I honestly prefer either the chronological order or the machete order. I just can’t bring myself to watch the Original Trilogy first and then the Prequels. For me, you’ve always got to end with Return of the Jedi, because that ending is the most satisfying. If you finish on Revenge of the Sith, the Saga ends on a really depressing note. But if you end with Return of the Jedi, you close things out on a happy, uplifting note. That’s why I stick with chronological or machete order: both let you watch Revenge of the Sith before Return of the Jedi instead of after, and that just feels like it makes way more sense.

Personally, I believe that they should have the courage to touch the Old Republic, either with a series of films or with a TV show. As long as the stories are well-written and the characters are relatable, I think that fans would not despise them, even if they are not an exact copy and are not faithful to the original Old Republic stories.

Mocata said:

Yeah but everyone is two decades years older they need to mature and develop critical faculties by now.

Why should “maturing” and “developing critical faculties” coincide with having the same opinions as you on the Prequels? It seems like a rather biased reasoning on your part.

Channel72 said:

In contrast, the popularity of the OT can’t be as easily explained as entirely the result of nostalgia, because the OT films have many devoted fans among the younger generations as well, I assume.

As someone who has had the opportunity to speak with many people who were Star Wars fans during the 1980s and 1990s, I feel compelled to express my disagreement with this statement. After the release of Return of the Jedi, the Original Trilogy practically faded into obscurity. Yes, they were considered very good films, but Star Wars was essentially dead between 1983 and the release of the Special Editions in 1997. Without the Special Editions and the Prequels, Star Wars would have remained nothing more than an old trilogy of 1980s movies. Sure, many people would certainly still love it, but it would never have become the massive franchise it is today. Star Wars would have ended up like Back to the Future — a well-loved series, but not a cultural phenomenon. So yes, objectively speaking, the almost blind devotion to the Original Trilogy that many people exhibit today is primarily a product of the older generation’s nostalgia, because again, between 1983 and 1997, nobody really cared about either the Original Trilogy or Star Wars in general. Had it not been for the Special Editions and the Prequels, Star Wars would be dead right now.

NeverarGreat said:

Perhaps the prequels are uniquely suited to appealing to kids, which is why they are getting more love these days from people who grew up with them, as well as kids today who are seeing them for the first time. If that’s true, then perhaps the only cohort who can’t widely appreciate them are those who were already too old when the films premiered.

I genuinely do not understand where this reasoning comes from. I know many people who watched the Prequels as adults and still appreciated them. Sure, many people consider them inferior to the Original Trilogy, but they certainly do not dismiss them entirely, as many users on this forum tend to do. I, too, watched the Prequels for the first time when I was 18, and I had absolutely no idea that Prequel hate even existed until my sister mentioned it a couple of years later — after I had already seen the films. Even on YouTube, there are countless reaction videos of adults watching the Prequels for the first time and still being able to appreciate them. So I truly do not understand where the idea that “only children who grew up with the Prequels can appreciate them” comes from.

Personally, I do not think The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith are bad movies. I think they are fine, but I also believe they could be improved through fan editing.

I genuinely agree with about 99% of the lore and concepts introduced in the Prequels, and very little actually bothers me on a conceptual level. However, there are undeniably some scenes that feel excessively over the top, and a few others that do not really serve any meaningful purpose and could easily be removed. In my opinion, these films are fine, but they have the potential to become much better with careful and thoughtful editing. This is why I have always wanted to create my own fan edits of the Prequels. Unfortunately, although I did manage to somewhat complete a fan edit of Attack of the Clones with the help of Hal9000, I have never been able to work on edits for the other two films because I have never found anyone else willing to help me with the project.

Furthermore, I am convinced that many of the people who dislike the Prequels are influenced by a specific type of bias. A lot of fans who grew up with the Original Trilogy were disappointed simply because the Prequels did not reflect the backstory they had imagined for Darth Vader. And honestly, that is a very human and understandable reaction. I do not blame anyone for feeling that way. I have experienced the same kind of disappointment myself with other franchises, watching a film I loved and then later seeing a prequel that did not match the version of the past I had built in my head. So in the end, I think that kind of response is entirely valid on an emotional level. But I also believe it is still a form of bias, even if it is a natural and forgivable one.

There is also a similar kind of bias when it comes to specific plot points. I have seen many fans criticize elements such as the creation of the clone army, Anakin’s willingness to believe Palpatine’s lies about cheating death, or the romantic subplot between Anakin and Padmé, claiming that these things do not make sense or feel unrealistic. But personally, I have always been able to rationalize them and find a coherent logic behind those choices. Yes, some scenes are over the top, and the execution of some plot points can definitely be improved through fan-editing. But that does not mean the core ideas behind them are flawed. Many viewers, like myself, are able to accept and even appreciate these plot elements when they are not actively looking for flaws. I think some fans reject these story choices not because they truly make no sense, but because they conflict with the expectations they had developed over the years. Again, that is a very human reaction, and I do not condemn it, but it is still a bias.

In the end, I do not think the Prequels are perfect, but I do believe they are deeply misunderstood. With the right editorial touch, they can be transformed into truly great Star Wars films.

If, when we finally manage to build the first interstellar spaceship, they do not name it Enterprise, I swear I will rise from the grave and slaughter whoever decided for another name.

darklordoftech said:

Spartacus01 said:

darklordoftech said:

The BBY/ABY calendar existing in-universe.

Why do you hate it? I do not mind it.

Why would the New Republic establish a new year 0? Isn’t that something totalitarian regimes do? Why not use whatever year 0 the Valorum-era Republic used?

The New Republic did not see itself as just a continuation of the Old Republic; it saw itself as a major improvement, something new and better. The Old Republic, especially in its final years, was bloated, bureaucratic, and too weak to prevent the rise of Palpatine. So from the New Republic’s point of view, there was no reason to go back to that exact model. Therefore, creating a new calendar, with a new Year 0, was a symbolic way of saying, “This is a fresh start.” It helped to draw a clear line between what came before — the corruption of the late Republic, the dark times of the Empire — and what they hoped to build. And if you think about it, choosing their Year 0 around the time of the first real victory against the Empire makes emotional sense too. That moment was not just a military victory; it was the first time in years that people across the galaxy had real hope. From the New Republic’s perspective, that hope was the foundation of everything they were trying to build. So starting a new calendar from that moment sends a message: “This is when things began to change.”

darklordoftech said:

The BBY/ABY calendar existing in-universe.

Why do you hate it? I do not mind it.

I was permanently banned from a subreddit and temporarily banned from Reddit for 7 days. And I am pissed off.

So, what happened? Let me break it down for you as simply as possible.

Basically, I posted some comments in a subreddit. Those comments got me banned from that subreddit for seven days. Now, just to be clear, my comments were not hateful, not racist, and not the kind of offensive nonsense that could justifiably get me banned from Reddit altogether. They were just a bit snarky, a little sharp — let’s say they had a bit of an edge to them. And apparently, that was enough to get me banned for “toxicity.”

Fine. I accepted it. No problem.

Now, here is where things took a turn.

Today, while going through my notifications, I noticed one I had not replied to. I clicked on it, and it turned out to be a comment someone had left for me in that same subreddit where I was banned. But this comment was in an entirely different thread, totally unrelated to the discussion that got me banned in the first place.

And then I had a lapsus. For a moment, I completely forgot I had been banned. So I tried to reply to the comment, but the system would not let me. I kept clicking “send,” but my response would not go through.

Now, because of this lapsus, my brain did not make the connection: “Oh, I cannot reply because I am banned.” Instead, I assumed there was some kind of system glitch preventing me from responding.

So, in my infinite wisdom, I thought, “Screw it, I will just make another account and reply from there.” That way, I figured, I could get my response through despite what I assumed was just a Reddit bug.

Well, bad idea.

Shortly after, I got a notification saying: “You attempted to evade a ban, so now you are permanently banned from this subreddit.” And then, about thirty minutes later, I got another notification: “You have been temporarily suspended from Reddit for seven days.”

That is when it hit me: “What the hell did I just do?”

Because I had not actually intended to break the rules. I had not tried to get around the ban on purpose; I had just had a lapsus and completely forgotten I was banned in the first place! When I made that second account, it was not to dodge the ban, but because I genuinely thought there was a technical issue stopping me from replying.

But, well… here we are.

Now I am permanently banned from that subreddit and suspended from Reddit for a week.

The End of MJ-12?

by Kevin Randle, published on October 17, 2010

Original Source: https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/10/end-of-mj-12.html?m=1

My plan had been to hold off on this until later, but with some suggesting there is still life in MJ-12, I thought I would attempt to drive a nail into this particular coffin. It is clear, based on some early research, that MJ-12 is a hoax created in the early 1980s, probably by Bill Moore and Richard Doty.

Here’s what we all seem to know. The information contained in the Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) reflects the state of UFO crash research in the early 1980s. Bill Moore told a number of people, and you can find their names on the Internet, that he was thinking of creating a “Roswell-style document,” in an attempt to smoke out additional witnesses. Moore had said that he had taken the investigation as far as he could.

By this time, it was clear to many that the Barney Barnett (who died in 1969, long before he could be interviewed) connection to Roswell was weak at best. Barnett, who told his tale of seeing a crashed UFO on the Plains of San Agustin, did not have a date associated with it. Barnett was important to the earliest Roswell investigations because he mentioned seeing alien bodies, and that was the only mention of bodies [at the time]. That made it clear the event was extraterrestrial in nature. The connection was drawn by J. F. “Fleck” Danley, who had been Barnett’s boss in 1947, and Danley said that he had heard the tale directly from Barnett. Pushed by Moore, Danley thought the date of this story might have been 1947, and, based on the sighting in Roswell on July 2, Moore and others assumed the crash to have happened on July 2. This sighting, by Dan Wilmot, has little relevance to the Roswell case, other than Wilmot lived in Roswell, and it happened on July 2, 1947. There is no reason to connect the sighting to the crash. When I talked to Danley, it was clear that he had no real idea of when Barnett had mentioned the UFO crash. It could have been 1947, but, if I pushed, I could have gotten him to come up with another date. Moore knew of the shaky nature of the Danley date.

To make it worse, I learned, in the 1990s, from Alice Knight, that Ruth Barnett [Barney’s wife] had kept a diary for 1947. It is clear from that document that the crash could not have taken place on July 2, if Barnett was there. In fact, there is nothing in the diary to suggest he had seen anything extraordinary or had been involved in anything that would have been upsetting. In other words, the only document about Barney Barnett that we could find suggested that, if he had seen a UFO crash, it didn’t happen in 1947. Of course, in the early 1980s, Moore wouldn’t have known about the diary, but he did know how he had gotten Danley to give him the 1947 date. He would have known that it wasn’t true, and that the Barnett story had nothing to do with the Roswell UFO crash. This is important, because it explains why there was no mention of the Plains crash in the Eisenhower Briefing Document. Moore knew that those on the inside would know that the Barnett story did not fit into the scenario. Moore left it out, because it would expose the MJ-12 hoax for what it was to those who knew the truth.

And now we come to the other crash mentioned in the EBD. This is the Del Rio crash, that was dated in the EBD as 1950. This is the story being told by Robert B. Willingham, who, it was claimed, was a retired Air Force colonel who had seen the crash. Because he was a retired colonel, his story had credibility with those in the UFO community. I believed it for that very reason. A retired Air Force colonel would not be making up something like this.

W. Todd Zechel, a UFO researcher of limited ability, in pawing through the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena files, found a newspaper clipping about Willingham and his alleged UFO crash. Back in the mid-1970s, when Zechel found the clipping, no one was taking much notice of such stories. They were considered, at best, to be mistakes, and, at worst, to be hoaxes. But Zechel believed the tale, and tracked down Willingham. At Zechel’s insistence, Willingham signed an affidavit about the crash, proving to many that this was a solid case. Even the Center for UFO Studies included the Willingham story on the LP (vinyl) record they produced of interesting UFO sightings. Moore knew of this story, because Zechel had told him. In Moore’s book, The Roswell Incident, he devotes a brief mention to the case, which establishes the link between Zechel, Willingham, and Moore. More to the point, Moore believed the story for the same reason that the rest of us did. Willingham was a retired colonel.

The thinking is easy to follow. Del Rio is a real crash, but Moore didn’t have all the details. Those belonged to Zechel and what he had learned from Willingham. But Moore believed this to be real, and, if those on the inside were going to believe MJ-12, he had to mention this crash. Without the details, he simply added a single paragraph to the EBD that suggested the craft had been nearly incinerated upon impact, which, in reality, wasn’t that far from what Willingham originally said. So, the MJ-12 document, using the information developed by Zechel and supplied by Willingham, said, “On 06 December, 1950, (sic) a second object, probably of similar origin, impacted the earth at high speed in the El-Indio-Guerrero area of the Texas-Mexican border after following a long trajectory through the atmosphere. By the time a search team arrived, what remained of the object had been almost totally incinerated. Such material as could be recovered was transported to the A.E.C. facility at Sandia, New Mexico, for study.”

The situation, then, in the early 1980s, was that Roswell was a real crash, the Plains might be but the date was wrong, Aztec was a hoax, as proven in repeated investigations, and Del Rio was real because there was an Air Force officer who said so. Which, of course, explains why both the Plains and Aztec were left out, and Del Rio was included.

I learned, as I was working on Crash – When UFOs Fall from the Sky, that no one had checked on Willingham’s credentials. I became suspicious when the date of the crash shifted from 1950 to 1955. I asked, but no one had ever looked into Willingham’s background. Apparently, everyone thought someone else had done it, most believing that Zechel had conducted that research. The whole case hinged on the credibility of Willingham. But Willingham had not been an officer, had not been in the Air Force, had not been a fighter pilot, and had not been in a position to see a UFO crash. In fact, though I didn’t find the newspaper clipping, I did find a one-paragraph report in the February/March 1968 issue of Skylook that gave the crash date as 1948, and suggested that there had been three objects. Nearly everything about that original case had changed, sometimes more than once. It was clear that Willingham had invented his Air Force career, was not a retired colonel, and had served just 13 or 14 months, from December 1945 to January 1948, as a low-ranking enlisted soldier.

If Willingham, as the sole witness to the crash, had invented the tale, then there was no Del Rio crash, and the MJ-12 documents, or rather the EBD, was a fake. But, in the early 1980s, Moore didn’t know this, most of the UFO community didn’t know this, and Willingham was still talking about the 1950 date.

Yes, I know what the answer to this will be. What relevance does Willingham have to MJ-12? Two separate issues. Except, they aren’t. There is no other witness, document, indication, suggestion, or mention of the Del Rio case without Willingham. If not for his discussion about the case in 1968, if not for Zechel’s interview of him in the 1970s, there would be no mention of a Del Rio UFO crash anywhere. That it is mentioned in the MJ-12 EBD, and we can draw a line from Willingham to Zechel to Moore, that suggests all we need to know about this. There was no Del Rio UFO crash, and, if there was none, then it shouldn’t have been mentioned in the Eisenhower Briefing Document.

If we look at the state of UFO research today, we realize that much of what was said in the EBD about Roswell was not quite right, and the information about Del Rio completely wrong. The more we learn about the events in Roswell, and the more we learn about the lack of detail for Del Rio, the better the case against MJ-12 becomes.

Couple the other problems to this — the lack of provenance, the typographical errors, the incorrect dating format, and the anachronistic information — then the only conclusion possible is that there is no MJ-12. There never was, except for a 1980 unpublished novel written by the late Bob Pratt, with the assistance of Bill Moore and Richard Doty. The only question left is: how long are we going to have to listen to the nonsense that is MJ-12?

Majestic Twelve: One of the Greatest Hoaxes in the History of UFOlogy

As evidence that the Roswell incident was the result of the crash of an alien craft, many UFO enthusiasts and Roswell believers often cite the so-called “Majestic Twelve” documents. The history of these documents is complex and multifaceted. Since no one has ever attempted to write a single, unified post containing all the available information about them, I thought that it would have been worthwhile to do so myself. In my opinion, it is important for people who are new to this topic to have a comprehensive reference. Therefore, I will write a single essay, explaining how the documents came into the hands of UFO researchers, what is their content, and why I believe they should be regarded as a hoax.

There are many documents associated with Majestic Twelve. Some of these documents were allegedly leaked in the early 1980s, while others were supposedly leaked in the 1990s. This essay will focus exclusively on the original Majestic Twelve documents that surfaced in the early 1980s. These early documents are the only ones worth discussing in detail, because they were the first to introduce the concept of Majestic Twelve and the entire lore surrounding it. Proving that the first documents to reference Majestic Twelve are forgeries would mean proving that the very name “Majestic Twelve” itself is a fabrication. And that, in turn, would automatically demonstrate that all subsequent documents referencing Majestic Twelve are fraudulent as well.

Furthermore, it is important to note that the later documents have never been considered authentic by UFO researchers, with the sole exception of Robert and Ryan Wood. Even Stanton Friedman, one of the most vocal advocates of the authenticity of the original 1980s documents, firmly rejected the Cooper documents. In fact, in his pro-Majestic Twelve book Top Secret/Magic, Friedman devoted several chapters to systematically debunking the 1990s documents. For this reason, not only is it unnecessary to examine the 1990s documents in detail, but it is also reasonable to assert that their fate is inextricably tied to that of the original documents. If the 1980s documents are discredited, then the entire narrative built upon them inevitably falls apart.

THE HISTORY OF THE DOCUMENTS

The Majestic Twelve documents first appeared in December 1984, when a package with no return address and a postmark from Albuquerque, New Mexico, arrived at the residence of television producer Jamie Shandera in North Hollywood, California. The package contained a roll of 35mm film. When developed, the film revealed a classified memo dated September 24, 1947, in which President Harry S. Truman authorized the creation of “Operation Majestic Twelve.” It also contained a document dated November 18, 1952, which purported to be a briefing document written by Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter and destined to President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower. The document outlined the nature and purpose of Operation Majestic Twelve, describing the Roswell crash and other related events. The text of the Eisenhower Briefing Document is reported below:

Operation Majestic-12 is a top-secret research and development/intelligence operation responsible directly and only to the President of the United States. Operations of the project are carried out under the control of the Majestic-12 (Majic-12) Group, which was established by a special classified executive order of President Truman on 24 September 1947, upon the recommendation of Dr. Vannevar Bush and Secretary James Forrestal.

Members of the Majestic-12 Group were designated as follows:

• Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
• Dr. Vannevar Bush
• Secy. James V. Forrestal
• Gen. Nathan P. Twining
• Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg
• Dr. Detlev Bronk
• Dr. Jerome Hunsaker
• Mr. Sidney W. Souers
• Mr. Gordon Gray
• Dr. Donald Menzel
• Gen. Robert M. Montague
• Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner

The death of Secretary Forrestal on 22 May, 1949, created a vacancy which remained unfilled until 01 August, 1950, upon which date Gen. Walter B. Smith was designated as permanent replacement.

On 24 June, 1947, a civilian pilot flying over the Cascade Mountains in the State of Washington observed nine flying disc-shaped aircraft traveling in formation at a high rate of speed. Although this was not the first known sighting of such objects, it was the first to gain widespread attention in the public media. Hundreds of reports of sightings of similar objects followed. Many of these came from highly credible military and civilian sources. These reports resulted in independent efforts by several different elements of the military to ascertain the nature and purpose of these objects in the interests of national defense.

A number of witnesses were interviewed and there were several unsuccessful attempts to utilize aircraft in efforts to pursue reported discs in flight. Public reaction bordered on near hysteria at times. In spite of these efforts, little of substance was learned about the objects until a local rancher reported that one had crashed in a remote region of New Mexico located approximately seventy-five miles northwest of Roswell Army Air Base (now Walker Field).

On 07 July, 1947, a secret operation was begun to assure recovery of the wreckage of this object for scientific study. During the course of this operation, aerial reconnaissance discovered that four small human-like beings had apparently ejected from the craft at some point before it exploded. These had fallen to Earth about two miles east of the wreckage site. All four were dead and badly decomposed due to action by predators and exposure to the elements during the approximately one week time period which had elapsed before their discovery. A special scientific team took charge of removing these bodies for study. The wreckage of the craft was also removed to several different locations. Civilian and military witnesses in the area were debriefed, and news reporters were given the effective cover story that the object had been a misguided weather research balloon.

A covert analytical effort organized by Gen. Twining and Dr. Bush acting on the direct orders of the President, resulted in a preliminary consensus (19 September, 1947) that the disc was most likely a short range reconnaissance craft. This conclusion was based for the most part on the craft’s size and the apparent lack of any identifiable provisioning.

A similar analysis of the four dead occupants was arranged by Dr. Bronk. It was the tentative conclusions of this group (30 November, 1947) that although these creatures are human-like in appearance, the biological and evolutionary processes responsible for their development has apparently been quite different from those observed or postulated in homo-sapiens. Dr. Bronk’s team has suggested the term “Extraterrestrial Biological Entities”, or “EBE’s”, be adopted as the standard term of reference for these creatures until such time as a more definitive designation can be agreed upon.

Since it is virtually certain that these craft do not originate in any country on earth, considerable speculation has centered around what their point of origin might be and how they get here. Mars was and remains a possibility, although some scientists, most notably Dr. Menzel, consider it more likely that we are dealing with beings from another solar system entirely.

Numerous examples of what appear to be a form of writing were found in the wreckage. Efforts to decipher these have remained largely unsuccessful.

Equally unsuccessful have been efforts to determine the method of propulsion or the nature or method of transmission of the power source involved. Research along these lines has been complicated by the complete absence of identifiable wings, propellers, jets, or other conventional methods of propulsion and guidance, as well as a total lack of metallic wiring, vacuum tubes, or similar recognizable electronic components. It is assumed that the propulsion unit was completely destroyed by the explosion which caused the crash.

A need for as much additional information as possible about these craft, their performance characteristics and their purpose led to the undertaking known as U.S. Air Force Project Sign in December, 1947. In order to preserve security, liaison between Sign and Majestic-12 was limited to two individuals within the Intelligence Division of Air Material Command whose role was to pass along certain types of information through channels. Sign evolved into Project Grudge in December, 1948. The operation is currently being conducted under the code name Blue Book, with liaison maintained through the Air Force officer who is head of the project.

On 06 December, 1950, a second object, probably of similar origin, impacted the earth at high speed in the El Indio-Guerrero area of the Texas-Mexican border after following a long trajectory through the atmosphere. By the time a search team arrived, what remained of the object had been almost totally incinerated. Such material as could be recovered was transported to the A.E.C. facility at Sandia, New Mexico, for study.

Implications for the National Security are of continuing importance in that the motives and ultimate intentions of these visitors remain completely unknown. In addition, a significant upsurge in the surveillance activity of these craft beginning in May and continuing through the autumn of this year has caused considerable concern that new developments may be imminent. It is for these reasons, as well as the obvious international and technological considerations and the ultimate need to avoid a public panic at all costs, that the Majestic-12 Group remains of the unanimous opinion that imposition of the strictest security precautions should continue without interruption into the new administration. At the same time, contingency plan MJ-1949-04P/78 (Top Secret - Eyes Only) should be held in continued readiness should the need to make a public announcement present itself.

Although the envelope bore no name or identifying marks, Shandera presumed that the package had been delivered by his friend William Moore, a prominent UFO researcher and the co-author of the very first book about the Roswell crash, titled The Roswell Incident. However, when Shandera showed him the envelope, Moore denied having seen it before. Nevertheless, when Moore had the opportunity to read the Eisenhower Briefing Document, he quickly discerned a connection between the document and his own Roswell research. After receiving both the Truman-Forrestal Memo and the Eisenhower Briefing Document, Moore and Shandera, together with Stanton Friedman, embarked on a meticulous effort to determine the authenticity of the documents and validate their content. This endeavor involved extensive research and fact-checking, which led them to spend significant time at the National Archives, combing through government records and declassified materials. Their goal was to uncover any circumstantial evidence or corroborating details that could indicate the authenticity of both documents.

In March 1985, Stanton Friedman visited the National Archives during a trip to Washington, D.C. While there, Friedman was informed that Air Force intelligence files were undergoing a classification review, which might yield information related to UFO phenomena. This promising lead prompted a return visit in July 1985 by Moore and Shandera, who meticulously searched through the records identified as Entry 267 of Air Force Record Group 341. After painstakingly reviewing over 120 boxes of documents, Shandera stumbled upon a peculiar memo dated July 14, 1954, addressed to General Nathan Twining and signed by Robert Cutler, then Special Assistant to President Eisenhower. This memo, known as the “Cutler-Twining Memo,” stated:

"The President has decided that the MJ-12 SSP briefing should take place during the already scheduled White House meeting of July 16, rather than following it as previously intended.”

The document was an administrative note, devoid of substantive details, but its reference to "MJ-12 " was groundbreaking. The memo was typed on onionskin paper with a watermark and bore a red pencil mark through its security classification, consistent with archival practices for declassified materials. The discovery provided the first tangible link to the existence of Majestic Twelve.

Following this significant find, Moore, Shandera, and Friedman undertook further efforts to authenticate the Cutler-Twining Memo. By 1987, Moore, Shandera, and Friedman had gathered enough evidence to confidently present their findings, and decided to officially and publicly release the documents in a press conference. The release ignited intense debate within the UFO research community and the broader public. Some researchers hailed the documents as conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, while others questioned their authenticity, claiming that Moore and Shandera were the perpetrators of a hoax.

THE AQUARIUS TELEX AND “MJ-TWELVE”

Contrary to what one might be led to believe, the first mention of an organization called Majestic Twelve does not appear in the Eisenhower Briefing Document or the Truman-Forrestal Memo sent to Jamie Shandera in 1984. Instead, it can be traced back to a document delivered in March 1981 to a man named Paul Bennewitz. However, to fully understand the significance of this document, we first need to know who Paul Bennewitz was and what he went through.

Paul Bennewitz was a physicist and electrical engineer who, in the mid-1960s, founded a company called Thunder Scientific in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which specialized in manufacturing temperature and humidity instruments for NASA and the Air Force. His house overlooked both Kirtland Air Force Base and the nearby Manzano Weapons Storage Area, which was a secretive nuclear weapons depot. From his rooftop, he had an unobstructed view of both sites, and his laboratory was so close to Kirtland that he often said he could practically shake hands with the guards on the base.

In December 1979, Bennewitz observed strange disc-shaped objects flying over and around the Manzano complex. Some of these craft appeared to be resting on or near the ground within the Weapons Storage Area, occasionally gathering in groups of up to four. Being a physicist who habitually documented everything meticulously, he photographed and filmed the objects, and took detailed notes on their appearance and behavior. According to his notes, the objects emitted a glowing, pulsing light, and just before rising into the air, a bright flash would appear beneath them, followed by a bluish halo as they silently ascended. Since Bennewitz was very patriotic, he believed that his findings should be reported to the authorities. Therefore, in January 1980 he contacted the Air Force personnel working at Kirtland to relay what he had seen.

Since UFO sightings over nuclear installations were regarded as a serious national security concern, the Air Force decided to launch an operation with the goal of discrediting Bennewitz entirely. To do that, they began feeding him false, exaggerated, and misleading information, hoping that he would spread it as widely as possible. They believed that if he started spreading stories that were obviously absurd, the media and the more rational segments of the UFO research community would stop taking him seriously, and the authentic UFO sightings he had witnessed in December 1979, along with his genuine photos and videos, would be dismissed by association.

After reporting his findings to the Air Force, Bennewitz began to think that if there was some kind of alien presence in the area, he might be able to detect the electromagnetic signals emitted by the extraterrestrials. Therefore, he built a device specifically designed for this purpose and informed the Air Force about his plan. Not long after, in March/April 1980, Bennewitz started picking up strange electromagnetic signals and managed to decode some of them. The signals contained messages that conveyed claims such as “the number of our crashed saucers is eight,” “our race is dying on home planet,” and “women of Earth are needed.” He thought these transmissions were authentic, and came to believe that the aliens who piloted the UFOs he had sighted in December 1979 were now attempting to contact him directly. In reality, those signals were generated and sent by the Air Force as part of their operation. That was the start of the disinformation campaign.

A few months later, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) assigned special agent Richard C. Doty to the case. Doty quickly established contact with Bennewitz and began acting as a “yes man,” reinforcing Bennewitz’s convictions and telling him he was on the right track. Furthermore, in 1981 Doty approached William Moore and recruited him to participate in the operation. According to Moore’s later admissions, the Air Force, acting through Doty, promised him access to classified UFO documents if he collaborated in managing the Bennewitz affair, spied on other UFO researchers, and helped spread disinformation within the community.

Over the following years, the “aliens,” meaning the Air Force, continued sending Bennewitz signals that contained increasingly elaborate messages and “revelations.” Through these communications, they managed to convince him that:

1. The aliens had established an underground base beneath the Archuleta Mesa, near the small town of Dulce, New Mexico.
2. Inside the Dulce facility, they were conducting horrifying experiments on human prisoners, subjecting them to genetic manipulation and surgical procedures.
3. The U.S. government had established a secret treaty with the aliens, granting them permission to abduct humans in exchange for advanced technology.
4. The aliens were abducting millions of people and implanting them with devices that allowed them to control their bodies.
5. They were ultimately preparing to break the treaty, invade the planet, and completely enslave humanity.

Doty, of course, validated Bennewitz’s opinions by assuring him that the signals he was receiving were genuine extraterrestrial transmissions and that the information they contained was true.

Since Bennewitz was a licensed pilot, he occasionally flew over the Archuleta Mesa to search for evidence of the supposed underground base. Therefore, the Air Force deliberately placed fake ventilation shafts, phony guard towers, and other staged “evidence” on the mesa, so that he would see them from the air and convince himself that the “revelations” he was receiving through the fake alien signals were true. On some of these flights, Doty even accompanied him, pointing out the planted structures and saying, “You’re right, there really is a base down there.” In addition, Moore, acting under Doty’s instructions, provided Bennewitz with forged documents to further manipulate him.

Eventually, Bennewitz’s paranoia spiraled so badly that it started taking a serious toll on his health. According to the people who knew him personally, at one point he was barely eating at all and was smoking a pack of cigarettes every hour. He had completely barricaded his home and filled it with knives and guns to defend himself from the aliens, who he believed were breaking into his house at night to abduct him and inject substances into his body. He also became convinced that the aliens had implanted a device into his wife’s brain, and that they were using it to control her and spy on him. Things got so bad that, in 1988, his family decided to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital for a few months.

For a comprehensive overview of the Bennewitz case, I highly recommend reading Project Beta by Greg Bishop and X Descending by Christian Lambright. These books provide an in-depth analysis of the events, how they unfolded, and their implications.

Now, you might wonder: what does Paul Bennewitz have to do with Majestic Twelve? The answer is that in March 1981, Richard Doty arranged for a document to be delivered to Bennewitz through William Moore. The document is commonly known as the Aquarius Telex, and includes what is believed to be the very first mention of an organization called Majestic Twelve, highlighted in a small line near the end:

Results of Project Aquarius are still classified Top Secret with no dissemination outside official Intelligence channels, and with restricted access to MJ-Twelve.

The Aquarius Telex was delivered to Bennewitz three years before the Eisenhower Briefing Document and the Truman-Forrestal Memo arrived at Shandera’s house. Therefore, the line is particularly significant. It effectively resets the timeline for these events and indicates that Moore had already seen a reference to an organization called Majestic Twelve in 1981, a detail that has largely disappeared from the later discussion of the Majestic Twelve documents.

LINDA HOWE AND MAJESTIC TWELVE

In early 1983, Linda Howe, hot off the success of her regional Emmy Award-winning documentary on cattle mutilations, A Strange Harvest, had been tapped to produce an HBO special with the proposed title of UFOs: The E.T. Factor. On April 9, 1983, Howe met with Richard Doty at Kirtland Air Force Base, an incident that seems lifted straight out of a spy novel. As Howe recounted in An Alien Harvest:

I sat down with my back to the windows. [Doty] sat behind the desk. “You know you upset some people in Washington with your film, A Strange Harvest. It came too close to something we don’t want the public to know about.” That began a brief discussion about my documentary. I asked him why extraterrestrials were mutilating animals. Richard Doty said that the subject was classified beyond his need to know. He told me I had been monitored while I was making the film. […]
[Doty] reached with his left hand to a drawer on the left side of the desk and opened it. He pulled from the drawer a brown envelope. He opened it and took out several standard letter sized sheets of white paper. "My superiors have asked me to show this to you,“ he said, handing me the pages. “You can read these and you can ask me questions, but you can’t take any notes.” I took the papers and I read the top page. It was entitled “Briefing Paper for the President of the United States of America” on the subject of unidentified aerial craft or vehicles.
Richard Doty then stood up and said, “I want you to move from there.” He motioned me toward the large chair in the middle of the room. “Eyes can see through windows.” I got up and moved to the big chair, confused. I didn’t know what was happening. As I looked at the pages in my lap a second time, I wondered why he was showing them to me. I was very uncomfortable, but I wanted to read and remember every word…

The documents given to Linda Howe detailed four distinct saucer crashes that were said to have occurred in Roswell, Aztec, Kingman, and Mexico. The Roswell incident reportedly involved a lone survivor referred to as “EBE,” an acronym for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. EBE was described as being four feet tall, with gray skin and no hair, possessing a large head and prominent eyes that were likened to those of a child, though he was said to have the intellect of “a thousand men.” EBE was allegedly held captive at the Los Alamos Laboratories until his death in 1952.

According to Howe, the documents stated that Project Blue Book was a public relations operation that was supposed to divert attention from the real investigative projects. In his conversations with Howe, Doty mentioned MJ-Twelve, but suggested “MJ” stood for “Majority” rather than “Majestic.” Whatever the real name, it was a committee of twelve high ranking government officials, scientists, and military officers who set the policy for the cover-up and the dissemination of disinformation about UFOs and government interest in them.

One of the documents claimed that the aliens had created a being who was placed on Earth to teach humanity about peace and love approximately two thousands years ago, a reference that strongly implied a connection to Jesus Christ. Furthermore, they claimed that after EBE’s death, other extraterrestrials, identified as EBE-2 and EBE-3, arrived on Earth as part of an exchange program. Doty informed Howe that EBE-3 was still alive and indicated that she might have an opportunity to interview him. Doty also said that high-level intelligence officers were in possession of classified materials, including film footage of a UFO landing at a military base and other photographs, which he suggested could be used for Howe’s documentary. He assured her that he would contact her in the future using the code name “Falcon.”

Several months later, however, Doty told Howe that he had been removed from the case and referred her to other intelligence contacts. These individuals also delayed providing the promised materials, continuing to string her along for many more months. Ultimately, the prolonged delays led HBO to withdraw from the project, leaving Howe without the necessary resources to proceed with her documentary.

This information is extremely important, as it strongly suggests that Doty had a deep and deliberate involvement in the creation of what would later become the Eisenhower Briefing Document. In fact, the documents that were shown to Linda Howe contained a great deal of the same content that would eventually appear in the Eisenhower Document. For example, the acronym “EBE” can be found in both documents. Similarly, the documents shown to Linda Howe referenced a UFO crash that allegedly happened in Mexico. This crash is a clear allusion to the so-called “Del Rio crash,” which the Eisenhower Document places near the border between Mexico and Texas, in the El Indio-Guerrero region. Therefore, just like with the Aquarius Telex, we are faced with a situation where information that would later appear in the Eisenhower Document had already surfaced before that document was ever sent to Shandera.

75 MILES? NO, 62 MILES

In both Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood’s paper, The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12, and later in an article adapted from the paper and published in the MUFON Journal under the by-line of Brad Sparks, there is a discussion of what they regard as a fatal error in the Eisenhower Briefing Document.

To explain what they mean by a “fatal error,” they quote Stanton Friedman, who had stated that one way to determine whether “the document is a phony is on the basis of any mistaken information in it.” Both William Moore and Jaime Shandera echoed this concern at various times by suggesting the same principle. Erroneous information in a document strongly indicates that it has been forged. All of them, including Sparks and Greenwood, argue that such fatal errors would demonstrate that the Eisenhower Document, at best, constituted disinformation and, at worst, was a hoax designed to divert attention from more significant areas of research.

The error identified by Sparks and Greenwood in the Eisenhower Briefing Document pertains to the distance to the debris field near Corona, New Mexico, which is so significantly inaccurate that they consider it a major flaw. Brad Sparks asserted that “the Eisenhower Document wrongly claimed that the Roswell crash site, which refers to the Mack Brazel debris field, was approximately 75 miles from the Roswell base, when in fact it was only 62 miles away.” He has been highlighting this error since 1987. Sparks calculated the actual distance to be 62 air miles, while the distance by road exceeds 100 miles, further emphasizing that the 75-mile figure mentioned in the Eisenhower Document is incorrect. Such an error, even over something as minor as the distances involved, should throw the entire document into question, because those creating such a report for review by a president would not commit an error of this nature.

Sparks suggested that the 75 mile figure originates from The Roswell Incident, published by William Moore and Charles Berlitz in 1980. It is, at best, an estimate that is not based on the facts that should have been available to an aviation unit. Their navigation needed to be precise, and even a miniscule error made at the beginning of a flight could result in missing the destination by dozens of miles. The staff of Roswell Army Air Field would have known the precise distance to the Brazel debris field, and this information should have been reflected in the Eisenhower Document.

A MAJOR FLAW

As previously stated, the Eisenhower Briefing Document mentions two UFO crashes: the Roswell incident and another crash that allegedly occurred on December 6, 1950, in the El Indio-Guerrero area near the Texas-Mexico border. This second crash is relatively obscure, but its inclusion in the document is significant, as it serves as additional evidence that the document is not genuine.

In fact, this particular UFO crash tale came to light in the late 1970s through the efforts of W. Todd Zechel, a UFO researcher who claimed to have discovered a 1968 newspaper article referencing the supposed crash of an unidentified object in 1948. The article included statements attributed to a man named Robert B. Willingham, who identified himself as a former Air Force officer and claimed to have witnessed the incident. Building upon this vague lead, Zechel contacted Willingham directly. In 1977, Willingham signed an affidavit in which he recounted visiting the crash site, observing unusual debris, and even recovering a piece of metal that he described as having a honeycomb-like structure and being resistant to extremely high temperatures.

However, as the years passed, Willingham’s account underwent several changes regarding the date of the alleged crash. At first, he stated that the event had occurred in 1948, which coincides with the date mentioned in the 1968 newspaper article originally discovered by W. Todd Zechel. He later claimed that the crash had taken place on December 6, 1950, which is the date given for the incident in the Eisenhower Document. In subsequent versions, he moved the date once again, first to 1954 and finally to 1955. The supposed crash site also moved over the years, from the El Indio-Guerrero area to a location near Del Rio, Texas, and eventually to a region south of Lantry, Texas.

Willingham’s credibility was definitively undermined when various researchers started looking into his background. While he presented himself as a retired Air Force colonel, investigators discovered that he had never served in the Air Force at all. Instead, he had been a member of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), a civilian auxiliary of the Air Force, where he held the rank of lieutenant colonel. His military record showed that he enlisted in the Army in December 1945, achieved the rank of E4, and was discharged in January 1947. Furthermore, no evidence has ever surfaced to corroborate his claims, and no additional witnesses have come forward to support his account.

Since the story of the Del Rio UFO crash relies entirely on Willingham’s testimony, and since Willingham has proven to be an unreliable witness, it is clear that there was never any UFO crash in Del Rio. This, in turn, means that the inclusion of this alleged UFO crash in the Eisenhower Document represents a significant flaw. An authentic presidential briefing document written in 1952 cannot, by definition, include a demonstrably false story that was created in the 1970s. Therefore, the inclusion of the Del Rio UFO crash in the Eisenhower Document proves that the document was not created in 1952.

THE SMOKING GUN

A significant controversy surrounding the Majestic Twelve documents concerns the unusual date formatting they exhibit, which appears inconsistent with the standard practices employed by the United States government during the late 1940s and early 1950s. During that period, government documents typically used a specific date style: the day written as a number, followed by the fully spelled-out name of the month, and concluded by the complete year written numerically (e.g., “2 March 1948”). Although, on rare occasions, a comma might appear after the month, this was exceedingly uncommon. In one examined sample of 600 pages, only three instances of this anomaly were identified, all originating from a single individual in Air Force Intelligence.

Philip Klass, a well-known UFO skeptic, drew attention to the fact that the Eisenhower Briefing Document deviated from this conventional style. He highlighted that it not only included an additional, uncommon comma after the month but also added a leading zero before single-digit dates (e.g., “07 July, 1947”). Klass noted that such formatting was absent from authentic government documents of the time, but was present in the personal writings of William Moore. Consequently, critics raised the question of whether Moore had been involved in the creation of the Majestic Twelve documents.

In 1990, Barry Greenwood received a letter from Jun-Ichi Takanashi, a respected UFO researcher who has since passed away. In this letter, Takanashi claimed to have discovered five government documents concerning Green Fireballs that exhibited the same peculiar date formatting as the Majestic Twelve documents. Green Fireballs were mysterious luminous objects reported in the late 1940s and early 1950s, often seen streaking across the skies near sensitive military installations, particularly in New Mexico. Some researchers speculated that these phenomena might have been related to classified military projects, while others suggested a possible extraterrestrial origin.

Initially, Greenwood considered the possibility that the dating style in the Majestic Twelve documents might have genuinely been used by the government. However, Takanashi made an important observation. He noted that out of the five documents he had examined, only one appeared to be a direct copy of an original government document. The other four had been retyped, presumably for better readability, and all of these retyped documents were included in William Moore’s 1983 publication, The Mystery of the Green Fireballs. Recognizing the need to verify the authenticity of these documents, Greenwood embarked on a thorough investigation. He located the original versions of the retyped documents in the Project Blue Book microfilms stored at the National Archives, specifically in Roll 88, which contained the OSI Chronological Files. Upon comparison, Greenwood discovered that Moore had modified the date formatting during the retyping process. Moore consistently added the uncommon comma after the month and, in one instance, inserted a leading zero before a single-digit date that had not existed in the original document (e.g., “9 February 1949” became “09 February, 1949”).

It became evident that Moore had a habit of retyping government documents to improve their legibility. However, in doing so, he inadvertently introduced his distinctive style of date formatting into these reproductions. Moore referred to these retyped documents as "faithful reproductions” in his publication, but the alterations in date formatting created a strong resemblance between these documents and the Majestic Twelve documents. And that, in my opinion, proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Eisenhower Briefing Document, the Truman-Forrestal Memo, and the Cutler-Twining Memo were fabricated by Richard Doty with the assistance of William Moore, whose consistent use of this unusual date formatting across his personal writings implicated him in the creation of the documents.

CONCLUSIONS

After thoroughly examining all available evidence, I believe the case against the authenticity of the Majestic Twelve documents is overwhelming. The internal inconsistencies, factual errors, and peculiar stylistic choices, combined with their suspicious origin and connection to known disinformation agents leave little room for doubt. These documents are not genuine, and there is every indication that the Air Force Office of Special Investigations had a hand in creating them. They had the means, the motive, and the right people to pull something like this off. The way they handled the Bennewitz affair proves that this kind of disinformation campaign was well within their playbook.

So why would they do it? Most likely to reinforce the idea of a UFO crash at Roswell. By crafting a dramatic story involving crashed discs, dead alien bodies, and secret recovery teams, they diverted attention and led UFOlogists down a false path, away from more credible and productive lines of inquiry. They were probably designed to mislead: to create confusion, sow division among researchers, and flood the entire topic with noise. And they achieved that goal perfectly, hijacking the conversation and shaping a narrative that served the interests of those orchestrating the disinformation.

Ultimately, the documents cannot be separated from Richard Doty, William Moore, Paul Bennewitz, and the Air Force, whose actions shaped the myth. Understanding these connections is essential for anyone trying to make sense of UFO research and the patterns of disinformation that have influenced the field for decades. Recognizing how these forces operated allows us to see how narratives can be manipulated, attention diverted, and inquiry misdirected. By keeping these connections in mind, we can ensure that the documents are viewed for what they truly represent, rather than for the illusion they try to project.

MY SOURCES

• Top Secret/Magic by Stanton Friedman
• Project Beta by Greg Bishop
• X Descending by Christian Lambright
• Important New Revelations About the Paul Bennewitz Affair by Robert Hastings
• Crash — When UFOs Fall From The Sky by Kevin Randle
• The Myth of MJ-12 by Kevin Randle
• Case MJ-12 by Kevin Randle
• The Secret Pratt Tapes and the Origins of MJ-12 by Brad Sparks and Barry Greenwood

Soviet Nukes and UFOs

Original Source: https://openminds.tv/soviet-nukes-and-ufos/

It sounds like a tabloid headline, but the question is a valid one: Did UFOs almost trigger an accidental nuclear war in 1982? The incident in question occurred in south-central Ukraine on the evening of October 4th, according to official depositions from Soviet military units and interviews with one of the officers in charge of the investigation. There were multiple witnesses to the event, which took place between 7:30 and 9:37 pm, and many of them were Soviet military officers and personnel stationed at a long-range nuclear missile base in Usovo, near Byelokovoriche.

The depositions describe nighttime unidentified lights performing acrobatics in the sky over several villages around the missile base. That, in itself, is not particularly worrisome, as the reports don’t indicate any sign of hostility from the lights. But what happened at an underground bunker of Military Unit (MU) 52035, one which contained nuclear missiles launch control panels, is another matter entirely.

“For a short time,” retired Air Force Colonel Boris Sokolov told ABC TV News Moscow correspondent David Ensor, “signal lights on both the control panels suddenly turned on, the lights showing that missiles were preparing for launching. This could normally only happen if an order was transmitted from Moscow.” As director of the Ministry of Defense’s effort for “research into the field of anomalous phenomena in the atmosphere and in outer space,” Sokolov became a member of the four-man commission set up to investigate the so-called Usovo case.

That was back in the early ‘80s when the missile targets were located in America, former KGB Director Yuri Andropov was General Secretary, and Ronald Reagan was denouncing the USSR as “the evil empire.” Today, of course, it’s a different story. The missile base was closed in the early 90s with the end of the cold war, the Ukraine is an independent country, and military witnesses are free to talk, sometimes. So we are lucky to have the official deposition of Major M. Davidovich Kataman, senior assistant of the commander of the Military Unit 52035’s communication service, in charge of the computerized control panels for the long-range nuclear missiles at the Usovo base. Major Kataman did not see the UFOs flying above because he was, at the time, on shift in the underground bunker. But what he did see was, militarily speaking, the stuff of nightmares in his line of work.

Major Kataman wrote in his deposition that, “on the 4th of October 1982 at 21:37, I observed spontaneous illumination of all displays: BR, P, Sh, DR, GP, SR, PR, CZ, BT, NBT, GP, message, GB message, PP, PS, OR, PNS, Z, PZG, PZNS, figure indicators as in the regime ‘light marks’ at first push on the information board.” Confusing as this sounds—and the difficulties of translation notwithstanding (1)—the Major is implying that someone or something was apparently manipulating the series of precise control codes, four spaces and control code combination, which regulate the computerized missile control launch panel. His deposition added that, “testing of apparatus and measurement of parameters according to technical map 1-30 showed no defects. The apparatus was functioning normally,” that is, before and after the strange “illumination of all displays.”

The officer then added: “I suppose that this effect can take place as a result of the influence of a powerful impulse on the apparatus’ power system, especially on block BP-263 (U-10) then on VTG-127 (U5, U3, U2) and then on blocks U14, U12 and U11 [missile silos], bearing the main load in processing data in the apparatus. No abnormal effects were observed in other communications means… No such cases had been observed before.” The equipment was later taken apart piece by piece but no anomalies or malfunctions were found.

According to the ABC-TV News Prime Time Live segment “KGB UFO Files,” which was broadcast on October 6, 1994, “for 15 agonizing seconds, the base lost control of its nuclear weapons; what happened here on this day has never been explained.” ABC also interviewed two witnesses to the 1982 sighting: a civilian from Byelokovoriche and Lt. Col. Vladimir Platunov. Lt. Col. Platunov described the object as “… just like a flying saucer, the way they show them in the movies, no portholes, no nothing. The surface was absolutely even, the disc made a beautiful turn…on the edge, just like a plane. It [made] no sound. I had never seen anything like that before.”

In comparison, the language in the nine other depositions—in addition to Major Kataman’s—is quite sober. They are by witnesses from MU 52035 and MU 32157, and include one soldier, one Lieutenant, three Captains, two Majors and three Lt. Colonels. It’s quite an impressive list. The witnesses were in various locations, mostly on roads linking Byelokovoriche and the villages of Usovo, Topyilnja, Zhovtnevo, Perebrody and Korosten. These small villages probably will not appear in a general atlas, but the area is located in central Ukraine, south of the capital Kiev.

THE TESTIMONY

Captain Valery Polykhaev was on a bus, returning home from his post at the Usovo base at 7:30 pm on October 4, 1982. “After the bus stopped at the cross roads to Usovo,” he stated in his deposition, “I saw in the clear space above the road, at 5-6 km of altitude, two brightly shining objects resembling very much a New Year’s tree garland in it’s shape.” (I believe “New Year’s tree garland” is a politically correct, Communist term for a common Christmas tree decoration.) “They were shining with bright-golden light and those lights were twinkling,” continued Capt. Polykhaev. “There were 6-8 brightly shining spots making a circle in every object. The distance between objects was about 2-3 km. Then a shining small ball separated from the left object and moved to the right one.” The lights continued their acrobatics for another 5 to 7 minutes, according to the Captain, who added that, “while moving the object changed its shape, the twinkling lights reformed from an ellipsis to a straight line.”

Lt. Colonel Balanev was returning home on the same military bus when, together with the rest of the passengers, he “observed a luminescence in the sky unknown to me from 19:20 to 19:40 hours. It was in the shape of many twinkling stars from pale-yellow to dark-cherry in color.” Other passengers in the bus who also witnessed the phenomenon and wrote depositions for the Ministry of Defense were Captains Duman and Tukmachev, and Lt. Colonels Povar and Kuzmin. Lt. Colonel Zinkovsky at first thought that it was a helicopter, but “on coming to the place where I observed the object, I saw that there was nothing there.”

Capt. Polykhaev saw the object again later in the evening. By 8 pm, he was driving his car with his wife, two children and some friends. They were near the railway crossing between Topyilnja station and Zhovtnevo street when they noticed once again an unusual light show in the skies over Usovo at an altitude of 5-7 km. “A bright light flashed and went out, then it flashed again and after that, 6-8 bright-golden lights flashed around it in the shape of an ellipsis,” continued Capt. Polykhaev’s deposition. “A small brightly shining ball separated from them and flew to the earth and on approaching it, went out. In 10 minutes the phenomenon repeated… the shining object began to move quickly in our side, with high speed and rising in size. Then the object suddenly stopped. Our distance to it was about 1-2 km. The children were scared that the object would fall down on us. After it stopped, the light went out slowly as if melted away. In ten minutes, another garland ‘flourished’ at a large distance and went out again.” Captain Kovalenko was in the same car with Capt. Polykhaev and basically described a similar event.

Most of the depositions are shorter and less detailed than Capt. Polykhaev’s. Major Lipezki was driving along the Perebrody-Usovo road with Capt. Ryabinin. His deposition states that, “I paid attention to the luminescence of some object straight in front of me somewhere above Usovo. The luminescence came from a group of shining spots forming 5 groups. The lights were disposed on the area approximately equal to the area of the setting sun. It was situated at an altitude of about 30 meters above the edge of a distant forest. The color of the lights was from pale-yellow to red. It was about 19:10-19:15 hours.” The two officers saw the lights again twice as they continued on the road towards Byelokovoriche, which they reached without further excitement.

Senior Lieutenant Kobulyansky, the Battery vice-commander, and Major Drobakhin, also saw unidentified lights on and off from another car along the road to Byelokovoriche between 19:30 and 21 hours. At one point, they reported an apparent electromagnetic effect on the car radio, such as if “we were coming under high-voltage lines, but there were no high-voltage lines there,” states Lt. Kobulyansky’s deposition.

NO CONCLUSION

What could have triggered the multiple-witness UFO by several Soviet military officers in the Ukraine on October 4, 1982? The ABC broadcast added that “there were military exercises going on at the time of the incident involving explosives in the air, but they were over 200 miles away from here. The weather conditions were normal.” Unlike other Soviet military reports from Col. Sokolov’s collection we have obtained, the dossier on the Usovo affair is quite slim: nine pages with the typed depositions quoted above, but no evaluations, no technical appraisals on the control panel malfunction; no mention of other possible factors or data on military maneuvers, radar, additional witnesses, etc.; and perhaps most significantly, no conclusions by the investigating commission.

Presumably all or some of the additional data exists in a Russian Ministry or intelligence archive somewhere, but it’s still secret. Yet even if the incident’s visual component could be explained by flares and explosives from nearby military maneuvers—something Col. Sokolov has apparently discounted in his interviews—these could not account for the “spontaneous illumination” of the control panels reported by Major Kataman M. Davidovich, which makes this case unique.

THE SOVIET UFO DOSSIER

The report on the Usovo incident and other cases of “anomalous atmospheric phenomena” in the former Soviet Union would have remained secret under normal circumstances. However, the fall of communism and the demise of the USSR produced something that 15 or 20 years ago would have seemed unthinkable: the declassification and literal “sale” of government documents of all kinds—from nuclear disasters and sunken submarines to UFO reports and psychotronic research. George Knapp, the well-known reporter from KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, visited Moscow for the first time in 1993. With the assistance of Dr. Nikolai Kapranov, a national security advisor for the Russian Parliament, Knapp and his associate Bryan Gresh were able to meet and interview Boris Sokolov, the retired Soviet Air Force Colonel who directed the UFO collection effort for the Ministry of Defense between 1978 and 1988.

Col. Sokolov had kept copies of approximately 386 UFO sightings reported simultaneously to both the Ministry and the KGB and, after some delicate negotiations, the whole dossier was sold to George Knapp. “In essence,” says Knapp, “an order went off from the Ministry of Defense to every unit in the Soviet military empire to fully investigate, report on, and file any UFO sightings, so in essence the entire Soviet military was like a giant UFO listening post.” (2) The whole effort was undoubtedly cold war-oriented, as Col. Sokolov himself acknowledged in his interview with ABC: “It was presumed that if we obtained the knowledge of such technologies we would achieve a considerable advantage in the competition that we were unfortunately engaged at the time.”

The UFO documents obtained by Knapp can be divided in three broad categories. The first is a short Summary of 357 cases logged between 1978 and 1991. They give the date, time and location for each incident; a brief summary of the report; a notation on whether any space launches or other technical experiments took place on the same time; and finally what the investigators call “Influences,” such as radar detection, electromagnetic effect on equipment, or physiological effects on the witnesses. While these Summaries are basically raw or unevaluated data, some of them provide interesting and provocative reading.

The second part of Col. Sokolov’s dossier is a more detailed discussion of individual cases. These consist of full depositions written by the military witnesses, such as those reviewed in the Usovo case, as well as a complete Questionnaire. This questionnaire includes not just the obvious questions about time, shape, direction followed by the object, meteorological conditions, and so on, but also “Influence on technical means” (electric equipment, radar, etc.) and “Influence on people and other living beings and environment.” Drawings and sketches of the observation are also included in the Questionnaire.

The last category of documents obtained by Knapp are not part of the old Soviet Ministry archives kept by Col. Sokolov, but part of the “Thread-3” project undertaken since 1991 by the current Russian Ministry of Defense. These documents were actually smuggled out of Russia by Knapp, and their style and contents are quite different from the previous project. They consist of a number of reports not so much on individual UFO cases, but on a variety of topics such as: the history of UFO research in the USSR and Russia; propulsion and “non-traditional engines” and “the possible application for the creation of military and industrial technical devices”; a brief review of American UFO documents and popular Western ufological research; analysis of the messages and philosophical outlook of some Russian UFO contactees; reports and rumors of UFO sightings by Russian cosmonauts; and so on.

The head of “Thread-3” agreed to meet Knapp but only off-the-record; his name was not disclosed and his face hidden from the TV camera. But in 1992, a man described as “Lt. Colonel Alexander Platskin, a CIS-United Armed Forces consultant on the problem of anomalous phenomena,” was interviewed on camera on the record for the Russian documentary film, UFO: Top Secret, produced and directed by the Samara ufologist Dr. Vladimir Avinsky. Lt. Col. Platskin stated candidly that, “there were cases of unauthorized firing at UFOs from automatic weapons. For instance, in the Djerzhinsky region of the Gorky province, fighter planes rose to intercept UFOs and buried a glimpse more than once, but it was all in vain. The singularity of the phenomenon startled and terrified sentries who opened fire at the strange objects. Pilots often saw them on their radar screens.”

Col. Sokolov, in an interview with George Knapp, seemed to confirm Plastskin statement. “Pilots recognized UFOs as a threat to them,” he said. “There were 40 episodes in which they shot at UFOs. An order was given to pilots to chase UFOs and shoot at them, but when the pilots tried, the UFOs sped away… In three cases, the pilots lost control and crashed. Two of the pilots died. After that, pilots received a new order. When they see a UFO, change course and get out.”

COL. SOKOLOV’S FLIP-FLOP

In 2000, Col. Sokolov and Yuli Platov, a well known Russian scientist and UFO skeptic, published a comprehensive article in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, the official proceedings of the Russian Academy, titled “History of UFO State Research in the USSR.” It described the history of the secret military studies of UFOs between 1977 and 1990, only to dismiss the bulk of them as mostly space-related IFOs (Identified Flying Objects). “Practically all the mass night observations of ‘UFO’ were unambiguously identified as the effects accompanying the launches of the rockets or the tests of aerospace equipment,” stated the report. After discussing and debunking a few cases, Sokolov and Platov concluded that there were no genuine UFO landings, contact cases or abductions. “This means that either the territory of the USSR was, due to any reasons, closed for alien visitations during, at least, 13 years or that the hypothesis of an extraterrestrial origin of ‘UFO’ is inconsistent,” wrote Sokolov and Platov. You can access the entire Platov & Sokolov paper translated by James Oberg here [http://www.debunker.com/historical/HistoryRussianUFOlogy.html].

Needless to say, the Usovo case is also discussed in some length in the Russian Academy journal and debunked as well. The first strange item is that the authors give its date as October 5, 1983, while all the official depositions in our possession clearly state that the year was 1982. Could this be a typo either in the original or in the English translation supplied by the well known American space expert and UFO skeptic, James Oberg? Sokolov and Platov then explain the visual sightings in the Usovo area by bomb dropping exercises conducted at “an air polygon of the 26 army located in the belorussian Polesje approximately 400 kms from a place of observation.” Finally, the two authors deal with the nagging problem of the malfunction of the nuclear missile control panel described by Major Kataman. Nothing to worry about. Almost as an afterthought, they finished the section on the Usovo case with this statement: “It should be added, that the fault in the operation of the command post equipment had nothing to do with the observed phenomena, it just completely accidentally coincided in time. However, just this time coincidence was the main reason for an urgent investigation of the event.”

The main question we are left with is what happened to Col. Boris Sokolov. His article with Yuli Platov in 2000 sounds totally different to the man who was interviewed by George Knapp and ABC Prime Time Live in the early 1990s. What caused his reversal? One possibility is that he got some flack for giving Knapp the Soviet military UFO dossier. There is some murkiness on how this transaction took place and it’s almost certain that, given the dire economic situation in Russia at the time, Sokolov was paid for it.

OTHER UFO INCIDENTS AT MISSILE BASES

Another important point is that the Usovo case is not in a vacuum. There is at least a handful of incidents involving UFOs at sensitive installations with nuclear bases the in both the U.S. and the old USSR that are documented and there might be more in still secret military files. One fascinating case Soviet military case which ironically is not even mentioned in the Sokolov and Platov article, occurred at an army missile base in the district of Kapustin Yar, Astrakhan Region, on the night of July 28-29, 1989. A partial file of this incident was declassified by the KGB in 1991 to the late cosmonaut and general Pavel Popovich, as part of a so-called “blue folder” of 124 pages of “Cases of Observations of Anomalous Occurrences in the Territory of the USSR, 1982-1990.”

The Kapustin Yar dossier consists of the depositions of seven military witnesses (two junior officers, a corporal and four privates) plus illustrations of the object by the observers, and a brief case summary by an unnamed KGB officer. The KGB file is obviously incomplete, since there is no data on the jet scramble mission (which is mentioned) and no final conclusions. However, the documents we do have provide fascinating reading. The most detailed observation comes from the Officer-on-Duty, Ensign Valery N. Voloshin:

“One could clearly see a powerful blinking signal which resembled a camera flash in the night sky. The object flew over the unit’s logistics yard and moved in the direction of the rocket weapons depot, 300 meters [1,000 ft.] away. It hovered over the depot at a height of 20 meters [65 ft.]. The UFO’s hull shone with a dim green light which looked like phosphorous. It was a disc, 4 or 5 m. [13-17 ft.] in diameter, with a semispherical top.

“While the object was hovering over the depot, a bright beam appeared from the bottom of the disc, where the flash had been before, and made two or three circles, lighting the corner of one of the buildings… The movement of the beam lasted for several seconds, then the beam disappeared and the object, still flashing, moved in the direction of the railway station. After that, I observed the object hovering over the logistics yard, railway station and cement factory. Then it returned to the rocket weapons depot, and hovered over it at an altitude of 60-70 m. [200-240 ft.]. The object was observed from that time on, by the first guard-shift and its commander. At 1:30 hrs., the object flew in the direction of the city of Akhtubinsk and disappeared from sight. The flashes on the object were not periodical, I observed all this for exactly two hours: from 23:30 to 1:30.”

Ensign Voloshin also provided a sketch of the disc-shaped object emitting the beam (see picture). The multiple witness incident at Kapustin Yar was selected as one of the cases in the Laurance Rockefeller-funded UFO Briefing Document – The Best Available Evidence, which I coauthored with Don Berliner and Marie Galbraith in 1995. You can read our entire treatment of this episode here [http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ufo_briefingdocument/1989.htm].

On the American side, there are at least two other similar examples of missile launch code manipulation coinciding with a UFO incident. The testimony of USAF Capt. (Ret.) Robert Salas, who was on duty at Oscar Flight as part of the 490th strategic missile squad in Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana on the morning of March 16, 1967, is well known. Salas was one of the military witnesses at the famous Disclosure Project event in the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC in May 2001; he later published in 2005, with James Klotz, the book Faded Giant – The 1967 Missile/UFO Incidents. Basically, Salas’ story is that on that fateful morning, while on duty inside the underground bunker, he received a call from the one of the guards, who sounded quite disturbed. “Sir, there’s a glowing red object hovering right outside the front gate – I’m looking at it right now. I’ve got all the men out here with their weapons drawn.” As Capt. Salas went to notify his superior of the situation, “our missiles starting shutting down one by one,” he testified at the NPC event. “By shutting down, I mean they went into a ‘no-go’ condition meaning they could not be launched.” You can read the full details in Faded Giant, which includes a large number of declassified documents.

Fast forward to the fall of 1975. This time the target was the K-7 Minuteman nuclear missile area at the Malmstrom Strategic Air Command (SAC) base in Montana, on November 7, 1975. It occurred during a famous two-week UFO flap at several SAC bases along the USA-Canada border. According to The UFO Cover-Up, the authoritative book by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood on the declassified American UFO documents, “targeting teams, along with computer specialists, were brought to the [K-7] missile site to check out the missile, and specifically, the computer in the warhead that targets the missile. Amazingly, when the computer was checked, they found that the tape had mysteriously changed target numbers! The re-entry vehicle was then taken from the silo and brought back to the base. Eventually, the entire missile was changed.”

Although there are no specific declassified documents for this warhead computer tampering, the overall UFO flap over five SAC bases (Loring AFB, Maine, Wurtsmith AFB, Michigan, Malmstrom AFB, Montana, Minot AFB, North Dakota, and Canadian Forces Station Falconbridge, Ontario, Canada) during a two-week period in late October and early November 1975, is well known and fully documented by declassified USAF and NORAD documents. A couple of sample quotes provide the alert status of these incidents:

“Several recent sightings of unidentified aircraft/helicopters flying/hovering over Priority A restricted areas during the hours of darkness have prompted the implementation of security Option 3 at our northern tier bases. Since 27 Oct. 75, sightings have occurred at Loring AFB, Wurtsmith AFB, and most recently, at Malmstrom AFB. All attempts to identify these aircraft have met with negative results.” (CINCSAC Offutt AFB message, “Subject: Defense Against Helicopter Assault,” November 10, 1975.)

“November 7, Malmstrom AFB, Montana. A Sabotage Alert Team described seeing a brightly glowing orange, football field-sized disc that illuminated the Minuteman ICBM missile site. As F-106 jet interceptors approached, the UFO took off straight up, NORAD radar tracking it to an altitude of 200,000 feet [38 miles or 60 km.]. An object… emitted a light which illuminated the site driveway. The orange-gold object overhead also has small lights on it.” (24 NORAD Region Senior Director Log November 1975.)

With all these facts in mind, it’s not unreasonable to think that the nuclear superpowers set in motion a policy to deal with these situations and avoid a risk of nuclear war. A curious clause about “unidentified objects” within an Agreement on Measures to Reduce the Risk of Nuclear War between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics, points in that direction. The Agreement was part of the policy of detente during the Nixon and early Brezhnev administrations. It was signed on September 30, 1971 by Secretary of State, William Rogers, and Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko.

The Agreement has nine articles on issues such as informing each other “against the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons under its control,” notification in advance of missile launches that go beyond the national territory of each country, and other measures of cooperation in order to avert “the risk of outbreak of nuclear war.” Article 3 reads: “The Parties undertake to notify each other immediately in the event of detection by missile warning systems of unidentified objects [emphasis added], or in the event of signs of interference with these systems or with related communications facilities, if such occurrences could create a risk of outbreak of nuclear war between the two countries.”

The interpretation of Article 3 as including the possibility of UFO incursions seems inescapable. It is indeed reassuring in view of the cases where UFOs hovered over military facilities with nuclear weapons (SAC bases in USA, NATO bases in England, missile bases in Russia). On the other hand, attorney Robert Bletchman pointed out that “unidentified objects” (UOs) include non-UFO situations as well (such as an accidental overflight by a civilian aircraft or a terrorist attack), but in the final analysis, UOs do include UFOs. What degree of cooperation about UOs/UFOs existed between the USA and USSR (and currently with Russia), is hard to say, but Article 9 stated: “This Agreement shall be of unlimited duration.”

NOTES:

1. The depositions’ English translations were done in Russia and so the wording can be rough. I’ve edited the text slightly to make it more readable, but otherwise not changed the descriptions.
2. Knapp gave me copies of his entire Soviet and Russian military dossier in the fall of 1996, for publication originally in Japan (I was then a columnist for the now-defunct Tokyo paranormal magazine Borderland). An English version was also published in the journal The Anomalist Nº 7, Winter 1998/99.

My username is Spartacus because, being a radical socialist and a Marxist, I see Spartacus (the historical character) as “A great general, noble character, real representative of the ancient proletariat,” as Marx called him. The 01 in my nickname comes from the fact that I was born in 2001.

I have the habit of changing my Avatar very often. But whatever, if I had to explain the avatar I have right now, I put it simply because I like astronomy, I like space, and I like cool wallpapers that have astronomy and space as a theme.

G&G-Fan said:

There is a difference between those examples and a whole 5 minute stretch of time where we’re supposed to feel nervous for the droids because they’re in a dangerous wasteland.

The Jedi are mentioned quite a bit in the Original Trilogy, and they come across as mysterious because you have no real sense of how their Order was structured, what their rules were, or what their temple looked like. Watching those films, you are left with a sense of mystery surrounding the Jedi simply because you know so little about them. If you watch the Prequels first, they take that mystery away.

The same applies to the Empire. It is not mysterious in the sense that we do not know what it is, but rather in the sense that we do not know how it came to be. How was the Empire established? Who is this Emperor we see in the films? What connection did he have to the Old Republic? These are all unanswered questions when watching the Original Trilogy, and the Prequels take away that mystery by giving us all the answers upfront.

So, if we were to follow your logic and remove everything in the Prequels that diminishes the sense of mystery in the Original Trilogy, there would not be much of the Prequels left at all.

As for Tatooine, the Prequels do not ruin it. They only show a very small part of the planet, just like the Original Trilogy does. The Prequels never take us deep into the desert, nor do they explore its dangers. The story stays within a relatively civilized area where you have a clear idea of what to expect — exactly like in A New Hope. When the droids wander into the desert in A New Hope, the tension remains, even if you have seen the Prequels, because the desert is still an unknown. The Prequels only show the parts of Tatooine that are full of people, places where there are no real surprises. The desert, on the other hand, remains an unpredictable and dangerous place, no matter how much you have already seen in the Prequels.

G&G-Fan said:

When watching A New Hope, and the droids are trekking Tatooine, there’s meant to be an air of mystery. You don’t know what you’re gonna find.
The Prequels ruin that.

Not if you watch the movies in release order, like almost everyone does. Don’t take this as a personal attack, but by following your logic, the Prequels should not exist in the first place, because almost every single element of the Original Trilogy feels like that. The Jedi, the Dark Side, the Empire, Alderaan, and so on. You need to remove some of the mystery surrounding these things if you want to watch the Prequels first, that’s just inevitable.

A RESPONSE TO THE “WHY EARTH?” ARGUMENT AGAINST EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITATION

by Spartacus 01

A lot of UFO skeptics say it’s super unlikely that, out of all the planets in the galaxy, aliens would end up coming here, to Earth. But honestly, I’ve never really understood the logic behind that argument. Why exactly would it be so improbable for aliens to visit Earth? What are skeptics basing this assumption on? What parameters are they using to calculate how likely or unlikely that scenario is?

Even though we’re still a relatively primitive civilization by most standards, we’ve already figured out how to detect potentially habitable planets outside our Solar System. We can observe the atmospheres of exoplanets and identify gases like methane or carbon dioxide, which might point to biological activity. In the near future, we’ll have tools sensitive enough to pick up even more subtle signs of life. Eventually, we might even be able to spot solid indicators of technology, like artificial lights or traces of industrial pollution, coming from planets light years away. Now, think about a hypothetical civilization that’s a thousand years ahead of us. Their capabilities would likely blow ours out of the water. If we, despite being so early in our cosmic journey, are already on the verge of detecting biosignatures and technosignatures, then it stands to reason that such an advanced civilization would’ve mastered this stuff ages ago. They could probably scan entire sectors of the galaxy with pinpoint precision.

So the idea that aliens would’ve needed to randomly “stumble upon Earth" doesn’t really hold up. If they’re advanced enough to detect life-signs across space, then spotting Earth as a biologically active planet would’ve been easy. They could’ve noticed signs of life in the past and made a conscious choice to come check us out. The notion that their arrival would be some sort of crazy coincidence is based on an outdated, human-centered way of thinking that ignores what a truly advanced species might be capable of.

Now, some people might push back and say, “Well, even if they can detect habitable planets, why pick Earth specifically? Why us, out of all the other options?” But that argument quietly assumes something that doesn’t make much sense: the idea that aliens would be limited to visiting only one habitable planet at a time. There’s no reason to think that’s true. If they’ve cracked faster-than-light travel and can detect habitable worlds from light years away, it’s pretty reasonable to think they’d also be able to explore a bunch of planets at once.

I mean, even we don’t explore just one planetary body at a time. Right now, we’ve got robotic probes on or around Mars, the Moon, the Sun, and a bunch of other places; all running missions at the same time. And we’re barely getting started with space exploration. So it makes total sense that a far more advanced civilization would be capable of large-scale, coordinated exploration across an entire region of the galaxy. For all we know, the aliens that are visiting Earth could be part of a huge civilization (or even a coalition of civilizations) equipped with massive fleets made up of thousands of giant motherships and who knows how many smaller scouting craft. They might be surveying dozens or hundreds of life-bearing worlds in our corner of the galaxy, not just ours. Earth might not have been “chosen” in any special way. It could just be one planet among many that they’re watching, cataloging, or interacting with.

So the idea that Earth had to be uniquely targeted doesn’t really make sense either. It’s based on a very narrow, human way of thinking that forgets how big the galaxy is and how advanced other civilizations could be. Just like we don’t limit ourselves to one target, they probably don’t either. They could be conducting a massive exploration effort, and we’re just one small piece of that puzzle.

Except for the first couple of seasons, Family Guy is extremely bad. I have never understood why people like it so much. Honestly, I never liked that kind of humor, and the more the show went on, the worst it got. I am sorry, but watching Peter fart in Meg’s face, Stewie killing people, Chris acting like a creep, and Quagmire literally raping women is not funny. The episode where Meg snaps and tells everyone to go to hell is the most realistic one. And I am not one of those overly sensitive people who gets offended by everything. I enjoy black humor, I enjoy action movies where characters kill each other, and I am the first to laugh at my own disability. But Family Guy jokes about things I have absolutely no desire to laugh about.

Why I strongly disagree with the interdimensional hypothesis of the UFO phenomenon

by Spartacus01

According to Jacques Vallée and the late John Keel, UFOs aren’t spacecraft from other planets, but manifestations of entities from other dimensions or realities that coexist with our own. These entities, they argue, have interacted with human beings throughout history. Rather than showing their true form, assuming such a thing even exists, they supposedly adjust their appearance and behavior to match the cultural beliefs and expectations of each period. In other words, they appear in ways that reflect what people expect to see, based on the dominant worldview of the time.

For example, in ancient times and the Middle Ages, when society was deeply influenced by religion and mythology, people were inclined to interpret strange encounters as experiences involving angels, demons, spirits, or fairies, so the entities presented themselves in those forms because that was what people could understand. In the modern era, shaped by science fiction and technological progress, the same entities supposedly appear as extraterrestrial beings piloting advanced craft. From this perspective, the phenomenon is real but not extraterrestrial. Instead, it’s a timeless, shape-shifting presence that influences human perception according to the beliefs and expectations of each historical period.

Many people find this hypothesis intriguing, and I get why it appeals to those who like symbolic or mythological explanations. However, I don’t share that view. I believe the theory collapses under close examination for several important reasons, and I want to explain why.

The essential difference between ancient folklore and modern UFO sightings is the presence of evidence. Old stories about angels, spirits, demons, and fairies are simply that: stories. There’s no concrete or verifiable evidence that any of those encounters actually occurred, let alone that the described entities were real. In contrast, modern UFO cases provide physical and measurable data. We have radar-visual cases where unidentified objects were both tracked on radar and seen by witnesses. We have ground traces left at alleged landing sites, such as scorched soil, flattened vegetation, and sometimes chemical or molecular alterations of the environment. We also have pilot reports, military documentation, cases of electromagnetic interference, and sightings confirmed by multiple independent witnesses. So it makes no sense to lump modern, well-documented cases together with ancient myths and legends that have no supporting evidence.

Furthermore, it’s also worth remembering that even in today’s world, where science and critical thinking are widespread, stories can still get distorted. People misinterpret what they see all the time, rumors evolve into myths, and sensationalism spreads rapidly, especially online. If that happens in 2025, when information can easily be recorded and verified, imagine how things must have been in pre-scientific societies, where there was no scientific method, no peer review, and no real effort to document these accounts in a systematic or reliable way. People explained unusual experiences entirely through their religious or cultural beliefs, and even if something extraordinary really did occur, it would’ve been filtered through superstition and oral tradition before reaching us.

Therefore, I believe there’s no valid reason to assume that ancient folkloric accounts and modern UFO reports originate from the same source. Arguing that a few superficial similarities between old legends and modern UFO encounters prove a common origin isn’t logic supported by evidence; it’s simply an unfounded leap of imagination.

Not to mention, many of the arguments used by people who support the interdimensional hypothesis are actually very anthropocentric. For example, Jacques Vallée and John Keel claimed that the behavior of the beings reported in some close encounter cases often seems strange, absurd, or even theatrical, and that this means they can’t be real extraterrestrial visitors. But that’s a flawed way of thinking. How can we call something “theatrical” or “nonsensical” if we have no understanding of what would be normal or logical for a completely different species?

If these beings are real extraterrestrials biological entities from planets orbiting other stars, it’s only natural that their behavior, culture, and ways of communicating would be very different from ours. Their actions might look weird to us simply because they come from a world and a background that have nothing in common with human life. What seems strange to us might be perfectly normal to them. Expecting alien beings to act according to our own standards of logic or behavior isn’t scientific; it’s just human-centered thinking.

So when people say that these beings can’t come from space because they act in ways that “don’t make sense,” they’re really judging those reports through a human filter. If intelligent extraterrestrials are visiting Earth, there’s no reason to assume their motives, methods, or ways of interacting would fit our expectations. Their technology, biology, and way of thinking could be so different that we wouldn’t even recognize what they’re doing or why. Dismissing the extraterrestrial hypothesis just because their behavior doesn’t seem logical to us isn’t a valid argument. It only shows how limited our perspective still is.

A RESPONSE TO JACQUES VALLÉE’S ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL HYPOTHESIS

by Spartacus01

NOTE: If you compare what I say in this essay with what I wrote earlier in this thread, you’ll notice a clear shift in how I view pre-1947 UFO sightings. Up until last year, I used to take those early reports much more seriously. But, as I’ll explain in this essay, my perspective has changed quite a bit. I’ve grown increasingly skeptical of those accounts, and I now strongly believe that extraterrestrials first arrived on Earth in 1947. Before that year, I do not think alien spacecraft were present in Earth’s skies.

For those unfamiliar with Jacques Vallée, he’s a French-American scientist and UFO researcher with a background in astrophysics and artificial intelligence. In his early work, Vallée supported the extraterrestrial hypothesis. However, over time, he developed a much more complex and unconventional interpretation of the phenomenon. According to Vallée, UFOs are not physical craft from other worlds, but rather manifestations of a paraphysical phenomenon originating from another dimension. In his view, the so-called “aliens” people encounter are actually interdimensional entities that coexist alongside our reality. These beings, he argues, deliberately take on the appearance of extraterrestrial visitors as part of a long-term effort to influence human perception, culture, and even our evolution. Vallée worked closely with J. Allen Hynek, and eventually convinced him to reconsider the extraterrestrial hypothesis later in his life.

In 1990, Vallée published a paper titled Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects, where he presented several objections to the idea that UFOs are alien spacecraft coming from other star systems. Since I support the extraterrestrial hypothesis and don’t share Vallée’s conclusions, I’ve decided to offer responses to each of his arguments. So, let’s go through them one by one.

1. The sheer number of reported close encounters with UFOs far exceeds what would be necessary for any systematic physical survey of Earth by extraterrestrial visitors.

The vast majority of UFO sightings can be explained as misidentifications of man-made vehicles, hoaxes, or natural phenomena, and this is something just about every serious UFO researcher agrees on, regardless of what hypothesis they favor. The number of cases that remain genuinely unexplained is much smaller. If we focus only on those, Vallée’s argument that “there are too many sightings to be extraterrestrial” starts to fall apart. Instead of looking at the total number of reports per year, he should be looking at the small percentage that can’t be explained using conventional means.

But even if we were to ignore the numbers entirely, there’s still no contradiction in the idea that an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence might carry out repeated visits to Earth over time. Think of a scientist observing an anthill: would he glance at it once or twice and then move on forever? Of course not. He’d return regularly, studying the colony’s behavior over an extended period. The same logic could apply to extraterrestrials observing us. If they’re interested in our biological, cultural, or technological development, it would make perfect sense for them to conduct frequent observations rather than limit themselves to a few flybys.

It’s also worth pointing out that, while credible UFO sightings and close encounters involving humanoid beings were relatively common between 1947 and 1997, reports of that nature have become much more sporadic in recent decades, at least when we’re talking about truly convincing, unexplained cases. For example, we no longer see the kind of mass UFO sightings that were frequently reported in the 1960s and 1970s. Given this trend, it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that extraterrestrials arrived on Earth in 1947, conducted an intensive study of humanity over the course of several decades, and then sent most of their fleet back home around 1997.

If that hypothesis is correct, then Vallée’s argument loses even more ground. It would mean that the majority of UFO activity was concentrated within a specific historical window, rather than spread out evenly over time. In that case, the idea that “there are too many encounters per year for them to be alien” wouldn’t really apply, since the phenomenon wouldn’t be ongoing, but rather tied to a particular period of observation.

2. The beings associated with UFO sightings are often described as humanoid. It is improbable for intelligent life forms from distant planets to independently evolve such a similar physical form.

We currently have no direct access to alien ecosystems and no way to observe what forms complex life might actually take elsewhere in the universe. Because of this, any claim about what extraterrestrial beings should or shouldn’t look like is entirely speculative. Vallée’s objection would carry more weight if we had concrete data about the environments of other planets, which could help us make informed guesses about which types of biological forms are likely to evolve under different conditions. But since that kind of information is far beyond our current reach, it’s unreasonable to say that the humanoid form is any more or less likely than any other.

In the absence of actual knowledge about alien biology, dismissing the idea of humanoid-looking extraterrestrials as improbable has no solid foundation. It’s pure speculation and lacks the data needed to back it up. Until we can study alien ecosystems up close, we can’t say what is or isn’t likely to evolve out there.

Imagine trying to figure out the ingredients of a traditional Indian dish by looking at it from far away through a pair of binoculars. You wouldn’t be able to smell it, taste it, or examine it closely. Under those conditions, accurately identifying the ingredients would be nearly impossible. Why? Because understanding something as complex as a recipe requires direct interaction and close observation. The same idea applies to life on other planets. To make solid predictions about what kinds of life might evolve elsewhere, we’d need to observe those planets up close and study their environments in detail, which is something we’re currently unable to do.

3. Many abduction reports detail behaviors by these entities that are illogical or contradictory if their intent were scientific study or genetic experimentation. For instance, repetitive and invasive procedures lack the methodological consistency one would expect from an advanced civilization conducting research.

This is a fair point, and I fully acknowledge its importance. However, it doesn’t automatically rule out the possibility that some UFOs could be extraterrestrial craft. What it does challenge more directly is the notion that alien abductions are truly extraterrestrial events.

It’s entirely possible to argue that some UFOs are alien spacecraft without subscribing to the idea that aliens are abducting humans for experimentation. In fact, most alien abduction reports can be explained without invoking extraterrestrials at all. Even the researchers who take the abduction phenomenon seriously agree that many abduction experiences are better understood through psychology: hallucinations, sleep paralysis, vivid dreams, and other mental states are often enough to explain what people report.

For the relatively small number of cases that do seem to suggest some kind of external influence, there’s still no need to immediately jump to the conclusion that aliens are involved. For example, researcher Martin Cannon suggests that some abduction experiences might actually be the result of covert human experimentation. In his book, The Controllers, he argues that certain intelligence agencies have likely been abducting civilians to conduct secret experiments on them, using a mix of powerful hypnosic techniques, hallucinogenic drugs, and brain implants to induce altered states, implant false memories, and distort human perception. According to Cannon, what many abductees remember about their experiences is probably just a highly distorted version of what really happened to them, shaped by these methods. To back up his hypothesis, Cannon provides a lot of documentation showing that many scientists working for the CIA as part of the MK-Ultra program were researching things like cerebral implants, brain manipulation via electromagnetic frequencies, advanced hypnotic techniques, and more.

So, there are multiple ways to account for the abduction phenomenon that don’t require extraterrestrial involvement. Vallée’s argument, while valid in critiquing the logic of abduction narratives, doesn’t disprove the broader idea that some UFOs might be alien spacecraft.

4. UFO-like occurrences have been documented throughout human history, long before the modern era of space exploration. This historical continuity implies that the phenomenon is not a recent development and may not be linked to extraterrestrial visitors.

One major problem with using pre-1947 sightings as evidence against the extraterrestrial hypothesis is that, before the rise of UFOlogy, there was no reliable way to verify such accounts. Back then, stories of strange aerial phenomena were published in newspapers or passed around in books, but they were never investigated with any real rigor. There were no witness cross-examinations, no radar confirmations, no physical trace analysis, none of the tools that modern UFOlogists use to separate credible reports from rumors or misinterpretations. It was only after 1947, when both governments and private researchers began taking the UFO phenomenon seriously, that real investigative standards were applied to sightings.

Because of this, we have no reliable way of knowing whether most early reports were genuine, misunderstood natural events, or outright fabrications. Take, for example, the airship sightings of the end of the 19th century. Considering the sensationalist tendencies of newspapers at the time, it’s quite plausible — and perhaps even likely — that many of these stories were either hoaxes or heavily embellished for dramatic effect. Similarly, when ancient Roman writers described “flaming shields in the sky,” we can’t say with confidence what they actually saw. Some of these accounts could easily have been caused by natural optical effects, such as sundogs, atmospheric refraction, or other unfamiliar phenomena. Others might have simply been narrative flourishes added by the authors to enhance their historical accounts.

It’s also possible that some of the glowing aerial phenomena observed by ancient Greeks and Romans were natural events that remain unexplained even today. In fact, several UFO researchers have proposed that many glowing spheres reported in both ancient and modern times may be natural atmospheric phenomena. For instance, Paul Devereux has argued that areas near fault lines or rich in certain minerals might generate electromagnetic fields capable of ionizing the surrounding air, creating plasma-like luminous objects. This idea is backed by research showing that quartz-bearing rocks, when subjected to intense pressure, can emit light. Based on that, it’s plausible that some of the strange lights reported in antiquity — as well as the Foo Fighters observed over Germany and Japan during World War II — could be explained by this mechanism.

In light of all this, Vallée’s argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The fact that people described strange things in the sky before 1947 doesn’t disprove the extraterrestrial hypothesis, because we have no way of confirming whether those early sightings were real or even anomalous. If anything, they’re largely irrelevant to the discussion, since they can’t be reliably investigated or verified. Serious UFO research should focus on well-documented cases that have been examined with modern investigative tools rather than vague, ambiguous reports from ancient or pre-modern sources.

5. Reports often include descriptions of UFOs exhibiting behaviors that defy our current understanding of physics, such as sudden appearances and disappearances, shape-shifting, or instantaneous movements. These capabilities suggest that the phenomenon might involve dimensions or realities beyond the conventional space-time framework.

The fact that UFOs appear to manipulate space and time doesn’t necessarily mean they originate from outside our physical universe. More likely, it indicates that they’re equipped with technology far beyond anything we currently understand.

For example, the seemingly instantaneous appearance and disappearance of these objects doesn’t have to mean they’re literally materializing or vanishing. It’s entirely plausible that they’re moving at such extreme speeds that they become imperceptible to the human eye. Since it takes about 13 milliseconds for our eyes to register a visual image, an object accelerating to speeds of 50,000 or 100,000 km/h within that tiny window could easily seem to vanish instantly. Similarly, an object decelerating from that speed to a complete stop could appear to suddenly materialize. In other words, what we perceive as a sudden disappearance or appearance might just be a result of acceleration and deceleration that exceeds our perceptual limits.

In the same way, reports involving time distortion — like witnesses experiencing hours passing when only minutes have gone by — could be the result of advanced technology interfering with human perception. Whether intentional or not, this interference might cause people to lose track of time or experience it differently.

So, suggesting that UFOs operate outside the framework of conventional space-time is premature. It ignores simpler, more grounded explanations. The way something appears to human observers doesn’t always reflect its true nature. Just because these objects seem to defy the laws of physics doesn’t mean they actually do, and certainly doesn’t mean they’re coming from another dimension. Before turning to exotic theories, we should first consider the possibility that we’re simply witnessing technology that’s far more advanced than our own.

THE ETH AND THE LIKELIHOOD OF INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

by Jean van Gemert

“If we at once admit the foolishness of these perennially suggested ‘impediments’ to star flight, we will be on our way to understanding that interstellar space does not need a bridge too far. Interstellar travel may still be in its infancy, but adulthood is fast approaching, and our descendants will someday see childhood’s end.”
— Dr. Eugene Mallove and Dr. Gregory Matloff, The Starflight Handbook, 1989.

The (un)likelihood of extraterrestrial visitation is probably one of the most debated aspects of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, and the answer is an essential component to the validity of the ETH. After all, the assumed unlikeliness of interstellar travel has become the cornerstone of those who resist the ETH as an explanation for UFOs. So, does extraterrestrial visitation necessarily require all sorts of “unlikely” science, or is it possible to accomplish interstellar travel using conventional wisdom?

CAN THEY GET HERE?

Opinions on the practicality of interstellar travel diverge, but the negative and positive opinions seem to stem primarily from the backgrounds of those conducting the studies. SETI researchers believe that the degree of dispersion of stars throughout the galaxy, combined with the limitations of interstellar travel as we understand General Relativity, effectively precludes the feasibility of extraterrestrial visitation. Thus, they conclude that any extraterrestrial intelligence would only be transmitting their love and good wishes to us. On the other hand, physicists and engineers involved in propulsion research tend to believe that interstellar travel is difficult but not a barrier—or not difficult at all once technology progresses [Mallove and Matloff, 1989; Forward, 1986; Crawford, 1990]. Not surprisingly, the latter choice appears to be the most defensible.

A number of clever designs have appeared in print, describing various methods of getting mankind to the stars. These include projects such as the star probe Daedalus, a robotic interstellar vehicle designed by members of the British Interplanetary Society, which uses nuclear fusion power, or interstellar ramjets that scoop up their fuel between the stars. Physicist Robert Forward, one of the leading experts on space travel, has also proposed an entirely different method of interstellar propulsion—using photon pressure to accelerate a vehicle to a significant fraction of the speed of light in a few years [Forward, 1984]. Such ships would appear as huge sails, using the output of space-based orbital power platforms (Beamed Power Propulsion) for acceleration, eliminating the need for an onboard energy supply [Mallove and Matloff, 1989; Crawford, 1990]. Hence, much less mass would need to be accelerated. The important point here, as astronomer Ian Crawford notes, is that we

“can already identify technological solutions to the problem of interstellar travel that are consistent with the laws of physics as we currently understand them. We do not need new physics” [Crawford, 1990].

Another factor relevant to interstellar flight is relativistic time dilation. Any object traveling close to the speed of light will be subjected to effects predicted by Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. An observer on board a spaceship traveling close to c would observe that time on Earth has sped up, while time on the spaceship, relative to an observer on Earth, would appear to have slowed down. For example, a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri—assuming a constant acceleration of 1g up to a high relativistic speed during the first half of the flight and a constant deceleration of 1g during the second half—would take only three years of spaceship time, while six years would have passed outside the spaceship.

Moreover, recent ideas on speculative space propulsion may bring us the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. Some researchers propose making use of yet undiscovered “loopholes” in physical laws that would allow fast transit between widely separated points in space-time [Alcubierre, 1994; Visser, 1989; Crawford, 1995]. It might even be possible to extract large quantities of energy from the zero-point field (the vacuum) itself. If this can be done practically, then the energy available to a space traveler could be essentially unlimited, eliminating the need for an onboard fuel supply [Froning, 1986].

TOO EXPENSIVE?

Although it is impossible to precisely determine how expensive interstellar travel would be for a civilization about which no pertinent data is available, we can still make educated predictions. Interstellar travel appears not to be expensive for an advanced economy whose productivity has grown steadily for millennia. Therefore, alien contact by visitation is likely once these advanced economies implement interstellar propulsion technologies at insignificant costs relative to their wealth and capital stocks. Similarly, an interstellar transportation system may seem expensive from our perspective, but so would a 747 to the Wright brothers [Jones, 1995]. So, is interstellar flight as “improbable” as the naysayers claim? Only if we grant them their negative and self-defeating assumptions. As Ian Crawford noted in New Scientist (October 1996):

“It seems unlikely that interstellar spaceflight is impossible. Even today, we can envisage propulsion strategies that might make it possible to reach between 10 and 20 percent of the speed of light, permitting travel between nearby stars in a few decades. Any civilization with this technology would be able to colonize every planetary system in the Galaxy in about 10 million years, which is only one-thousandth of the age of the Galaxy” [Crawford, 1996].

WHERE ARE THEY?

Computer simulations and mathematical modeling suggest that the galaxy could be colonized in no more than a few million years [Hart, 1975; Jones, 1976; Papagiannis, 1978]. However, the galaxy is over ten billion years old, and second-generation (metal-rich) stars are up to nine billion years old. Thus, the time needed to colonize the galaxy is much shorter than its actual age.

O’Neill (1974) described large artificial space settlements capable of holding vast numbers of people, which he argued could be realized with existing technology in just a few decades. Scientists such as Frank Tipler and Michael Hart noted the relevance of these designs to the Fermi debate, suggesting that such habitats, equipped with propulsion, could also be used to colonize other star systems. The consequences should be clear. There is no need to invent fantastic propulsion systems such as “warp” or “hyper drives.” Current technology could theoretically allow for the colonization of the galaxy. Yet, despite calculations showing that an extraterrestrial species could have visited our solar system by now, there is no evidence of such visitation—leading to the famous Fermi Paradox. Hart and Tipler believe this paradox proves we are the only intelligent civilization in the galaxy, while SETI researchers argue that interstellar flight is entirely impossible. Other hypotheses include:

• Extraterrestrial civilizations are short-lived. If the average lifespan of an advanced civilization is only 50,000 years, none would persist long enough to colonize the galaxy.
• Most advanced civilizations focus on “more important” matters and have not developed an interest in space exploration.
• Earth is a colony, because one civilization colonized the entire galaxy long ago and now exercises a form of benign paternalism over developing civilizations (Zoo Hypothesis, Ball, 1973).

The first two hypotheses require that every civilization follows the same pattern, which seems unlikely given a galaxy with potentially millions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. It only takes one civilization to colonize the galaxy. This author favors the third hypothesis—that there is a “galactic club,” an established network of old, advanced civilizations, and that Earth is under a form of quarantine. Thus, in my opinion, there simply is no Fermi Paradox. The only reason it remains a paradox to most scientists is their failure to recognize possible evidence of extraterrestrial presence in our own solar system.

CONCLUSIONS

The feasibility of interstellar travel suggests that it should be easily accomplished by an advanced society. Arguments that extraterrestrials have not had enough time to find us appear implausible [Hart, 1975; Jones, 1995; Hoerner, 1995]. Neither technical feasibility, energetics, economics, nor social factors seem sufficient to prevent interstellar travel or slow the colonization of the galaxy [Papagiannis, 1980]. The probabilities appear heavily in favor of aliens visiting Earth—perhaps they already have.

• Alcubierre, Miguel, “The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel Within General Relativity,” Classical Quantum Gravity, Vol. 11, 1994, pp. 73-77.
• Ball, J. A., “The Zoo Hypothesis,” Icarus, Vol. 19, 1973, pp. 347-349.
• Crawford, Ian A., “Some Thoughts on the Implications of Faster-Than-Light Interstellar Space Travel,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, 1995, pp. 205-218.
• Crawford, Ian A., “Interstellar Travel: A Review for Astronomers,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 31, 1990, pp. 377-400.
• Crawford, Ian A., “Where are all the extraterrestrials?,” New Scientist, October 1996.
• Forward, R. L., “Feasibility of Interstellar Travel,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 39, 1986, pp. 379-384.
• Forward, R. L., “Roundtrip Interstellar Travel Using Laser-Pushed Lightsails,” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 21, 1984, pp. 187-195.
• Froning, H. D., “Use of Vacuum Energies for Interstellar Space Flight,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 39, 1986, pp. 410-415.
• Hart, M., “An Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society," Vol. 16, 1975, pp. 128-35.
• Hoerner, S., “The Likelihood of Interstellar Colonization and the Absence of its Evidence,” in: Extraterrestrials: Where are They?, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Jones, E. M., “Estimation of Expansion Timescales,” in: Extraterrestrials: Where are They?, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Jones, E. M., “Where is Everybody?,” Physics Today, August 1985, pp. 11-13.
• Jones, E. M., “Colonization of the Galaxy,” Icarus, Vol. 28, 1976, pp. 421-22.
• Mallove, E. F., and Matloff, G. L., “The Starflight Handbook,” Wiley Science Editions, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1989.
• O’Neill, G. K., “The Colonization of Space,” Physics Today, Vol. 27, September, 1974, pp. 32-40.
• Papagiannis, M. D., “Strategies for the search for life in the universe,” Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing, 1980.
• Papagiannis, M. D., “Could we be The Only Advanced Technological Civilization in Our galaxy?,” in: Origin of Life, Japan Scientific Societies Press, 1978.
• Tipler, Frank, “Extraterrestrial Intelligent Beings Do Not Exist,” Physics Today, April 1981, pp. 70-71.
• Visser, Matt, “Traversable wormholes: Some simple examples,” Physical Review D, May 1989, S. 3182.

Original Source: https://nicap.org/papers/gemert-eth.htm

All vegetables are disgusting. I eat them because I have to, because they are healthy, not because I want to.

JadedSkywalker said:

TNG made Klingon’s space Vikings.

I do remember some of the complaints around this a long time ago.

I have always liked the idea, to be honest. But perhaps it is due to the fact that I watched The Next Generation first, and was therefore introduced to the Klingons through their The Next Generation portrayal. The same applies to the Borg Queen. The concept never bothered me, but I think it is due to the fact that I watched First Contact (and the other movies) before The Next Generation, and was therefore introduced to the Borg through their First Contact portrayal.

THE LOGICAL TRICKERY OF THE UFO SKEPTIC

By Brian Zeiler

Skeptics in the scientific community resist the evidence for extraterrestrial visitation because of the implications it raises and the questions it begs. But should the integrity of the determination rely on the implications of a positive classification? Or should the classification of true or false be assessed in isolation from the implications? Which is worse — a false positive, meaning ruling in favor of the UFO as a unique phenomenon when in fact it does not exist, or a false negative, meaning ruling against it and missing out on its true existence? The answer, of course, lies in the incentive structure of the analyst. An equally intelligent non-scientist has no incentive nor predisposition to favor one type of error over the other, but scientists do. For scientists, it would open a whole new confounding problem domain, and it would make them look incompetent in the public’s eyes for missing out on this fact for 50 years.

That is why the incentive structure of contemporary scientists is such that they will not accept alien visitation unless they must — meaning when they get irrefutable physical proof. Their incentive structure prohibits them from making any such inference unless it is unavoidable, and they will strain the boundaries of logic and reason to no end to dismiss all evidence other than physical proof, no matter how powerful it may be. This scientific predisposition toward disbelief, rooted not in science and logic but rather in dogma and paradigm, brings us to the logical trickery of the scientific UFO debunker.

WHAT EXACTLY IS “EXTRAORDINARY”?

First, the scientific debunker will say that because alien visitation is an extraordinary claim, it thus demands extraordinary proof. Therefore, no evidence is suggestive of alien visitation unless it is accompanied by irrefutable physical proof — even if the observations directly indicate, within normal scientific evidential standards, the presence of a solid object under intelligent control with propulsion technology beyond human understanding. No matter how directly the observations indicate an anomalous vehicle of non-human origin, skeptics maintain that a prosaic explanation must be adopted unless physical proof is obtained. But such a stance, rigid beyond the normal standards of scientific methodology, is a direct product of the incentive structure, not of logic, as indicated above. Normal standards of science would require meeting the evidential threshold for each of the above conditions necessary to establish extraterrestrial origin; yet the same degree of evidence for physical substance is rejected for anomalous vehicles when it would otherwise be accepted for observations of more conventional vehicles.

Thus, the debunkers have failed to define the boundary of extraordinariness, which renders the declaration logically specious due to its wholly arbitrary implementation that is easily contaminated by individual and collective incentives. They exploit the arbitrary classification of “extraordinary” by applying absurdly rigid evidential boundaries to cases that clearly feature anomalous, physical vehicles that humans could not have built. Instead of assessing the case for physical substance on its own merits with the radar-visual observations, they merely apply a priori probabilities of nearly zero to the detection of anomalous vehicles, with no logical defensibility in the face of insufficient information to estimate the a priori probability, and therefore give themselves license to reject all evidence of any quality unless a physical specimen is obtained.

For instance, if SETI receives an anomalous repeating signal with intelligent content, such as a mathematical constant, and rules out all known causes of terrestrial and deep-space interference, do they need a chunk of the alien radio dish or a dead alien to attribute it to alien origin? It would be just as easy to apply UFO-skeptic logic and insist that the signal is nothing more than anomalous until we obtain physical proof of aliens; after all, why ascribe a radio signal to alien origin before we have physical proof of the existence of aliens? After all, we cannot rule out malfunction, fraud, or human error with 100% certainty, so the simplest explanation is an undetected flaw, not an alien message. Right? Or is it really just the case that the a priori probability assumed by scientists of alien radio detection is higher than that assumed for atmospheric detection? Is this a priori probability differential between radio versus atmospheric detection logically defensible? Or do we lack sufficient information to make anything but a wild guess, a guess contaminated by incentive, dogma, and mere habit?

Why do so many scientists, including Tipler and Fermi, argue that interstellar travel would be feasible for advanced civilizations whose productivity growth has created such vast wealth that journeys are less expensive than they would be for us humans? Do we know what alien energy resource stocks are? Even right now, we have the technology to mount a journey at 10% of the speed of light and arrive at the nearest star in 40 years. How “extraordinary” is it to consider that, several billion years ago, one culture might have mounted a gradual expedition that took them to our solar system and many others? We sure do not know whether this is “extraordinary” or the natural outcome of technological advancement, but many scientists wish to believe, simply due to heavily entrenched ideologies with absolutely no basis in logic nor fact, that such interstellar expansions are far less likely than the human interception of alien radio signals. So just what is “extraordinary,” aside from a word referring to a claim for which extremely low a priori probabilities of truth are applied? I consider extraordinary a claim that undermines fundamental precepts of physics. Alien visitation does not do this. And no matter the difficulty as we perceive it, interstellar travel does not violate the laws of physics. Neither do aliens. Therefore, alien visitation does not violate the laws of physics, nor does it require a straining of credible probabilistic expectations. We simply do not know how likely it is. And that is hardly a strong case for considering alien visitation an “extraordinary claim.”

Nevertheless, skeptics will insist on applying to alien visitation an a priori probability of nearly zero for some strange reason. Interestingly, many scientists, such as Fermi and Tipler, were skeptical of both UFOs and of alien life in general; they contended that interstellar travel would be easy for advanced civilizations, so the lack of overt contact disproved alien existence. Yet most UFO skeptics do believe alien life exists out in the universe — just not here. So they defend the near impossibility of interstellar travel, which contradicts a considerable portion of the scientific community. This a priori probability allows them to reject evidence arbitrarily that would otherwise confirm the presence of a solid object under intelligent control with propulsion irreproducible by human technology. For instance, when a certain degree of corroboration of physical substance for an airplane is obtained for an unconventional disk-shaped vehicle, this degree of evidence is accepted for the airplane but rejected for the anomalous vehicle. The only way to do this is to apply a priori probabilities of nearly zero to the detection of such an anomalous object. The problem, of course, is that, first of all, we do not have enough information to defend a low a priori probability, and second of all, this approach guarantees the automatic rejection of normal avenues of evidence. Effectively, what the skeptics are saying is that radar evidence is too “ordinary” to suffice for an “extraordinary” claim. They succeed in eliminating from review all types of indirect and direct evidence, except for physical proof.

This type of logic can be successfully applied to any claim. For instance, let us declare that dinosaurs are an extraordinary claim. This declaration requires no logical substantiation — just the way skeptics use their nearly zero a priori probability of extraterrestrial visitation to declare the claim extraordinary with no logical defense whatsoever, given the insufficient information to determine this probability. So, we have declared dinosaurs to be an extraordinary claim. The next step is to reject all fossil evidence for dinosaurs, since fossils are only acceptable for ordinary claims such as woolly mammoths; for extraordinary dinosaur claims, fossils are worthless. What we need, as dinosaur skeptics, is physical proof of an intact dinosaur. And, to make it even more similar to the skeptic approach, we do not need to defend the rationale of the demand for physical proof of dinosaurs; the fact that it is an extraordinary claim allows us to demand the very upper boundary of conceptually feasible modes of proof — but conceptual feasibility does not translate into practical feasibility. Sure, I can demand physical proof, but will I get it? Is it worth ignoring fossil evidence while I wait for physical proof?

We could extend the analogy further by applying more skeptic logical tricks. For instance, dinosaur articles are published in journals that already believe in dinosaurs; therefore, they are biased and one-sided, and hardly representative of truly critical peer review. We could assert that all fossils are best explained as hoaxes, misidentifications of known and unknown geological processes, and hallucinations and/or misinterpretations by overzealous paleontologists imposing their belief system on an anomalous rock. This, I can contend, is the “simplest explanation,” and I do not have to worry about using overly strenuous logic because, in the absence of physical proof of dinosaurs, any explanation is simpler — no matter how contrived and convoluted! This is the essence of the scientific rejection of UFO evidence: an overwhelming need to disbelieve coupled with a shameful lack of research into the actual evidence.

THE DEMAND FOR PHYSICAL PROOF

If aliens were visiting, I find the expectation of physical proof quite illogical, since it is going to be hard to obtain. In fact, it may even be impossible. But the skeptics do not mind, since they have already decided to disbelieve until they obtain the highest conceivable level of proof. In the discussion above, it was noted that anybody can apply this logic by insisting that dinosaurs should not be accepted until we find an intact, frozen, preserved dinosaur with the flesh still on the bones. And if that is impossible — well, too bad. Is it rational to reject fossils the way skeptics reject radar-visual cases and ground-trace cases, and then demand a preserved dinosaur specimen the way skeptics demand an alien and/or vehicle specimen? I contend that physical proof is an unattainable evidential boundary that guarantees rejection of the hypothesis of extraterrestrial origin.

Despite the table-pounding insistence by skeptics on physical proof, they have simply not been able to defend this demand — one which is far beyond the scientific rigor that standard scientific methodology would require. The UFO evidence has satisfied the evidential threshold of normal scientific protocols; unfortunately, the evidence has been rejected by dogmatic, specious demands for physical proof. For all these demands for physical proof, the skeptics have not been able to meet any of the following logical criteria necessary to defend the imposition of this arbitrary evidential threshold:

• How can one declare a claim to be extraordinary without sufficient information to defend a low a priori probability?
• Are there degrees of extraordinariness?
• How does one relate a degree of extraordinariness to a fair and reasonable evidential threshold?
• What is it about extraterrestrial visitation that implies the availability of physical proof?
• How can we obtain physical proof?
• How can an evidential threshold be imposed with no logical defensibility nor any rational expectation of actually meeting such a stringent threshold?

OCCAM’S RAZOR AND THE SKEPTICS

The UFO skeptics do not understand Occam’s Razor, and they abuse it regularly. They think they understand it, but they do not. What it means is that when several hypotheses of varying complexity can explain a set of observations with equal ability, the first one to be tested should be the one that invokes the fewest number of uncorroborated assumptions. If this simplest hypothesis is proven incorrect, the next simplest is chosen, and so forth. But the skeptics forget two parts: the part regarding the test of the simpler hypotheses, and the part regarding explaining all of the observations. What a debunker will do is mutilate and butcher the observations until they can be “explained” by one of the simpler hypotheses, which is the inverse of the proper approach. The proper approach is to alter the hypothesis to accommodate the observations. One should never alter the observations to conform with a hypothesis by saying:

“If we assume the object was not physical, despite the level of evidence that would imply the solidity of a conventional aircraft with near-certainty, then we can also assume the object was not moving, was not exhibiting the color orange, was not 50 feet in diameter as described, and then declare that it was really Venus.”

But that is okay for the skeptics to do, because it is an “extraordinary claim” being made that deserves to be explained away in a Machiavellian fashion as rapidly as possible, with the urgent zeal of a religious missionary. Now, to alter observations to force conformance with the preferred hypothesis — is that science? Or is that dogma? The answer, of course, is dogma. This practice is extremely poor science, and the approach undermines the very spirit of scientific inquiry. It is simply unacceptable to alter the observations that refuse to conform with the predetermined, favored explanation.

THE ETH AND FALSIFIABILITY

While a more thorough discussion of the formulation and potential falsification of the ETH can be found on the ETH page, one particular aspect is worthy of note as another logical trick. The skeptics complain that the ETH is not falsifiable, which is a condition that violates a necessary component of hypothesis formulation. This is not true, as explained on the ETH page. However, even if it were true, the skeptics fail to realize that their beloved SETI hypothesis of alien radio signal detection can be said to be non-falsifiable! Does a lack of detection disprove the hypothesis that aliens are beaming mathematical constants at us? Certainly not, since our equipment may not be strong enough to detect them. It has been 30 years since SETI’s beginnings, with absolutely no positive results whatsoever, yet the non-falsifiability allows the preservation of the project with hopes as high as ever.

SCIENCE VS. SKEPTICISM

Skeptics are skilled propagandists who appeal to base emotions just like seasoned politicians. Skeptics like to wrap themselves in the robe of science, declaring that their approach and conclusions are “scientific,” in just the same way that a politician will cloak himself in the mantle of “family values” and “doing what’s right for America.” But is skepticism really as scientific as the skeptics want people to believe? As has been explained throughout this essay, the clear answer is no. Their logical reasoning is rife with fallacies, from their arbitrary declaration of a claim as being extraordinary to their specious demand for physical proof, to their abuse of Occam’s Razor, to their erroneous complaints about hypothesis falsification. So why do they claim that they are the real scientific side?

Skeptics are mostly scientists, but that certainly does not mean they behave scientifically, as has been explained. Their behavior stems partially from their distaste for public opinions that contradict the consensus of the scientific community. When a public consensus does contradict the scientific opinion, scientists will mount a public campaign to discredit this opinion because such an opinion undermines the role of the scientist in society as the appointed knowledge-seeker and truth-gatherer. What good are scientists if mankind will only insist on believing in warm, fuzzy superstitions anyway? So, these scientists who are guilty of the logical infractions exposed in this essay are so consumed with the presumed validity of their opinions that, like zealous religious fanatics, they must convert the masses to the side of truth in order to salvage their own self-image.

The second stimulus of pseudoscientific skepticism is that these scientists, who do not represent all scientists but rather a rogue band of propagandists, feel that science is about the mastery of nature. When nature introduces an anomaly — a violation of expectation — to science, the anomaly must be crushed. How dare nature violate science’s laws and principles! The anomaly is supposed to indicate an incomplete framework or incorrect a priori assumptions, yet to the skeptical propagandists, it indicates misbehavior by nature that cannot be allowed to undermine their role in society. The anomaly is a threat to the validity of their work, so they must wish it away, convince themselves through wild logical fallacies that the anomaly does not exist, and return the public back toward the truths of nature that are approved by the scientific community. This tendency only changes when it becomes more work to deny the anomaly than to accept it; sadly, with UFOs, this is not likely to occur, because the scientific community will never deal with UFO reports.

CONCLUSION

The scientific community has vociferously resisted the acceptance of anomalies for centuries, with the Copernican Revolution being the most notable historical example. They threaten the paradigm and disturb the equilibrium. They undermine the community’s self-perception of usefulness and value to society by threatening to destroy the assumptions behind their work. For the purposes of emotional well-being, they will be protested and debunked until they can no longer be denied; with UFOs, the breaking point will be physical proof. Yet, as this essay demonstrated, the criterion of physical proof is a product of anomaly resistance rather than a rational assessment of a priori probabilities or a rational interpretation of evidence. Instead of applying fallacious reasoning to the evidence, applying normal scientific standards to the UFO evidence would long ago have enabled the scientific community to embrace the ETH.

Original Source: https://nicap.org/papers/zeiler2.htm

Hal 9000 said:

Did all the humans in Star Wars have a common ancestor on a planet or did at least some of them develop independently?

In the Expanded Universe, it is explained that humans originated on Coruscant, and that the Rakatan Empire — which conquered almost the entire galaxy and used to enslave many species — frequently transported humans from one planet to another for slave labour. As a result, humans became widely dispersed, and by the time the Republic was founded, many planets were already inhabited by them. I personally find this explanation very compelling, because it makes a great deal of sense.

One of the things I love about Star Wars is that, no matter what your personal preferences are, you can always have a laugh when watching some silly video or parody. Whether you like the Prequels or not, you can still enjoy a YouTube Poop or a comedic take on them, and have a good laugh. The same goes for the Sequels — whether you like them or not, you can still laugh when watching a silly spoof about them. For example, I do not like the Sequels at all, but I still loved Star Wars Undercover Boss and laughed a lot when I watched that parody, even though it was based on the Sequels.

I still love The Cosby Show despite what Bill Cosby has done. Personally, I choose to separate Bill Cosby from Cliff Huxtable. For me, they are two entirely different people, as opposite as they could possibly be. I simply cannot reconcile the idea that they are one and the same, so I choose to think of them as if they existed in two parallel universes.

This mental separation is made easier for me due to the fact that I am Italian, and in the Italian-dubbed version of The Cosby Show, Cliff Huxtable is voiced by Ferruccio Amendola. His voice creates a sort of barrier between the real-life Bill Cosby and the fictional Cliff Huxtable. Another thing that helps me separate them is the fact that the name of the show in Italian is completely different. In Italian, the family’s name is not Huxtable, but Robinson. Therefore, the show is called The Robinsons, which means that the name “Cosby” is not even present in the title. It is as if Bill Cosby does not exist in the show at all, and this helps me a lot.

I understand that not everyone is able to separate the art from the artist, and I respect that. However, for me, the voice of Ferruccio Amendola in the Italian dub provides just enough distance to allow me to continue enjoying The Cosby Show for what it meant to me growing up, without the constant reminder of the real-life issues. In my experience, Cliff Huxtable speaks with Amendola’s voice and the name of the family is Robinson. These differences help me maintain a clear distinction between the fictional loving father and the real-life serial rapist, allowing me to continue appreciating the show without feeling conflicted.