<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><HTML><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">I read an article in Salon a few months back saying that the film "</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">uses questionable on-screen experts -- and appears to be an infomercial for a controversial New Age sect."<BR>
<BR>
The website is http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/09/16/bleep/. I'd paste it in, but it would exceed the 40k message limit. Well, I'll paste in a few choice excerpts below, since they're so juicy.<BR>
<BR>
-Matthew</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
>From http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/09/16/bleep/:<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">At least one scientist prominently interviewed in the film now says his words were taken out of context. And two other key subjects in the film are not fully identified: a theologian who, the film fails to divulge, is a former priest who left the Catholic Church after allegations of sexual abuse; and a mysterious woman identified only as Judy "JZ" Knight, who is actually a sect leader claiming to channel a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit named Ramtha. The film's three co-directors are among those who follow Ramtha and look to Knight's channeled maxims to decipher the mysteries of life. These Ramtha followers reportedly number in the thousands. But critics call the sect a cult.</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">In the movie, the 58-year-old Knight, whose accent is as thick as her mascara, makes the boldest statements -- pronounced with long, rolling R's -- about particles and God. "We have grrreat technology. But we still have this ugly, superrrstitious, backwahds cohncept of Gahd," she says, adding that "the height of arrrrrrogance is the belief of those who would see Gahd in their own image." Musing on the unity of consciousness and matter, she reminds us that "it only takes a fantasy for a man to have a harrrd-on." In her normal mode, Knight speaks the plain talk of her native Roswell, N.M., but in the manly presence of Ramtha, said to have conquered the continent neighboring Atlantis, Knight's jaw juts and her voice deepens into something magisterial and brash (view her </FONT><FONT COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">here [http://ramtha.com/images/products/video/v1.40.ram]</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">). Her Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, on a $2 million compound based in Yelm, Wash., boasts followers -- including celebrities like actress Shirley MacLaine (who attended Knight's seminars in the late '80s) and "Dynasty" star Linda Evans -- willing to pay up to $1,600 for a seminar.<BR>
<BR>
Reached by Salon, Meyer Gottlieb, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films, says he's seen "Bleep" about eight times. Its fledgling distribution company Roadside Attractions had its first real hit earlier this year when it launched festival favorite documentary "Super Size Me" and is hoping for a similar sleeper hit with " Bleep." Asked what he thought of the expressed desire by filmmaker Mark Vicente (on a Ramtha Web site, BeyondTheOrdinary.net) for his viewers to emerge from his movie in an "almost trance-like state," Gottlieb only laughed.</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
....<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">David Albert, a professor at the Columbia University physics department, has accused the filmmakers of warping his ideas to fit a spiritual agenda. "I don't think it's quite right to say I was 'tricked' into appearing," he said in a statement reposted by a critic on "What the Bleep's" </FONT><FONT COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">Internet forum,</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"> "but it is certainly the case that I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness. Moreover, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers of the film ... Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed."<BR>
<BR>
"I certainly do not subscribe to the 'Ramtha School on Enlightenment,' whatever that is!" he finished. Albert provided Salon with an excerpt from a piece he's writing on the subject, in which he says, in part, "I'm unwittingly made to sound as if (maybe) I endorse its thesis."</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
....<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">Knight's role as the voice of Ramtha is the most striking -- but hardly the only -- omission of the film, which could easily be interpreted as a full-blown infomercial for Ramtha. Two other on-screen experts are not identified as Ramtha associates: Dr. Joe Dispenza, chiropractor and mystic, listed as a student on the Ramtha Web site; and a man identified only as "Dr. Miceal Ledwith."<BR>
<BR>
Ledwith (at one time Monsignor Michael Ledwith) was once on track to be the next archbishop of Dublin, but the theologian stepped down as president of Maynooth College in 1994, after a complaint that he had sexually harassed a young seminarian. It was later revealed that Ledwith had allegedly paid an six-figure sum to a man who accused him of sexual abuse. Ledwith has maintained his innocence but left Ireland for the more placid confines of Monterey, Calif. On the "Bleep" Web site, Ledwith's relationship with the Catholic Church is only </FONT><FONT COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">alluded to</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"> in a claim that he was once "charged with advising the Holy See on theological matters," but he is not identified as ever having been a priest, or even as a lecturer at the Ramtha school. According to </FONT><FONT COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">a Ramtha Web site,</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"> Ledwith has joined "Ramtha's core of appointed teachers." (The Ramtha school and Ledwith have not responded to requests for interviews. The "Bleep" Web site recommends that journalists contact an independent publicist, but the movie previously listed as its P.R. contact Pavel Mikoloski, also director of public affairs for Ramtha's school.)<BR>
<BR>
Later in the film, a "scientist" explains that, thanks to the strangeness quivering below the subatomic level, meditating monks have lowered the crime rate in Washington, D.C. But not until the end of the film do we learn that the scientist making this claim, John Hagelin -- who once </FONT><FONT COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4">ran for president</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"> -- conducted the research while teaching (until 1999) at Maharishi University, the school named for the Beatles' guru. In JZ Knight's own publications, Ramtha's existence, too, is frequently explained in terms of quantum mechanics.<BR>
<BR>
Funding for the $5 million "Bleep," according to various published interviews with the film's creators, comes not from Ramtha but the software fortunes of director Arntz, who designed the job-management application AutoSys. Now popular in Unix environments, the program sold for more than $14 million in 1995. (Eerily, the startup money for AutoSys was also of Atlantean origin, or so the original investor claimed. A 1999 piece in Wired by David Diamond described the life and suicide of Frederick Lenz III, a guru in his own right, who called himself not Ramtha but Rama. The software mogul told those who rendezvoused with Rama that he'd taught meditation classes on Atlantis. Later, Lenz said his students were bent on his murder, and he plunged himself into the waters of Long Island Sound with a $30,000 watch on his wrist and 150 tabs of Valium in his bloodstream.)</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
In a message dated 1/26/05 10:00:56 PM, langwidge@erols.com writes:<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE CITE STYLE="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px" TYPE="CITE"></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><A HREF="http://www.whatthebleep.com/scientists/"> http://www.whatthebleep.com/scientists/</A></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Has anyone seen or heard anything about the film What the Bleep Do We Know?<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Christine Gray<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
_______________________________________________<BR>
Chat mailing list<BR>
Chat@charlesvillage.info<BR>
http://charlesvillage.info/mailman/listinfo/chat_charlesvillage.info<BR>
<BR>
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"><BR>
<BR>
</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" FAMILY="SERIF" SIZE="4"></FONT></HTML>