Two lights circling the sky over South Shore sky

It's hard to draw a surfer's attention away from the next wave, but whatever was in the northwest sky Friday evening around 6:20 p.m. drew a crowd along Kewalo Basin and Ala Moana Beach Park.

Honolulu resident Peter Hollingworth described as two lights circling in the sky, about 45 degrees above the horizon.

“These two little fireballs with a stream behind it,” said Hollingworth. “Looked kind of like a shooting start but it just kept going. They changed directions a few times, at first it was coming in then it turned, then it went out then it came back in again"

Hollingworth was surfing with his 12 year old son when the unexpected show began.

“I was a little concerned. I told him come over and sit with me - this might be the last surf session we ever have together because this thing's coming straight for Honolulu. It looked deadly to me it was kind of spooky.”

The National Weather Service says nothing showed up on their radar at the time of the sighting and the Federal Aviation Administration didn't report anything unusual.

The U.S. military conducted a missile defense test off of Kauai Friday evening but the test didn't begin until 7:20 p.m.

“This in a sense is an unidentified flying object,” said University of Hawaii astronomy professor Gareth Wynn-Williams. “It's something in the sky that's moving that we haven't identified.”

“It's probably a contrail of some kind,” he said while watching video of one of the lights at his Kailua home.

The professor says contrails are caused by high flying airplanes burning hydrogen based fuels. One of the byproducts of the fuel exhaust is water.

“The air is very cold so the water condenses and forms like drops very quickly and then these drops stay behind the plane until eventually they warm up and they evaporate.”

“Some people just think differently than scientists and they like to look for the fanciest most exciting explanation. Those people would like to think it's little green men, I think that's very unlikely."

According to published reports this is not the first time a UFO has grabbed the attention of Hawaii residents.

In December of 2004 an unexplained streak of light was captured by a camera on Haleakala moving southwest to northeast. No official explanation has been given for that UFO either.

Pinging the list, thanks to SunkenCiv for the information.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.space.com/news/070202_alien_contact.html

Author Michael Michaud tackles how humanity should handle close encounters in his book "Contact with Alien Civilizations – Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials." Credit: Copernicus Books/Springer.

Contacting ET: Our Hopes and Fears
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 2 February 2007
2:00 p.m. ET

High-tech telescopes on the ground and in space that perform daunting astronomical peep shows in a search for Earth-like worlds aim to answer one of humankind‘s most monumental questions: "Are we alone?"

Arguably, a more pointed question might be: "Just how crowded is it?" [video].

There is on-going deliberation relating to the societal, philosophical and religious fallout that stems from resolving such a stellar inquiry.

Michael Michaud is the author of a newly published exceptional book, "Contact with Alien Civilizations – Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials" (Copernicus Books). He suggests that the "prime question" is straightforward: Should we simply be watchers and listeners from our outpost in the universe, or should we actively seek contact by sending out messages, proclaiming our presence?

As the book suggests, our answers to those queries expose both our desires and qualms about encountering extraterrestrials (ET). Additionally, contact may not lead to a Woodstock of the skies…nor does it imply Armageddon either.

Belief and observation

In writing the book, Michaud told SPACE.com that his research led to several realizations. For example, he said that the debate has been dominated by supporters and opponents of one scenario: remote contact through radio signals.

"As my book points out, that is far from being the only possible model of contact. Secondly, I became increasingly convinced that non-science, non-technology factors such as motivations and ethics may be crucial for the outcome of contact," Michaud said.

Michaud said that he was struck by the centuries-old dialogue between belief and observation that got under way with Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian astronomer and physicist.

"Science has steadily improved our perceptions of the physical world, but still is unable to answer some basic philosophical questions. Some day, science may be able to answer questions now in the realm of belief, but we aren‘t there yet. Both science and belief have roles to play, though the dialogue will be fruitful only if both sides show tolerance and civility. There is no place for arrogant assertion when so little is known," Michaud said.

Serendipitous results

Is it time for the U.S. Congress to re-look at the ET encounter business - given the increasing rates of extra solar planetary detection?

"I doubt that an initiative to restore NASA funding for SETI would succeed in the present environment, particularly when NASA is cutting funding for space science projects," Michaud responded. "In my view, we need to broaden our approach to encourage related activities that might produce serendipitous results, such as expanding funding for extrasolar planet searches."

Moreover, Michaud suggested that there‘s need to address the possibility of an artifact somewhere in the solar system - one that could have ceased operating millions or billions of years ago.

Perhaps having served as Director of the U.S. State Department‘s Office of Advanced Technology and as Counselor for Science, Technology, and Environment at the American embassies in Paris and Tokyo, Michaud served up a proposal.

"Have some authority, such as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, send a reminder to agencies that do space-oriented research, reminding them that peculiar phenomena they detect might be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. This should include security-oriented agencies that shall remain nameless here."

Impact of detection

In his new book, Michaud spotlights the fact that, for many people, ET contact in one form or another now seems likely, but at some unpredictable time in our future.

Still, is the often cited societal grasp and gasp that "we‘re not alone" an overblown axiom – perhaps akin to a puffed up cosmological rapture of the deep? Could it be that the general public, in learning such news, might not be able to appreciate the magnitude of such a confirmation?

"While much of the public takes the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence for granted, the impact of a detection could vary considerably, depending on the scenario of detection," Michaud said.

"In the case of a remote signal," Michaud added, "my view is that it is unlikely to be a message…it would be contact without communication. If we find an artifact in or near our solar system, the impact could be much greater."

Societal shockwave?

As to the societal shockwave of detecting ET, there are those that suggest that the impact won‘t vary too much. That‘s because the scenario of detection is somewhat guaranteed to follow a pattern of unfolding actions.

In that camp is Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

Firstly, someone, somewhere will hit upon a signal that -- at least at first -- appears to possibly be extraterrestrial, Shostak said. "Maybe that person is doing a SETI experiment, and maybe it‘s the unexpected result of a more conventional astronomical observation. Perhaps it is even a hoax. But in any case, the story begins to get traction when the claim is made."

What happens next is that the SETI community, and possibly others, would swing their telescopes in the direction of the suspected source, Shostak continued. They‘d get busy trying to ascertain whether this is really ET on the line, or simply some unrecognized, at least by the finder, terrestrial interference - say a chatty communications satellite.

"It will be days and days before researchers would feel convinced from their observations that the signal is truly extraterrestrial," Shostak emphasized. "That‘s the amount of time it would take to reconfigure the instruments…to follow the source…and to establish its position, frequency drift and other parameters that are relevant to deciding ‘this is someone on another world.‘"

Front-page news

Shostak said that while all this was going on, the media would be covering the story. "We know this from experience. There is no secrecy…and no chance of secrecy," Shostak noted. Furthermore, the public will be interested.

"After all, this is a front-page story. But they won‘t be rioting in the streets, or even scared, I would venture. Picking up a signal is not a danger. The aliens don‘t know we‘ve done it [detected their signal], and they‘re highly likely to be 500 light-years away or more."

Lastly, Shostak pointed out that, eventually, scientists will say that they are "99 percent certain" -- or whatever -- that they have found a signal coming from intelligence elsewhere in the cosmic neighborhood.

"If it‘s a radio signal, there probably won‘t be any easily detectable information. That requires a different instrument," Shostak said. "So it‘s unlikely that we‘ll have the ‘bits‘…we won‘t know what they‘re saying. Merely that they are on the air."

As a result, the ET revelation will be the leading science story of the year. Some would say of the century, Shostak predicted. "The public will be enthused or otherwise, depending on how they view the news of another world with thinking beings. But just as Europe was changed -- but did not panic -- when the New World was found, so will we be changed…but philosophically, and at a relatively slow pace," he concluded.

Same as ever, the difference being they are now threads on FR. There was a time when such threads were deleted immediately.
== =

1. As to the first: No. Not so. There has been a heightened awareness fostered by increased phenomena all over the globe. Checking the facts before pontificating can be helpful to both pontificator and reader.

2. As to the latter . . . yeah, there were a lot of rabid folks who frothed at the mouth at the idea that ANY conservatives would take ANY UFO reports ANY degree of seriously. In fact, such OBVIOUS IDIOTS were CERTAIN that said FREEPERS were ipso facto AUTOMATICALLY DECLARED DISRUPTOR TROLLS out to destroy FR by embarrassing FR before the world with such utterly ridiculous and outrageously stupid ideas and reports.

All this was quite independent of the raft of reports by Air Force Cols; Airline pilots; 20 year Police veterans and even by some well placed folks reporting from their highly classified black ops work years ago.

EACH AND EVERY UFO thread was automatically seen as evil and destructive idiocy of a deliberate sort.

Thankfully, FR has matured from such silly notions. Sure, we still get relegated to chat overly quickly most of the time. But at least very bright; very loyal conservatives; very educated engineers and other scientists and highly educated people can now discuss in a conservative context the phenomena and it's implications for the USA and conservatives. We are thankful for that progress.

As a subset of this whole situation, a number of FREEPERS have had cattle mutilations on their own ranches. They have tentatively sought to discuss such on UFO threads--sometimes quite earnestly and even a bit desperately. They have been ridiculed into silence. Some have managed a few FREEPMAIL exchanges but the help they might have received has been obliterated by short-sighted, ignorant, dismissive, unwarranted and undereducated hostility based evidently on wholesale bias and fear or just plain mean cussedness and ignorance.

I consider that a gross and insensitive dereliction of duty toward fellow conservatives.

It's no fun to be working hard on thin margins eeking out a living from the land with cattle . . . to come upon a prize bull or other prime breeding animal or even just a good animal worth more than $1,000 at market . . .

to come upon the animal in the middle of a several acre field of new fallen snow--with animal tracks into the field--that suddenly stop. And then maybe 25-50 feet away from the point of the tracks stopping--the animal's carcass lies obviously dropped and bounced a little from a significant height--with no tracks at all around. No other animal tracks; no human tracks; no machine tracks; no snow wash from helicopter blades.

And, sure enough--there's the commonly found anal coring; missing half jaw; genitals missing; an eye missing. And not a drop of blood in the cow or on the snow. All the incisions are laser fine with laser like cauterization.

Then, for many months thereafter, not a single scavanger or even flies will touch the carcass.

Being a faithful loyal and contributing FREEPER, the rancher comes to a rare UFO thread on FR because he's found FREEPERS are wonderful resources on everything imaginable. He gently offers his story. The usual 80% of the UFO threads that are hostile ridiculers pounce on the esteemed FREEPER/rancher as though he's a 2 year old IQ-20 idiot.

He gets little help before the dismissive swarm descend on him with stingers flashing and raucus laughter flinging. He limps away dismayed that FREEPERS could turn into such insensitive and ignorant mob attackers. And, of course, given FR tradition RE UFO's, the mods do nothing or worse.

Not very impressive, to me. I don't miss those aspects of the old days. There's plenty of that mentality left as we see on this thread. Only the brazenly bold and serious folks dare post seriously even now.

Evidently some folks prefer it that way. Must help their egos or something.

The following from his website is full of his personality:

From:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sfchlgaf.html

= = = =

Scientist Challenges Air Force
Regarding UFOs

Nov. 13, 1997

"Frankly I am sick and tired of the US Air Force lying to the public, the press, and members of Congress about UFOs," said nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman at a public lecture "Flying Saucers ARE Real" in Albuquerque. "I have had a serious interest in UFOs for 39 years, lectured in a dozen countries, and visited seventeen document archives," he continued. "For 50 years there has been massive misrepresentation about UFOs in general, and in recent years the Roswell Incident in particular. The Air Force has come up with four different answers for Roswell:

A flying saucer

A radar reflector and weather balloon

A Mogul balloon train over 500 feet long with 23 balloons, sonobuoys, etc.

And most recently, a Mogul balloon train plus crash test dummies dropped at least six years AFTER the 1947 crashes Southeast of Corona and West of Magdalena."

Friedman, who spent fourteen years as an industrial nuclear physicist working on a wide variety of classified, highly advanced nuclear systems for major corporations, was the first civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident.

"I hereby challenge Colonel Richard Weaver, author of the outrageously misleading huge volume 'The Roswell Report: Fact Vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert', and USAF Captain James McAndrew, author of the 1997 'The Roswell Report: Case Closed', to a formal debate.

"These two officers have made a mockery out of serious investigation. They have used all the tools of the propagandist with selective choice of data, false reasoning, false claims, positive and negative name calling. These reports should be listed under fiction in the library.

"The Mogul explanation doesn't fit. There are gross differences among the testimony of their witnesses, and they ignore the testimony they don't want to consider while claiming falsely that they have talked to all the original witnesses still alive who handled material totally different from the Mogul explanation.

"They left out vital aspects of quotes from the FBI. They falsely tried to claim the Roswell story came to light because of a story in a tabloid in 1978. That story didn't appear until 1980 after a colleague and I had talked to 60 people connected with the case. I was falsely portrayed as somebody who gets his UFO stories from tabloids.

"The fact is in 1978 I was the first to talk to a key witness, Major Jesse Marcel the intelligence officer for the only atomic bombing group in the world in 1947. I was referred to him by an old ham radio buddy of his who had seen the press stories in 1947. Jesse never sought publicity. I discussed many of these false charges in my book TOP SECRET MAJIC.

"One of the silliest official USAF stories is the crash test dummy nonsense. I spoke in person with Colonel Madson, whose picture is in the Case Closed volume and was heavily involved in the research program. He is adamant that the explanation doesn't fit. Remember that the dummies had to be the same height and weight as air force pilots. None were dropped anywhere near the two crash sites and none were dropped earlier than 6 years AFTER the 1947 events.

"They used a crazy explanation for the red-headed officer observed independently at the Roswell Base Hospital, and in the Plains of San Augustin. World class pilot, Joseph Kittinger, was a redhead and was at the Roswell base hospital after a ballooning accident. But it was twelve years later! If the explanation doesn't fit, one must acquit. As it happens, I was the first to hear the two independent stories about the nasty red haired officer and the black sergeant, an unusual combination for 1947. The Air Force says nothing about the black sergeant, or the two independent stories.

"There are many other examples of massive misrepresentation by the Air Force about UFOs. The USAF Office of Special Investigations even told its own units to ignore their own regulations if they received an FOIA request from me about UFOs. The USAF apparently even lied to the CIA recently, falsely claiming that half the UFO sightings after 1955 were the results of observations of super secret reconnaissance aircraft, the U-2 and later the SR-71. But there was no increase in the number of sightings after 1955. Why would anybody report a very high flying aircraft moving in a straight line and never making right angle turns, as stopping on a dime, instantly reversing direction, or silently landing and taking off in the middle of nowhere, like UFOs so often are observed to do???

"The Pentagon based Air Force Liaison officer has written numerous one page letters in response to constituent requests for information about Roswell to congressman. It took me five pages to correct all the false claims he made.

"Colonel Weaver wrote a researcher that the Operation Majestic 12 Documents, which are the subject of TOP SECRET/MAJIC are known by everybody to be BOGUS. In response to my Freedom of Information Act request for any memos, letters, documents, etc. supporting this ridiculous and baseless claim, I was told, "There are no records available." This is a clear case of research by proclamation.

"Doesn't the Air Force have a responsibility to those who pay the bills to be honest? Or are they above the law? I repeat my challenge:

"USAF officers McAndrew and Weaver, do you have the courage of your convictions? Name the date and place. Perhaps Larry King or Walter Cronkite or Ted Koppel would be willing to act as moderator."

Stanton Friedman

Here's the first web page of 3 answering some common questions about UFO's from Stanton's website. pages 2 & 3 are available at the following links:

page 1:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sf-ufo-why1.html

page 2:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sf-ufo-why2.html

page 3:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sf-ufo-why3.html

PAGE 1 IS HERE:

The UFO “WHY?” Questions

4th Annual UFO Crash Retrieval Conference
Las Vegas, NV
November 10-12, 2006
by Stanton T. Friedman
[«] [1] [2] [3] [»]

ABSTRACT

I have been fortunate enough to lecture (usually “Flying Saucers ARE Real”) over 700 times in 18 countries. My audiences, mostly college and professional groups, seem to have no problem accepting the detailed factual data that I present leading to my conclusions that SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft and that the subject of flying saucers represents a kind of Cosmic Watergate. But what seems to be of most concern, judging by the Question and Answer sessions, are the “WHY?” questions. Why would saucers crash? Why would aliens visit Earth? Why doesn’t the government tell us what it knows? Why would aliens not land on the White House lawn or at the United Nations? Why would people fake MJ-12 documents? Why do you say SETI stands for Silly Effort To Investigate? Why have you kept at it for 39 years? Why hasn’t the government taken you out? Perhaps my answers will help the reader answer his “WHY?” questions, or lead to more such questions.

THE UFO “WHY?” QUESTIONS

1. WHY have you concluded that the evidence is overwhelming that Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled Extraterrestrial Spacecraft?

The simplest answer is that it is the only conclusion merited by the enormous amount of evidence. In my lectures I review 5 large scale scientific studies and ask after each one how many have read it. Typically fewer than 2% have read any. I note the 5000-plus physical trace cases that Ted Phillips has collected from over 70 countries. In these people see a craft land and then take off leaving behind various markings on the soil such as burn circles, landing gear marks, small footprints, dried out rings of soil, etc. These are not crop circles where normally no saucer is seen. About 1/6 of these cases involve reports of small beings. I refer to the more than 1000 abduction cases that have been investigated by Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, John Mack, and Raymond Fowler and the Betty and Barney Hill case as recorded by John G. Fuller. I review the outstanding work by Marjorie Fish clearly indicating that Betty’s star map makes sense and provides information not previously known to us. Furthermore, I have spent time at 20 archives, had a security clearance for 14 years, and find it perfectly obvious that crucial data has been withheld and many government people have lied with regard to UFOs. Saying some UFOs are of ET origin, of course, doesn’t answer other questions such as WHY are aliens coming here, WHY haven’t I seen one, where are they from, etc., etc.

2. WHY don’t the aliens, if they are real, just land on the White House lawn and say “Take me to your leader.”?

Obviously I don’t speak for any aliens. However, let us note three facts:

A. The White House is in a forbidden flying zone. Our response to intruders in such zones is to take immediate action to escort the intruders away or shoot them down. As far back as the summer of 1952 when, in July, UFOs did fly over the White House, orders were given to military interceptors to shoot down UFOs if they don’t land when instructed to do so. This is described in detail in Frank Feschino Jr.’s new book “Shoot Them Down.” Major General Roger Ramey proclaimed that interceptors had been scrambled hundreds of times without any luck. As an indication of the zeal of pilots, I have heard of at least 7 specific cases in which the UFOs zapped attacking earthling aircraft. Tim Good in his new book “Need to Know” recounts similar cases. I am working on a claim by a pilot that UFOs took out 20 of our planes in Europe in the early 1950s.

B. It may come as a surprise to many Americans, but the President of the USA doesn’t speak for Planet Earth. After all who elected him World President? Certainly not the billion people from India or the 1.3 billion people in China. Obviously the UN also does not speak for Planet Earth, either.

C. Normally, negotiations only take place between roughly equal parties. Surely it is not difficult to see that aliens have technology far in advance of earthling technology. Their vehicles are clearly faster, more maneuverable, and have access to huge space carriers (mother ships) with lord-knows-what capability. They have no reason to negotiate when they can already do what they please.

3. WHY in the world would aliens want to come here if, as you have claimed, we are a primitive society whose major activity is clearly tribal warfare?

Answers to this question depend very much on one’s picture of the local galactic neighborhood and of the situation on our planet. The SETI cultists seem to think we are the Crown of Creation and that there may be “as many” as 50,000 civilizations in our Milky Way Galaxy, which has a few hundred billion stars. It is almost 100,000 light years across which, according to Frank Drake, means there may be another civilization “only” 1000 light years away. This would, of course, make us very special as one of the elite civilizations. I think that there are probably many advanced civilizations within our local neighborhood on planets around some of the 2300 stars within 54 light years, especially the 46 that are very similar to the sun. The driving fact here is that we have only had fancy technology for perhaps 100 years. But the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and has been suitable for life for well over a billion years.

Just down the street, 39.4 light years away, we find a pair of sun-like stars, Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli. These are only an 1/8 of a light year apart from each other, but are a billion years older than the sun. In other words, there has been a great deal of time for other civilizations to establish themselves. Having an easily observable neighbor nearby would provide far more incentive for the development of interstellar travel than we have out here in the boondocks. My view is, per a fine analogy from physicist Beatriz Gabo Rivera, that we are like the gorillas in a nature preserve in Africa who know nothing about what is going on outside the preserve. I think aliens have been traipsing around the neighborhood for a very long time indeed. I think it is hilarious that Dr. Seth Shostak, one of the noisier SETI guys, says there is nobody at ZR 1 or ZR 2, because they were listened to by a Southern Radio Observatory 10 years ago. One would think he knows what equipment and frequency alien communicators way ahead of us would use, and that they are trying to attract our attention, which is totally absurd.

Answers also depend greatly on how difficult it is to travel within the neighborhood. If one is a SETI cultist noting (as on the terrible Peter Jennings, Feb. 24, 2005, TV mockumentary) that our fastest spacecraft is the Voyager probe and that it would take 70,000 years to get to the nearest star, trips would be very uncommon indeed. A much more realistic approach is to note that Voyager hasn’t had a propulsion system on it since it left Earth. It is coasting, helped by some cosmic freeloading. Can we estimate the time it takes to cross the ocean by throwing a bottle in? Can we tell how long it would take to fly from New York to Los Angeles by putting a feather in the air? It took Charles Lindberg 33 hours to cross the Atlantic. The Concorde did it in just a few hours. The space station goes around the entire earth in 90 minutes. Electromagnetic signals take 1/7 of a second to circumscribe the earth.

Remember, we have just started on our technological kick. Think back to 1900. Note no TV or radio or microwaves or nuclear power plants or satellites or DNA testing or lasers or computers or airplanes or rockets or nuclear weapons or transplanted organs. I am convinced that, unless we stupidly destroy ourselves, there will be a time when star travel is not considered any more far out than crossing the Atlantic on a 747 is today. I recently flew nonstop from Newark, New Jersey, to Hong Kong, China, in less than 17 hours. Nuclear submarines circumnavigate the globe without surfacing. Obviously there are those who think star travel is impossible. If that were true, which it isn’t, obviously nobody could be coming here from the stars.

I just found this Stanton commentary on the horrid Peter Jennings "mocumentary" . . .

From:

http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/sfjennings1.html

= = = = = =

Jennings Program

MUFON Journal column by Stanton T. Friedman
March 3, 2005

By the time you read this you will have read a ton of verbiage about the February 24 Peter Jennings's ABC "UFOs: Seeing is Believing." I think it is appropriate for me to comment since so many people sent me emails about it. Almost all were sympathetic about what they considered the unfair treatment that I and the Roswell incident received.

The producers in Roswell interviewed me for over an hour in July, 2004. Don Schmitt who has been active in Roswell research for many years was also interviewed. He and a film crew actually went out to the site, which was marked out for more archeological digging. I believe about 20 seconds of my interview was shown with none of Don's nor of the scientific work site. I had been cautiously optimistic after hearing a few weeks before the showing that I had made the cut, but that 100 people had not. My optimism decreased when I heard that Seth Shostak, Frank Drake, and Jill Tartar, (SETI Specialists) and Michael Shermer, skeptic, were going to be on. Despite all their writing about SETI, it was clear that none knew anything about UFOs. Proclamation is not the same as investigation. I had jokingly told people that, after all, Peter Jennings and I were both dual citizens of the USA and Canada and, surprisingly, both had been born on July 29. How could I not trust him? I didn't place enough emphasis on the fact that Benito Mussolini was also born on July 29.

I was favorably impressed with the first portion with interviews with aircraft crew members, comments about Blue Book's focus on explaining away sightings and the interview with Major Friend whom I had met at Blue Book in the early 1960s. The second half of the show was like a horror film. The SETI people waxed poetic about their wonderful search for ET Signals. There was no indication of any knowledge of UFOs other than one of the sillier moments of the show when Jill Tartar described having a sighting of the moon partially obscured by clouds. This was worth recreating?? One can see why the SETI people don't want to deal with eyewitness testimony. I think one could also see why I say that SETI stands for Silly Effort to Investigate and why I talk of the cult of SETI: Charismatic hand waving, very strong dogma (they must be out there, they can't be coming here, we will make the most important discovery in Man's history a signal from a distant civilization, and nobody could possibly come here -- if they did, we would be out of a job) and strong irrational claims about the absence of evidence. Meaning "we don't dare review it." Dr. Tyson joined the crowd and proclaimed that eyewitness testimony may be OK in court, but not in science. Tell Jane Goodall that.

Several times PJ used the term "mainstream science" along with a proclamation about its non-acceptance of UFO reality. No evidence was presented. It appears that the only mainstream science he was talking about was astronomy. Think of chemists, biologists, geologists, us physicists, etc. Much of science today was based on eyewitness testimony of something unusual. Think Roentgen and X-rays. I believe that most mainstream scientists like me believe that the methodology has to suit the problem. Unpredictable, brief appearances of strange craft (not under the control of the observer or of Mother Nature) behaving in strange ways require eyewitness testimony as, of course, do airplane crashes, crimes, etc. Shostak proclaims when he finds a signal they will tell everybody else who will then verify it and anybody can use his own antenna. What happens if the transmission stops? How many can afford their own Hat Creek Telescope System? Does he think the signal will be "Testing 1, 2" repeated over and over again? That we can order the saucer to stop while we do measurements?

PJ claimed that mainstream science doesn't accept the UFO evidence. This was yet another misrepresentation. Polls have consistently shown that the greater the education the more likely to accept UFO reality. Two polls of R and D people showed that about 2/3 of them who expressed an opinion said flying saucers were real. But then they live in the real world unlike the SETI cultists.

The program contained, as might be expected, based on past experience, a major putdown on star travel from people who know absolutely nothing about space travel. We were told that the Voyageur spacecraft, our fastest space craft launched 30 years ago, will take 73,000 years to reach the nearest star and that the fastest man made object goes only 11 miles per second compared to the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second. Wow! Sounds like we sure can't get there from here. These are both totally misleading. The Voyager hasn't been attached to a propulsion system since it left the vicinity of the earth!! It is coasting. This is like tossing a bottle into the ocean or a feather in the air as a basis for estimating crossing time for the Queen Mary 2 or the SST or the space station.

We physicists have accelerated particles in the vacuum chambers of expensive accelerators to speeds of 99.99% of the speed of light. Eleven miles per second is absurd. Space is a very large vacuum chamber. These totally misleading comments rank on a par with Dr. Simon Newcombe's claim in October, 1903 (2 months before the Wright Brothers' first flight) that the only way man would fly would be with the help of a balloon. Dr. Bickerton in the 1920s proved "scientifically" that it would be impossible to provide enough energy to put anything into orbit. Dr. Campbell in 1941 "scientifically" calculated that the required initial launch weight of a rocket able to get a man to the moon and back would be a million million tons. He was, because of his total ignorance about space flight, off by a factor of 300,000,000. All three were, like the SETI cultists, astronomers. With this track record, why believe any of their proclamations? I was involved more than 40 years ago in work on a fusion propulsion system able to eject particles having 10 million times as much energy per particle as in a chemical rocket. This, of course, was not presented. After all, I was just a promoter.

A real hatchet job was done on Budd Hopkins in the show's segment on UFO abductions. The witnesses were OK, but then we have the off-the-wall proclamations about sleep paralysis being the explanation coupled with hypnosis to generate false testimony from the witnesses. All the data provided by Budd about the fact that many abductions don't take place in bed (think Betty and Barney Hill, Travis Walton, etc), that there are many cases when more than one person is abducted (is sleep paralysis contagious?), that at least 30% of abduction investigations do not involve hypnosis, and there are physical markings, was left on the cutting room floor. Budd has worked with over 600 abductees. Had the 2 Harvard psychologists worked with more than a dozen? Why wasn't any of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack's interview run? The pronouncement that there is no benefit of hypnosis in memory enhancement is false. Phil Klass made the same claim to me, but stopped when I provided an article about a stonemason being able, under hypnosis, to describe tiny details on a particular stone that he had placed years earlier.

Finally we have the Roswell segment. I was introduced as a Roswell promoter. The term was used twice. There was no mention of the fact that I was a nuclear physicist who had worked for the likes of GE, GM, Westinghouse, etc. The totally unjustifiable term "myth" was used at least twice. PJ should be ashamed. Jesse Marcel junior was filmed. There was no mention of the fact that he is a medical doctor, a Flight surgeon Colonel in the reserve, and serving in Iraq despite being 67. His father was called an intelligence officer, but without adding that the group was the most elite military group in the world, the 509th, which had dropped the A-bombs on Japan. Don't these facts go to credibility? Of course I am a Roswell promoter, based on 27 years of research and investigation and the outlay of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours and finding loads of supporting testimony, visits to 20 Document Archives, all ignored by the noisy negativists and none presented in the program.

At the request of the producers I had provided a total of 57 videos from which they used a few clips. One video was the 105-minute "Recollections of Roswell" which included testimony from 27 witness including Retired General Thomas Jefferson DuBose. He told me of taking the call from General Clements McMullen, head of SAC, who was the boss of 8th Air Force Commander Roger Ramey (who was DuBose's boss) ordering him to get the press off their back, send some wreckage up here today, and never talk about it again.

For reasons unknown they had historian Robert Goldberg tell the Roswell tale although he was seriously in error in his description of Roswell in his book about conspiracies and on the show. They gave Karl Pflock quite a bit of time with his Roswell debunking. They blindly accepted the Mogul Balloon explanation even though there is no evidence to support it, the materials characteristics don't match witness testimony, and the dates and locations are wrong. They stressed the high security for Mogul -- vastly overstated since several launches were allowed to just drop in the desert, no chase planes or ground teams. At least the crash test dummies weren't paraded. I have dealt with all the objections in my MUFON 2003 paper "Critiquing the Roswell Critics."

The real promoters on the show were the SETI cultists with their myths. They have no evidence of any kind that there is anybody out there, that there are signals being sent, that they can receive and interpret such signals if there are any, using our primitive technology. An AM radio can't pick up FM signals. They can't admit that there is overwhelming evidence of alien visitation.

It appears that the producers were perfectly willing to present some interesting testimony though they left out things like Project Blue Book Special Report 14, or other large scale scientific studies, and the statement by AF General Carroll Bolender that reports of UFOs which could effect national security were not part of the Blue Book system. But the three areas of investigation that clearly together establish both the cover-up and that the planet is being visited (Roswell and the abductions and the fact that interstellar travel is feasible with reasonable trip times) were trashed. Sounds like when push came to shove they lacked any courage at all. It was nice to give a neat segment at the end of the program to Dr. Michio Kaku saying that maybe visitors are well ahead of us and can warp space and time. Fusion propulsion systems are much closer in time. Blacked out and whited out government UFO documents force one to the conclusion that the government is not just incompetent with Blue Book, but lying through its teeth.

Perhaps I should mention that only 11.6 million people watched the show. The Unsolved Mysteries program on NBC in 1989 about Roswell was seen by over 28 million people the first time around and 30 million the second time.

Particularly irritating was the frequent mention of lights in the sky, billions of stars, and absence of physical evidence. There was not even the slightest mention of Ted Phillips's 3000+ excellent physical trace cases from 90 countries. Why show Chris McKay digging in desert dirt and not the traces left by a UFO?

Frankly, I was also bothered by the proclamations by nasty noisy negativist retired USAF officer James McGaha. We had a full-scale debate in Tennessee. The video is noted at my website www.stantonfriedman.com. It is easy to say we need both sides. But is that true when one does his research by investigation and the other does it by proclamation?

-------

Over the years I have been involved in the making of a number of documentaries about UFOs. These include "UFOs ARE Real," "Flying Saucers ARE Real (2 Vols.)," "Stanton T. Friedman IS Real!," "Do you Believe in MAJIC?" and in numerous interviews for a wide variety of producers of shows that have aired on the History Channel, The Discovery Channel, TLC, etc. Therefore, I am really puzzled about certain aspects of the Peter Jennings's Productions UFO special seen on ABC on February 24, 2005. The word is that 150 people were interviewed and only 50 made the cut. That is far more than would be required for a 2-hour special. I had heard just before the broadcast that an interview was done with Harvard psychaitrist Dr. John Mack that would not be used. It surely would have made a good counterweight to the two Harvard psychologists falsely explaining away abductions as sleep paralysis enhanced with hypnosis. It was only after the broadcast that I found out how many extended interviews with very sharp people hadn't been used. Richard Hall, Dr. Richard Haines, Dr. David Jacobs, Dr. Bernard Haisch, John Schuessler, John Greenewald, Ted Roe of NARCAP, etc. I saw the people who interviewed Don Schmitt (no air time) and myself (20 seconds, and referring to me as a promoter twice, and calling Roswell a myth at least twice) in Roswell with Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell. None of this is in the PJP show. Crews for PJP travelled a lot including, for example, to the MUFON Conference in Denver. There was no mention of MUFON in the program though CUFOS was given a lot of time with old footage of Dr. J. Allan Hynek as well. Strangely he was portrayed as a courageous loner, the only one standing up to the debunkers -- a totally misleading portrayal. The question thus arises as to why spend at least many hundreds of thousand dollars to collect far more footage than could possibly be used? Perhaps they will do another special using "the good stuff"? I doubt it.

But if one wanted a real state-of-the-art survey of ufology on who knows what, is there a better cover story than that a company linked to Peter Jennings, the last remaining Big Time Network news anchor, is making a hard-hitting 2-hour special? People are flattered to be asked to contribute. Many of us were questioned for more than an hour. It might also be possible when reviewing the tapes to get clues as to who might be speaking out of turn. The crews were very tight about who all they talked to. Is it really surprising that the harshest attacks came down on Roswell, the reality of abductions and the reality of interstellar flight? Glorifying the Silly Effort To Investigate cultists provides a great deal of misdirection away from the reality of UFOs and the government cover-up. The footage would be a feast for the minions of whatever group is taking Majestic 12's place to help plan their strategy for debunking and also for possible future release of data. I suspect they are also collecting reactions to the program. I would really like to collect the names of those who were interviewed but didn't make the cut besides those given above.

Stan Friedman

fsphys@rogers.com
www.stantonfriedman.com

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.