Us and Them

I often ask myself why the subject of UFOs is treated so shamefully in the media? Of course I know the answer to the question, but still I have to wonder when people will wake up to the facts about the subject and cease the ridicule factor.

Occasionally some tidbit of information comes along that makes me think the silence quota is filled and now someone is going to spill the beans. Then, usually very soon after, some other situation occurs where I believe we are back where we were 50 years ago. We take one step forward and five steps back. And those back steps can be something as subtle as a remark or gesture from a prominent person.

There are many factors the people, government and organizations must overcome for disclosure to happen. It won't happen overnight, but perhaps it will happen in our lifetimes. Perhaps...

UFO enthusiasts urge Obama to release X-Files about alien sightings

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:26 PM on 30th November 2008

UFO aficionados are urging Barack Obama to release classified documents about sightings of alien spacecraft, spurred on by support from within his own White House team.

They have written to the president-elect, pressing him to reveal the contents of America's X Files.

In a letter, the Extraterrestrial Phenomenon Political Action Committee asks Mr Obama to 'end the six-decade truth embargo regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race'.


The Extraterrestrial Phenomenon Political Action Committee is calling for an end to the 'six-decade truth embargo' about alien spacecraft

They hope to have garnered 40,000 signatures in support of their campaign by the time Mr Obama is inaugurated in January.

The enthusiasts are encouraged by public statements from John Podesta, who is running the president-elect's transition team, and Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, who is expected to land a cabinet post.

When he was the White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, Mr Podesta was in charge of a project to declassify 800 million pages of intelligence documents.

He said in a press conference: 'It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon.'

UFO enthusiasts want Barack Obama to follow Britain's example

Gov Richardson is a fellow UFO enthusiast. He has written a forward to a book on the 'Roswell Incident' in New Mexico, where an alien spacecraft crash is said to have landed in 1947.

Campaigners believe the corpses of humanoid aliens have been locked away by the government.

Gov Richardson has urged the Pentagon to disclose what really happened, and last year insisted there had been a 'cover-up'.

The committee wants the U.S. to follow Britain's example in making public reported contact with UFOs.

Stephen Bassett, Executive Director of the Extraterrestrial Phenomenon Political Action Committee, told the Sunday Telegraph: 'The release of documents in Britain and France has put huge pressure on the US. It makes the government here look pretty stupid.

'I think we are seeing the Democrats moving towards disclosure.'

The group wants military services and intelligence agencies to brief the incoming president about what they know.

They also urge Mr Obama to open congressional hearings 'to take testimony from scores of government witnesses who have already come forward with extraordinary evidence and are prepared to testify under oath.'

Wow, just as soon as I praise the media for taking the subject seriously, CNN puts their foot in their mouth...

This article sums it all up. Geez.

Low expectations from CNN

http://www.heraldtribune.com
By Billy Cox

Published: Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 3:21 p.m.

A “smoking gun,” as jurors in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson reminded us, is in the eye of the beholder. So when CNN’s Miles O’Brien warned “American Morning” audiences on Friday that his upcoming “In Search of Aliens” series “landed a little bit south of smoking gun proof that we are not alone,” it sounded like all the other noise emanating from the network sausage factories.

O’Brien is one of the brightest lights in network journalism. A licensed pilot and award-winning investigative sleuth in the fields of space and technology, his agility in translating the violent physics of shuttle Columbia’s catastrophic re-entry into a riveting comprehensible narrative left competitors sucking wind in 2003. And that’s why it’s so disappointing to hear him pumping his piece on the SETI radiotelescopes — part of a five-installment series — by saying he’ll tell us “where they’re listening for alien signals – yes, I said alien signals.”

Wow. That’d be news to an old Japanese soldier hiding out on Gilligan’s Island, but the rest of us have been beaten over the head with SETI “revelations” since Senator William Proxmire bestowed his notorious “Golden Fleece Award” on government appropriations for it in the 1980s. Even if you’re not into politics, you couldn’t miss “The X-Files” spin on the massive Arecibo dish, or “Contact” at the movie theaters in 1997, which featured Jodi Foster listening for alien signals. Yes, I said alien signals.

So here we’ll go again on Monday morning, revisiting the same hack format we’ve seen too many times before on Larry King or ABC in September, another ratings month: Pretend nobody’s ever heard of any of this stuff before, do your alien abduction piece, balance it off with SETI’s level-headed, faith-based pragmatists, throw in some titillating ambiguity from the surface of Mars, get Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s shocking revelations on camera (he’s only been talking about the UFO coverup since 1996), defrost a little Roswell action – voila! – a nice bounce in the Nielsens.

Is it too much to ask, just once, to get one of these projects to put a single compelling element beneath a microscope and study its texture? O’Brien evidently had that opportunity with retired jet fighter pilot Milton Torres, who reportedly makes a cameo on “In Search of Aliens.”

Now retired in Miami, the 77-year-old made headlines last month (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4974540.ece) by confirming his role in an attempted shoot-down of a UFO over Great Britain in 1957, which was disclosed during the declassification of Ministry of Defence papers.

Back in the Fifties, when the military was marginally more candid than it is today, authorities admitted engagements with UFOs involved potentially profound national security consequences. In 1953, Gen. Benjamin Chidlaw, who ran America’s Air Defense Command, stated, “We have a stack of reports of flying saucers. We take them seriously, when you consider we have lost many men and planes trying to intercept them.” Former Project Blue Book director, USAF Capt. Edward Ruppelt, tried to disentangle a popular impulse to embrace them as “space brothers” by writing that UFOs pursued by military pilots sometimes resulted in “lurid tales of death.”

If CNN wanted to perform a public service, it wouldn’t have to dig back half a century. It could simply focus on the Stephenville, Tex., incident from January, where radar analysis by MUFON investigators caught the Air Force with its pants down in its inability to prevent a UFO from violating restricted airspace at President Bush’s Crawford ranch. And those regional sightings continue, having disrupted a football game in October (http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1488&category=Environment) and distracted motorists (http://reporternews.com/news/2008/nov/20/another-unexplained-sighting-in-stephenville/) just this week.

This isn’t news anymore: UFOs can go wherever they want, and the military can’t stop it. The media’s inability to cover this reality outside sweeps-week stunts — that’s news. In fact, it’s a scandal.

2008 - Banner Year for UFOs

A good video that may support the idea that the media is slowly warming up to UFOs. Indeed some networks have been down right supportive in recent years and others who continue their tongue - in - cheek journalism at least try to be unbiased at times. With 2008 producing multiple good cases of UFO activity across the country, many with supportive video or photographic evidence, it's time people begin to be informed about this.

I don't think the American people will stand for the status quo reporting of UFOs anymore. Its time to take the subject seriously and have science look into it. Of course we don't need another "PR" campaign like Project Blue Book, but a serious independent scientific study that will advance our knowledge of the phenomenon.

2008 will go down in UFO history as a banner year. A "flap" as it is called. Perhaps we haven't learned much more about the phenomenon but at least the people are growing tired of the same rhetoric and how the subject is treated, and this change will bring on more disclosure.

Has UFO disclosure begun?

Governments are said to be gearing up to disclose what they know about UFO's? Will they, or is it just another misinformation campaign?



This year we have had unprecedented news coverage of UFO's. It started with Stephensville, TX and has gone to this point with the UK releasing yet more documents. But what does it mean? Will we finally find out the truth, or is this just more covering of a huge secret?

It's entirely possible that the "government" doesn't know any more about UFOs than we do, so how do you tell the public you have no idea what is flying around in our skies? And can the public accept that? On the other hand, how do you tell the public you do know and have been lying for years?

It's tricky on both sides. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What are your thoughts? Leave comments below: