Buzz Aldrin's wife

        On July 31st, in a thread labeled "Buzz Aldrin says there's a monolith on Phobos," a regular blog-commenter posting as T'Zairis (an assistant librarian) wrote, in part:

I also went to Amazon after I watched the video of the Buzz, and I perused description info and customer reviews of his new bio, called 'Magnificent Desolation'.
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While I didn't find anything to disabuse me of the notion that he is not really talking about Mars anomalies, he does apparently devote a lot of space in his book to his current squeeze, a woman by the name of Lois. She is apparently rather wealthy, as her family has all sorts of *banking connections*, which raises red flags for me when one is talking about 'governments within governments', secret connections, and things like escaping Nazis after WW2.
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I'll have to see if the library system has ordered a copy of his bio as I am very interested in Lois's pedigree...

        Since I've actually read "Magnificent Desolation" I thought I would be helpful with those "red flags." I posted as follows:

To "T'Zairis":
Buzz Aldrin's third wife ("squeeze" is unnecessarily demeaning, don't you think?) is indeed Lois Driggs Cannon, of the formerly wealthy Arizona family that controlled Western S&L. After the US Government seized Western on June 14th 1989, the Driggs family fortunes became essentially worthless. I hope this is a useful starting point for your research.

ref: "Magnificent Desolation" p.228.

Mike Bara censored my post in its entirety.

Update:
June 2011: They divorced.

The moon-walkers had their memories "selectively edited"

        This is one of the more outrageous claims made in "Dark Mission" (and elsewhere) by the error-prone and scientifically-unqualified Mr. Hoagland. He uses it to explain why none of the twelve moon-walkers noticed the mile-high glass domes he says are on the Moon.

        The only conceivable micro-justification for this ludicrous claim is an offhand remark by Apollo 14 LMP Ed Mitchell, saying in effect that he sometimes has a hard time recalling exactly what his feelings were while on the Moon (Note that not even Ed Mitchell has ever said or even hinted that he has any difficulty remembering what he saw on the Moon.)

        Perhaps now that Buzz Aldrin's new book[1] is out, Hoagland and Bara will read it and think again. I'm not holding my breath, however -- demonstrable facts appear to make no impact on those two clowns.

[1] "Magnificent Desolation": Aldrin with Ken Abraham, Harmony 2009. ISBN 978-0307463456. Aldrin has no difficulty describing his feelings when on the Moon (page 57).

Deeper into the slime

        Mike Bara waded yet further into the slime of ad hominem debate today, referring to me as "douche-bag." The occasion was yet another iteration of his completely mistaken idea that NASA is a primarily military institution. This ignorant fantasy occupies the first few pages of Hoagland & Bara's wretched book, in fact, and is very easily refuted.

        You probably ought to read the blog-post to get the full context. He quoted Buzz Aldrin, and then exercised his right as moderator to suppress my reply, which was as follows:

>>"...a military entity converted for the purpose of winning the space race.”<<
I think the key word there is "converted." Converted into a non-military entity, he means. The military entity he cites would be the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which incidentally gave us the Internet without which we couldn't be enjoying this pleasant discussion (pleasant, that is, if you overlook Mike Bara's fondness for personal insult as a substitute for logic.)

The first text Bara quotes from his co-author is based upon a hilarious mis-reading by that author. Here, once more with feeling, is a link to US Code Title 35. See if you can comprehend, by inspection of the number of times the word PATENT appears in just the first screen, what this Title is all about.

The second quote, about classified information, simply expresses what every NASA-watcher with any insight has always known -- NASA sometimes deals in classified activities and those don't get published. Richard Hoagland was negligent in not realizing this when he was advising CBS News, and perhaps he should now return some of what that organization paid him. The >50,000 sales of the error-filled "Dark Mission" should ensure that doesn't hurt too badly.

Buzz Aldrin does have a point. NASA was unquestionably formed in an atmosphere of intense Cold-War competitiveness, and Kennedy's committment to the Moon was likewise a direct challenge to the USSR with miltary implications. However, if that's ALL the agency ever was, as Hoagland & Bara appear to think, it would not only have been downsized in 1972 but utterly disbanded in 1991.

        By the way, as one who was lucky enough to have French girlfriends in his youth, I've seen douche-bags, believe me. Plenty. It's not a nice thing to be compared to but, y'know, they aren't actually slimy or anything. Just saying.

Testimony of the 12 moonwalkers (updated)

        Very little has been heard from the 12 moonwalkers in response to Richard Hoagland's unsupported and plainly ridiculous assertions about artifacts of dead lunar civilizations, vast glass structures, and other such flim-flam. Hoagland, of course, claims -- again with no evidence whatsoever -- that they've been deliberately deprived of their memories (he doesn't say HOW). The truth is that they have nothing to say since most of the Apollo astronauts haven't even heard of Richard Hoagland, who has no reputation at all in the world of lunar science. It's a safe bet that none of them has heard of Mike Bara, who is also devoid of reputation in any field that matters.

        There are a couple of exceptions, however. Buzz Aldrin knows who Hoagland is, and once devoted some of his valuable time explaining to a group of reporters that Hoagland's ideas are hogwash. Ed Mitchell once went so far as to agree to appear on 'Coast to Coast AM' with Hoagland and listen to Hoagland's reasons for believing in the vast glass domes. To nobody's surprise, Mitchell listened and then dismissed the idea as "green cheese and baloney".

        Ed's been in the news this week because he flatly asserted that UFOs (or at least some of them) really are intelligent alien visitors, that the US Govt knows it and has been covering it up. That should not be news -- he said the same thing to George Noory on 'Coast to Coast AM' in September 07 (Noory replayed that interview last night, 25/26 July).

        However, Mike Bara treated it as though it was news and posted on it July 24th, together with a link to a transcript of the twelve-year-old so-called Hoagland/Mitchell "debate". Fighting back the nausea, I re-read that transcript and posted four comments to the darkmission blog. Mike Bara added a few insults, as he usually does in lieu of reasoned rebuttal, and then exercised his privilege as moderator to suppress any further discussion. The full dialog was as follows:

EXPAT: Several points occur to me on re-reading that so-called "debate". I won't expound on all of them, just the most important.

1. Art Bell was a dismally poor moderator, permitting Hoagland to interrupt on numerous occasions and generally dominate the conversation.

BARA: Since it was Hoagland’s data that was the subject of the debate, his responses obviously were more extensive.

EXPAT: 2. In segment 2, Mitchell made the good point that there were "dozens" of photo-panoramas like the one Hoagland considers anomalous, and that to be at all rigorous all of them should be examined. Hoagland replies "We have two or three of those pans right now, but we don't have all of them, but we want all of them and want to do the same thing." OK -- 12 years later, I'd love to know what the result of that research has been, but I strongly doubt I'm going to find out.

BARA: The only pans that were in question were the first generation prints that Ken Johnston had. There were not “dozens” of pans on Apollo 14, and not all the missions landed in areas where there might be such ruins. What we do know is the same structures are evident on NASA’s newly published versions of these same pans, although in a degraded form, putting the lie to the idea that the ruins are a product of our enhancement processes.

EXPAT: 3. In segment 4, Hoagland's mind-boggling dishonesty strikes me, as he partially quotes from the Space Act "The administration (meaning NASA) shall be considered a defense agency of the United States." It drew a response from Mitchell that I'm sure Hoagland relished. "I'll have to admit that's an interesting bit of language." But of course, if Hoagland had been at all honest he would have completed the clause with "....for the purpose of Chapter 7, Title 35 of the US Code". As we have discussed on this blog previously, Title 35 is exclusively concerned with patent law, and Chapter 7 concerns patent applications by employees. This legal language emphatically does not mean that NASA is "a direct adjunct of DoD", and the book ("Dark Mission") should be corrected. In particular, the very first sentence in the book should be struck. It's a lie.

BARA: It’s not a lie, you’re an idiot. As we’ve discussed before, this specific language gives NASA and the DOD carte blanche to classify any “discoveries” made by NASA. They do not have to be patentable.

EXPAT: Of course they do, if they're covered by this clause. How many times do I have to type these words? TITLE 35 IS EXCLUSIVELY CONCERNED WITH PATENTS. Chapter 17 (sorry, 17 not 7) can be read here:
http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/35C17.txt. I direct your attention to Sect. 181 in particular. All readers of this blog will, I think, understand the point.

Notwithstanding this, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if you are correct in writing that NASA has other ways of classifying anything it chooses. That does not make it a "direct adjunct of DoD", neither does it mean that "The NASA we have known for 50 years has been a lie". If Richard Hoagland was not aware of NASA's classified activities when he was consultant to CBS, he was negligent -- it's as simple as that.

BARA: The book will not be corrected, because it is correct as it is now written. Your inability to comprehend the meaning of the US Code does NOT make it a “lie” on our part.

And if Hoagland is so dishonest, why did he include the specific language you cite in the introduction to Dark Mission?

EXPAT: He was totally dishonest in the context of the Mitchell "debate", a hair less so in the Intro to "Dark Mission". The Intro nevertheless contains quite enough distortions and outright lies.

BARA: You remind me of one of my favorite U2 lyrics "It's no secret that a liar won't believe anyone else."

EXPAT: 4. In segment 2, Hoagland makes the astonishing suggestion that some in NASA management were aware of the mile-high glass domes. He says "Well, maybe you didn't [know about them], but maybe the guys that sent you there and picked the landing sites did." Just think about that. He's saying that mission planners were aware of a mile-high physical hazard in the vicinity of the landing site AND SAID NOTHING TO THE CREW??? That's so utterly preposterous, revealing such utter ignorance of mission planning, that if I were Art Bell I'd have concluded the discussion right there and said "Go to bed, Richard. We'll call if we ever need your opinions again."

BARA: Again, all you prove here is what a fool you are and how desperate you are to try and “catch” us at something.

He’s not talking about the Mission planners. He’s talking about Farouk El-Baz. The Mission planners did not pick the landing sites. Dr. El-Baz did.

EXPAT: Is that why he used the plural word "guys"?

BARA: Given that we had consulted on all this with Marvin Czarnik, a 35 year NASA veteran and mission planner, we were hardly “ignorant” of mission planning requirements.

EXPAT: I've never heard of Czarnik. Did he advise you that Apollo crews could be kept in ignorance of major hazards in the vicinity of their landing sites? If so, he's worthless.

BARA: ....But apparently you are.

EXPAT: Have you ever attended a NASA landing site review meeting? I have, although not for Apollo. I can personally assure you that hazards are a subject of discussion.