Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Gigantic Storm With Huge Tail Erupts on Saturn

An enormous storm has erupted in Saturn’s northern hemisphere.

Amateurs first sighted the storm earlier this month, but the Cassini spacecraft moved into a good position on Dec. 24 to photograph it from about 1.1 million miles away. Earth received the raw and unprocessed shots today.

The storm has a huge central funnel and a long tail that sweeps around Saturn’s northern hemisphere for tens of thousands of miles. A shot in blue light (left) reveals the extent of the tail, but infrared light (right) shows detail of the storm’s amorphous core. The photos were taken exactly a month after Cassini recovered from a solar-flare-induced error that temporarily silenced the spacecraft from Nov. 2 through Nov. 24.

Saturn’s weather is complex like Jupiter’s, but it’s often difficult to see such storms beneath Saturn’s hazy outer atmosphere, wrote Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and leader of Cassini’s imaging team, on Twitter.

Images: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Found Here: http://current.com/1f3gt4c

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Romulus, Conqueror of Acron, 1812, Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres


Jean Ingres’ “Romulus, Conqueror of Acron” of 1812. Ingres was born in Montauban in 1780 and at the age of sixteen he went to Paris to study under David. He won the Grand Prix in 1801. He went to Rome in 1807 having secured a following in the art world. He continued to mature and gather a greater gathering until his death in 1867. Romulus, Conqueror of Acron, was created as a large painting for the salon of Napoleon I. It recalls the earliest and mythological history of Rome and reflects the Napoleonic obsession with all things Roman and Classical. The original painting is in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Found Here: http://finecanvas.com/finecanvasartblog/2010/12/romulus-conqueror-of-acron-1812-jean-auguste-dominque-ingres/

A few important commissions came to him; the French governor of Rome asked him to paint Virgil reading the Aeneid (1812) for his residence, and to paint two colossal works—Romulus's victory over Acron (1812) and The Dream of Ossian (1813)—for Monte Cavallo, a former Papal residence undergoing renovation to become Napoleon's Roman palace. These paintings epitomized, both in subject and scale, the type of painting with which Ingres was determined to make his reputation, but, as Philip Conisbee has pointed out, "for all the high ideals that had been drummed into Ingres at the academies in Toulouse, Paris, and Rome, such commissions were exceptions to the rule, for in reality there was little demand for history paintings in the grand manner, even in the city of Raphael and Michelangelo."[18] Art collectors preferred "light-hearted mythologies, recognizable scenes of everyday life, landscapes, still lifes, or likenesses of men and women of their own class. This preference persisted throughout the nineteenth century, as academically oriented artists waited and hoped for the patronage of state or church to satisfy their more elevated ambitions."[19]

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Auguste_Dominique_Ingres


Tuesday, November 30, 2010

John F. Kennedy - Little kid holding gun to mouth

Matt Ryan
Infowars.com
November 30, 2010

In another example of children being considered potential terrorists, a Massachusetts teacher sent home a note to each parent of her sixth-grade class banning all pencils and pens from school including the student’s person, backpack, and on the bus citing that they could be used in “weapon making”.

The letter read:

students would no longer be allowed to bring writing implements to school. It said pencils would be provided for students in class and any students caught with pencils or pens after Nov. 15 would face disciplinary action for having materials “to build weapons.”

After receiving several calls from the media, the school district quickly retracted the ban, stating that the teacher sent the notice on their own authority without prior approval of the school board.

This isn’t the first case of a teacher or school taking a drastic stance against minor and otherwise harmless items at school. A school in Rhode Island banned one student from wearing a hat that featured an American flag and plastic toy soldiers made in honor of soldiers. The 8-year-old boy made the hat as part of an assignment when they were to meet their pen-pals. He decided it would be a good idea to decorate it to be patriotic. The school disagreed.

A 7-year-old was expelled for over a year after a teacher found a toy gun in his backpack. The toy never left his bag, and wasn’t used in any threatening manor. The school board determined that the young boy should have to risk repeating the second grade as a just punishment for bringing a toy with him to school.

If that wasn’t crazy enough, a student was nearly expelled over a 2-inch Lego gun made for a policeman figure. The Staten Island student was playing with Legos during his lunch period when a teacher spotted a tiny toy gun no bigger than a quarter. This landed him in big trouble resulting in threatened suspension and even expulsion.

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Are teachers, principals, and school board members taking their zero-tolerance policies just a little too far? While there is no denying that bringing a live firearm on school property should be strictly forbidden, instilling fear of retaliation by public employees for even possessing a toy leaves a lasting and potentially harmful mark on a child’s psyche. This is an early conditioning that teaches students to fear their own actions, and with notes like the one above banning writing utensils, to possibly submit to restrictions on creativity and expression. Keeping a journal or writing about your experiences was also banned in Orwellian 1984.

Note from Alex Jones: This is a form of mind control to teach children that the image of a gun in a slave’s hand is evil, while the same weapon in the hands of a swat team is good.

Found Here: http://www.infowars.com/teacher-bans-pencils-from-class-cited-potential-weapon-making/


Kryptos - Jim Sanborn

It is perhaps one of the C.I.A.’s most mischievous secrets.

“Kryptos,” the sculpture nestled in a courtyard of the agency’s Virginia headquarters since 1990, is a work of art with a secret code embedded in the letters that are punched into its four panels of curving copper.

“Our work is about discovery — discovering secrets,” said Toni Hiley, director of the C.I.A. Museum. “And this sculpture is full of them, and it still hasn’t given up the last of its secrets.”

Not for lack of trying. For many thousands of would-be code crackers worldwide, “Kryptos” has become an object of obsession. Dan Brown has even referred to it in his novels.

The code breakers have had some success. Three of the puzzles, 768 characters long, were solved by 1999, revealing passages — one lyrical, one obscure and one taken from history. But the fourth message of “Kryptos” — the name, in Greek, means “hidden” — has resisted the best efforts of brains and computers.

And Jim Sanborn, the sculptor who created “Kryptos” and its puzzles, is getting a bit frustrated by the wait. “I[..]umed the code would be cracked in a fairly short time,” he said, adding that the intrusions on his life from people who think they have solved his fourth puzzle are more than he expected.

So now, after 20 years, Mr. Sanborn is nudging the process along. He has provided The New York Times with the answers to six letters in the sculpture’s final passage. The characters that are the 64th through 69th in the final series on the sculpture read NYPVTT. When deciphered, they read BERLIN.

But there are many steps to cracking the code, and the other 91 characters and their proper order are yet to be determined.

“Having some letters where we know what they are supposed to be could be extremely valuable,” said Elonka Dunin, a computer game designer who runs the most popular “Kryptos” Web page.

None of this was really envisioned when the Central Intelligence Agency planned the expansion known as the New Headquarters Building in the 1980s and asked artists to submit proposals to create a work of art for the courtyard. The broad principles it provided for the $250,000 commission included the notion that it should “engender feelings of well-being, hope.”

The winner was Mr. Sanborn, and the agency introduced him to Edward Scheidt, a retiring C.I.A. cryptographer, who gave him a crash course in the arts of concealing text and helped devise the codes used in the sculpture.

One reason the fourth puzzle has proved so difficult is because, with just 97 characters, it is shorter than any but the first. Longer chunks of text are easier to crack because there is more information to study for patterns.

The messages form the two left-hand panels of the sculpture’s wall of text; the other two panels on the right side provide the key to cracking some of the text. Each is encrypted in a different way from the others.

The first reads: “Between subtle shading and the absence of light lies the nuance of iqlusion.” (Mr. Sanborn admitted to introducing misspellings to add a degree of difficulty.)

The second passage includes the latitude and longitude of the C.I.A.’s headquarters and asks, “Does Langley know about this? They should: it’s buried out there somewhere. X Who knows the exact location? Only WW.”

This is a reference to William Webster, the former C.I.A. chief — Mr. Sanborn gave him a key to deciphering the messages.

The third passage paraphrases, with an intentional misspelling, the account of Howard Carter, the renowned Egyptologist, as he opened King Tut’s tomb. Mr. Sanborn has said the passage has inspired him since childhood.

“Slowly, desparatly slowly, the remains of passage debris that encumbered the lower part of the doorway was removed. With trembling hands I made a tiny breach in the upper left-hand corner. And then, widening the hole a little, I inserted the candle and peered in. The hot air escaping from the chamber caused the flame to flicker, but presently details of the room within emerged from the mist. x Can you see anything? q”

Though “Kryptos” has long been famous in code-busting circles, it gained wider notoriety when Mr. Brown slyly referred to it on the dust jacket of his best-selling novel “The DaVinci Code” and incorporated it into the plot of “The Lost Symbol.”


While many artists might be thrilled with such publicity, Mr. Sanborn was deeply irked by the way his work was portrayed as a possible key to “ancient Masonic secrets” in “The Lost Symbol.”


“As far as I’m concerned, he did me no favors,” Mr. Sanborn groused about Mr. Brown.

The message of his artwork, and its relevance to the C.I.A., is more nuanced than a plot point in a potboiler novel, he said.

“Anybody holding a secret has a position of power, even if it’s a trivial secret,” Mr. Sanborn said.

To code breakers, Mr. Sanborn, not the C.I.A., is in the real position of power. They e-mail him. They call him. Some have produced papers of 100 pages or more explaining their theories on the final 97 characters. “In their world, a complete tour de force,” said Mr. Sanborn, save for one thing: “It doesn’t have anything to do with ‘Kryptos.’ ”

He likes and respects many of the fans. But some others? “Certifiable,” he said.

Recently, one even showed up in the front yard of his home on an island in the Chesapeake Bay, brandishing a three-ring binder that she was convinced contained the answer. It did not.

He has asked a friend — Mr. Sanborn has given him some of the answers, but not all — to handle inquiries from those who say they have solved the puzzle.

“My friend says, ‘What do you have in letter-position 27?’ ” Mr. Sanborn explained. “If that’s not the same letter, ‘Game over, and you didn’t crack the code.’ ” (He recently set up a Web site to take submissions automatically.)

So far, no one has had more than two letters right, though some dispute this. “They say, of course I cracked the code — who are you to say I didn’t crack the code?” Mr. Sanborn said. Some of them even suggest that he does not know the answer himself.

He hopes others will hurry up and solve it.

“I can’t do this for many more decades, O.K.?” Mr. Sanborn said. “I’m 65 now. They might get some more clues at 75. But 85?”

Found Here: http://slumz.boxden.com/f5/nov-22-can-you-crack-c-i-s-kryptos-code-1451559/

Mystery Crypto Letter Has Coders Stumped

A coded letter sent last year to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois has the lab, and outside coders stumped. The letter was sent anonymously last March in a hand-addressed envelope via regular mail to the physics lab’s public affairs office.

After sitting on the letter for more than a year, the lab posted it on a physics blog in May, hoping to get help cracking it.

Thousands of sleuths have taken a stab at it so far and have succeeded to crack two parts of the letter. An engineer at the Canadian Space Center used a variation of the base-3 system to uncover a line that reads “Frank Shoemaker would call this noise,” which refers to an 86-year-old retired Princeton University physicist who helped design the magnets used with the lab’s first particle accelerator, known as the Main Ring. Another line in the letter has been cracked to read, “Employee number basse sixteen.”

A Chicago Tribune story about the letter offers some possible explanations behind the two sentences and what appears to be a typo in the second sentence.

But, like the famous CIA Kryptos sculpture (which also has a typo), one final section of the letter (pictured above) remains unsolved. The lab is hoping outsiders will help them unravel the clues. You can see the entire letter on the physics blog where it was posted. An undated update to the blog post indicates that they suspect they now know who may have sent the letter.

Coders post your solutions in the comments section below or send them directly to me (you’ll find my e-mail address in this blog’s righthand column) with an explanation about how you cracked it.

Found Here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/07/mystery-at-ferm/

Jim Sanborn

Jim Sanborn has had work exhibited at the High Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection and the Hirshhorn Museum. He has been commissioned to create artwork for such sites as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sanborn was born in 1945 in Washington, D.C. His father, a print maker, was the Director of Exhibitions at the Library of Congress for 30 years. His mother was a pianist and photo researcher. Sanborn grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, attended JEB Stuart High School in Fairfax, and went on to study archaeology and Romanesque cathedrals. He studied archaeology at Oxford University, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in paleontology, fine arts, and social anthropology in 1968 from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland Virginia, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1971. He taught at Montgomery College in Rockville, and for nine years was the artist-in-residence and taught classes at Glen Echo Park. He has also traveled extensively in Asia, and in 1983 was commissioned to install a piece in Japan.

Mr. Sanborn is noted for his work with American stone and related materials that evoke a sense of mystery and the forces of nature. He is probably best known for the "Kryptos" sculpture installed at CIA Headquarters in 1990, which displays encrypted messages which continue to stump code-breakers to this day.

Sanborn contact info: This website is not directly associated with Mr. Sanborn.

Found Here: http://elonka.com/kryptos/sanborn.html

Saturday, November 20, 2010

A New Ancient Crystal Skull Discovered!

The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull is no longer unique! Out of Africa – by way of California – emerges another ancient skull, “Compassion”, with a detachable jaw. Already, this skull is re-carving the crystal skull landscape!

With the 2008 release of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, crystal skulls attained a far higher level of exposure than ever before. Before, crystal skulls had only become somewhat famous in the 1980s, particularly in New Age circles. Today, there are hundreds of crystal skulls, almost all of them of modern fabrication (most made in China) and used in various New Age-type seminars. Only a handful of skulls are suspected of having ancient origins, including the most famous of all crystal skulls: the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull.
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” makes scant references to the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull. It stands out for it is by far the most complex, and the only skull with a detachable jaw, meaning that whomever made this, was a master artist in carving crystal – able to create a feat that modern carvers have been unable to accomplish. Gerald Leandro De Souza, a master skull carver from Brazil with 25 years of experience behind him, notes that “the process of cutting the jaw from a skull causes the jaw to break and is almost impossible for skull carvers to accomplish.”
Still, sceptics, principally led by Jane Walsh, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, try to argue that all these skulls are of modern fabrications. So far, none of the claims made by Walsh and co. have been substantiated, let alone supported by factual evidence. Specifically, Walsh tries to point the finger to Germany and the town of Idar-Oberstein, arguing most of these skulls were carved there by the resident artists. However, no records of skull carving have ever been found there; there are no records of any carver doing carving in the middle of the 19th century, when some of these skulls are said to have been made. In short, Walsh’s theories remain totally unsubstantiated – not very scientific!
On the other side of the debate are the likes of Nick Nocerino, one of the first crystal skull researchers, who travelled extensively throughout Central America, in search of them. He noted how on several occasions, Indian tribes offered skulls on sale to him, as with the money, the local shamans could buy precious Western medicine and like, to help their tribe at a time when the Mayan people were subjected to genocide. Nocerino always refused such offers, as he strongly believed the skulls were such an integral part of Mayan society, that these tribes needed their precious talisman. (Though he did everything to help the tribes in other ways.)

The Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull too comes with a Central American origin. The family itself stated that Anna Mitchell-Hedges found the skull in the ruins of Lubaantuun on her 17th birthday in 1924. It is a story Anna adhered to until her death, though it was subjected to intense criticism from the sceptics. Indeed, a more likely story about how her father found the skull is told in his novel, “The White Tiger”, published in 1931. In it, he relates a largely autobiographical account of an Englishman who is initiated by a Mayan tribe, to become the principal caretaker of a most important treasure. When the Mayan priest shows him the treasure, the Englishman is led down into a series of tunnels, before the treasure is unveiled to him: “Before him, piled in endless confusion, lay the treasure of the Aztecs. Gold chalices, bowls, jars and other vessels of every size and shape; immense plaques and strange ornaments all glittered dully. Of precious stones there were none, but many rare chalchihuitl (jadeite pendants) [sic]. Masks of obsidian and shells beautifully inlaid were all heaped together with heads carved from solid blocks of crystal. Legend had not exaggerated the treasure of the Aztecs. Almost boundless wealth lay at the disposal of the White Tiger.”
“Heads carved from solid blocks of crystals”: a reference to crystal skulls made by Frederick “Mike” Mitchell-Hedges in 1931, more than a decade before he – according to the likes of Walsh – acquired a skull at auction at Sotheby’s in London in 1943.

Because it is the most complex, the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull is both the most famous and the most debated. It is unique. But today, the Mitchell-Hedges skull is no longer unique: on August 6, 2009, former Alaskan fisherman Joe Bennett was able to finally buy, from a Californian import shop, a crystal skull… with a detachable jaw, which he soon named “Compassion”. A new era in crystal skull research had therefore dawned, for a number of reasons.
Bennett is a retired fisherman from Alaska. He had earned the nickname “the crystal sailor”, as for years, he had been collecting an impressive array of crystals. In his hunt for crystals, in 2006, he stumbled upon a crystal skull, in an import store in Carmel, California. The skull had belonged to a close friend of the owners, who had brought it over from Africa. Upon his death his family liquidated the estate and asked the import store to sell the crystal skull for them.
Bennett relates how he “noticed a crystal skull in the back of this shop on a high shelf. I admired the extreme craftsmanship, saw the price and forgot about it. Like most people I didn’t have any reference for crystal skulls other than Halloween witches or Black Magic.” However, the skull did not let go of Joe, who had a series of vivid dreams about the skull, so much so that he dispatched his sister – who lived nearby – to make a series of photographs, which she sent to Joe. It was now only a matter of time before the skull would end up in Bennett’s care.

Compassion is human-sized and clear quartz, 5.5” tall, 5.5” wide and 8 inches long, weighing 11 pounds – very similar in dimensions to the Mitchell-Hedges skull. The mouth has 28 teeth. Little is known of the origins of the skull. It is known that the skull was in storage in the United States for five years prior to the shop putting it up for sale. Before, it had spent 22 years in a warehouse in Africa. The name of the people who owned it in Africa is not a matter of public record, but initial analyses of the skull have shown that the crystal is not from Brazil. Gerald Leandro De Souza argues that the “quartz probably is from Africa”. The likeliest source is Namibia, Africa, which is a well-known location where quartz crystal can be found.
Whereas the Mitchell-Hedges skull is “crystal clear”, Compassion is more like another crystal skull, known as MAX: Compassion is made out of three distinct layers (MAX has five such layers). The largest, frontal part is made of the clearest quartz crystal. Behind, roughly the top of the forehead, is a somewhat softer section of less-clear crystal. Behind is a final, third layer, separated from the others by a small fissure of iron oxide, which one can only truly see from the back of the skull.
The possibility that the material inside the fissure is iron oxide was first suggested by crystal carver James Ziegler, who added that the material at the bottom of the fissure was feldspar. This conclusion was confirmed when Bennett had the skull examined by Dr. Ray Corbett, Associate Curator of Archaeology at the Natural History Museum in Santa Barbara and Geologist Dr. John Minch on March 30, 2010. It was Minch who confirmed that the fissure was filled with iron oxide.
These experts furthermore accepted that the grounding of the crystal had occurred by hand, and not by machine. One area of the skull show pie-shaped areas, which a carver would keep, but a grinding wheel would smooth out. There are other aspects of the skull, especially to do with a lack of symmetry between the right and left side, which show that the work was carried out by human hands. Corbett and Minch also identified that the natural growth of the crystal is for the skull to be placed with the teeth pointing up. This means that the iron oxide layer was at the bottom of the then axis of the crystal, with the layer of the face being the clearest and the top one. The carver would have to carve against the grain of the skull and skip over these fractures, a task which crystal carvers say is extremely hard to do – surpassing their expertise.
When one runs a fingernail along the top of the skull, one can feel the fractures between the layers. Dr. Minch said that whoever made this skull, would have to do so very slowly, for if the quartz were to get hot, it would shatter – thus underlining that the usage of tools in the making of this skull was unlikely.
During testing, Dr. Minch also noted there was an “air bubble” inside the skull. When the skull is rocked, the bubble moves over half the thickness (about 1mm) up and down in a solution which he believes is water, which somehow made its way into the skull and trapped the air bubble inside. Bennett has speculated whether this air bubble should be interpreted as a representation of the pineal gland, a part of the brain that is often referred to as the “third eye”, and which is therefore heavily imbued with esoteric meaning. René Descartes even labelled it the seat of the soul, echoing a belief that goes back thousands of years.
Minch also found golden rutile in both skull and jaw. Rutile is a major ore of titanium, and is found as microscopic inclusions in quartz and other precious gemstones. It is responsible for many of the light effects that one sees within these objects.
Scientists have a hard time admitting that the detachable jaw of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull is made from crystal (it is), and is from the same crystal as the rest of the skull (it is). But no such doubt can arise in the case of Compassion: its right cheek has a foil in the crystal that runs from the right cheek into jaw, and hence clearly shows that both the main part of the skull and the jaw are from the same crystal.
It will be interesting to see what sceptics are now going to do. In the case of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull, they tried to debate the jaw away, as the creation of such a jaw has never been accomplished by modern crystal workers. But Compassion will not look compassionately upon these sceptics, who will have to come up with stronger arguments, if they want to persist in continuing the same old controversies in trying to explain away what is one of the most interesting recent discoveries.

However impressive Compassion is, its face is not symmetrical. With its detachable jaw placed underneath the skull’s teeth, Compassion looks and is symmetrical, but remove the jaw, and it becomes clear that the skull is off-centre: the teeth are slanted to the right. The only place where polishing marks are evident to the human eye is under the maxilla. This area was not finely polished, maybe to illustrate it was hand carved. The rest of the skull does not show any of these marks. Indeed, Compassion brings us to an interesting conclusion: the skull is clearly made by human hands, but whomever made it, had an expertise in working with quartz crystal, which exceeds that of anyone alive today. In short, there is an entire lost science of working with quartz crystal. But where did it come from, and where did it go?
Finally, when we stare into its eyes, it is clear that both are not identical: the left eye is far clearer than the right. It was in fact while Bennett and his wife stared into the skull’s eyes, that they felt “it” looked sad. His wife said she “showed compassion in her gaze” and a name was born. Both also felt that Compassion held a feminine energy.
Bennett has photographed the skull extensively. Some of the close-ups have revealed a number of interesting subliminal images that Compassion conjures up. When the skull was placed on a light-box, one such image that emerged was of an enigmatic head, while nearby, there was the outline of a horse’s head.

The key question is whether Compassion can ever be proven to be ancient. As mentioned, the likes of Jane Walsh from the Smithsonian have gone out of their way – abandoning the scientific process altogether – to argue come what may that all skulls are of modern origin. Their scientific bias was apparent during the testing of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull in 2008, when one member of the team straightforwardly proclaimed that the detachable jaw clearly was and could only be glass. When it was found out not to be glass soon afterwards, he exclaimed somewhat reservedly “this did not mean it was crystal” – even though previous testing by Hewlett-Packard had clearly shown that the jaw was indeed crystal!
The problem is that crystal is impossible to date, so any dating needs to happen through other, secondary means. Evidence of tools, especially the wheel, has been put forward as the key indicator as to whether a skull is ancient (read: pre-Columbian) or modern. However much this argument is flawed, it cannot apply to a skull that comes from Africa – Africa was never an isolated continent, witnessing the origins of Mankind several tens of thousands of years ago. The argument only works if we see crystal skulls as a purely American phenomenon, whereby the wheel is assumed to have been introduced with the arrival of Western Europeans.
Of course, the skull’s presence in Africa for a number of decades does not mean it was always there. Equally, the origins of civilisation in Central America itself remains enigmatic. The Olmec civilisation dates back to at least 1200 BC, and some have argued for an African origin to this civilisation. In 1972, Dr. A. Wiercinski argued that some of the Olmecs were of African origin, supporting his claim with skeletal evidence from several Olmec sites. According to Clyde Winters, the Olmecs were from the Mandinka region of West Africa (north of Namibia). Their language is known as Mende, the script which was actually found on monuments at Monte Alban in Mexico. Interestingly, it is at Monte Alban that evidence has been found that the Mayans were definitely familiar with crystal artefacts.
Still, the quartz crystal itself having Namibia as its likeliest origin means that the skull itself must have had an African connection, wherever it was carved or used. And whereas there are Mayan legends of how skulls with removable jaws could “sing and talk” during certain religious ceremonies that were performed in the many Mayan sanctuaries, the question is which African cultures held crystal skulls dear.
Little is known about Compassion and seeing its existence is only known about for a year, most discoveries about it are still to come. If we were to assume that it is indeed of African origins, then we are confronted with crystal skulls on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, bearing great similarities. Are they evidence of pre-Columbian contact between the two continents, in which case the Olmecs are the likeliest candidate, or should we look at much older origins, including the fabled lost civilisation of Atlantis?

Those who have communicated with the skulls – in trance, meditation or otherwise – keep referring to an Atlantean connection. During a crystal skull conference in September 2009 – one of the first public airings of Compassion – Mayan elder Hunbatz Men was one of the speakers and he became intrigued by Compassion. Studying the skull closely, he exclaimed “Atlantis!” He added that there was a matrix in the back of the skull which showed an ancient map which he did not understand. Several months later, Bennett realised that the iron oxide layer in the skull largely resembles a map of the African continent. Coincidence, or not?
Another psychic who has worked with Compassion is Carole Wilson/Davis. Wilson originally worked with the Mitchell-Hedges skull, resulting in “The Skull Speaks”, published in 1985 and one of the first books to appear on crystal skulls altogether. For Wilson, the iron oxide came in the shape of a phoenix, spreading its wings, with a head and a beak in the centre. She added that the information from Compassion changed, whereas that of the Mitchell-Hedges was stable – “the same information every day.”

Within Mayan creation mythology, there is a special role for skulls. Ancient temple complexes like Chichen Itza are three-dimensional renderings of the Mayan creation myth. Near the famous pyramid and ball court is an unimpressive “Platform of the Skull”. In the creation myth, when playing ball, the Twin Maize Gods disturbed the lords of Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. The Xibalbans summoned the Maize Gods to the underworld to answer for their disrespectful behaviour. There, they subjected them to a series of trials. When they failed these tests, they were killed and buried in the ball court of Xibalba. The eldest twin was decapitated, his head hung in the tree next to the ball court, as a warning to anyone who might repeat their offence. This was visualised on the Platform of the Skull. There is no archaeological evidence as to what type of skull hung there, but seeing it was a divine skull, which spoke and spat, a crystal skull with a detachable jaw would definitely have impressed all visitors – in a way any other type of skull would not have been able to accomplish!
Crystal balls are also used for scrying. Is it possible that Compassion was used for scrying? The various images that people have seen inside of her, would thus be parts of the scrying process. And extended staring in the skull might have placed the person in a trance. Users of Compassion are sometimes transported to another reality, for example by staring into its eyes – especially the left one.

In the 1980s, when the Central American crystal skulls came to prominence, various atrocious crimes were committed against the Mayan population there. In countries like Guatemala, an oppressive regime slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Mayan people. It took years before the news of this “Silent Holocaust” became known; throughout the genocide, Western governments supported the Guatemalan government. Only able to rely on themselves, the Mayan people began to organise themselves – becoming terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective – and they began to use key dates from the Mayan calendar for their campaigns, hoping to shake the Mayan people awake and embrace their true origins and common heritage – one that transcended the modern borders Western world powers had created. Sociologists have labelled it the “Mayan Renaissance”. Today, three decades later, the world is very much aware of the Mayan calendar – especially its key date, December 21, 2012 – and millions of people visit the various Mayan monuments of Central America.
The 2010 World Cup in South Africa was seen as a joyous event for Africa, showing that Africa is not just a country of civil war and hunger. There is great joy in a continent that gave us the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, while Kenya is seen as the “cradle of Mankind”, for the remains of the earliest hominids have been found in that country. Twenty years ago, American bestselling author Kathleen McGowan attended a crystal skull workshop lead by Susan McCune. McGowan was told that in the future, she would work with skulls from Africa and that several skulls would emerge from that continent. When she saw Compassion in July 2010, McGowan remembered McCune’s prophecy. And if McCune is right, Compassion is but the first in a series of African skulls that will make their existence known the world. And with their emergence, will there be a renewed appreciation for the African continent?

At this moment in time, Compassion’s existence has already changed the entire crystal skull debate, showing that the Mitchell-Hedges skull is not unique in its complexity, and that Central America is unlikely to be the only origin of crystal skulls. The question as to the origins of the crystal skulls has therefore been redefined: did various ancient cultures have them? Did an African civilisation bring them to the American continent? Or do we need to delve further back in time, to a lost civilisation, like Atlantis, from which these skulls originated? A new dawn in crystal skull research has just broken…

Found Here: http://www.philipcoppens.com/compassion.html

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Wernher Von Braun and Walt Disney

Walt Disney and Dr. Wernher von Braun

Dr. Werhner von Braun, then Chief, Guided Missile Development Operation Division at Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, was visited by Walt Disney in 1954. In the 1950's, von Braun worked with Disney Studio as a technical director, making three films about space exploration for television. A model of the V-2 rocket is in background.

Source: NASA

Excerpt
Disney, who would become an international icon, opened Disneyland the same year that von Braun worked as a technical director on three Disney TV programs about space.

The first, ``Man in Space,'' aired on ABC on March 9, 1955. The second, ``Man and the Moon,'' aired the same year, and the final film, ``Mars and Beyond,'' was televised on Dec. 4, 1957.

Found Here: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/41pegasus/02files/Cosmic_Conspiracy4.html

Operation Paperclip

Dossier Compiled by Agent Orange (Fri, 08 Aug 1997)

After WWII ended in 1945, victorious Russian and American intelligence teams began a treasure hunt throughout occupied Germany for military and scientific booty. They were looking for things like new rocket and aircraft designs, medicines, and electronics. But they were also hunting down the most precious "spoils" of all: the scientists whose work had nearly won the war for Germany. The engineers and intelligence officers of the Nazi War Machine.

The U.S. Military rounded up Nazi scientists and brought them to America. It had originally intended merely to debrief them and send them back to Germany. But when it realized the extent of the scientists knowledge and expertise, the War Department decided it would be a waste to send the scientists home. Following the discovery of flying discs (foo fighters), particle/laser beam weaponry in German military bases, the War Department decided that NASA and the CIA must control this technology, and the Nazi engineers that had worked on this technology.

There was only one problem: it was illegal. U.S. law explicitly prohibited Nazi officials from immigrating to America--and as many as three-quarters of the scientists in question had been committed Nazis.

Data-Points:

Convinced that German scientists could help America's postwar efforts, President Harry Truman agreed in September 1946 to authorize "Project Paperclip," a program to bring selected German scientists to work on America's behalf during the "Cold War"

However, Truman expressly excluded anyone found "to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Naziism or militarism."

The War Department's Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) conducted background investigations of the scientists. In February 1947, JIOA Director Bosquet Wev submitted the first set of scientists' dossiers to the State and Justice Departments for review.

The Dossiers were damning. Samauel Klaus, the State Departments representative on the JIOA board, claimed that all the scientists in this first batch were "ardent Nazis." Their visa requests were denied.

Wev was furious. He wrote a memo warning that "the best interests of the United States have been subjugated to the efforts expended in 'beating a dead Nazi horse.'" He also declared that the return of these scientists to Germany, where they could be exploited by America's enemies, presented a "far greater security threat to this country than any former Nazi affiliations which they may have had or even any Nazi sympathies that they may still have."

When the JIOA formed to investigate the backgrounds and form dossiers on the Nazis, the Nazi Intelligence leader Reinhard Gehlen met with the CIA director Allen Dulles. Dulles and Gehlen hit it off immediatly. Gehlen was a master spy for the Nazis and had infiltrated Russia with his vast Nazi Intelligence network. Dulles promised Gehlen that his Intelligence unit was safe in the CIA.

Apparently, Wev decided to sidestep the problem. Dulles had the scientists dossier's re-written to eliminate incriminating evidence. As promised, Allen Dulles delivered the Nazi Intelligence unit to the CIA, which later opened many umbrella projects stemming from Nazi mad research. (MK-ULTRA / ARTICHOKE, OPERATION MIDNIGHT CLIMAX)

Military Intelligence "cleansed" the files of Nazi references. By 1955, more than 760 German scientists had been granted citizenship in the U.S. and given prominent positions in the American scientific community. Many had been longtime members of the Nazi party and the Gestapo, had conducted experiments on humans at concentration camps, had used slave labor, and had committed other war crimes.

In a 1985 expose in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Linda Hunt wrote that she had examined more than 130 reports on Project Paperclip subjects--and every one "had been changed to eliminate the security threat classification."

President Truman, who had explicitly ordered no committed Nazis to be admitted under Project Paperclip, was evidently never aware that his directive had been violated. State Department archives and the memoirs of officials from that era confirm this. In fact, according to Clare[nce] Lasby's book [Project] Paperclip, project officials "covered their designs with such secrecy that it bedeviled their own President; at Potsdam he denied their activities and undoubtedly enhanced Russian suspicion and distrust," quite possibly fueling the Cold War even further.

A good example of how these dossiers were changed is the case of Wernher von Braun. A September 18, 1947, report on the German rocket scientist stated, "Subject is regarded as a potential security threat by the Military Governor."

The following February, a new security evaluation of Von Braun said, "No derogatory information is available on the subject...It is the opinion of the Military Governor that he may not constitute a security threat to the United States."

Here are a few of the 700 suspicious characters who were allowed to immigrate through Project Paperclip.

ARTHUR RUDOLPH

During the war, Rudolph was operations director of the Mittelwerk factory at the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camps, where 20,000 workers died from beatings, hangings, and starvation. Rudolph had been a member of the Nazi party since 1931; a 1945 military file on him said simply: "100% Nazi, dangerous type, security threat..!! Suggest internment."

But the JIOA's final dossier on him said there was "nothing in his records indicating that he was a war criminal or and ardent Nazi or otherwise objectionable." Rudolph became a US citizen and later designed the Saturn 5 rocket used in the Apollo moon landings. In 1984, when his war record was finally investigated, he fled to West Germany.

WERNHER VON BRAUN

From 1937 to 1945, von Braun was the technical director of the Peenemunde rocket research center, where the V-2 rocket --which devastated England--was developed. As noted previously, his dossier was rewritten so he didn't appear to have been an enthusiastic Nazi.

Von Braun worked on guided missiles for the U.S. Army and was later director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. He became a celebrity in the 1950s and early 1960s, as one of Walt Disney's experts on the "World of Tomorrow." In 1970, he became NASA's associate administrator.

KURT BLOME

A high-ranking Nazi scientist, Blome told U.S. military interrogators in 1945 that he had been ordered 1943 to experiment with plague vaccines on concentration camp prisoners. He was tried at Nuremberg in 1947 on charges of practicing euthanasia (extermination of sick prisoners), and conducting experiments on humans. Although acquitted, his earlier admissions were well known, and it was generally accepted that he had indeed participated in the gruesome experiments.

Two months after his Nuremberg acquittal, Blome was interviewed at Camp David, Maryland, about biological warfare. In 1951, he was hired by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps to work on chemical warfare. His file neglected to mention Nuremberg.

MAJOR GENERAL WALTER SCHREIBER

According to Linda Hunt's article, the US military tribunal at Nuremberg heard evidence that "Schreiber had assigned doctors to experiment on concentration camp prisoners and had made funds available for such experimentation." The assistant prosecutor said the evidence would have convicted Schreiber if the Soviets, who held him from 1945 to 1948, had made him available for trial.

Again, Schreiber's Paperclip file made no mention of this evidence; the project found work for him at the Air Force School of Medicine at Randolph Field in Texas. When columnist Drew Pearson publicized the Nuremberg evidence in 1952, the negative publicity led the JIOA, says Hunt, to arrange "a visa and a job for Schreiber in Argentina, where his daughter was living." On May 22, 1952, he was flown to Buenos Aires.

HERMANN BECKER-FREYSING and SIEGFRIED RUFF

These two, along with Blome, were among the 23 defendants in the Nuremberg War Trials "Medical Case." Becker-Freysing was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for conducting experiments on Dachau inmates, such as starving them, then force-feeding them sea water that had been chemically altered to make it drinkable. Ruff was acquitted (in a close decision) on charges that he had killed as many as 80 Dachau inmates in a low-pressure chamber designed to simulate altitudes in excess of 60,000 feet. Before their trial, Becker-Freysing and Ruff were paid by the Army Air Force to write reports about their grotesque experiments.

GENERAL REINHARD GEHLEN

It was five years after the end of WWII but one of Hitler's chief intelligence officers was still on the job. From a walled-in compound in Bavaria, General Reinhard Gehlen oversaw a vast network of intelligence agents spying on Russia. His top aides were Nazi zealots who had committed some of the most notorious crimes of the war. Gehlen and his SS united were hired, and swiftly became agents of the CIA when they revealed their massive records on the Soviet Union to the US.

Gehlen derived much of his information from his role in one of the most terrible atrocities of the war: the torture, interrogation and murder by starvation of some four million Soviet prisoners. Prisoners who refused to cooperate were often tortured or summarily executed. May were executed even after they had given information, while others were simply left to starve to death. As a result, Gehlend and members of his organization maneuvered to make sure they were captured by advancing American troops rather than Russians, who would have executed them immediatly.

Two months before Germany surrendered in 1945, the Gehlen organization made its move. "Gehlen and a small group of his most senior officers carefully microfilmed the vast holding on the USSR in the military section of the German army's general staff. They packed the film in watertight steel drums and secretly buried it in a remote mountain meadow scattered throughout the Austrian Alps.

General William Donovan and Allen Dulles of the CIA were tipped off about Gehlen's surrender and his offer of Russian intelligence in exchange for a job. The CIA was soon jockeying with military intelligence for authority over Gehlen's microfilmed records--and control of the German spymaster. Dulles arranged for a private intelligence facility in West Germany to be established, and named it the Geheln Organization. Gehlen promised not to hire any former SS, SD, or Gestapo members; he hired them anyway, and the CIA did not stop him. Two of Gehlen's early recruits were Emil Augsburg and Dr. Franz Six, who had been part of mobile killing squads, which killed Jews, intellectuals, and Soviet partisans wherever they found them. Other early recruits included Willi Krichbaum, senior Gestapo leader for southeastern Europe, and the Gestapo chiefs of Paris and Kiel, Germany.

With the encouragement of the CIA, Gehlen Org (Licio Gelli) set up "rat lines" to get Nazi war criminals out of Europe so they wouldn't be prosecuted. By setting up transit camps and issuing phony passports, the Gehlen Org helped more than 5,000 Nazis leave Europe and relocate around the world, especially in South and Central America. There, mass murderers like Klaus Barbie (the butcher of Lyons) helped governments set up death squads in Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, and elsewhere.

KLAUS BARBIE

Known as the Nazi butcher of Lyons, France during World War II, Barbie was part of the SS which was responsible for the and death of thousands of French people under the Germany occupation.

HEINRICH RUPP

Some of Rupp's best work was done for the CIA, after he was imported in Operation Paperclip. Rupp has been convicted of bank fraud. He was an operative for the CIA and is deeply involved in the Savings and Loan scandals. A federal jury has indicated they believe testimony that Rupp, the late CIA Director William Casey - then Reagan's campaign manager, and Donald Gregg, now U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, flew with George Bush to Paris in 1980, during the election in which Bush was on the ticket with Ronald Reagan. The testimony states that three meetings were held on October 19 and 20 at the Hotel Florida and Hotel Crillion. The subject? According to the court testimony, the meetings were to sabotage President Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign by delaying the release of American hostages in Iran. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, right after Reagan and Bush were sworn into office. Iran was promised return of its frozen assets in the United States and the foundation for the Iran- Contra deal was set into motion.

LICIO GELLI

Head of a 2400 member secret Masonic Lodge, P2, a neo-fascist organization, in Italy that catered to only the elite, Gelli had high connections in the Vatican, even though he was not a Catholic. P2's membership is totally secret and not even available to its Mother Lodge in England. Gelli was responsible for providing Argentina with the Exocet missile. He was a double agent for the CIA and the KGB. He assisted many former Nazi high officials in their escape from Europe to Central America. He had close ties with the Italian Mafia. Gelli was a close associate of Benito Mussolini. He was also closely affiliated with Roberto Calvi, head of the scandal-ridden Vatican Bank. Calvi was murdered. Gelli's secret lodge consisted of extremely important people, including armed forces commanders, secret service chiefs, head of Italy's financial police, 30 generals, eight admirals, newspaper editors, television and top business executives and key bankers - including Calvi. Licio Gelli and others in P2 were behind the assasination of Pope John Paul I.

The central figure in Europe and South America that linked the CIA, Masonic Lodge, Vatican, ex-Nazis and several South American governments, the Italian government and several international banks was Licio Gelli. He, with Klaus Barbie and Heinrich Rupp, met with Ronald R. Rewald in Uruguay to arrange for the Argentine purchase of the French-made Exocet missile, used in the Falkland Island attack to kill british soldiers.

Who is Gelli and why was he so important?

To understand Gelli, one must understand the complex post war years of Europe. The biggest threat to Europe in pre-war times was Communism - it was the great fear of Communism that gave birth to the Fascists and the Nazis. Though both sides were dreaded, the Fascists represented right-wing government, while the Communist represent left-wing government. It was the right-wing that the United States and the Catholic Church desired over Communism - because Communism would destroy the capitalistic system. This is why the CIA and the Vatican had go through with Operation Paperclip. The Nazis had massive amounts of Soviet intelligence, had infiltrated Communist partisans, and were in no way going to be given up to the Soviet Union.

Gelli worked both sides. He helped to found the Red Brigade, spied on Communist partisans and worked for the Nazis at the same time, a double agent. He helped establish the Rat Line, which assisted the flight of high ranking Nazi officials from Europe to South America, with passports supplied by the Vatican and with the full acknowledgment and blessing of the United States intelligence community. While on one hand, the U.S. participated in the war crime tribunals of key Nazi officials and maintained an alliance with the Communist Soviet Union, secretly, the U.S. was preparing for the cold war and needed the help of Nazis in the eventual struggle the U.S. would have with the Soviet Union. Gelli's agreement with U.S. intelligence to spy on the Communists after the war was instrumental in saving his life. He was responsible for the murder and torture of hundreds of Yugoslavian partisans.

The Vatican provided support to Nazis and Fascists because the Communists were the real threat to the Church's survival. The Italian Communists would have taxed the Church's vast holdings and the Church has had a dismal experience with Communist governments throughout the world - where religious freedom was stamped out.

Gelli was well connected with the Vatican from the days of the Rat Line and he worked for American intelligence, as well. Gelli formed the P-2 Masonic Lodge-which did not follow the direction of any Grand Lodge-and it was supplied with a sum of $10 million a month by the CIA. Its membership was a Who's Who in the intelligence, military and Italian community. So prominent was Gelli's influence, that he was even a guest of honor at the 1981 inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.

Gelli used blackmail in order to gain prominent members of his P-2 lodge, its membership is estimated at 2400 members, including 300 of the most powerful men in the Western World.. He was a close friend of Pope Paul VI, Juan Peron of Argentina, Libyan Dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, and many high officials in the Italian and American governments - he is also reported to have had some financial dealings with the George Bush for President campaign.

Gelli and his P-2 lodge had staggering connections to banking, intelligence and diplomatic passports. The CIA poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Italy in the form of secret subsidies for political parties, labor unions and communications businesses. At the same time the Agency continued its relationship with far- right and violent elements as a back-up should a coup be needed to oust a possible Communist government. This covert financing was exposed by the Prime Minister of Italy in a speech to Parliament. He indicates that more than 600 people in Italy still remain on the payroll of the CIA. Licio Gelli was an ardent Nazi and a perfect asset of the CIA. As part of Reinhard Gehlen's intelligence team, he had excellent contacts. Licio was the go between for the CIA and the Vatican through his P2 Lodge.

Project Paperclip was stopped in 1957, when West Germany protested to the U.S. that these efforts had stripped it of "scientific skills." There was no comment about supporting Nazis. Paperclip may have ended in 1957, but as you can see from Licio Gelli and his international dealings with the CIA in Italy/P2, and Heinrich Rupp with his involvement in October Surprise, the ramifications of Paperclip are world-wide. The Nazis became employed CIA agents, engaging in clandestine work with the likes of George Bush, the CIA, Henry Kissinger, and the Masonic P2 lodge. This is but one of the results of Operation Paperclip. Another umbrella project that was spawned from Paperclip was MK-ULTRA.

A secret laboratory was established and funded by CIA director, Allen Dulles in Montreal, Canada at McGill University in the Allen Memorial Institute headed by psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron. For the next several years Dr. Ewen Cameron waged his private war in Canada. What is ironic about Dr. Cameron is that he served as a member of the Nuremberg tribunal who heard the cases against the Nazi doctors.

When it was at its height in drug experiments, operation MK-ULTRA was formed. This was the brainchild of Richard Helms who later came to be a CIA director. It was designed to defeat the "enemy" in its brain-washing techniques. MK-ULTRA had another arm involved in Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) known as MK-DELTA. The "doctors" who participated in these experiments used some of the same techniques as the Nazi "doctors". Techniques used by Dr. Cameron and previous Nazi scientists include electro shock, sleep deprivation, memory implantation, memory erasure, sensory modification, psychoactive drug experiments, and many more cruel practices.

Project Paperclip brought us MK-ULTRA. Paperclip ultimately brought in key players involved in the Assassination of Pope 1, October Surprise (sabotage of Carter's peace talks), and a great many other things still classified to this day. The results of Project Paperclip were devastating, and very far reaching. I guess that is what you would expect from collaborating with Nazis.

This research shows that the OSS/CIA that was formed in the National Security Act, the same agency that employed hundreds of Nazis, has been in alliance with the Vatican through various Agency connections such as Licio Gelli. The CIA/Vatican alliance that Assassinated Pope John Paul 1, JFK, and hundreds of dictators of 3rd world countries is the Illuminati.

The Bavarian Illuminati has been around for centuries in one way or another. It's presence in the 20th century is the direct result of the Nazis. The Nazi connections to the occult and the Bavarian Thule Society were parallel to the American members of 33rd degree Freemasonry. When the Operation Paperclip was successfully executed, the Nazi element of the Bavarian Thule society was fused with the American members of Freemasonry to create the Illuminati.

Operation Paperclip, MK-ULTRA, October Surprise, and George Bush are all facets of the Illuminati, a group whose ideals are rooted in the occult, and dedicated to world domination.

Soon after the American Revolution, John Robinson, a professor of rural philosophy at Edinburgh University in Scotland and member of a Freemason lodge, said that he was asked to join the Illuminati. After studying the group, he concluded that the purposes of the Illuminati were not compatible with his beliefs.

In 1798, he published a book called Proofs Of A Conspiracy, which states:

“An association has been formed for the express purpose of rooting out all the religious establishments and overturning all the existing governments.... The leaders would rule the World with uncontrollable power, while all the rest would be employed as tools of the ambition of their unknown superiors.”

The CIA and the Vatican have rooted out all the religious establishments in the world. The CIA has overthrown and set up dictators under their control all over the world. The CIA and the Vatican have fulfilled the purpose of the Illuminati. The CIA and the Vatican are the Illuminati.

Bibliography:

Found Here: http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/project_paperclip.htm

Walt Disney Helped Wernher von Braun Sell Americans on Space
By Dave Bryan
Associated Press
posted: 03:00 pm ET
13 August 2002

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (AP) -- Wernher von Braun, the German physicist who oversaw most of the achievements of the U.S. space program until his death in 1977, might not have been as successful if it weren't for Walt Disney.

Von Braun, a hero to many for his work as technical chief of the Army's missile program and later NASA's space program, began a concerted effort in the 1950s to sell the idea of space travel to the American public. That included the collaboration with Disney on three highly popular space-related television films.

``He had the ability to take this interest in space exploration and take it to the public,'' said Mike Wright, staff historian for the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Disney's senior producer, Ward Kimball, had taken notice after von Braun and other scientists wrote a series of articles for Collier's magazine, said Wright. He tapped von Braun to work on the popular Disney TV films about space.

Von Braun's work on the Disney films and the Collier's series sold many Americans on the idea of space flight and helped ensure adequate funding of the space program, said Wright.

The German scientist's personality was important for the success of the space program, said Michael Neufeld, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington who wrote a book about von Braun and his rocket team.

``He was very charming, he was very charismatic,'' Neufeld said. ``He was a very good politician in the context that he understood.''

Disney, who would become an international icon, opened Disneyland the same year that von Braun worked as a technical director on three Disney TV programs about space.

The first, ``Man in Space,'' aired on ABC on March 9, 1955. The second, ``Man and the Moon,'' aired the same year, and the final film, ``Mars and Beyond,'' was televised on Dec. 4, 1957.

Von Braun's talent was that he could communicate a vision of space travel in layman's terms while bringing to the message the authority of a scientist.

``To make people believe that space flight was a possibility was his greatest accomplishment,'' said Wright. ``Von Braun brought all of this out of the realm of science fiction.''

Found Here: http://www.space.com/news/spacehistory/vonbraun_disney_020813.html