Posted on 12/17/2003 6:09:59 PM PST by Momaw Nadon
PITTSBURGH A researcher backed by cable televisions Sci Fi Channel sued NASA for the release of records she contends the agency has of a UFO that reportedly crash landed and was recovered by government workers in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1965.
The lawsuit was filed Dec. 9 in U.S. District Court in Washington on behalf of Leslie Kean, a San Rafael, Calif., investigative reporter backed by the cable channel and a group called the Coalition for Freedom of Information.
Our lawsuit is aimed at getting NASA to tell the public what it knew and when it knew it, said Ed Rothschild, a lobbyist the Sci Fi Channel hired from the Washington firm PodestaMattoon, who is also identified as CFIs executive director. Former President Clintons one-time chief of staff John Podesta is backing the Sci Fi Channels efforts, and his brother, Anthony, is a principal in the lobbying firm hired by the channel.
Bob Jacobs, a NASA spokesman, said he was unaware of the lawsuit and could not comment.
The filing marked the 38th anniversary of the Kecksburg UFO incident, which occurred in the unincorporated hamlet about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
Witnesses described a fireball in the evening sky, and a metallic, acorn-shaped object about 12 to 15 feet high and 8 to 12 feet in diameter that landed in the woods, according to news media accounts in the Tribune-Review of Greensburg and other outlets at the time.
Military personnel quickly surrounded the site, removed the object, threatened residents who tried to inquire about it, and left later calling the object a meteor, according to news accounts.
James Romansky, 57, of Derry Township, was then a 19-year-old volunteer firefighter. He told the Associated Press that he was among those who drove to the landing site.
Now, Im prepared for a smashed-up airplane ... and Im thinking, What in the hell is this? Im looking for wings, propellers, motors, a fuselage but theres none of that, Romansky said. Theres no rivet marks on it, no weld marks on it, no windows, no doors no possible way of getting in and out of this thing that I seen.
There was writing on it, but not writing that you or I could understand. I always referred to it as something like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. There was dots and dashes and circles, Romansky said.
The cable network announced in June that it was backing the effort to research the Kecksburg incident in promoting a documentary, Out of the Blue, which examined various UFO reports.
This should have been done a long time ago, Romansky said. The United States government has given us a snow job for the last God knows when. I cant understand it for the life of me. They cant come out and say its nothing because I was 10, 20 feet away from it.
Sci Fi Channel officials said theyre looking for an explanation of what occurred. Theyre also looking for viewers.
A November 2002 documentary on the suspected 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, N.M., was the highest-rated special in the networks 11-year history. It was seen by nearly 2.4 million people, or about 2 1/2times Sci Fis usual prime-time audience.
The lawsuit contends NASA has thwarted Keans efforts to retrieve official files on the incident by sending her irrelevant information or nothing in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Apparently... in WW2, when different armies took over Pacific Islands the natives saw them bring in lots of goods and cargo. They benefitted from this a tiny bit.
When the war was also the cargo stopped coming, and many decided they could do the same thing the foreigners had done and they would get the cargo like the foreigners.
There were instances where natives would clear airfields and build bamboo control towers, complete with bamboo antenna's and they would even wear 'headphones' while they call in the cargo.
This went on for decades apparently, cults actually sprang up with the natives trying to will in the cargo from the skies just like the foreigners who occupied the islands in the war.
Kind of like UFO enthusiasts.
The term cargo cult is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific, especially New Guinea and Micronesian islanders, in the years during and after World War II. There was no one Cargo Cult so this proper name is a misnomer - no one who participated in a cargo cult actually knew that they were doing so.
The vast amounts of war materiel that were air-dropped into these islands during the Pacific campaign against the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of these islanders as manufactured clothing, canned food, tents, weapons and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers - and also the islanders who were their guides and hosts. When the war moved on, and ultimately when it ended, the airbases were abandoned and no new "cargo" was then being dropped.
In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders adopted a shallow version of the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood, and wore them while sitting in control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses.
The cultists thought that the foreigners have some special connection to the ancestors, who were the only beings powerful enough to spill such riches. By mimicking the foreigners, they hoped to bypass them.
In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size mockups of airplanes out of straw, and created new military style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. The cultural impact of these practices was not to bring about the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war, but to eradicate religious practices that had existed prior to the war.
When Westerners explained to them that the riches came from labor and that islanders would get them as well if they worked hard enough, the cultists couldn't help noticing that, in missions and camps, islanders were doing the hardest work but got the least of the goods.
A similar cult, the dance of the spirits, arose from contact between American Indians and the American civilization in late 19th century. The Piute prophet Wowoka preached that by dancing in a certain fashion, the ancestors would come back on railways and a new earth would cover the white people.
Some Amazonian Indians have carved wood mockups of cassette players (gabarora from Portuguese grabadora) that they use to communicate with spirits.
Anthropologist Marvin Harris has linked the social mechanisms that produce cargo cults to those of Messianism.
Eventually, the Pacific cultists gave up. But, from time to time, the term "Cargo cult" is invoked as an English language idiom, to mean any group of people shallowly emulating practices of a group whose behavior they have seen result in a shower of unexplainable riches and social status.
In this sense, they are perhaps best known because of a speech by Richard Feynman at a Caltech commencement, which became a chapter in the book "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" In the speech, Feynman pointed out that cargo cultists create all the appearance of an airport--right down to headsets with bamboo "antennas"--yet the airplanes don't come. Feynman argued that scientists often produce studies with all the trappings of real science, but which are nonetheless pseudoscience and unworthy of either respect or support.
think about the UFO Cargo Cult thing. I'm going to bed.
LOL
It's gonna take a bit of time to search the whole universe for them.
But do us human beings know everything there is to know about physics and interstellar travel?
If all of the aliens who are visiting Earth are of the same "species", why wouldn't they all look the same? Don't all human beings, generally speaking, look the same?
Glad you could acknowledge them.
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