RaelPress.org scrubs CLONAID

The official site for press releases by the International Raelian Movement (IRM), RaelPress, has scrubbed all news between January 2001 to May 2004 in an apparent attempt to disassociate itself from claims of human clones made by CLONAID during that time. That's the period when the CLONAID hoax was in the limelight.

A search for "clonaid" produces only 6 results from the entire press site. None of the entries make direct references to CLONAID's claim of being the first company to have successfully cloned a human being:

CISION PR Newswire has archived IRM press releases since July 2002.

It's been 20 years since Rael founded CLONAID (initially called Valiant Venture) as a publicity stunt. While it's claimed that the supposed cloning company is completely independent from Rael and the IRM, all of the people involved with the former were indeed all dedicated IRM members.

This pic of Damien still appears
on CLONAID's website

One such person is Damien M., who had devoted 33 years of his life to Rael. With a background in biotechnology, he was used as a poster boy for CLONAID as part of its scientific team.

However, more than a decade later, in early 2016, he was excommunicated by Rael for finally denouncing Raelian Bishop Brigitte Boisselier, who runs CLONAID, for lying to the media about producing human clones (to date, 13 clones have been claimed) to effectively publicize Raelism to the world. In fact, in 2003, Rael gloated about running a successful media campaign that allowed him to reach one of his 2 main goals: to spread the Raelian Messages worldwide (Susan Palmer, Aliens Adored, p. 191). Rael instead accused Damien of lying and making everything up before expelling him from his cult.

[RaelTV FAIL] Doggone it, SIRIUS-ly!

As part of a series of short clips on RaelTV, the Raelian Movement refers to the Dogon tribe of sub-Saharan Africa, as possessing secret knowledge about our galaxy passed down by their ET ancestors/creators thousands of years ago. The clip argues that the Dogons are one of many examples of indigenous peoples from around the world testifying about their origins to be from ETs as fact instead of mythology. This comes from the notion in Rael's writings that humanity's scientific creators, the Elohim of the Bible, left traces of their existence among ancient civilizations across the globe [Intelligent Design, p. 60].

The claim that the Dogons are an exemplary case rests on the subclaim of how it is possible for them to know about a star system 8.6 light-years from here and unseen to the naked eye, that of Sirius A and B, unless the mythological serpent-like amphibious beings known to them traditionally as the Nommos are actually technologically advanced ETs?... and in terms of Raelian confluence, must be the Elohim.

The popularization of these claims in New Age and ancient astronaut literature originates from Robert Temple's book The Sirius Mystery (1976) based on his interpretation of the work of ethnographers Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen. A substantial bulk of The Sirius Mystery consists of comparative linguistic and mythological scholarship, pointing out resemblances among Dogon, Egyptian and Sumerian beliefs and symbols. Greek and Arab myths and words are considered to a lesser extent.

Skeptics question Temple on several grounds: (1) his drawing supposedly by the Dogon depicting the orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A was doctored, (2) the Nommos couldn't have come from the Sirius system, and (3) astronomical knowledge was limited to the time the Dogons first interacted with Europeans in the early 1900s.

[RaelTV FAIL] Piri Reis Map

Years ago, when Rael started his You Tube channel RaelTV, the Raelian Movement produced a series of short clips presenting some interesting information that supposedly challenges conventional knowledge and thus would support their tagline:

"Isn't it time we rewrote our history books?"

 ... implying the Raelian version of history as being true.

The clip showcases a 16th-century map produced by Turkish admiral Piri Reis. It is claimed that the map depicts an outline of Antarctica without its ice caps and that it was drawn 300 years before the modern discovery of that continent.

Bad Archaeology's Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews points out:

Maps of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries are a favourite source of information for fringe writers, who use them to make a wide variety of claims. To Erich von Däniken, for instance, they are evidence for a survey of the Earth from space, carried out by extraterrestrials, while for Graham Hancock, they are evidence for an ancient sea-faring civilisation, lost beneath the sea after the melting of glacial ice at the end of the Pleistocene. These writers focus on a relatively small number of such maps, those of Piri Re‘is and Orontius Finaeus being the most used, whilst ignoring others of the same age. All these maps are alleged to show anomalous knowledge for the dates at which they were drawn: the west coast of South America, Antarctica (with or, more frequently, without its ice sheet), the Strait of Magellan and other “impossible” details. This appears to be solid evidence, so why do mainstream historians and archaeologists ignore it?

Fitzparick-Matthews' article traces the origins of this claim, originating not from scholarly studies of the map, but from a geography college teacher by the name of Charles Hapgood (1904-1982). He shows where and how Hapgood got it wrong and that the map in fact did not show Antarctica at all, but the coastline of South America only instead.

How RAELIANS fit in the CONSPIRACY THEORY universe ;)

[RAELIAN DISINFO] Einstein invented the Atomic Bomb

Had Einstein known how his invention was to be used, he would never have allowed it. When he did realize, it was too late: The organized brutes of the military were already flying their fortresses toward Hiroshima. -Rael (Geniocracy, p. 4)

Einstein did NOT invent the Atomic Bomb.

However, Einstein's greatest role in the invention of the atomic bomb was his indirect signing of a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt urging that the bomb be built to stop the Nazis! 

In 1939, a group of Hungarian scientists that included Hungarian emigre physicist Leó Szilárd attempted to alert Washington of ongoing Nazi atomic bomb research. The group's warnings were discounted. Einstein and Szilárd, along with other refugees such as Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, "regarded it as their responsibility to alert Americans to the possibility that German scientists might win the race to build an atomic bomb, and to warn that Hitler would be more than willing to resort to such a weapon." In the summer of 1939, a few months before the beginning of World War II in Europe, Einstein was persuaded to lend his prestige by writing a letter with Szilárd to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to alert him of the possibility. The letter also recommended that the U.S. government pay attention to and become directly involved in uranium research and associated chain reaction research.

Einstein biographer Ronald Clark has observed that the atomic bomb would have been invented without Einstein's letters, but that without the early U.S. work that resulted from the letters, the a-bombs might not have been ready in time to use during the war on Japan (Clark, pg. 682-683).

Einstein later expressed regret about his letter to Roosevelt. In 1947, Einstein wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly arguing that the United States should not try to pursue an atomic monopoly, and instead should equip the United Nations with nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of maintaining deterrence.

Looks like Rael relies on popular myths instead to support his ramblings. LOL



References:
see, World War II and the Manhattan Project
Einstein–Szilárd letter
ALBERT EINSTEIN and the ATOMIC BOMB
Albert Einstein's political views

Bad Archaeology and Raelism

Last year in August, the Raelian Movement published an article and press release titled "Chinese pyramids confirm that an advanced civilization existed on Earth more than 10,000 years ago". There, they make many wide claims based on "anonymous sources" and other questionable information found on the Internet linking several archaeological structures to "advanced civilizations" and UFOs.

Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor

First they claim that the Chinese government and their scientists are keeping anything to do with "Chinese pyramids" under wraps. This claim is categorically untrue as many of the sites are open to tourism such as the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor which incidentally is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site (the site is famous for the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors). The picture used in the Raelianews article is from a map displayed at the popular historical cite. These structures known popularly in the West as the Chinese pyramids are actually ancient mausoleums and burial mounds built to house the remains of several early emperors of China and their imperial relatives. About 38 of them are located around 25 kilometres (16 mi) - 35 kilometres (22 mi) north-west of Xi'an, on the Qin Chuan Plains in Shaanxi Province. Here's a scan of a map outlining the locations of these imperial tombs in Xi'an.

The alleged "Great White Pyramid"

The Raelians claim there are 100 white pyramids in China. The mention one of them being white comes from the very first popularized report in the mid-1900s in which U.S. Army Air Corps pilot James Gaussman is said to have seen a white jewel-topped pyramid during a flight between India and China during World War II. Later, Colonel Maurice Sheahan, Far Eastern director of Trans World Airlines, told an eyewitness account of his encounter with a pyramid in the March 28, 1947 edition of The New York Times. A photo of Sheahan's pyramid appeared in The New York Sunday News on March 30, 1947. This photograph later became attributed to James Gaussman. The first published paper concerning Chinese burial mounds was back in 1915. Many articles found on the Internet claim approximately 100 of these structures. In fact, a more recent survey by independent Russian researcher Maxim Yakovenko states that there are more than 400 of these structures across China. Yakovenko's site has more up-to-date information regarding these "pyramids".

Pyramids around the World

The next claim the Raelians make is that "According to the few archaeologists who have approached the site, these Chinese pyramids are located at the same latitude as the pyramids of Egypt." A quick Google search reveals that this is not the case. The pyramids on the Giza plateau are located on latitude 29°N while the pyramids in Xi'an are on latitude 34°N. In fact, pyramids are found all over the world and they are certainly not aligned on the same latitude. 

The Raelian article provides no evidence for their claims that these Chinese pyramids were built around 10,000 BCE and that they "share a common origin with the world-famous pyramids of Egypt and Central America” let alone their claim that "everyone admits that they can hardly be duplicated with today's modern technology" implying that it was only possible through advanced ET technology (check out the links at the bottom that debunks this notion). The Chinese pyramids were built with mere clay and are not bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza (which is about 150 meters tall and made of quarried stone blocks)... but, the Raelian article claims an exaggerated 500-meter tall Chinese pyramid! German UFOlogist Hartwig Hausdorf (and Belgian fringe science radio-host Philip Coppens) reported that the Chinese pyramids date back at least 5,000 years ago. Hausdorf reported that Chinese archaeologist Professor Wang Shiping believes the pyramids have an astronomic alignment and could be dated to only 1,500-500 BCE. The most number of Chinese imperial tombs are found in Xi'an and are attributed to the Western Han dynasty which dates back to only 206 BCE – 220 CE.

On the topic of pyramids, it should be noted that there is no mention in Rael's books of the Elohim building any pyramids whatsoever. There is mention of the Elohim initially having "bases" up in the mountains and later under the sea. There's mention of "traces of great civilizations" in Peru and the Himalayas, but with no further elaboration (Intelligent Design, p. 84 and 232). While the former did host ancient peoples such as the Incas, the Himalayas are yet to reveal any besides the notion of a fictional paradise known as Shangri-La popularized in the West just before Rael was born. It is claimed how the "Raelian scriptures describe [the presence in antiquity of a highly advanced civilization] very well". Let us not forget that Rael's books are largely based on the Biblical narrative of human history with an ET twist, which limits its story to the Israelites in the middle-East and not around the world.

As for Elohim "bases" under the sea, recently there has been some fascination in Raelian circles surrounding some natural underwater formations off the coast of Japan near Taiwan called the Yoneguni Monument. Rael has been living in Okinawa, Japan since the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in early 2011. Here's an excellent debunking of this by Brian Dunning: Yonaguni Monument: The Japanese Atlantis

The article ends with some other examples of "precision-engineered, ancient megalithic structures [that] exist all over the planet" such as Puma Punku, Baalbek and the Great Pyramid (King's Chamber). There's very good chance that the Raelians are basing all their claims on the History Channel's dubious Ancient Aliens series (they used to link to it at rael.org as evidence for their Elohim). And so, not surprisingly, here's Mike Heiser's informed debunking of those claims: Puma Punku, Baalbek and the Great Pyramid.