The petition was written by Stephen Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group, who also proclaimed July 8 to be World Disclosure Day. It states,
We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon.
On Nov. 7, the White House finally issued its response to the Disclosure Petition, which reads, in part:
As far as I can tell, this response is 100% correct and accurate. However, as you might imagine, this is not going down well in certain places. PRG states simply, "The response was unacceptable." They promise to have more to say about it soon.
Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.
The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.
The White House's threshold for a petition response has since been raised to 25,000, but the change is not retroactive. However, Bassett was urging his followers to raise the signature count over 25,000 anyway, as a demonstration of their strength. The final signature count was 12,078.
The Disclosure Petition clearly states, "..an Extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race." - not engaging the U. S. government. It does not presuppose the government is in contact with ETs. Classic debunker tactic: restate the issue falsely and then attack the false restatement. Quite lame. PS The White House response is indefensible, as you and many others will soon find out.
ReplyDeleteThe petition was to the US government asking for the release of US government files. It's hard to find fault with Mr. Sheaffer's remarks from that basis.
Delete"...as you and many others will soon find out"..
ReplyDeleteWe've all grown gray awaiting 'soon', decade after decade after decade. And if we'd ever find any UFO proponents willing to lay their money on the line to back up these empty promises, we could have cured the retirement trust fund crisis.
www.jamesoberg.com/ufo.html
Stephen,
ReplyDeleteOK, fair enough. Your petition said "..an Extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race." - not "engaging the U. S. government."
But if the ETs are engaging some foreign government, say France, and if the French are keeping this a secret - how would Obama know? So why are you asking him?
I look forward to reading your response to the White House response. I hope you have a lot of solid evidence to back it up.
"as you and many others will soon find out"
ReplyDeleteThank you, Major Keyhoe. But isn’t that what you’ve been saying since 1950?
Over a century of “UFO” reports–based in a widespread false belief preceded and promoted by mass-media hoaxes–but not one real “UFO” of any kind. What a Shocker! Believing is Seeing.
Hi I am new to this site. Do you have any theories regarding the Hudson Valley UFO? I saw it in July of 1983 at 7pm with 13 other witnesses. It was the size of a football field. It hovered at about 500 feet above us. I could have thrown a rock at it. If you did not see the object you will have a difficult time comprehending the facts. Has this been debunked? please don't mention pilots in formation. that's an insult.
ReplyDeleteI know a teacher that works at The Bronx High School of Science. He unequivocally claims to have seen (a huge) one of those UFOs over Co-Op City in the Bronx, where he lives. It is very unnerving to him that it has not been publicly acknowledged. I say 'one' of those UFOs because in the book: UFOs Over New York, Preston Dennett indicates that there were hundreds of separate UFO sightings over the lower Hudson area in the 1980s!
DeleteThe next day, no major newspapers or other media mentioned the story except for USA Today. In that paper, the report was only a paragraph long on one of its inner pages. It referred to witnesses that saw the UFO from the Palisades Interstate Parkway in New Jersey. According to the article, witnesses there mentioned (the object was so large) that dozens of drivers along the Parkway stopped their vehicles to witness the object despite the fact that the UFO was some 20 miles away, over the northern Bronx and lower Westchester area!
Firstly, pretty sure the US Government is a Sub-Group of the Human Race (maybe not, new conspiracy???)
ReplyDeleteAlso, " It was the size of a football field. It hovered at about 500 feet above us. I could have thrown a rock at it." 500 feet = 152.4 metres. Do you really want to claim this? You should go for the shot put in the Olympics, the World record is 23.12 metres. You'll win hands down
Stephen Bassett has presented his petition at the wrong time.
ReplyDeleteGoddammit, we have the Euro crisis, the stock market 'crisis', war in Afghanistan, problems with Pakistan, unemployment in the US, the perpetual middle-east situation and the unfinished Arab spring.
And this guy is still convinced the US is interested in ETs. Why can't he get his priorities right and wait for ALL the above to be solved - permanently, before bothering Obama with ET matters?
OK, Bassett has now posted his rejoinder to the White House response to his petition: http://www.paradigmresearchgroup.org/Press_Releases/Press_releases.html#11-8-11
ReplyDeleteIt just reasserts the old claims we've seen before.
The PRG response is mind-boggling. I refuse to accept that they think those statements are realistic.
Delete"Easily the most important issue in the world today"
"More than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about the phenomenon"
*sigh*
If the whole system depends on people with blinders on, we will never get UFO / ET disclosure on government level or higher ...
ReplyDelete"Инопланетяне это создание генномодов...."
ReplyDeleteApparently answering Ray Palmer's question, "Are the SAUCERS Space Animals?"
(LOL)
"we will never get UFO / ET disclosure on government level"
ReplyDeleteThe very idea of "UFO disclosure" is utter nonsense since the government doesn't know anything about imaginary "UFOs."
There aren't any real "UFOs" of any kind and there never were. If there had been, we'd all know it already. It would be an indisputable fact in the world, not the subject of a fossilised pseudoscientific myth and collective delusion.
There are no "UFO" facts in the world. The century-old origin of the idea--impossible ubiquitous phantom airships--exposes its absurdity and informs that simple negative statement of fact about the world.
This should be all the proof any rational mind requires about this non-issue. Absence of evidence is very good evidence of the failure of an hypothesis.
I would prefer that people not make foreign-language posts here (especially languages that I can't read!). Unless somebody can show us some very valuable comment inside that long Russian posting, I'm going to delete it.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what official response a similar on-line petition in the UK would produce? I doubt that anyone here is willing to start such a petition but it would be interesting to see what ensued.
ReplyDeleteThere is a scheme whereby 100,000 signatures on a topic can force parliament to have a debate on it, but so far these have been confined to terrestrial matters. And of course a parliamentary debate is not the same thing as a governmental response to a petition.
I deleted the long posting in Russian above. It went on about "Aliens is a gennomodov (gennomodificirovannyh people), they created for flights to okolosvetovyh and light speeds as well as for flights in the other dimension, with the possibility of return." (via MS Word translate feature). Apparently humans are being genetically modified to undertake long space voyages.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Laszlo Kerecsen, we have the following translation of the now-deleted Russian posting:
ReplyDelete"Aliens are creating genetically modified humans, they are created to fly at near-light speeds as well as to travel to other dimensions with the possibility of return.
Globe digest of foreign information. № 4, 2009.
The birth of the first genetically child happened in Great Britain. Experts of the hospital of the London University college, where this bright experiment " informed the puclic..
Boris Zajtsev, correspondent of ITAR-TASS in London.
" August 11 Management of DARPA at the Ministry of Defence USA announced that their scientists and engineers achieved inv 2011 a completely controllable flight for the maximum speed at Mach 20.They have flown at this speed for 3 minutes.
All-Russia Astronomical Ресурс.http: // www.ru
" For space flights, probably, will have to modify genes of the person.
Known scientist Dzh. Крейг Вентер (J.Craig Venter), whose works on decoding human genome are known all over the world, during a meeting in NASA Ames research center made this very interesting statement.
All-Russia Astronomical Ресурс.http: // www.roscosmos.ru/"
Interesting, if true. Which I greatly doubt.
Stephen Basset has gotten himself very busy, and now has the "Disclosure II Petition" ready to go:
ReplyDelete"We petition the Obama Administration to demand a full congressional investigation of UFO/ET Disclosure efforts by the Clinton OSTP [Office of Science and Technology Policy] - the Rockefeller Initiative."
"In response to the first Disclosure Petition, the OSTP stated, "The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race."
"If true, what was the OSTP investigating from March 1993 to October 1996 in concert with billionaire and Clinton friend, Laurance Rockefeller?
"Those who knew of and have not spoken publicly of this initiative include: Bill Clinton, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Obama transition co-chair John Podesta, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta, Dr. John Gibbons, Albert Gore and Governor Bill Richardson."
Bassett says that the petition will go on the White House website on December 1. This time it will need 25,000 signatures by the end of December. http://www.paradigmresearchgroup.org/Press_Releases/Press_release_index.html Note that this now involves "Hillary Clinton" and "Albert Gore," among others. If they can get enough signatures, this could get very interesting.
Which is more implausible, Bassett’s bizarre “ET are here/alien abduction” version of a worldwide “UFO” conspiracy or Kean’s retro and absurd “UFOs are REAL but we don’t know what they are” worldwide conspiracy of human ineptitude–the failure of our scientific reality to describe the world? As if Kean’s “real but unknown somethings” are all around us, but the world’s scientists have somehow failed to make one of the greatest discoveries of all time!
ReplyDeleteBut Kean’s not really claiming that is she? It’s just a ruse. Her pretention of retreat to some sort of “serious” objective investigation of an ambiguous–but real–aerial phenomenon is merely a transparent strategy for perpetuating a failed hypothesis, the idea that there are real “UFOs” of any kind at all. And her retro “Bluebook” disclosure idea is more of the same, shouting the loaded-question trick.
Kean exposes the ruse: “Despite our own personal beliefs about alien spaceships, extraterrestrials, or government cover-ups, we have to adopt a strategy that will work. Our assumptions and conclusions are completely irrelevant….” I really doubt this will work. (g)
Asking the government to tell you the truth about the UFO presence is like asking a child if they took the cookie out of the cookie jar. They both pretend like you don't already know the truth... and they both actually believe their own lie!
ReplyDeleteThen why ask them?
Delete