Kultura, two creatures exited the hatch, one apparently being a robot. A young boy started screaming in fright, but fell silent and unable to move when the alien looked at him with shining eyes. When other onlookers screamed the UFO and other creatures disappeared, Two rocks containing an ‘unknown element’ were left at the landing site, along with traces of footprints. “We found two mysterious pieces of rock that cannot be found on Earth,” claimed scientist Genrikh Silanov. Pravda reported there were 40 witnesses ~ to the landing and that children made a sketch of the craft shortly after the landing. Reports claimed the visitors came on three separate occasions. Pravda _ reporter Pavel Mukhortov claimed to have met the glowing creatures in the Ural Mountains on the night of July 30th. He said he did not actually talk to the 4-metre tall creatures but communicated by “thought waves”. When he asked to retum with them to their planet they said; “There would be no retum for you and it would be dangerous for us - you would bring thought bacteria.” “The constellation Libra, Red Star - our homeland,” was the reply to questions about their origins. When Mukhortov asked about their goal, they replied; “It depends on the centre. We are directed by a central system.” sum Ergot Was the French Revolution brought on by people eating of bread contaminated with ergot, a natural form of LSD? Drawing on historical records, University of Maryland historian Mary Kilboume Matossian claims that a mystery phenomenon known as La Grande Peur (The Great Fear) in 1789 can be attributed to peasants undergoing massive food poisoning brought on by the ergot fungus, the LSD precursor which grows on rye grain. During the three weeks of The Great Fear peasants took to the woods with pitchforks and muskets, weeping and shouting. Others crossed the country in a blind panic, looting and buming chateaux. Matossian disputes the dominant view that the phenomenon was a revolt by peasants over taxes and tithes. “In the spring of 1798 there were peasant protests against the food shortage and ‘feudal’ practices, but The Great Fear of July and August was mainly a panic, not a protest,” she writes in Poisons of the Past: Molds, \ Epidemics and History (Yale Uni Press). . The Black Plague of the 14th century, the Salem, Massachuseus witch trials, the 1 8th century religious revivals and other notable events indicate the large role played by serious microbiological food contamination in shaping social behaviour, she says. Ergot in flour made from infected rye can cause an amazing range of symptoms when eaten, including gangrene, fertility suppression, loss of motor control, severe hallucinations and death. Peasants were heavily reliant on rye until the potato became the dietary staple in the 18th century; European peasants ate as much as a kilo of rye bread a day. Matossian points out that ie symptoms normally associated with be- witchment - as in witch trials - are strikingly similar to nervous system disorders caused by ergot - tremours, spasms, seizures, facial and eye contractions, hallucination and panic attacks. European witch trials were most commonly held in cold, wet areas where rye was the staple food. ; Washington post, AP NEXUS New Times Nine Spring 1939