FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 1996

STEAMSHOVEL PRESS is a quarterly magazine, available from PO Box 23715, St Louis, MO 63121, USA.

POPULAR ALIENATION is an anthology of back issues of STEAMSHOVEL PRESS, published by John Brown/Counter Publications.

STEAMSHOVEL PRESS is part of the "marginal press", giving alternative points of view to the mainstream media. It is part of the "underground press". The "underground" is, however, tainted by association with militia groups post-Waco/Weaver/Oklahoma and is now seen as racist. This is an anti-conspiracy smear effort. All dissent is smeared.

The late Danny Casolaro was a "marginal" journalist. THE OCTOPUS - his book - was never published, and the notes he had with him when he died were dismissed. A book is coming out, thanks to Kenn Thomas, in late ‘96/early ‘97 which will publish the remaining notes, also under the title THE OCTOPUS. Casolaro was a writer for various journals. He had written a Hemingway-esque novel. He’d also written a film, which was narrated by Orson Welles. He was a "poetic" type., who by chance ended up as a conspiracy investigator. The "Octopus" was a handful of spies that had manipulated various international events since 1980 (inc. the "October Surprise" and the Nugan Hand bank scandal). Casolaro’s suicide note was unconvincing and the autopsy was rushed. He was found dead in a blood-filled bath. There were 7 gashes on his wrists but there was no weapon found. There was a shoelace tied around his neck. Two bloody towels had been used to wipe the blood off the floor. The cause of his death?

1. Killed by the Octopus
or 2. Suicide
or 3. Killed by an informant that didn’t want to be exposed
or 4. He stumbled upon some corporate illegality and was killed by Hughes Aircraft

What Casolaro was investigating was the scandal in a software company called INSLAW. A man named Michael Riconosciuto revealed to Casolaro information about the US government stealing software called PROMIS off INSLAW. PROMIS is software for police & security files. There was a backdoor system, so the US government stole PROMIS off INSLAW and sold it to police & security forces across the world, knowing that they could get into their files and read them.

STEAMSHOVEL PRESS differs from other political conspiracy magazines in that it also deals with UFO reports. This is because of links between UFO sites/sightings and "Octopus" agents/players. The 24th June 1947 is famous for Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine objects in the sky. Interestingly, Arnold was hired later by Ray Palmer, editor of FATE magazine [using a pseudonym which also happened to be the name of a man who was a "second Oswald", i.e. one of the LHO lookalikes in the JFK conspiracy] to cover the Maury Island incident, an alleged crash which had occurred on 21st June 1947. Palmer paid Arnold to look into the claims of a crashed saucer. The Maury Island witnesses apparently had debris. The Air Force also investigated but a B25 (accidentally?) killed the investigators! The "debris" was never recovered. One witness on Maury Island held onto some debris. His name was Cruiseman and the theory is that he used the debris to get into an intelligence group. He was connected to Lee Harvey Oswald and looks like one of the infamous "three hobos" at the JFK assassination. [The other two look like, and were, supposedly, the Watergate conspirators E.Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. Hunt had been part of the action against Castro, possibly including the Bay of Pigs operation. People who spoke with Hunt apparently ‘felt’ mind control! Hunt and Casolaro had spoken. Sturgis was a Mafia recruiter for the Bay of Pigs., and had been involved in pre-invasion raids on Cuba. Felix Rodgriguez, alleged assassin of Che Guevara, and good friend of George Bush, was in Sturgis’ team.] Cruiseman’s son Fred, who became a writer and a scientist, said his father was mind controlled...

More UFO/intelligence agency connections: (1) William Cooper, who wrote BEHOLD THE PALE HORSE, is easily dismissed as an anti-semitic conspiracy nut, but not everything he said should be "thrown away", because he WAS privy to certain "information". He drank in the same place as the intelligence agencies involved in Watergate. (2) After Bob Lazar quit Area 51, and "went public" about the "alien technology" at the base, a man named Novelle was seen there. Novelle is connected to the whole JFK assassination/Watergate saga. This leads one to assume that Lazar’s story should not be immediately dismissed "just" because of its outlandish elements. Perhaps the "alien" story was a smokescreen for "Black Projects"? After all, was Area 51 not the home of U2/Aurora? Kenn Thomas himself went out to Area 51 to see what he could see and observed UFO lights etc. Also, Area 51 now officially exists, because Clinton has exempted it from environmental laws. According to Sean Morton in STEAMSHOVEL PRESS #14, p31, however, there has been no top level secret research/activity there since 1993: "...by late 1993 we simply weren’t seeing anything, and my excellent sources told me that everything had been moved to Tucson and Maryland."

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