Close Encounters of the Hamburger Kind

Cattle mutilations have long been one of those weird mysteries of Ufology. They are kind of like a dirty secret – they’re in your face, but like great uncle Harry’s peculiar toilet habits, we don’t like to talk about them.

There’s long been debate over whether they’re related to the UFO phenomenon at all, or are a phenomenon in their own right. And if they are indeed related to, are a byproduct of, or in fact are the raison d'être of our ET visitations, they’re damn peculiar.

We’ve long known that cattle are closely related to humans. It’s probably why whole corporations are built upon them, and why we spend so much time, money and effort grinding them up into uniform little patties that we sell wholesale. Just like humans (according to the cannibals we’ve interviewed), cows taste mighty fine. It has been posited that perhaps the reason for ET’s interest in cattle could be this close genetic relationship – rather than experiment on people (because people might notice a sudden decrease in population), that some of the more invasive or deleterious experimental work could be done on our bovine relatives.

Well, scoff at that idea at your peril. According to a report at the ABC Science site, http://tinyurl.com/5s4crs, UK researchers have created embryos using human cells and the eggs of a cow. For what purpose is hard to define, since the researchers assure us that they are neither going to use the resultant hybrid embryos for any useful purpose, nor are they allowing any of the mutants to live past 14 days, ensuring that no horror-movie abominations survive to rampage through downtown London.

However it does throw another slant on the entire cattle mutilation scenario. What if it was genetic material (in bulk) that ET was needing all this time? What if cattle tissue, cells, eggs, sperm and blood is useful in the Human-ET cloning process? Are cattle the ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Butter’ component in the (supposed) ET-Human clone initiative? Or are cattle the ‘Hamburger Helper’ that ET requires to beef up (no pun intended) their human burgers? Oh dear. We’ll never be able to look at a cheeseburger in quite the same way again….

The UFO Why Questions – Oz Style

Why? Why? Why? Over the years we’ve been asked so many why questions about UFOs that it’s left our heads spinning. The types of questions people ask are intelligent and logical, yet when it comes to giving good answers not many can come up with them. One person who does address the why questions is Stanton Friedman but it’s a short list and there’s oh so much more to ask. Maybe it’s because we live on the underbelly of the globe who knows, but here in Australia we are a fairly simple people who just need to know a few basics. Things like:

1. Why don't people know more about the UFO phenomenon?
2. Why are only a few people doing the job of uncovering the truth about UFOs?
3. Why don’t people care that they've been lied to by the authorities about the existence of UFOs and are living under a delusion because of those lies?
4. Why don't researchers get together on a GLOBAL scale to create a true groundswell that will bring about real awareness?

1.Why don't people know more about the UFO phenomenon?
More people know about the existence of UFOs these days than they ever did and there are two main reasons for this. Television and the changing scientific acceptance of the subject. Science fiction shows like Star Trek and The X Files have been able to explore the more fantastical aspects of the phenomenon and have done a lot to awaken the public to the UFO subject. Mostly it's been a shallow, abstract version of the extraterrestrial reality, but for some it’s created a springboard into the subject that may not ordinarily have occurred.

As for a changing scientific acceptance of the subject, some may not see this so clearly. However, in the last 20 years scientists have not been so fixed in their common mantra “we are alone in the universe”. Instead we’ve seen a more pronounced study of panspermia and exobiology, the discovery of new planets, the exploration by quantum physics into other dimensions, cosmological discoveries via the Hubble telescope, the Mars missions, MIR and the International Space Station, all colliding to change the direction of modern scientific enquiry into humanity’s place in the universe and other life we might share it with.

Meanwhile, western society has become so scientifically "aligned" that when scientists began to change their thinking, the public soon followed. Why? There's a prestige in western society that accompanies scientific understanding. Scientists are portrayed as being highly intelligent individuals and if you understand them and agree with what they say you must be intelligent too. And we ask you….who doesn't want to appear intelligent?

However, the hidden problem this has created in UFO research is that this scientific seduction has blinded UFO researchers from a true exploration of ufological anomalies.

2. Why aren't more people curious or investigating UFOs ?
This is the easiest of all questions to answer. Hidden competing emotional commitments. What’s that you ask? Emotional commitments could be described as supporting our personal internal reward system. In other words, we perform certain behaviours because we’re rewarded for doing so. For example, people work hard and maintain standards of excellence in business practice because the reward is income, customer loyalty and return custom. But where’s the reward in studying UFOs? People who do so often face social ostracism, loss of status, sacrifice of personal time, loss of esteem from family and friends….shall we go on? As you can see there’s very little reward in tripping down the UFO path, so most people don’t.

However, the good news is that buried in the deeply twisted recesses of the psyche of some people (like us) there’s a greater emotional payoff to explore the UFO issue than to leave it alone. For some it’s sparked by our own experiences and the consequent search for answers. For others a more general answer may be that the UFO subject is a deeply profound tool for personal growth. In the long run, expanding personal awareness is of great benefit to our lives and extremely satisfying in ways that can be difficult to articulate.

3. Why don’t people care that they've been lied to by the authorities and have been living under a delusion because of those lies?
Wow! How long are you willing to sit and read this blog? Okay we’ll try to keep it short. In all honesty if you don’t know by now that governments are willing to lie to the people who put them in power then you’ve probably been living under a rock. So what if the government has been lying about something that has the potential to create so much social upheaval that life on this planet will probably never be the same? Well what if the outing of that lie then caused the citizens of this planet to concern themselves with the question of alien motives and Earth’s planetary defense capabilities? (and that’s just one question off the top of our heads!)

We know SETI loves to promote the idea that advanced ET societies will probably have evolved past any malicious intent, but it’s equally possible this is not the case. Then what? Okay, we’re still here and seemingly unharmed, that’s true, but will this always be our situation ? Do we really want to worry ourselves with such things when it’s the role of the defense force to deal with it, even if in reality they can’t defend this planet against technologically advanced malevolent ETs? Better not to think about such things….really. In this case living with a lie is good….right? Wrong actually, but that’s how most people reason, at least subconsciously.

4. Why don't researchers get together on a GLOBAL scale to create a true groundswell that will bring about a real awareness of UFOs and disclosure?

The reasons why people are drawn to become ufo researchers in the first place are quite varied and not every person who does has the temperament to become an activist.

This is a voluntary field of endeavour so the areas people become interested in are decided by their individual interests and not a shared goal. This culminates in researchers working in pockets rather than under the auspices of a large organization that is established with one clear goal in mind. Over the years individual researchers have been working towards disclosure and still do. In recent times the Exopolitics Institute has emerged, establishing itself in various countries around the globe, with the aim to gather credible whistleblower testimony from political, military and private citizens. Although there are those who do not agree with various aspects of their work, the fact is this group has a clear goal and a shared vision which works in their favour.

Currently there is no clear, shared single vision among the general UFO community. In the past various national bodies have arisen in countries but generally they don’t receive long-term support. That’s not to say it cannot be achieved, but the right people have to spearhead such a formation and they must have clearly focused goals. If the ufo community were to ever gather itself together globally, it would truly be a force to be reckoned with. The authorities know this so their best defense against any such groundswell arising has been to create dissent among such formations.

Since disclosure witnesses have spoken out, some have confirmed what researchers always expected: that there are indeed debunkers peppered within the UFO community whose job is not only to throw shadows of doubt over the UFO subject but to discourage the UFO community from pursuing certain paths of inquiry or collaboration and create division where possible. Researchers need to be aware of this and observe those within the UFO community that may be creating the most division. This may just be their goal.

UFOs: 50 Years of Denial….and then some

Recently we watched the documentary UFOs: 50 Years of Denial which explored the consistent, official UFO debunking process. We’re sure we watched it when it was first released in 1997 but sometimes it takes some years of hindsight before one can actually “get the point”. Part 1 starts here http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pbaEGiftX6A

(There are 5 parts in total)

Some comments stood out in our mind, one being that the authorities did not want the public to "get excited" by UFO reports. An interesting choice of words, don't you think? To achieve this goal and to overcome leaks from official sources about the reality of the subject, a vast network of ridicule and debunking had to be set in place - and it was, well and truly as this documentary so clearly pointed out. The last thing officials wanted was for public opinion to be mobilised into asking all the right questions of the authorities who weren't yet willing to answer, if ever. They didn't want to be herded down a path they were unwilling to travel which might allow vast opportunities provided by alien contact (one can only begin to imagine what they might be), slip through their fingers. Instead, they had to quickly curb that interest so they could retain control of their chosen direction, and one of the ways this was done was by sidelining all contactee accounts through the consistent installation of the debunking process.

Remember this a time when the UFO phenomenon was brimming with contactee reports that ignited public imagination, causing a deep questioning of the social issues of the time. From reports we've received over the years we know that alien abductions were taking place back then, but it was the contactees who fired public interest. They were the instigators of social unrest among the UFO interested public, not the nightmarish and deeply disturbing alien abductee reports which came with an in-built aversion process called fear. Frightening accounts of this type of ET contact weren’t going to get the public probing too deeply into the subject, naturally enough. That aspect of the UFO phenomenon, at least at that time, would not be the undoing of the cover-up.

To this day even the mere mention of the word contactee in UFO circles triggers this process whose tentacles have become so insidiously entrenched in the psyche of many in the field that it causes an immediate knee-jerk reaction switching off any further discussion. It has become too much of a time consuming effort for researchers to even bother raising contactee cases any more. The final result is the debunking process remains in tact, unchallenged, and the ultimate goal achieved - end of discussion.

Yet it could possibly be the accounts by people such as Ludwig Pallman, Dan Fry, Orfeo Angelucci and Elizabeth Klarer, among hundreds of others, that give us the greatest insights into those with whom we share the universe. To do so we must remain alert to the debunking process that exists within the UFO community and continue our investigation into the truth.

Alien Worlds Magazine

Stuart Miller, editor and publisher of Alien Worlds Magazine, kindly sent us a copy of the first issue of his latest project, a reincarnation of his previous eNewsletter UFO Review, now in hard copy under it’s new title Alien Worlds. Thanks Stuart. It contains an unorthodox content mix emerging from the convergence of three disciplines involved in the search for alien life; UFOs, astrobiology and SETI, the latter posing as the high priest of space exploration so we can understand why Stuart included SETI (well almost).

Initially you might wonder what these three have in common. Astrobiology searches for intelligent life holding that if it exists it is far, far away or only microbial in form; SETI which holds that if ET life does exist it is also far, far away, so far in fact that it’s not much use worrying about it; while Ufology claims alien life exists as sentient life forms that visit Earth for a variety of reasons right under our nose even though very few take any notice of it.

The quest then for the editor of Alien Worlds will be to weave this combination into something that will be of value for UFO research given that any ufologist worth their weight already remains abreast of SETI and astrobiology “discoveries”. He’ll also be charged with unearthing if this mix will appeal to anyone in the UFO field besides those that take the “scientific approach only” to Ufology, or miracles of miracles, if it will help birth what anxiously paces outside the UFO delivery room - a wholistic approach to the UFO subject. A challenging quest indeed.

If it is to be the latter then there seems that some other essential components might need to be added to this brew, that is, information from the behavioural sciences, neuroscience and consciousness research. One could also add a splash of the esoteric, since many ancient esoteric ideas now seem to harmonise with modern day quantum physics, string theory and super position hypothesis, just to name a few. In our opinion this would cover all the bases giving a true eclectic approach to the subject, if that were to be the ultimate goal.

Stuart has taken on a great challenge which causes us to wonder whether 2 years down the track he will remain true to the direction Alien Worlds set out to steer. After all, when one rubs shoulders with scientific conditioning for a while it is bound to rub off eventually leaving one akin to the subject in the boiled frog experiment. So the questions remain…. will Stuart remain wide-eyed, bushy-tailed and full of objective wonder? Will scientifically oriented UFO veterans find the magazine “dry” enough? More importantly will it be enough to keep the interest of UFO buffs, researchers, experiencers and the interested UFO public piqued, given they appear to be the magazines target market and that scientists probably won’t read this magazine? All good questions that only time will tell.

Good luck with the magazine Stuart, it’s going to be a fine balance indeed, but if anyone can do it we know you can.

Dr Carl Jung…a mere mortal after all?

If you haven’t read Carl Jung’s book by now then you should because, ‘Flying Saucers – A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies’ is a classic. Jung’s primary question throughout this book was whether UFOs are real or if they are mere products of fantasy psychically projected? Although he claimed to explore the question with an open mind, it becomes obvious to the reader that the dear doctor pushes his view that UFOs are a projection of the subconscious human mind only, and do not exist in our reality. One can only wonder if he would have the same view today given the Disclosure Project complete with it’s whistleblower testimony.

However, Dr Jung was only a mere mortal after all, and like many scientists and researchers today found the UFO phenomenon challenged him at his deepest level to go beyond his training and conditioning. One question stood out for Jung, baffling him to understand, how UFOs as psychic projections could throw back radar echo, confounding him immensely no doubt.

Based on the works of Ruppelt, Keyhoe and Menzel at the time, Jung eventually decided that even if UFOs are physically real they are so bizarre that they tax our understanding and credulity to the limit. This is very reminiscent of T.S. Eliots’ words, “human kind cannot bear very much reality” and reveals that even great minds, like Carl Jung, can only tolerate so much.

It also reminds readers of the rift that exists between science and the mystical and that as Jung himself stated, “the interest of many scientists is too easily restricted to the common, the probable, the average, for that is after all the basis of every empirical science.” Fortunately, and eventually, the good doctor became willing to go where few had been before, especially in his lifetime, and was willing to admit that any scientific basis “has little meaning unless something can be erected upon it that also leaves room for the exceptional and the extraordinary.”

We can only wonder what Dr Jung might think of the modern research of Dr Rick Strassman with his subjects using DMT (N-dimethyltryptamine) or the investigations of Graham Hancock into shamanic experiences using ahyuasca, to further our current understanding of alternate realities as well as the possibility of them being stomping grounds for some extraterrestrials. Would Jung approve of psychedelic use and ancient ritual to make contact with ETs? Maybe…maybe not.

However looking back on Jung’s thoughts 44 years later, his work acts as a beacon as well as a warning for researchers, revealing the lack of psychological research into the UFO subject which remains undone but by now should have far surpassed his initial work. Jung himself admits that he found no clear answers to an ET reality and had to be content with having sketched out a few lines for future research. He also stated that the “psychic aspects of the UFO subject play so great a role that it cannot be omitted from any future studies”. He considered that “if military authorities felt compelled to set up bureaus for collecting and evaluating UFO reports, then psychology too, had not only the right but also the duty to do what it could to shed light on this dark problem.” Yes good doctor, we couldn’t agree more.

Don’t drive over .05

A recent image of a UFO careening drunkenly across the London skies has got us thinking. Do UFOnauts have a licensing bureau? And do they have blood alcohol limit restrictions?

The photo in question at http://tinyurl.com/2sl79k touted as ‘genuine’, seems to us to be not quite so. There are reasons why we think it may be a fake, but there are also a number of reasons why we need to doubt our own reasoning whenever we look at an image of a UFO. In fact why all of us on this planet need to rethink and reconsider our thought patterns whenever we are confronted by things ‘alien’ to our dull Earthly milieu.

Why we think it’s a fake:

Well, just look at it. The pilot is flying too low to the ground, he’s too close to large ground-based structures for safety. Like, doesn’t the pilot care that he might knock over that great big Ferris wheel thingy and kill hundreds of terranian holiday makers? No, no respectable pilot (no matter which planet he trained on) would fly that low or that close to a building, would he? Unless he’s drunk. And from the angle of that spaceship, he just might be.

Also, the UFO in question looks too nice, too clean, too ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’… too good to be true in fact. It looks too human to be extraterrestrial, so it just couldn’t be. Could it?

Further, and more realistically, there is too much rain – it causes pixel interference so nobody can judge accurately if the UFO has been pasted into the image at a later date. You just gotta be suspicious of that, right? Nice big shiny UFO flying too close to an internationally-known landmark on a busy evening. In the rain. It screams hoax. It really does.

However!

Reasons not to judge too quickly and too harshly:

What do we, puny little Earthlings with our puny little Earthling educations and our puny little Earthling imaginations, know of extraterrestrial vehicles? Are we adequately equipped to know one when we see one? Are we adequately equipped to look a photograph of a UFO and judge?

As a society we are unbelievably judgmental, and Ufologists in particular are even more so. Pop a photo of a UFO in front of us and first thing we’ll say will be ‘fake.’ Why, when we are clamouring for evidence, are we the first to discard it when it comes our way? Does the reality confront even we, who are so desperately longing for it?

And who are we to say that an alien vehicle shouldn’t look too clean, or too dirty? Are we allowed to dictate if one is too round or too square, too amorphous or too bright, or not bright enough? What do we know, really know, about how alien civilisations construct their spaceships, their cities, their babies’ bassinets? They’re ALIEN – and that’s the whole point. We wouldn’t know the first thing about an extraterrestrial culture, and we could not ever place our psyches into theirs, so how could we ever predict what their artefacts might look like? They have different psyches, the result of millennia of social and cultural evolution on a different planet. Just as we are the result of millennia of social and cultural evolution on ours.

Too much evidence has been buried beneath good intentions by people who think they know what a UFO should, would or could look like. It behoves us to re-examine all the evidence we have, this time with a non-judgemental eye.

The moral of the story:

Perhaps we need to be less hasty in our urge to dismiss UFO evidence and discourage researchers. Because perhaps the truth has been out there all along, and we’ve just been too self-assuredly smug to see it.

Spielberg to launch UFO and paranormal social network?

http://tinyurl.com/2hyv7t

Hollywood mega-director Steven Spielberg is reportedly setting up a social network for people interested in paranormal and extra-terrestrial activity, inspired by his own personal experiences with the unknown.

The focus of the network will be on people who have an interest in, or have experienced paranormal phenomena, and the network may feature multimedia content of UFO sightings, paranormal activity and user-based content. Stories of Speilberg's own personal experiences with ghosts are widely known; his stay in the Excelsior House led him to become so frightened by alleged ghosts that he fled the room and moved 20 miles away, forming the inspiration for the movie 'Poltergiest'.

The network may have been originally in development with Yahoo, but the project was abandoned before it was launched. But reports suggest that the idea lives on, and a team of developers are aiming for a mid-year launch.

Punyverse not so puny?

http://tinyurl.com/29l3ow

Hot on the heels of our earlier post, ‘Across the Punyverse’, comes the surprising news that SETI has also disagreed with NASA’s choice of song. Hi-ho, on one thing at least SETI and we agree: the Beatles suck.

Actually, it turns out that SETI (who – never let it be forgotten – keep insisting they have yet to discover any signs of intelligent life in the universe), are worried that the nasal honking of the Beatles could result in an alien attack. It seems SETI is a tad concerned that if we advertise we’re here, then, well, we’re asking for trouble.

So, SETI, what do you know that we don’t know? More importantly, what do you know that NASA doesn’t know? And if you know something that NASA needs to know, then, dear SETI, you really should be communicating with them. If there really are angry aliens out there and you are worried that the Beatles might disrupt their quiet evenings, you really should’ve said something before NASA tromped all over their beauty sleep.

If readers happen to peruse the article at the link above, they will discover that SETI is quite a-feared of alerting a potentially unfriendly ET species to our existence, and, more specifically, our location. Pretty strange thinking for a group of people that publicly and ostensibly really don’t think there’s anything out there at all. But now, thanks to NASA’s intergalactic faux pas, it turns out that SETI is plain pants-wetting terrified that there IS something out there, and that we might make it mad.

Mixed messages SETI! What do you know that we don’t know? What have you discovered? What don’t you tell us? Why won’t you tell ANYbody, including all those persons or institutions capable of transmitting crappy songs out into the void? (Yes, it turns out some dude with a great honking satellite dish in his backyard transmitted Bob Marley out there about 10 years ago. Jeez SETI, you coulda said something before that happened.)

If our music, our culture, and our pathetic selves are such a dangerous torment to the easily irritated ET, then hell, SETI, you’d best start popping all our satellites out of orbit right now. Because, as we noted in our earlier post, we beam ourselves and our soap operas out into space every second of every day. This big round blue ball of ours must be the noisiest and most irritating disturbance this side of the Crab Nebula.

But don’t worry SETI, we promise it’s safe for you to sleep at night. If the intergalactic noise police were really going to visit and politely ask us to shut up, they’d surely have done it before now. Probably during the 80s – that wretched and embarrassing hiccup in our cultural development…

The Paranormal At Penrith Draws Response From Believers

http://tinyurl.com/yttyuy

Here's something not many would know - that Sydney's south-west, northern beaches and the Penrith-Blue Mountains region are regarded as 'hot-spots' for UFO sightings.

Those who believe are already convinced, and their numbers might be boosted as a result of an exhibition featuring UFO inspired art at the Penrith Regional Art Gallery The Visitors - The Australian response to UFO's and Aliens. The collection was co-curated by Anne Loxley and Regina Walter who have tapped into not only a rich vein of belief in sightings of UFO's, but also in artistic expression and influence from sources other than just a few re-runs of the X Files.

The exhibition incorporates sculpture, painting (some in 3-D), video , print and installation works as well as an 'evidence room', which is a collation of newspaper, TV and radio reports on the top 30 UFO encounters in Australia with the expert assistance of leading Ufologist Bill Chalker. Some of the collected evidence dates back to the 19th century to present day, and includes a rather compelling front page reports in the Sydney Morning Herald July 20, 1957 with the headline "RAAF jets ready to investigate Katoomba's mystery lights."

Anne Loxely says the evidence room has been a major hook, with people staying for hours examining the detail, and returning for more. She says when planning the exhibition, a clear direction was given. "It was important for us not to appear as zealots, as there is a strong element of faith in this topic. The evidence is being scrutinised by 'straight', seemingly upstanding citizens, who will stay for hours and sometimes return for more."

Beyond the evidence there is the interpretation of the UFO experience of belief, including the works of Pope Alice, who Loxely informs 'believes she is an alien'. Indeed, the exhibition catalogue states she was born in Outer Space in 5252ABCD (but currently based in Brisbane). The artist's work includes alien figures interspersed more earth-bound idols, light, audio and images and with a strong influence from people from indigenous cultures. Other contributing artists are from across Australia.
Adam Norton is inspired by perhaps the best known UFO spot, Roswell, following reports that a flying saucer, and its occupants, was captured in 1947. Norton's Roswell Timeline links events from pre-history to the current day in a large, detailed, linear exhibit that is difficult to ignore.

Other exhibits are more 'down to earth' - or at least they may seem that way. As an eight-year old, artist James de Blass saw a UFO as an eight year old living in Tasmania, and has been influenced ever since as he produces paintings with a strong parallel universe theme. His father's actual interviews on the radio at the time are part of the evidence collection, and his mother attended the exhibition opening. It's the story from a family interested in science, but otherwise, curator Loxley describes as being not unusual, like many of the Visitors visitors. "We've had a phenomenal attendance at this exhibition. Scoffers have stayed away and more open minded have taken the opportunity to look at the evidence and interpretations of what is quite a full on subject. There is at times a real element of faith toward UFO's".

The exhibition runs from December 8, 2007 to February 17, 2008 at the Penrith Regional Art Gallery, 86 River Road Emu Plains. Ufologist Bill Chalker will give a tour, and close the exhibition on Sunday February 17 at 3 pm ($5 charge)

Apologetically Yours, signed....The Anecdote

Recently we read on the FQXi blog under the post entitled Are UFOs Foundational? (http://tinyurl.com/3auxze) that “if we [scientists] actually had scientific evidence of advanced alien life, or any alien life, we would all be jumping out of our skins”.

While digesting these eye-wateringly ignorant words we also stumbled across another statement stating that “anecdotal evidence is the least interesting kind of evidence in science, very close to being without value.”

And there you have it in all its magnificent glory, another argument by scientists as to why the UFO subject is a waste of their time - because it’s based mostly on anecdotal evidence. Poor little innocent anecdote - enemy of the objective, dispassionate observation of scientists. It carries no weapons, it doesn’t punch, abuse or maltreat anyone in any way, so why does science run shrieking in the opposite direction at the mere mention of the word? Why do scientists fear it so much? Is the dynamic construct of the simple anecdote too much for them to bear?

Maybe we have to be scientists to understand such things. Perhaps to offer anecdotal evidence for a scientist might be to admit the insufficiency of their knowledge. Could that be a tad too overwhelming for the scientific ego? But didn’t anyone ever tell scientists that science is anecdotal? After all, scientists observe an event then tell others about what they saw. Does that not qualify as an anecdote? Scientists didn’t wake up one day with the foundations of a scientific modality in their mind. They struggled with their mental limitations, entering deep discussions with other scientists, discussing the what-ifs and maybes of atoms, particles and electromagnetic spin and the like, all before they had their breakthroughs. Isn't the scientific world therefore brimming over with anecdotal reporting?

How can one deny the right of the anecdote to exist? Aren’t civilizations built on anecdotes? To deny anecdotal evidence is to stand in a pool of water looking for somewhere else to drink. It is to deny our life, our self. Anecdotes, or more simply, stories, are powerful tools that help us understand what our rigid linear minds cannot. They help us see what has existed right under our nose all along, whether it be how gravity works, how to send a man to the Moon, or whether extraterrestrial life exists.

If the demand for scientific evidence of the UFO subject was less critical of anecdotal evidence it might help us to understand what we obviously do not. Or is there more to it than that? Could it be that it is the power of the truth contained within the witness story that many fear after all…

Cosmic Top Secret Location

Lathrop, California

Across The Punyverse

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/across_universe.html

At 4.00pm (US-EST) on February 4 2008, NASA, for reasons known only to its erudite self, beamed the Beatles song ‘Across the Universe’ to the North Star, Polaris. NASA told us (ie, the ignorant world) that it did this to celebrate its 50th anniversary of space exploration.

NASA, NASA, NASA…very heavy sigh. What indeed are you trying to tell us?

For the last 50 years you’ve studiously ‘explored’ space with all the resources available to you and never found any sign of life – that you have told us about anyway. And whenever a sign of any pesky extraterrestrial life does emerge you hurriedly funnel those impressive resources into debunking your own findings, just to make sure we don’t get too excited, or too used to the idea that we may have some ET relatives out there, somewhere.

So why, dear old NASA, would you now spend your money on emailing a crappy old Beatles song to Polaris, of all places? Do you know something we don’t know? Have you discovered life, and transistor radios, out there? It must be a curious kind of life you’ve found on Polaris (who, we would like to keep reminding you, you haven’t told us about yet), one that bypassed the beat of the 1960s and apparently requires the overly nasal tones of John Lennon to snap it up a bit.

Who chose you, NASA, as the arbiter of the message humanity might like to send into the void? We don’t recall being asked to participate in a poll, so we assume that you used some other egalitarian method that we must have missed out on. Or did you hold a meeting of your board of directors, catered of course, where you discussed at your leisure which golden oldie best represented our planet and the people on it.

Unfortunately we cannot commend you on your selection. Would not a better choice have been Justin Timberlake’s ‘Bringing Sexy Back’? Or Britney Spears’ ‘Hit me baby one more time’? After all these are the sorts of things humanity thinks about ad infinitum -- sex and violence -- and as Justin and Britney are our current reigning deities we should share them with the rest of the universe, huh. It just seems that if you are going to waste electricity on the biggest pulse of information you’ve ever sent out there, wouldn’t we as a planet have been better served by sending out some useful information about ourselves, so our Polaris pals can decide whether they want to email us back? Or not.

Of course we have skirted the obvious – the fact that our transmissions are being beamed endlessly out into space every minute of every day, boinging from satellite to satellite and thence on to lord knows where. Our ET friends, even if they are as far away as Polaris, already know that John Lennon was a pale and myopic bipedal creature who never cut his hair, and that the population of planet Earth spends all its leisure time obsessing over who can dance and who cannot. One wonders what we could have to tell them that they don’t know already.

So, dear NASA, while your personal message to Polaris was clear and to the point (‘Yoo hoo, here we are! This is the kind of music our board of directors listens to!’), your message to us was somewhat confusing.

Stop playing with our minds – is there life out there or isn’t there? Indeed there seems to be, since you are sending them the hits of the 60s one painful tune at a time.

Jesus Doesn't Live In The Toaster & We're Not Nuts

Some may see little green aliens in their dreams and imagine every memory lapse is down to spending time aboard a UFO, but this is not as common in the UFO community as many think. While there are those who certainly fit the image of a wannabe, fantasy-prone personality or are just plain delusional, the reality is that there are no more escapees from reality in the UFO community than there are in the general population.

In fact, dare we say it, there may be more intelligent thinking people circulating in the UFO community than in our society at large. People with degrees in biology, psychology, engineering, microbiology, oceanography, medicine, astrophysics, archaeology, anthropology, education, just to name a few, are heavily peppered amongst the UFO community. In addition, those who lack formal education are successfully self-educated in many areas of life.

In his book, After Contact : The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Contact, Albert A Harrison PhD states that a study was undertaken on 102 Ufologists who were listed in the Encyclopedia of UFOs and it was found that roughly one third of the group held less than a bachelor’s degree, one third held a bachelor’s or master’s degree, and one third held a doctoral degree. Ufologists were highly educated relative to the general population. “Ufologists who believed in the extraterrestrial origin of UFOs were as likely to hold an advanced degree as those who were skeptical. Thus a weak intellect or lack of schooling does not seem to explain an advocacy for the extraterrestrial hypothesis.”

Furthermore, most who circulate within the UFO community have a strong orientation towards the social concerns of our time such as natural health, the environment, governmental management, social inequality, consumerism, and are quite critical of most large institutions in modern society. Typically they reject narrow analyses and despise media as business. In short they are critical thinkers. They may go a bit overboard sometimes but that enthusiasm is driven by their desire for truth and a better world. So if you imagine that people in the UFO community think Jesus lives in their toaster, think again. And if you plan to attend a UFO meeting anytime soon, plan on expecting the unexpected – you may be very surprised.

The New Church of Ufology

We are tired of being asked the question: 'Do you believe in UFOs?'

Do we believe in UFOs? No, we don't. Because UFOs aren't a faith, they're a reality. We don't require fervent belief and hope that UFOs exist -- they do. There are photographs, there is film footage, there are physical traces. Unlike the saints of old, UFOs don't need to manifest their likenesses in a piece of toast because they reveal their physical selves to people all the time, every single day.

UFOs are a reality, far more than God who, after all, has yet to appear at or hovering above a shopping mall and pose for a photograph. And if God did pose for a photograph, would the photographer have to run the gamut of disbelief, ridicule, shame and public humiliation that a person who snaps a photograph of a UFO must endure? Hardly, when the face of Jesus in an eggplant receives credible and global media coverage and draws pilgrims from far and wide.

So why must Ufology endure this constant criticism? What status quo does it threaten? Is Science in fact the religion that the New Church of Ufology threatens to topple?

Scientists react to UFOs with the same kind of witch-burning zeal as the Popes of old - and it isn't hard to imagine that the Whitecoats would love to round us up and burn us at the stake for our blaspheming and false idols. All hail the doctrine of evolution. All hail MAN, the greatest pinnacle of biology that any creature on any planet could hope to aspire to!

Or should it be all hail the NEW gods, the DNA-manipulating Greys, the stately perfection of Orthon.

How difficult then is our struggle, fighting against all the old gods of science. Darwin, the Zeus of Evolution, and Sagan, the Ares of our time, zealously guarding the sterile vacuum of space from our irrational imaginations. They rule from on-high, casting their thunderbolts of fear and doubt and confusion upon an unsuspecting world.

How can the tribe fight the gods? More importantly, how can Ufology fight these time-honoured tactics, and win?

Feeling Sneaky

Just like Australian band Sneaky Sound System who rocketed to fame with their gold single entitled UFO, a lot of people have seen a UFO but nobody believes them either. How frustrating, but more to the point, how very isolating. Just like the first line of the song that says “ I just don’t wanna be lonely”, thousands around the planet are also being forced into exiled loneliness by hostile skeptics and denialists. As people report their experiences of UFO events to their doctors, neighbours, churches etc, again as the words of the song say, they end up having to bite their tongue for the “plastic man on the telephone”.

Witnesses are continually forced to endure the continuous stream of debunking by the narrow-minded commentary of SETI scientists blabbing on about the simple physics of high school science making intergalactic space travel close to impossible, the casual bald-faced avoidance by skeptics of any serious questioning of UFOs and ET visitation, and the intelligence community hell bent on keeping a lid on the possible negative aspects of the phenomenon that has the potential to ignite public panic.

For those who endure this consistent wash into the falsely turbulent mythology of our current reality, it becomes at times almost too much to bear. Many may feel they are sent far from home and their respective tribes by these experiences, and just like in the song, left wondering “Whats it gonna take to get me back home tonight?”. After all, their goal is that they too, just don’t wanna be lonely - and isn’t that the simple point....?

Mirror Mirror On The Martian Wall

The much-discussed news story about humanoid life on Mars was laid to rest this week by among others, The Planetary Society, who pulled the anthropomorphic wool off our eyes to reveal the humanoid-shaped rocky outcropping on an image captured by Nasa's Mars Explorer Spirit, was not a Martian Bigfoot after all. Turns out the "Bigfoot" is actually less than five metres from the rover and no more than about 6 centimeters tall, or thereabouts. While this comes as no surprise the public response to the story and it’s whirlwind circulation in cyberspace around the globe, has revealed, among other things, the naked truth about human self projection.

Spirit has sent back images of another world – Mars, but what did the public see? A reflection of it’s own self, just a hairier version. While we are privy to gaze upon other worlds, or other life-forms, we cannot do so with our narrow human perception and expect to get it right. Our ignorance about ourselves and the human condition is brimming over into our understanding of everything and seems to be the source of our ultimate affliction, hijacking us from a greater reality.

As Australian author Jeremy Griffith points out, “the greatest of all human explorations in the universe is in fact the ‘dark continent’ of ourselves”. The trail explorers blaze through the wilderness of our inner selves will ultimately become humanity’s highway to truth, and a key component to any large scale contact we may ever have with an extraterrestrial society.

The War On Error

On 15th January a report was posted by KTVU – TV from California that began with this comment - “Across the globe, researchers searching for signs of life in space were abuzz this week with word that a mystery signal has been picked up by a giant radio-telescope in Puerto Rico.”

That comment caused the hearts of UFO researchers across the globe to go all a-flutter. Yes, all very exciting except the journalist reporting the story got it all wrong. Turns out radio astronomer, Dan Wertheimer, who is affiliated with SETI was interviewed about sending signals into space (so-called "active SETI") as opposed to just listening for aliens. The scuttlebutt is that after the interview Werthmeier talked to the reporter about some of the astronomy he does, including looking at radio transients: bursts of radio waves that are caused by one-off events like colliding neutron stars, exploding stars, and so on.

Somehow in the article the reporter mixed up the observation of the transient signals with detecting a signal from E.T. Worse, the observations of the transients weren't from Arecibo, and they weren't from Wertheimer as initially claimed. It was another astronomer altogether, observing with the giant Parkes radio dish in Australia!

In a retraction, KTVU-TV says the signal has not been confirmed as any sign of extra-terrestrial intelligence, although the Allen array in California is now actively searching for more of these signals.

Well, we want to know who’s raking the media over the coals about getting this story wrong? Who’s making the media take responsibility for circulating false stories? If this were an erroneous story about, say, a presidential candidate, it would have been withdrawn quicksmart and with a lot of loud shouting. But in this case it was a story on the possible existence of little green men that the media got wrong, and really, it doesn't matter if it’s wrong, because nobody takes this stuff seriously anyway. Not even SETI.

Mantle Burning

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, but can Philip Mantle run for his life? Well let's hope so, because Philip will be taking his life into his own hands when he appears at the UFO Congress in Nevada this year, proving once and for all that the Alien Autopsy footage was indeed a hoax.

The perpetrator, Spyros Melaris, claims cudos for the hoax, but we're yet to know the complete whys of it, although some reasons have begun to filter through, most notably in Philip Mantle’s recent expose ‘Alien Autopsy – Game Over’.

Despite the years and years of doubt surrounding the Alien Autopsy film, it seems that some have clung rather steadfastly to the hope that it was real, that this time they held the smoking gun in their quivering fingers. And while the Alien Autopsy footage was the Ufological equivalent to the face of Jesus in a piece of burnt toast, a wine-stained image of the Virgin Mary on great aunt Hilda’s tablecloth, an Elvis Presley bust in a 15 year old tooth filling…well you get the idea….it served as a sign telling us to never give up faith and that yes Fox Mulder, the truth is out there.

Yes indeed, Philip Mantle will surely shatter a few hopes and dreams on Feb 23 in Nevada, and like fervent believers of the true faith, the UFO community may just rise up to burn him at the stake for it. We vigorously suggest that conference organisers ban all those entering the door wearing long white dresses, peaked hoods and smelling of smoke. Good luck Philip, our hearts and prayers are with you.

I am, You Are, We Are Australiens

An experienced UFO spotter has lent his support to the theory aliens landed at Uluru and created human beings. Lew Farkas runs the store and holiday park at Wycliffe Well, an internationally-renowned UFO hotspot 380km north of Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway. The Northern Territory News yesterday reported on a US UFO enthusiasts' website carrying a story about aliens landing at the Rock and creating human life.

The event, the UFO Area website claims, is depicted in Aboriginal rock paintings at Uluru. Mr Farkas, 60, said he has spotted about 30 UFOs in his time. "I think it's feasible," he said. "There's more to things in the past and to our lives than we can comprehend. "I think that some other beings from another planet in some format started us off down here. "That's why they keep coming back and checking us out."

Mr Farkas said depictions of aliens were common to the art of many ancient cultures. "They all seem to have a being with helmets on and space-looking characters," he said. "They only paint what they see. "Indians, Aztecs, they've all got space creatures."

Mr Farkas said there had not been a sighting at Wycliffe Well since November 7, when a group of British backpackers said they saw a light hovering around for about 15 minutes before flying off. Outside the tourist season there are not as many eyes trained to the mysteries of the sky.

"Nobody here spends all night sitting around looking at the sky," he said. "If it came early in the evening someone might see it." The Wycliffe Well Holiday Park is popular with tourists keen to catch a glimpse of an alien visitor.

"If you stand outside in the middle of the night you can look in any direction and see the whole sky to the horizon," he said. "If something does move, you can see it."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23035923-2,00.html

We are the Aliens

Did humans evolve from alien life forms? That’s the question Horizons documentary asked SBS viewers on January 6. But if you’re waiting for an answer don’t hold your breath, because the question of human origins is still as contentious as ever in the scientific community.

With the opening statement that if we went back far enough we’d find the ancestors of humans to be extraterrestrials, the show knew how to capture its viewers’ curiosity early. But once released back into the wilds of suburbia would this question get people really thinking, or would they yawn and flick channels to Extreme Makeover? Well we know some who did!

The idea of life on Earth being seeded from among the stars via natural processes is known as Panspermia. If we really did come from elsewhere then Panspermia requires a closer examination, and that’s exactly what the program did. However such crusades into our origins can be quite boring for most, hence the program being accompanied by 1950s music and B-grade alien movie images, and we loved it.

To solve the question of human origins the documentary began by re-examining the Red Rain that fell in Kerala (India) in 2001, although in their attempts to explain this peculiar phenomenon away as earthly, the ‘rain’ was said to be anything from bat blood to lichen spores. Samples of the ‘rain’ revealed cells containing no DNA - a curiosity in itself - and begged the question where did the micro-organisms come from? Taking viewers on a romp through the world of extremeophiles, life forms that live in extreme conditions, viewers were shown terrestrial places with extreme temperatures and chemistries while abundant with life.

As a species, we were told, we need to re-examine current notions about where and how life might exist, and Considering that micro-organisms have been found to exist even on spent rods of nuclear fuel, it leaves the mind boggling over how durable and adaptive life might actually be. Of course scientists can swallow only so much and have ultimately relegated any possibility of ET life to that of only tiny life (micro-organisms) joy-riding the universe on comet tails, surfboards or whatever. Despite initially stating that the diversity of life on Earth (and that pinnacle of biology and intelligence – us!) may have evolved from a handful of such space-born micro-organisms, apparently taking that extra step and imagining that a similar kind of life (or, heaven forbid, a better kind of life) might have evolved on other planets and might one day visit Earth seems just too much for scientists to tolerate, at least for now.

However, one important point the program did make was the growing number of scientists now willing to at least accept the concept of Panspermia and that our ancestors might indeed have come from elsewhere, whether they began as microbial life or not. As it turns out bacteria are born space-dwellers, and if they are indeed our ancestors that might explain why some of us feel that call to space…