The UFO Phenomenon - Seeing Is Believing (Peter Jennings tonight - Live Thread)

ABC News ^ | Feb. 24, 2005

[traumer]

Almost 50 percent of Americans, according to recent polls, and millions of people elsewhere in the world believe that UFOs are real. For many it is a deeply held belief.

For decades there have been sightings of UFOs by millions and millions of people. It is a mystery that only science can solve, and yet the phenomenon remains largely unexamined. Most of the reporting on this subject by the mainstream media holds those who claim to have seen UFOs up to ridicule.

On Feb. 24, "Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" takes a fresh look at the UFO phenomenon. "As a journalist," says Jennings, "I began this project with a healthy dose of skepticism and as open a mind as possible. After almost 150 interviews with scientists, investigators and with many of those who claim to have witnessed unidentified flying objects, there are important questions that have not been completely answered — and a great deal not fully explained."

"Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" airs Thursday, Feb. 24 from 8-10 p.m. ET on ABC. The program will be broadcast in High Definition.

This two-hour primetime special reports on the entire scope of the UFO experience — from the first famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 to the present day. The program draws on interviews with police officers, pilots, military personnel, scientists and ordinary citizens who give extraordinary accounts of encounters with the unexplained. Also included are the voices of professional skeptics about UFOs, including scientists who are leading the search for life forms beyond Earth elsewhere in the universe.

The program explores the facts behind the enduring mystery of the incident at Roswell, N.M., and looks into the strange stories of alien abductions. Among the UFO cases presented:

Minot Air Force Base, N.D., October 1968 — Sixteen airmen on the ground and the crew of an airborne B-52 witness a massive unidentified object hovering near the base.

Phoenix, March 1997 — Hundreds witness a huge triangular craft moving slowly over the city.

St. Clair County, Ill., January 2000 — Police officers in five adjoining towns all independently report witnessing a giant craft with multiple bright lights moving silently across the sky at a very low altitude.

Today if you report a UFO to the U.S. government you will be informed that the Air Force conducted a 22-year investigation that ended in 1969 and concluded that UFOs are not a threat to national security and are of no scientific interest. But as one of the world's leading theoretical physicists says in the program, "You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings from some object created by … a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology."

"Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing" is produced by PJ Productions and Springs Media for ABC News. Mark Obenhaus and Tom Yellin are the executive producers.

[R. Scott]

At our present state of knowledge the energy requirement would be a real barrier. I say “present state”, as an intelligent educated natural philosopher of a couple millennia ago would have denied the practicality of moving a 97,000 ton ship at 30+ knots (Nimitz Class carrier) for the same reason.

[maestro]

The UFO 'Code' Phenomenon - Seeing Is Believing (Peter Jennings 'Code' tonight)....o.k.

.....WW-II Nazi blimps and Midgets, and Colorado-Utah Veterinarians at 'it' again....hush-hush 'Code'...

/Sarcasm in the 'Public' Schools

;-)

[Quix]

THANKS.

[Quix]

Well said.
Especially the last part.

Evidently.

[Quix]

A fairly reasonable perspective, imho.

However, I do believe that "MY SHEEP KNOW MY VOICE" is also quite potent. . . that we can KNOW because we know because we know WHOM we have been walking with . . . for however many days, months, decades.

RELATIONSHIP TRUMPS RELIGION any day.

[Quix]

Well Said. It's in the ball park of my perspective, too.

I think it was primarily a bit of a loosening of the fierce disinformation gestalt so effectively implanted on the nation. A bit. We shall see how slight of a bit.

[Quix]

I have relatives in Phoenix.

Always sounded to me like the officials quickly brought in the planes flying with lights junk to discredit the authentic and then stuck to that explanation. Easily doable. Didn't fool me for a minute, though. Too many people saw a solid craft.

[Quix]

Quite right about the dummies.

[Quix]

For people who've seen a massive craft up reasonably close--there is NO--absolutely NO compariston between the craft and a C5A or any other known conventional human aircraft. NONE except, perhaps that both were in the air and substantive objects.

[cgbg]

I have a confession to make before starting this long post with my comments on the Jennings presentation. I have not read most of the more than 700 that preceded me because that would take as long as watching the entire show did last night. :-)

So if I am repeating something some wise Freeper said three hundred posts ago I apologize. :-)

(1) The first hour had lots of military pilots, policeman, witnesses I hadn't heard before, some debunkers, a fair cross-section of UFO-world. Alan Hynek's career as coverup artist converted to believer was covered faithfully, and imho that the best part of the show.

(2) Then the show got into Roswell, covered the discovery of debris and the favorable press coverage, then the Air Force "balloon story" and the favorable coverage of that. Jennings mentioned that the press in those days were very gullible.

(3) Then Jennings started to prove just how gullible he was by swallowing hook, link, and sinker the 1990s version of the balloon. Jennings mentioned in one sentence that allegedly there were glyphs on this balloon. He presented no evidence of such and then dismissed the whole Roswell matter as a "myth" rolling out the kooks and nuts and treating the Roswell believers like Swiftboat Vets. Yikes!

There was such irony here as Jennings laughed at the press of the 1940s and then repeated their blunders five minutes later!

(4) Then Jennings moved into the abduction fray. (Oh God, I thought, this could get ugly. :-))

He tried to argue that the abductees were normal people suffering from sleep disorders. He pulled out two Harvard professors to support that view. What he didn't discuss were daytime abduction stories and the other Harvard professor who thinks abductions are real. (Mack is his name if anyone cares.)

(5) At the end he had a cool CUNY physics prof talking about wormholes and how star travel might work.

------ Sometimes when you look at a MSM presentation it is more interesting what they _don't_ talk about--since in my experience _that_ is where "the truth" is more likely to be found.

If you are really interested in this subject imho you really need to be familiar with:

--Jacques Vallee--He has the best books of the subject imho. He tries to use the scientific method in this strange field.

--Majestic--There has been a lot of ink supporting and debunking this claim of a secret government organization with alien stuff in their warehouses.

--The "suicide" of James Forrestal. Years ago the JBS published a great book that persuaded me the guy was murdered. Was it about Communists--or aliens?

--Other theories that might explain the UFO phenomenon including Jung's collective unconscious, time travel (in combination with, perhaps) Gaia theory, interdimensional travel.

This is a field that has always interested me, and I have tried hard to keep an open mind on it.

Jennings should have stopped his show at one hour because he got deep into debunking mode at the expense of "objective" journalism in hour two.

[Quix]

. . . SNAKEBUNNIES, DIMRATS, SKERRY'S, SHRILLERY ANTOINETTE DE FOSTERIZER . . . DE SADE's; SCUBA TEDDY's; BILDEBERGERS; . . . NUKES, MASSIVE QUAKES, . . .

and other wiles of satan and his other crews.

[Quix]

YUP.

[Quix]

Since 1948, that explanation sounds exceedingly more hollow and shallow, to me. And to millions of other Israel/prophecy watch watchers.

[dennisw]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v469/deke9/Wcropcircle.jpg

A nice crop circle. 200kb size. Somewhere in England

[Quix]

A couple of comments.

Mostly I agree.

However:

1) There's a famous case of a fairly devout Pentecostal/Spirit-filled practicing Christian being abducted. There's some argument as to how up-to-date her Christianity was when the abductions began. But they continued over a long time. I don't have an explanation for that one that fits well. She's the only such case I know of.

There have been LOTS of other so called Christians abducted--evidently some as devout as any you'd find--EVIDENTLY. I'm not quite convinced on that latter point but many are.

Supposedly Roman Catholics and JEWS are !UNDER! REPRESENTED in the abductee population. Not totally absent but mostly absent.

Essentially, every denomination of Christians is somewhat represented.

However, to my understanding, though I've never seen this staticstically in a solid study--Spirit-filled Christians who know their authority in Christ and instantly exercise it in all situations of any kind of threat--THOSE kinds of Christians seem to be very, very, very under represented, to my assessment of the phenomena.

2) There are many examples of craft which COULD be, plausibly--demonic manifestations.

The folks doing the servicing on the craft my relative worked around were not working on demonic plasmic goo. They were working on solid nuts and bolts craft, so to speak.

Are there both? I'm convinced there are both. I'm convinced that there are

1) craft we have built and fly.
2) craft we have recovered and reverse engineered.
3) craft we have been taught to build by ET's.
4) demonic manifestations appearing at various points as craft.
5) ET craft that are not built by us and that are not demonic manifestations.

Dimensional travel between other dimensions and this one can explain a lot of seemingly impossible things. So can some other physics stuff that I'm not capable of discussing very intelligently.

The merging and dividing of smaller craft into larger craft and of multiple craft into one craft sure seems to be very tricky with the physics we suppose to be operant. Reports seem to vary on that. Some seem to think it's just a manifestation of physics we can't conventionally wrap our minds around yet. Others seem to think there is some spiritual forces hokus pokus going on.

Then there's the contention that SOME craft are LIVING BEINGS from other planets. I'm more inclined to believe the demonic than that one but what do I know.

Even some of the Biblical descriptions of some critters boggles the conventional mind and explanation.. . . whether they are symbolic, or not.

[R. Scott]

I watched the program last night. I was surprised to see that Jennings took the Official Government Line, ridiculing those who claim to have experience with aliens space craft and parroting the official “debunking” lines – it was a star, the planet Venus, reflected light, weather balloon…
Is he now supporting our federal government?

[Quix]

THANKS. AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!

I get weary of stating the simple truth about that one.

[Quix]

Repeating the truth doesn't force closed minds to even think much about it, much less to think about it logically.

The 3-4 factors or so which MAY HAVE SLIGHTLY, SORTA, SOMEWHAT FROM A GLANCING VIEW been fitting to Biblical prophecies occasionally through the ages

do NOT come remotely close to the THOUSANDS of data points from 1948 with Israel becoming a nation again--which have been increasingly and with increasing abundance true regarding Biblical prophecies.

But, hey, stay focused on the tired old mantra. Sounds like a pretty reliable way to miss out, to me.

[dennisw]

Click for larger image of crop circle

[Quix]

There are answers to such questions. They may not meet your criteria in the near term.

1) A lot, perhaps all, of the mutilations appear to take place aboard craft hovering or even that abduct the cattle, fly off, return to the spot or near the spot and drop the cow--usually for significant height.

2) You've not begun to explain the KNOWN factors that are COMMON in EVERY valid mutilation case. You haven't BEGUN to do that--do that and THEN ask the questions that remain unanswered.

3) Some contend that it's American Government JOINT research with ET's studying pollution and/or nuclear pollution. Others contend that those specific organs and blood products are needed in ET food/breeding/DNA enhancing . . . . whatever . . . experiments/projects.

The degree and attitude of skepticism you voice regarding the cattle mutilations just indicates to me--increasingly--that you have NOT studied the phenomena deeper than a slight surface scratch--comparatively.

Sigh.