Saturday, February 27, 2016

A Skeptical Look at the 25th Annual International UFO Congress (Part 4)

Leda Beluche interviews me for one of her Girlie Vegan videos on YouTube.
John Greenewald spoke on " Inside The Black Vault: A 2 Decade Journey into the Declassified World of Government Secrecy," referring to his website that is the repository of vast numbers UFO-related documents, many of them released by government agencies. He described how he first began requesting UFO-related documents from government agencies twenty years ago, when he was just fifteen! Greenewald argued that blacked-out sections of released NSA documents pertaining to UFO reports indicate that the government continued to investigate UFOs long after Project Bluebook was closed. I was thinking, "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence or over-zealousness."
John Greenewald

He noted that 100% of released CIA UFO-related documents were newspaper stories, from all around the world. Some investigation - a CIA newspaper clipping service! In any case, you will find far more interesting UFO stuff in The Black Vault than in Hangar 1

Nick Pope
Nick Pope, who worked for the British Ministry of Defence for 21 years, has built a career as a major UFOlogist based on the fact that for three of those 21 years, he worked on the MOD's UFO desk. His talk was titled "Disclosure: Who, What, Where, When, Why?" In the UFO community, "Disclosure" is an expected event that is viewed much the same as the evangelical Christians see "The Second Coming": it's inevitable, it's coming soon, it will change the world - but when? Pope noted that one factor discouraging Disclosure is that the government would in essence be admitting, "We've lied about this for over seventy years." He also noted that governments "over-classify like crazy" and that "redaction" is typically arbitrary and somewhat capricious, points relevant to my comments on Greenewald's talk above.

Pope spoke of many hypotheticals concerning so-called "Disclosure." He even called his own talk "speculative," and I fully concur. He talked a bit about Rendle-sham (probably his top case), showing us a sketch by Jim Penniston of the supposed "craft," and promoting his forthcoming book, The Halt Perspective.

There was a panel on the Alien Abduction Agenda featuring Barbara Lamb, Dr. David Jacobs, Dr. Joe Lewels, moderated by abductionist Yvonne Smith. This panel really brought out the differences between Jacobs' apocalyptic vision, and the others' view of the aliens as Sweetness and Light. Jacobs said he wished they could have this nice, happy, harmonious abduction community, but the "reality" of the aliens' agenda is shocking.

Lewels said "thank God" that the alien hybrids are here, and not a minute too soon. We are all "hybrids" created by aliens long ago. Receiving new hybrids into our midst is like a "software upgrade." It will make humans less violent, and more loving.

Jacobs said that if you think you are an alien hybrid, you almost certainly are not. If somebody cannot easily read your mind, then they are not a hybrid. This invasion of "hubrids" is the most important thing that has ever happened to humanity.

Smith asked the audience, "How many feel an urgency," that something is coming soon (like the New Age or something). A lot of them did.
Something's coming, something good,
If I can wait!
Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
But it is
Gonna be great!
- West Side Story


18 comments:

  1. If you're not a hybrid if you think you are one, then those who are (but don't know it) must wonder how they can read minds (whatever that means), if they're not one?

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  2. After Chris Rutkowski spoke, I decided to take a break from the conference. To keep it within theme I decided to visit the Dreamy Draw UFO crash site, where a saucer is rumored to be buried beneath a dam. After hiking around, I concluded that it was more likely that Jimmy Hoffa was underneath it.

    I was in no hurry to return. Rendlesham has been run into the ground and disclosure will always be just out of reach. If the government disclosed alien contact and released the text of treaties, there would still be people claiming that it was disinformation and that the real story remains hidden. The UFO Industry has to go on.

    But how could I miss the panel with Smith moderating Jacobs, Lamb, and Lewels? It was worth attending to watch Jacobs while the other panel members spoke. It undoubtedly confirmed his opinion that it takes someone like him to cut through the confabulation so that abductees can get their story right.

    If I thought I had an abduction experience, I would go with Lamb - yet, she may be the only person who can make Jacobs look like a dedicated and rational investigator. I had to agree with Jacobs that if aliens or hybrids are abducting humans, then they are up to no good; that people who claim to be hybrids are not; and that real hybrids would not come to a conference or let themselves be tested for DNA. I wondered if the latter statement was an attempt to answer people who keep asking for the DNA test results, but of course he would not need to test the hubrids to validate his claim.

    I am not sure how good or bad can be measured in an abduction scenario. If aliens come from other dimensions or star systems and transport people through walls and ceilings, then how can we possibly understand their purposes or morality? Both kinds of experiences fit within the pattern that abductees describe and both kinds of experiences seem equally real to the “experiencer.” Human psychology is far more complex than either Jacobs or Lamb would have us believe.

    I was almost willing to agree with Lewels that aliens or hybrids probably cannot do any worse with the planet than what we have done. But then again, we might end up like the Borg. I was glad not to have to figure it out since I was not persuaded that hypnosis offers a way to determine reality or that either hubrids or hybrids are walking among us. It's up to us to fix what we have done.

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    1. I think simple biology answers the question of hybrids; whilst the laws of physics appears to answer the '[A]re they from outer space?' question.

      Further, even if aliens did land their craft in an open 'contact' scenario, there'd be those claiming that that was faked by whomever their bugbear is with.

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  3. I was at the conference promoting our new project the CubeSat for Disclosure. We are launching a satellite for UFO Research. Check out the link for more info. http://cubesat.tech/

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    1. http://cubesat.tech/

      That's the funniest thing I've seen in years!

      No doubt about the assumption being made here: ET spacecraft have traveled untold light-years to Earth, so let's go up to near-earth orbit--SPACE--to meet them!

      As if they couldn't make it the last few hundred miles. No, spacecraft are in SPACE, and that's where we'll find them!

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    2. To put Zoam's comment a little more formally, there doesn't seem to be any thought given on how to disprove or falsify the project's assumptions. If no alien spacecraft are found, how will the project interpret that finding?

      My own criticism is more mundane. I notice an omission in the cost estimate for the project: there is no line item telling us how, and at what price, the satellite will get into orbit! That would take millions of dollars, would it not?

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    3. Terry, you obviously didn't google the cost of putting something in orbit! I thought the same as you, but I had a look, and although space-rockets do indeed cost millions, I was surprised to find that some commercial rockets can carry so many modest-sized satellites that a tiny little one like this can be got up there for $3,000 or less. Apparently they've already paid the 10% deposit and booked a launch date.

      My own criticism is slightly less basic, but nevertheless important. For over 50 years satellites have been launched in ever-increasing numbers, and a great many of them have been equipped with cameras, radar, and other devices of the type Cubesat will carry, only far better.

      Since none of them has ever spotted any flying saucers, what are the chances that Cubesat, by doing the same things nowhere near as well, will suddenly find the elusive aliens? I can't think of any logical answers to this question that make it worthwhile launching Cubesat at all.

      However, assuming it does go up there, I have no doubt whatsoever that it will produce numerous fuzzy images of little white dots which overenthusiastic amateurs will interpret as spaceships and be happy, and everyone else will find as impressive as those "orb" photos which you can take with equipment a lot cheaper than Cubesat.

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    4. "...none of them has ever spotted any flying saucers..."

      You don't seriously believe that the Lizard People and the Illuminati (or the Jews or the Freemasons, why not) would ever let all the pictures they're covering up into the public domain—do you??

      —Peter B

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    5. Thanks, Terry, I do appreciate your comments. But some pseudoscientific conspiracy-minded loonacy--such as a "UFO" hunting satellite--doesn't even rise to the level of intelligent discourse and to which one good laugh is more appropriate than a thousand syllogisms. There's no science in pseudoscience.

      But doing so does have much more than naive dismissal behind it, as you well know. This is such obvious loonacy, doomed to failure even if realized, that it seems more like a scam than a serious project. Besides, Believers have been imagining "anomalies" in images from space since the 1960s! It's not as if they need more pictures in which to misinterpret meteorites and space junk as "flying saucers."

      I've pointed out to Believers for decades on the Internet, just as Otto says, if there were "UFOs" of any kind visiting Earth, then DSP and other satellites surveilling the globe continuously would have detected them. It would certainly be reported because it would be the greatest discovery of all time and so impossible to keep secret. They have not. This absence is very good evidence that no "UFOs" of any kind are visiting Earth, it is deadly to the ETH, and generally shows that "UFOs" do not exist at all except as terrestrial apparitions. That's only one of several solid arguments for why real "UFOs" of any kind do not exist; and to which Believers can only default to conspiracy, as the Duke rightly observes.

      So since we can surmise that's the deluded paranoid assumption they're operating under, there's not much point in arguing with them. Debunking paid Believers the compliment of rational discourse, debunkers played the complement to Believers in public discourse, but the Psychosocial theorist (especially this armchair type) is for the most part divorced from playing and players in the "UFO" circus and sideshows as well as the myth and delusion because he knows they're not even wrong. The subject subsists as a cultural relic of interest only to students of cultural history and social psychologists. But as a great Magonian once said: Got a good "UFO" story? I'll gladly don my skeptic's hat and look into it!

      Unfortunately, as with Falcon Lake, Cash-Landrum, the RendleSham and Captain Terauchi's Mothership, it usually takes all of about five minutes to determine that the would-be witness is entirely predisposed to the very earthly and mundane "UFO" myth and that none of it really happened--not the way they tell it anyway.

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    6. Since these CubeSat characters have chosen to solicit money for what is very probably a scam on a skeptical website, I was hoping they'd take the trouble to explain the point of this project themselves if they honestly think it has one. Let's give them one last chance to refute the following objection to wasting a penny on their daft project:

      There are precisely three possible reasons why existing satellites have never spotting incoming alien spacecraft.
      1) There are no flying saucers to spot. Therefore CubeSat is useless.
      2) Advanced alien technology makes flying saucers invisible until, for their own inscrutable reasons, they wish to be seen. Therefore CubeSat is useless.
      3) Satellites have been spotting alien spacecraft regularly for almost 60 years, but a massive conspiracy of silence exists. As long as only major governments had the capability to launch satellites, this information embargo didn't take much enforcing. But now that all manner of commercial satellites are up there, it has become necessary to intercept and falsify the data from some of them, or if this isn't possible, arrange for them to have an "accident". Which of course The Massive Conspiracy can easily do because it's a massive conspiracy. Therefore CubeSat is useless.

      By the way, anyone proposing to launch this type of device might do well to consider the problems experienced recently by a vastly more sophisticated yet still very modest machine which, while not designed to look for UFOs, certainly had the exact capabilities required to detect them by mistake if there were any (you will note that the Massive Conspiracy Of Silence theory is still feasible if you like that sort of thing):

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Earth_Object_Surveillance_Satellite

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  4. I think at this point I'd better confess. I'm a "hubrid". The proof is obvious. Firstly, I don't think I am, therefore I might be. Secondly, I can honestly say that I don't know anyone who can easily read my mind, therefore I must be. As David Bowie once sang: "You gotta make way for the Homo Superior", so feel free to acknowledge me as your new transhuman overlord. You're only bowing to the inevitable.

    On a related note, Robert's often quoted as saying that the 1953 movie "Invaders From Mars" prefigures just about every major aspect of the basic alien abduction myth. But when it comes to these "hubrids" and similar more recent schisms in the Church of Ufology, could I draw your attention to the 1958-59 British TV serial "Quatermass And The Pit"? Admittedly, few Americans would have seen it in its original form, but the 1967 Hammer film of the same name and with an almost identical plot certainly crossed the Atlantic.

    I think you'll find a great deal of its content relevant, and well ahead of its time; but then, the late Nigel Kneale was truly legendary. Both the BBC TV series and the Hammer film can be obtained on DVD. There's even a 1959 episode of The Goon Show called "The Scarlet Capsule" which pokes fun at the whole kaboodle only weeks after its first transmission. Perhaps we were all more skeptical in 1959...

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    1. I'm a hubrid; and so's my wife...

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    2. > feel free to acknowledge me as your new transhuman overlord

      I didn't vote for you!

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    3. You don't vote for transhuman overlords! The Lady of the Pleiades, her arm clad in shimmering white spandex, bestowed unto me the holy lightsaber Aetherius (on the astral plane of course, so I can't show it to you unless you're as special as me which you're not), signifying that by the divine will of the Council of Nine I was greater than mere mortal man - THAT is why I am your transhuman overlord!

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  5. Aw, Roberto, you look so sweet and innocent sitting next to the lovely Leda. I do hope you weren't trying to impersonate a swan.

    —Peter B

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    1. Yer Grace,

      Are my tailfeathers showing?

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    2. Actually, I thought I saw your neck had grown a little longer...

      —Peter B

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  6. Returning to the subject of the peculiar qualifications these "experts" have, it's worth reminding everyone exactly what Nick Pope's job with the British government actually was. By the way, his civil service designation didn't include the phrase "UFO" or anything similar - he was a one-man subsection of Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a.

    The British civil service is notorious for its over-elaborate bureaucracy, which, amongst other things, results in letters from the general public on subjects for which no departmental responsibility exists, such as UFO reports, being passed around from one department to another because they have to be officially dealt with in some way, but nobody knows what to do with them. And this wastes a certain amount of time.

    Which didn't matter if it was a only couple of letters a month, but when "The X-Files" became massively popular in the UK in the early nineties, there was a huge increase in members of the public getting the (mostly) well-intentioned notion that if they saw something in the sky they thought was odd, the government ought to know about it.

    For this reason, it became cost-effective to pay one civil servant to handle these letters so that everybody else knew where to send them. Nick read them on the off-chance that they merited action (they never did), sent a form letter in reply, then stuck them in a filing cabinet where they probably are to this day. He was literally fulfilling the function of a waste paper basket in a situation where regulations forbade people from throwing this rubbish in an actual bin.

    Our hero's "expertise" derives entirely from his reading UFO books available to anyone after becoming interested in the subject because of his job, which was so pointless that UFO conspiracy buffs have suggested it was just a decoy, and the real UFO department the UK government obviously must have remains top secret.

    I can't remember for sure, but I think I'm right in saying that Nick himself has been quoted as saying this might very well be true, but his security clearance was never anywhere near high enough for him to know whether such an agency even existed. Some expert!

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