"Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths."

(Sir Karl Popper)

The vast majority of people who take ET seriously have been medical professionals, TV crews, publicity seekers, and gullible people.

I am fascinated by the attitude of the UFO community toward military and intelligence agencies, which seems to fluctuate between hatred and near-worship. My own attitude toward government agencies tends toward the cynical at all times, and here's why...

The American government confessed to injecting innocent citizens, without their knowledge or consent, with syphilis (as they did to black males in the fifties and sixties), or plutonium (Rochester experiments on pregnant women during the fifties), or my personal favorite, sent us to a jungle to die for their own egos (Johnson's taped conversations in the White House). The CIA claimed that they had a remote viewing program for 20+ years -- they had to admit it because it 'got discovered' by some senate investigation or the like -- and it was an embarrassment for them but they admitted that it had been eliminated. It does not surprise me that the CIA might try remote viewing as an intelligence tool, any more than it surprises me that the US Armed Forces paid thousands of dollars for a screwdriver. But a screwdriver is not worth thousands of dollars, is it? Why would anyone want to give credibility to an organization that has been responsible for:

1. The Bay of Pigs fiasco
2. The Berlin Wall surprise
3. Gary Powers and the U-2 incident
4. Having their agents wear official CIA jackets with CIA logos on when helping rebels mine harbour in Nicaragua
5. Failing to anticipate Chinese intervention in the Korean War
6. Telling us how 'strong' the USSR was and how we had to arm ourselves against them, right up to the day they "suddenly and without warning" fell apart...oops!
7. Aiding drug cartels in SE Asia and Central America, all in the name of 'fighting communism'
8. Knowingly feeding faulty information to the White House and the Pentagon from double agents who were working for the USSR

The military makes blunders all the time (Tailhook, Vietnam, Rwanda, Lebanon, numerous crashing jets), so why not when it comes to UFOs too? In fact, it gets even worse in regards to the UFO situation, but not everything the military and intelligence agencies does is wrong or bad. When the USAF investigated UFOs from 1947 to 1969 during PROJECT BLUEBOOK, they reached three conclusions:

1. UFOs were not a national security risk,
2. Any sighting that could be backed up with demonstrable evidence could be explained as something mundane, and
3. It was a waste of taxpayers money to continue investigating UFOs anymore.

All three conclusions were obviously and indisputably correct.

Nowadays, it seems everyone wants to hop aboard the UFO bandwagon of money making opportunities, and astronauts are no exception. These one time 'heroes' had their day in the sun but they want to bask there forever -- even if it means the possibility of having to cater to New Age fringe groups. These astronauts seem to be exploiting their credentials to curry favor from anything from voters to buyers to believers. To me it is just another rotten example of what commercialization can do to the ethical consciences of people, and it is another example of meresay instead of fact finding.

"Jung's focus, first, foremost, and always, is psychological. His purpose in examining the various reports of flying saucers -- 'things seen in the skies' -- is not to establish the truth or falsehood of these reports but rather inquire into the psychological meaning of such reports for the individuals involved or for the larger culture. This psychological focus does not require that Jung believe that visitors from another planet are actually visiting Earth, nor does it require that he refute these claims. Secondly and equally characteristic, Jung examines the possibility that such worldwide UFO sightings hold a collective meaning, a mythic importance for modern people. For this reason, Jung unearths in the most surprising way parallel images and sightings from mythology and historical reports. He draws this material not as a credulous ufologist seeking to establish the objective reality of flying saucers"

During the 1994 CSICOP conference held in Seattle, Washington, June 23 through 26, one of John Mack's star 'abduction' patients he wrote about in his book ABDUCTION, Donna Bassett, came forward and confessed that she had never really been an abductee. She went on to say that John Mack was so easy to fool into believing she was an abductee because John Mack failed to rely on any sort of scientific methodology. And John Mack's rebuttal to all of this? "Whether she did in fact hoax or whether she has in fact had these experiences herself. I don't know".

In my mind, these events call into question everything that John Mack has ever contributed to the subject of alien abductions. If John Mack cannot even tell the difference between a 'real' abduction story and a fake abduction story, then the issue of reality versus fantasy becomes an issue here. John Mack seems like a very nice gentleman, but that means nothing in regards to his work. He's just a nice gentleman who is very easy to fool when it comes to the UFO phenomenon. And he is a very intelligent gentleman, which I'm sure will make any of his lying patients very proud, proud to know that they fooled someone much smarter than they are.

Not one to be easily deterred by such facts, John Mack continued on anyway to write a second book on the subject of abductions, where he talks about the value of what can be learned from the meaning of the abduction experiences -- the plea for us to transform ourselves so we can solve all our problems! If the whole point of the message is to transform ourselves, then why all the other BS, like having sex with aliens? More importantly, why is there absolutely no guidance given on how to accomplish this transformation? Did it ever occur to the New Age nimwits of our day, that maybe the problem with humanity isn't that they don't realize that there is a problem with themselves, but that they don't know how to go about changing themselves in order to fix the problem? But I know exactly why the 'visitors' don't give practical solutions, because they aren't real, because they are imaginary creatures of our own making and we cannot create something from our own imagination that knows more than we do.

I often wonder what really could motivate so many people with Phd's to flock to disciplines of such ill-repute, like UFOlogy is. But then I thought (in regard to John Mack at least), which option would give you a better chance to find fame or fortune: practising psychiatry or practising UFOlogy? UFOlogy seems to me to be the more sure-fire hit compared to psychiatry. Think about it...when was the last time you heard a famous psychiatrist in the media as compared to a famous UFOlogist?

I attended AN EVENING WITH DR SKY held in Phoenix on March 13th, 2000 and I was surprised to hear Peter Gersten make an unusual comment. Peter stated that, "...all evidence for the existence of alien contact is inconclusive..." and then on the other hand claim that "...it is an indisputable fact that we are in contact with an alien intelligence...". His two statements are mutually exclusive. Either you have facts or you do not have facts, there is no sorta, kinda, or maybe in this regards. If all your evidence is "inconclusive" then you cannot conclusively state that you have any facts, period.

I rest my case.

I really sat up and took notice when I saw that Richard Hoagland took some unspecified part in the debunking article put out about regarding the faked moon landing conspiracy. What I mean is, is there no honor among thieves, ie -- is there no honor among make believe conspiracy theorists? Now there is something really funny -- talk about 'silly and damaging urban myths', I believe the Mars Face conspiracy takes the cake, yet here we have the king of the conspiracy promoters somehow taking part in performing the 'evil task' of debunking someone else's silly and damaging urban myth. Debunking must not be so 'evil' afterall, I guess it only becomes 'evil' when someone does it to you. This reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw the other day that read, 'Don't lie, cheat, or steal because the government hates competition'. Likewise, for one silly and damaging urban myth maker to debunk another silly and damaging urban myth maker sounds to me like conspiracy believers hate competition.

Objectively speaking, there are no 'pyramids' or 'faces' or 'cities' in the NASA or JPL photos of Mars, just some blobs and blurry rock piles. And speaking of blobs and blurs, do you also remember how psychologists used to often ask their clients to interpret what they think they saw in a random blotch of smeared ink called a Rorschach test? Well I often wondered what a mathematician or a physicist might see in a random blotch of smeared rock piles in a photo of Mars surface and apparently what they might see is called "hyperdimensional physics" by some! I wonder whatever happened to the scientific method or, especially, whatever happened to experimentally repeatable demonstration of facts, facts that I can actually hold in my hand instead of having to wait for a, 'Just you wait and see -- anyday now I will be proven right' kind of mentality? All I can see for now in support of the Mars conspiracy theory is a bunch of hand-drawn lines on a photo of Mars surface, but I can find nothing on Richard's website or writings that is based on any well known, established, and demonstrable science, can you? You know, this brings up an interesting point: I never understood why Richard Hoagland calls his alleged theory, "physics", when it sounds more like an 'art' than a science -- not at all too much unlike the art of fortunetelling, where a make believe psychic takes one look at the lines on your hand and then proceeds to tell you your 'future' from them.

I cannot imagine anyone but the stupidest, most gullible, least skeptical people in the world listening to Jonathan Rutter Reed tell his alien encounter story and believe it all -- hook, line, and sucker! Audiences have given him standing ovations after hearing his ridiculous storytales. Art Bell and Jaime Maussan claimed they had done all sorts of "research" on Dr Reed or "confirmed" his story to the nth degree. But it took the real life skeptical UFO WatchDog to actually research and uncover the Dr Reed hoax, so what does this say about all the people who claimed they had done all sorts of "research" on Dr Reed or "confirmed" his story to the nth degree? Art Bell claims he is "more skeptical than the skeptics" but he wasn't being very skeptical at all during all those years when he was promoting the Dr Reed hoax, was he? Is Art Bell and company only driven by what makes the ratings, instead of by what is reasonable? If so, shame on them and shame on Mr Rutter (alias Dr Reed).

In 1987, Whitley described in his book, COMMUNION, what was unquestionably a rape. Rape is a very emotionally and physically traumatic experience for women, but it is even more so for men because "it isn't supposed to happen" to men. No man or woman in their right mind would get raped and then casually tell everyone they meet the story about how they got raped. That isn't believable or credible in the slightest. Men normally and naturally do not get raped and then, merely a few months later, go around telling everyone about how they got raped; giving details like how they were penetrated, how long it took, what their rapist was feeling during the act, and so on. It clearly sounds like a fabrication. Even if it were true, you have to ask yourself, "What is wrong with a man like that that he would go around describing his rape to anyone that was willing to listen?". Why? I don't know. It certainly earned him his five minutes of fame and some fortune and maybe that is all he wanted. That is all a lot of people ever want. But if he made the story up, he is a victim to his own game forever. He can never come out now and tell people, "Ha! I made the whole thing up and your guys were stupid enough to fall for it!". He would have to pretend he was raped and abducted by the "visitors" for the rest of his life.

Whitley now believes his rape was the same type of electroejaculation used in animal husbandry and in sex clinics, only the "visitors" were using Whitley as a stud. I've seen Whitley and all I can say is, "In your wildest dreams Whitley!". And think about this: if the visitors didn't want to inform Whitley what they were doing and didn't care what humiliation he would suffer if he were stupid enough to tell everyone the story about his rape, it most certainly wasn't worth it. Whitley was played the fool by the visitors. He was their little puppet on a string that they could taunt and manipulate to his detriment.

Yet Whitley loves and admires his visitors. That is the problem with people that are easily impressed. They worship their gods (real or imagined) and are afraid to displease their gods, so they do their gods every bidding, without moral or ethical or logical restraint. That is Whitley's real lesson here. Show some intellectual restraint when confronted with the unknown that is way more powerful than oneself -- real or imagined!

Number one, the people who wrote the report you are referring to, Dr William M. Kramer and Charles W. Bahme J.D., are NOT the spokespeople for every police and fire dept in the country. More importantly, no police or fire department is known for their scientific credibility, and police and fire personnel are composed of the same exact humans that are as everybit prone to mass delusions as you and I are. So you believe everything you read without question? You really do believe that Police and Fire personnel never lie or make things up? Never, not even once in all of history? The police and the fire dept can assert all they want but I will only believe in facts and not fairytales.

Number two, there is absolutely no evidence that this book is officially sanctioned by the Executive Department of the US Government as a guide or training manual by any, much less every, police station and fire department in America.

Even so, the book contradicts your childish fantasies, since chapter 13 is titled ENEMY ATTACK AND UFO POTENTIAL. Do you know what "potential" means? It means it isn't actual. You are twisting their words around to mean "They have proof that ETs have visited us" and should be taken seriously when in reality the book is more a review of the anatomy of a mass delusion and how to deal with mob control. Whether or not a real ET ever visits us, people will lose their heads, as they often do, even if they imagine ET is visiting us, just like they did during the broadcasting of Orsen Welles' THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.

To be honest with you, there is absolutely no legitimate scientific evidence that there has been any alien visitations, there are only alien fantasies, so why not just come out and say so? Why the run around and the games of 'the issue isn't about the physical reality of this phenomenon...now here is one example of this physically real phenomenon...'? I mean if you don't want to get into the sticky issues of reality versus fantasy, then don't throw comments out on the floor that something is actually happening in physical reality when no one can demonstrate anything other than a poorly told story.

The outspoken participants of this alien visitation circus don't appear to be overly concerned with getting out the message as much as they are concerned with book signing sessions, sequels to their last 'one-of-a-kind' book, TV appearances, and so on. Do you really think all these people believe what they've been telling you? The UFO phenomenon is only second to sex in number of hits on the internet. There is a lot of incentive to join in on the UFO cash cow, because the UFO phenomenon is a very big business. Regardless of how credible the witnesses may be (not that it matters), their stories are never credible. There is always some cockamaynee reason why they can never provide any demonstrable evidence for their silly tales. But the believers and promoters had better hurry up and drain as much money as they can because someday the debunkers are going to abduct the believer's UFO cash cow and there will be nothing left for them to scrounge off of anymore.

Let's pretend that invisible pink elephants exist

Now let's make up excuses for why they don't appear to everyone.

Then let's continue making up reasons for the reasons for the make believe excuses for why they don't appear to everyone.

A 'discussion' of that type could literally go on forever because when does the make believing end and reality begin? Imagination is limitless but reality has limits.

And the difference between that discussion and the one on the reality of ET? None. Both discussions are exactly the same. If you don't want to discuss facts or search for truth in regards to UFOs/ETs/abductions, you will continue to go around and around in ever widening circles, never going anywhere and not even noticing you aren't going anywhere.

Nowadays, almost everybody and their cousins have camcorders and some of these individuals are videotaping certain things in the sky that sometimes are (and sometimes are not) evident to the human eye at the time the picture was taken. The problem is that by claiming that they weren't 'evident to the human eye' when the picture was taken, they mean that the people taking the pictures or video shots didn't notice any strange objects until after they were DEVELOPED later on, proof that the 'UFOs' were not alien craft at all, but a result of one of the artefacts of modern day photography and camcorders called 'noise,' 'smudges,' 'scratches,' etc -- exactly what most 'UFO' sightings look like. Don't you find it funny that in the 40's through the 80's, UFO photos were blurred because that was the best that their technology was able to do, but even with today's technology, UFO pictures are still blurred despite the fact that we can send back high-resolution pictures of the Orion Nebula via Hubble or work in almost no light with the latest CCD video cameras.

Many kinds of people from all walks of life have come forward to say that they have seen an UFO. There have been cases of ex-presidents, governors, congressmen, policemen, professional astronomers, airplane pilots of all types, military officers, radar operators, and various scientists. Most people will blindly assume that since many witnesses are highly trained and well educated, that this would make it impossible for them to lie or to have any reason to lie. Science is not prejudiced and treats everyone equally, credible or not, because even the most highly trained and educated people in the world can be fooled by optical illusions, as evidenced by confirmed cases where highly trained military pilots have been caught chasing weather balloons. No amount of training or education can prevent hallucinations, optical illusions, mistakes, or lies from happening. As the scientific method teaches us, being considered a credible witness does not insure that the person will tell the truth. Scientific credibility has to do with verification of facts and confirmation that an UFO sighting was not a result of delusion, illusion, mistaken identity, daydreaming, or lying than it does with who is telling the story.

Things that actually exist can be heard, seen, smelled, tasted, and/or felt. This is called 'direct evidence'. The flying saucer phenomenon never has been substantiated with even what could remotely be called direct evidence. This doesn't mean that is the end of that because we don't have to be present at the time of a hit-and-run accident to know if there was a hit-and-run accident, do we? Of course not! That's because real things that actually exist interact with reality. Real objects interact with other objects by displacing other objects, or rubbing off on them or scraping or burning or distorting or doing something to their surroundings that is left behind after the interaction. That interaction is called 'indirect evidence'. From this indirect evidence we can reasonably deduce the characteristics of the alleged object. Since there is no direct evidence of flying saucers, what indirect evidence do we have?

Someone made the very big mistake of claiming the repeat return visit of a UFO lovingly called 'Bubba' in Gilbert, Arizona in 2001. A mere 1-1/2 miles from the location of the repeated Bubba visitations, is an extremely popular shopping center and a major freeway. If you take the time to look over this site, located at the Gilbert/Guadalupe intersection in Gilbert Arizona, the first thing you will notice are the numerous jumbo jets that frequent the area there (about one plane every ten minutes), as this area is close to a local aircraft landing/takeoff corridor for the huge Phoenix Airport. So far, Bubba has eluded me, any and all jam packed jumbo jet aircraft that frequent the area, a shopping mall packed full of potential witnesses, and busloads of freeway gawkers. It is literally impossible, to have so many thousands of potential witnesses passing by within arm's reach, hour after hour, and have only one or two individuals ever notice such a profound phenomenon after six months of repeatedly returning on a regular basis! This kind of oversight just doesn't happen in real life with real life phenomenon, so where is the beef?

Furthermore, no size, distance, or speed measurements were scientifically or logically derived from what has been posted about it and what little estimates were given were inconsistent from one report to another, ie -- one time it was an object 20 feet in diameter and 2000 feet in the air (which would appear as a very large star from the 'witnesses' point of view), then another time it was such an incredibly tiny speck in the sky, barely visible even with an 80x video camera, manoeuvring anywhere from 5000 to 100 feet in the air, so it was practically a miracle that it was ever discovered to begin with. But at least this last report allowed the UFO proponents to always give the excuse that if we didn't see Bubba, that it must be because we weren't looking hard enough with our 80x eyes.

Since only a small handful of believers ever 'saw' it, I personally believe Bubba is a hoax and the believers are bluffing. What we really have is an undetermined flying aircraft with a red blinking light that looks exactly like "the starboard light of a commercial airplane". Logically speaking, if it looks exactly like the starboard light of an airplane and blinks exactly like the starboard light of an airplane, then it must be exactly that -- the starboard light of an airplane (or helicopter, since the Mesa Police helicopter frequents this area also) -- any other claim would not be logical or reasonable or scientific. We will have to have someone demonstrate more for us besides poorly taken videos that show us nothing more than a light identical to the starboard light of an airplane, if you want to convince thinking people, like myself, that Bubba is anything more than the apparent overdramatization of mundane events by some Gilbert locals.

Crop circles appear to be a case of alien juvenile delinquents, tagging wheat fields across Europe (and occasionally other continents). How do we know that the ETs aren't blasting holes in the ozone everytime they tag a wheat field? Isn't it time the adult ETs cracked down on their children for making such a mess of our backyards? These supposedly ultra-technologically advanced ETs haven't heard of plain and simple pen and paper as a form of communication yet? And why pick on wheat or barley fields? If the purpose of this cosmic graffiti is to communicate with us, highway pavement or parking lots would make a more lasting and obvious way to get our attention. Or how about schools of fish lining up in patterns? Hey, with ETs, who knows? Anything is possible with the ETs -- that is anything except a simple, direct, honest face-to-face contact. But that wouldn't be as fun to do as playing all the silly Captain Decoder games they do, games like leaving english messages in ASCII binary instead of doing the more intelligently obvious thing by leaving english messages in english, now would it? And if the Chilboton Crop Circle Schematic is the ETs idea of a response to the 1975 Arecibo radio telescope transmission, then the ETs must be complete and total idiots or psychotic juvenile delinquents. Think about it: What would you think if you transmitted a message on your shortwave or CB, and then the next day noticed that someone had sneaked into your backyard during the night and engraved their 'reply' onto your freshly manicured lawn? Would you think they were intelligent or insane, criminals or artists? I think the answer is obvious.

Considering the level of intelligence demonstrated within the contents of Crop Circles as a method of communication, let's hope and/or pray that it is a hoax conducted by stupid humans and not stupid ETs, because it would mean that total idiots are in control of very advanced (and therefore very dangerous) technology -- and one cannot reason peace with a total idiot. Whitley Strieber states that, "If people are behind the circles, they are extraordinary human beings. Finding human crop circle makers would be almost as amazing as finding evidence they're being made by aliens from another planet. These people would have to be incredibly organized and fast and also incredibly well educated in mathematics, music and sacred geometry" (ARE CROP CIRCLES MAN-MADE? 31-May-2002), to which I say, incredibly organized compared to what? Granted, they would have to be "incredibly organized" compared to the UFO community, but that isn't saying much. And as for the "education", all one needs is well "educated" software and a PC. Creating fractal patterns or musical compositions or "sacred" geometry on a computer is as easy as 1-2-3. Nowadays, with the advent of the PC, a five year old could even do it (which might even explain why crop circles have increased in sophistication in direct proportion to the degree that computers and their associated software have increased in sophistication). One would think if ET was so intelligent, they would have been making fractal patterned crop circles all along, but such is not the case. And if one wants to pretend that the ETs have only created crop circles to the level of sophistication that people are currently at, that would contradict the claim that only "well educated" people are able to understand and create them.

So it wouldn't take much of a stretch of imagination to believe that humans are behind Crop Circles, but can I explain them? While I cannot explain how crop circles are made, it isn't relevant or necessary for me to do so since, for example, I can watch a magician perform feats of magic I could never explain, so it too isn't relevant or necessary for me to explain how a magician does his/her tricks to know it isn't real but trickery. Based on the actual demonstrable evidence (or extreme lack thereof), I see no other logical or factual conclusion other than 100% of all crop circles are man-made. There are no exceptions and there is no logical or demonstrably factual reason to suspect that there would be an exception. Crop circles are just another magic trick that has fooled some of the people all the time, but it will never fool all the people all the time.

According to Linda Moulton Howe's web site and the article quoted from Whitley Strieber above, much of the Crop Circle analysis is being performed by Dr Levengood, a person who's opinion on any scientific matter I would never ever consider credible since his write up on THE ALIEN CHOIR...

As I have already pointed out before, testimony without physical evidence you can put in your hands and take home is nothing more than storytelling.

The Freedom of Information Act has yet to help anyone turn up even the slightest evidence that indicates that the USA Government has a minimal trace of any knowledge of the alleged ET presence for anytime or at anyplace. All claims to the contrary have so far been extensively built upon silly fairytales of completely unverifiable and unbelievable sensationalistic cloak and dagger games. The MJ-12 group is one such fantasy that springs to mind.

No one will deny that UFOs are a classified topic in the USA Government, but it would be ridiculous to believe that an ET presence is of any serious concern to anyone but tabloid reporters or their infected minions. The USA has a need to identify intruders for the purpose of enforcing and protecting it's borders, so should the USA make public to it's enemies, when and how it fails to identify intruders? I can understand why the USA would choose to keep that info confidential but nowhere in any of those confidential scenarios does the term 'ET' spring to mind.

There is absolutely no evidence that the NSA, NRO, CIA, DIA, ONI, AFI, SAC, or any other three-letter agency you would care to mention, are hiding any evidence from us -- that is pure storytelling. There is nothing to disprove here where nothing has been proven in the first place, is there? Don't expect me to believe anything in regards to these organizations unless you can provide FOIA documents or a smoking gun, but no one, absolutely no one, has anything other than 'take my word for it'...and that was my point from the beginning.

Gary Lowery chose to sell his soul to the highest bidder and that to me tells me all I need to know about Gary and the value system that motivates him. It doesn't appear to me, not from Gary's actions, that he ever wanted to share his ongoing encounters with the world to get the truth out. No, from what I can see, he only wanted to use Peter Gersten in order to get the publicity he needed to get offers for money and fame. I mean, whatever happened to his claim Peter Gersten indirectly quoted from him, about "wanting to learn some answers as to what he and his family were experiencing"? Is sensationalizing his supposedly real-life experience going to accomplish that for him now -- or is that no longer a priority? If the ET/paranormal phenomenon were physically real (as opposed to imaginary), then one would reasonably expect that the person asserting their alleged experience would not want to cheapen it by sensationalizing it or selling their soul to the highest bidder, instead we would reasonably expect that they would want to resist the media hounds and the hush money and let the world know that they take this seriously and that this is no joke. But it is too late, it is just another joke now. Case in point: the "claw" that Gary Lowery claimed to have came from his abductors was actually only a mere dried up snail from the real world

What about alien implants? Do we actually have alien implants in our possession as evidence that ET is visiting us? In the past, somehow the aliens had always been able to "steal the evidence" before we could get our hands on it (like Budd Hopkins says they always do in his book, WITNESSED?), but lately there has been publicized cases of alien implant retrievals. Unfortunately, instead of having the appropriate logical structure of, for example, what an integrated circuit would be expected to have and what a monitoring implant DEVICE would be expected to have, instead all we have is a few irregularly shaped pieces of material that look suspiciously like shards of ordinary glass.

On the Feb 17th airing of CONFIRMATION: THE HARD EVIDENCE OF ALIENS AMONG US, there is a scene where Whitley Strieber is giving an interview with Jessie Long. Interlaced with the clip of this interview, Jessie is shown having a hysterical fit during a hypnosis session recorded on 02/23/1991. The significance of Jessie's hysterical fit is that people who are prone to hysteria are also prone to suffering hallucinations/visions (See ON THE PSYCHOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY OF SO-CALLED OCCULT PHENOMENA, by Carl Jung, especially paragraph 59 where a patient is described having a vision of an encounter with a "star traveler". The "star traveler" actually turned out to be an acquaintance of Carl's). During the actual interview with Strieber, Jessie confesses that he was subjected to a "sperm extraction procedure" during his encounters with some aliens or the 'grays'. The "sperm extraction procedure" is basically just another way of saying he was sexually raped by one of the grays (or as Jessie put it, "...they actually forced me to crossbreed with what seemed to be a female being..."). What Jessie actually seems to be confessing is that he must have a very VERY small penis. Think about what Jessie is confessing. The grays are described throughout various literature as being three to four feet tall with large heads and very slight bodies, with no discernible sexual characteristics -- in other words, they have miniscule sexual organs. A typical female gray would barely reach my bellybutton, probably would weigh no more than about 40-50 pounds, and would have a vagina proportionate to her size that would be far too small to accommodate the typical penis of a typical white male. So either Jessie is confessing that he was hallucinating or he is confessing he has an extremely small penis. I wonder what the truth of the matter really is?

The Mexico City sightings were not witnessed by 'thousands of witnesses'. That is the claim but where are all the thousands of names recorded? The film I saw of this, showed distant starlike points that did not display any kind of structure whatsoever. The fact that the vast majority of them were taken by a UFO group there in Mexico, casts doubt on the validity of the films due to the huge conflict-of-interest present (not to mention the poor quality of the 'evidence'). Now if ten or twenty completely unrelated individuals had taken those videos, and each one of those videos had a distinct and clearly taken image of an object with details on it like windows and landing gear, then it would be a different story. People see strange looking objects in the sky all the time but only a naive few assume 'unusual object = ET craft', but what they should be expecting is something completely and totally out of the ordinary, say like an object that is clearly seen AND then moves at great speeds and performs virtually impossible maneuvers. There would be no mistaking a plane or a balloon for a 'flying saucer' then. All we see are a bunch of distant indistinct points of light, not any actual physical crafts or entities. Furthermore, Mexico is experiencing a tremendous popularity in the alleged UFO phenomenon, so everyone and their brother is coming forward to 'confess' a UFO experience. A few of these random 'confessions' is bound to hit the jackpot every once in awhile, and fool the experts. But being part of a fad makes them prime candidates for a mass delusion.

What exactly are the MJ-12 documents? The MJ-12 documents are claimed to be a copy of a very top secret special operations manual on the recovery and disposal of aliens by the American government. So far so good, but the next issue becomes that of how was this very top secret document obtained, ie -- what are it's sources? Unfortunately, the MJ-12 documents were not obtained via any scientifically legitimate means, say like the Freedom of Information Act or an archaeological dig or the dumpster of some military installation. No, the MJ-12 documents were conveniently found in someone's mailbox, once upon a day, and the junk mail of someone's mailbox is hardly considered a 'legitimate scientific source'. Therefore a scientifically-mindful committee would have immediately rejected any such material from the outset and justifiably so since there is no way to validate the true source of these documents. To do otherwise would leave us at the mercy of having to take somebody else's word that they are 'legitimate' with the even more usual, 'Trust me when I say...' sort of dealings.

Have you actually seen the NASA STS-51 footage? There is all kinds of debris floating around in the video, and most of it also changes direction after the flash of light appeared. So how does one tell the UFOs apart from the debris, other than by sheer blind faith belief? And the alleged missile? It moves far faster than the UFO! We have better technology than the ETs? Haha! The NASA STS-51 footage is a perfect example of imagination gone unchecked by reason.

I know that in the past I confessed to having a crush on the lovely sounding Verdant named Gina from Philip Kraph's book, THE CONTACT HAS BEGUN, but, like I also confessed, that didn't mean I was stupid or gullible enough to believe anything that Philip reported as being the truth or fact. I was just being honest enough to admit that I had fantasies and I at least didn't confuse my fantasies with reality, no matter how alluring they might be. On October 1st of 1998, only just a few months after Philip released his first book, and months before Krapf had his second abduction, CNI News posted an article titled, LUNCH WITH GERSTEN AND KRAPF (CNI NEWS, Vol. 4, No. 15, Part 1). In that article, Peter Gersten of CAUS, cross-examined Philip and revealed questionable motives behind Philip's not so subtle hint of the promise of a second book, a promise which Philip followed through on by releasing his second book in June of 2001.

There is absolutely no evidence of the existence of UFOs, merely only extensive cataloging of an overwhelming number of reports of the existence of UFOs. As UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASON by Ronald N Giere puts it, "...the basic data consist of REPORTS of UFO sightings, not the EXISTENCE of what was reported. This distinction is crucial because the fact that some people have reported such things has been verified by many investigators. There can be no doubt that people have made such reports. That the people in question actually saw or experienced what they say they did, however, is open to question" (pg 166). PROJECT BLUEBOOK is one such example of a collection of mere reports of UFOs and not any actual study of some objects. I can think of numerous other major, alleged scientific studies that follow under the same logical fallacy of failing to verify a phenomenon by collecting reports instead of legitimate physical evidence.

20.1% of the Project Blue Book cases are labeled as "unknown" (PROJECT BLUE BOOK, edited by Brad Steiger, pg 400) or "unidentified" and Stanton Friedman capitalizes on this uncertainty by concluding that some of the unknown sightings therefore must be non-human, probably extraterrestrial craft. How he ever came to that conclusion is beyond reason, but interestingly enough, that isn't what PROJECT BLUE BOOK concluded about the cases labeled as "unknown":

1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.
2. There has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge.
3. There has been no evidence indicating the sightings categorized as "unidentified" are extraterrestrial vehicles.(U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet, UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS AND AIR FORCE PROJECT BLUE BOOK)

For Freidman to claim anything else is a lie. Think about it: If there are objects which cannot be accounted for by any 'scientific' explanation, then likewise that means these are objects which cannot be accounted for by any explanation whatsoever. Explanation without facts is called storytelling and not fact and that is exactly what Friedman does with his version of PROJECT BLUE BOOK. And speaking of lies...

Roswell is the story that won't die, in fact, everytime I hear it, it gets bigger and better...not at all unlike the story of 'the big one that got away', told and retold by fishermen all over the world.

According to the still public sources of the July 8th and July 9th, 1947 issues of THE ROSWELL DAILY RECORD, here is a synopsis of what happened at Roswell that fateful day:

1. On June 14th, 1947, WW Brazel found some debris, seven or eight miles from the JB Foster ranch he was operating on. Thinking nothing of it at the time, he left without further incident.
2. On July 2nd, Mr and Mrs Dan Wilmont were sitting on their porch at 105 S Penn in Roswell, New Mexico, whereupon they claim they saw a 'flying disc' zoom out of the sky from the southeast and remain in view for about 40 to 50 seconds before disappearing in the hills to the northwest. The Wilmont's did not report the alleged phenomenon nor did anyone else claim to see this phenomenon.
3. On July 4th, WW Brazel heard all the excitement about Kenneth Arnold and his 'flying discs' sighting and thinking that the debris he found might be the cause for all this talk about 'flying discs', he decided to act upon his previous finding of June 14th by going back out to the sight with his whole entire family and collect up most of the debris and stash it under some nearby brush.
4. On July 5th, WW Brazel went to town to wait and report his find.
5. On July 7th, WW Brazel reported his finding to sheriff George Wilcox. The sheriff called Major Jesse A Marcel at the Roswell Army Air Force, whereupon the Major and "a man in plain clothes" went to WW Brazel's home with the evidence and tried to "make a kite" from the debris.
6. On July 8th, the Wilmont's finally decided to report their alleged UFO experience. Minutes later, the Roswell Army Air Force claimed it had in its possession a 'flying disc' -- obviously a reference to the debris they had collected from WW Brazel's home. In response to this story, WW Brazel became an instant celebrity, had his picture published, and then given some airtime on radio station KGFL.

According to the poorly told and poorly researched urban myth of Roswell, we are expected to believe that Brazel saw some type of unknown aircraft wreckage at the ranch, but it was so unimportant to him that he ignored it for three weeks. Three long weeks! Then Brazel heard all the talk about UFOs and flying saucers so that was when he decided to report the wreckage to the sheriff, but first he took most of the debris and hid it under some bushes. If there were any ETs in the wreckage, that would have been the time to find them -- assuming that Brazel did not find any ETs the first time around when he first discovered the wreckage three weeks ago, but just choose to ignore them. In the meantime, the dead and seriously wounded ETs just lied around waiting for someone with a moral conscience to come along and help them.

So all those stories about the military immediately going out to the ranch and finding live bodies after a major crash landing is ludicrous. This poorly told and poorly researched story had little impact upon the citizens of Roswell or UFO believers at the time -- and this was at the very peak of the UFO frenzy!! The saucer craze of the 1940's and 1950's was a by-product of the Cold War: American citizens lived in fear that UFO sightings could be craft belonging to the Soviets. Always on the ready to exploit people's fear to sell a paper or a TV spot, the mass media was criticizing and demanding an explanation from the government. Then there was the genuine concern that a national panic could occur after considering what happened with the then recent Orsen Wells broadcast of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. So how could such an allegedly very important issue such as this be put on the back burner and completely forgotten about for the next 20+ years or so, before this 'very important' issue was resurrected?

Nevertheless, inconsistencies in the poorly thought out interpretation of what happened at Roswell were cropping up all over the place, forcing the media to come up with even more ridiculous interpretations of the Roswell incident. For example, in order to justify their faith that the Roswell incident was really due to a crashed flying saucer, and in order to have a piece of the action, various 'researchers' interviewed numerous 'witnesses' in a desperate attempt to validate their version of the Roswell fairytale. The not-so-intelligent 'researchers', refused to share information with each other for fear of losing out on their share of the money to be made through all the sensationalism, so they accidently wound up with five basic, contradictory Roswell fairytales. So in Linda Howe's version of 'the big one that got away' from Roswell, her story consists of incorporating three of the unrelated crash-landing site testimonies into one. Therefore, by incorporating three of the five testimonies into one testimony, five contradictions magically become only three contradictions, reducing the previous five contradictory testimonies to a mere three contradictory testimonies. And what about the government's insistence that what was mistaken by the public as a UFO was really only a balloon? Well at one (of the many) Roswell crash sites, the craft had apparently collided with the balloon on it's way down, therefore Brazel and the government weren't lying, but only telling a half-truth. In Stanton Friedman's version of 'the big one that got away', he just simply ignores any research other than his own. What they both thereby prove is that (1) they don't want to be bothered by the facts and (2) they didn't do their homework. Case in point: Brazel told reporters that after waiting two weeks, what he found barely weighed five pounds total and when gathered up, took up a space of 56 by 8 inch thick mat in the back of his pickup truck, and consisted of paper, tape, sticks, tinfoil, and rubber (See the July 9, 1947 edition of the ROSWELL DAILY RECORD, "Harassed Rancher who Located 'Saucer' Sorry He Told About It"). Oddly enough, there was no mention of pilot seats, navigation instruments, metallic parts of an engine or hull, little green men in spacesuits, or why he waited two weeks to report anything.

Since 1947, new information has surfaced for the Roswell incident:

In 1978, Jesse Marcel admitted that his claim that the debris was a weather balloon was a planted lie.

In July of 1994, the Air Force admitted that what was really found near Roswell in 1947 was part of a TOP SECRET balloon project called PROJECT MOGUL.

In June of 1997, the Air Force revised its 1994 report by adding matter-of-factly that it was likely that the bodies claimed to have been found in or near the debris discovered near Roswell were "anthropomorphic dummies".

Of course, it was nice of the military to 'volunteer' that information under duress from Congressional pressure, but at least this establishes the fact that the only reliable witnesses of the Roswell incident were any of those witnesses from 1947, who claimed before 1994 that the weather balloon story was a premeditated lie, as the military confessed it was in 1994. By process of simple elimination, if we exclude all witnesses who were known liars (the military, the sheriff, etc) that only leaves only one valid witness to this whole story. That doesn't mean that this one witness should be taken as the infallible word of God, only that there is only one valid testimony to base anything on.

And just where are all the UFO 'soil samples' today? Any scientifically conducted organization or individual knows that samples are never analyzed and then disposed of. The evidence must be catalogued and stored...unless of course there never was any evidence or you don't want anyone to question your evidence or methodology.

It was claimed that the 'biophysicist' Dr. Levengood attributed the appearance of glowing aliens in THE ALIEN CHOIR to "a very significant Doppler shift in a highly active energy form". I must wonder though, didn't anyone teach Dr Levengood that a doppler shift only occurs when an object is moving and not standing still, as the alleged aliens are doing on the roof top? I'm telling you folks, this is one of the many reasons why the UFO community apparently has no respect. I mean this isn't science, this is sci-fi. Dr Levengood goes on to state that the glow is the result of an energy that, "...is beyond our ordinary methods of monitoring electromagnetic energy. The final state from this Doppler shift appears to be in the 'actinic region' of the spectrum where it stimulates photoluminescence in the green region of the visible spectrum". Dr Levengood could tell all that from just from one blurry, out-of-focus photo? Wow! He could actually see the x-rays or ultraviolet radiation being emitted by the alleged aliens? Where? Show me!...or did he mean that was the only explanation he could think up? Well it isn't even a good guess. For one thing, ultraviolet radiation is invisible and air does not noticeably fluoresce in the presence of ultraviolet light, and definitely not in the green portion of the spectrum. Ditto for the x-ray radiation claim unless the radiation is so intense that the air becomes ionized...but then again, a radiation intense enough to ionize the air would certainly be intense enough to char the roof of the garage where the alleged aliens were standing. So scratch the ultraviolet or x-ray claim because it doesn't hold water.

If I were going to make up stories, I might say that the glow was being caused by Cherenkov radiation...but then again, the rooftop of the garage in the picture would have been radioactive afterwards and no mention was made of radiation damage or radiation sickness of any of the occupants of the owners of the garage. No, no, no...how about this: someone had a camera with a thermal imaging attachment (the kind like you can buy at the Price Club or Best Buy) and took a picture of some friends sitting on a rooftop? Nah, that would make too much sense now, wouldn't it?

There is nothing 'genuine' about the Nellis video because it isn't a UFO, it isn't a flying saucer, it isn't nothing but a bunch of pixels on a screen. No one knows who took the video, no one can tell by the video where the video was taken, and the blurry smudge moving about on the video cannot be demonstrated to be physical (vs a special effect or model or whatever). The whole entire thing is one poorly told story to go along with a poorly taken video. The alleged Nellis 'sighting' in no way shape or from can be considered a 'UFO' but an unidentifiable video creation or UVC.

The Phoenix Lights sighting was originally just one event: the mistaking of multiple flares over the Barry Goldwater military range as multiple UFOs. The singular, triangular UFO report aspect did not appear until much later, after the flares were reported. Typically when people see an alleged UFO, they report it immediately out of panic and hysteria. If they have to take weeks and months to think about it before reporting it, it tends to make it look contrived instead of spontaneous. That is why many of the late edition add ons to the Phoenix Lights event have also been coming up as obvious hoaxes, for example, the unidentified ground crewman at Luke Airforce base who called in one or two months later to report he saw some F-15s dispatched to seek out the UFO that night. The problem is that Luke doesn't have any F-15s and hasn't for quite some time now.

The problem with THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S STORY is that the pictures and the story look and sound like they were staged. A candidly taken picture never comes out so contrived looking as these pictures are -- unlike hoaxes usually do. Let us take an objective look at those pictures again, okay, and see what we can objectively come up with. What we see is a perfectly framed picture, with the alleged UFO taking up the entire frame of the photo. That indicates that who ever took that picture had to take the time to carefully setup each shot, not at all like something that someone had accidentally stumbled upon, and had no idea how long the object would be around to be photographed, and had to prop up a super long telephoto lens on the top of his car and shot the UFO from over a mile away. There is no rational or reasonable explanation for taking all that extra effort to make a professional studio quality portrait photo of an UFO, as if the UFO had posed for each shot like a paid model, therefore there is no logical or factual reason to suspect that the photos are real or should be taken seriously. I've seen better fakes anyway, so I'm not impressed.

Photos are always interesting but never proof. It is easy to fool the experts with photos and this is being done all the time, even as we speak. There is a lot of egotism invested in videos and photos of UFOs, hence the reason why so many hoaxes are being uncovered all the time. That makes every picture or video suspect from the very start. Yes photos and videos just don't cut it -- but it isn't like there are any good ones out there anyway. The vast majority of them that haven't been successfully exposed as hoaxes, are blurs or blobs or extremely distant specks of undefinable lights.

Then on the other hand, even when the object was evident to the human eye, the vast majority of photographic evidence of UFOs are useless junk because they fail one or more of the following reasonable criteria:

1. The object and it's surroundings must be clearly visible,
2. The object and it's surroundings must be distinct,
3. There must be visual references to enable one to accurately determine size and distance to the object.

In this day and age of computer enhancing technology, the only irrefutable media evidence would be two or more video clips or pictures showing the same object at the same time from two or more completely different points of view, taken by two or more entirely different and unrelated people.

This not to say that all UFO pictures are fakes, since some are due to the sheer ignorance of the way cameras work, for example, the laughable attempt by many people to pass off lens flares as 'UFOs'.

Since the 1960s, hundreds of people have confessed before many an abduction researcher, very similar complaints of missing time events, often associated with unidentified bright lights, in which minutes to hours are inexplicable lost from a person's life. The phenomenon has come to be known among the abduction researchers as the 'UFO abduction syndrome'. A 1992 Roper survey about "Unusual Personal Experiences" of people in the United States suggested to some analysts that perhaps 2% of the population has experienced the UFO abduction syndrome. 'Anomalous trauma victim' is a phrase sometimes used by psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals to describe patients who report experiences with odd lights and missing time. Often people report disturbing memories of non-human beings that perform physical examinations and extract human tissue, fluid sperm or ova.

As for any 'similarities' found in abduction 'research', this is primarily a result of pre-screening of cases and not because there is any scientific legitimacy to their reports. More to the point, most abduction 'studies' are little more than a collection of anecdotes, cross-referenced to find similarities. These similarities are then deemed to be 'proof'. The fact that in any large random collection of data there will be similarities found if the data is filtered, but this fact is often ignored by the 'experts'.

As for the 'anomalous trauma victim', that is abduction speak and not science. In real life it is called grande hysteria (this is discussed further below). If you don't believe me, then read it for yourself...

"An educated man, aged 30, exhibited all the symptoms of grande hysteria. He was very suggestible, and from time to time, under the stress of emotional excitement, had attacks of amnesia that lasted from two days to several weeks. While in these states, he wandered about, visited relatives, smashed various things in their houses, contracted debts, and was even arrested and convicted for picking pockets"

(Collected Works of Jung, Vol 1, para 18)

The Roper survey, like any other survey, is about collecting opinions and not scientific evidence, and in 1992 they seemed to prove that point for me.

Not a single successful argument has ever been made against the claim that the UFO/ET fad is just another example of a mass delusion and one with a lengthy historical precedent.

Bernard Cohen, a professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, wrote an article in 1992 for Scientific American, based on his long-term studies of creativity in science. What is remarkable about his study is that it proves that just because numerous and even highly credible witnesses come forward to make a claim for a phenomenon, doesn't imply that anything physically real is occurring, especially when the phenomenon cannot be backed by even so much as the slightest shred of physically demonstrable evidence...

"Tales of humanoid monsters were a common component of the travel literature and legends with which Columbus was familiar. They became an important part of Columbus's writings as well. The mythical monsters known to Columbus included giants, one-eyed cyclopes and hairy men and women, as well as more exotic creatures. Amazon fighting women cut off the right breast so they could use bow and arrows more efficiently. Anthopophagi devoured human flesh and drank from human skulls. Blemmyae had heads located in their chests. Panotii were endowed with gigantic ears that they used as blankets or as wings for flying. Cynocephali had human bodies but dogs' heads. Sciopods possessed a single leg and a huge foot; they would stretch on their backs and hold the foot above themselves to act as parasols. Information about these beings appeared in many written accounts and literary works. The alleged correspondence of Alexander the Great, for example, and Pliny the Elder's NATURAL HISTORY contain early mention of humanoid monsters. Marco Polo's MILLIONE included descriptions of monstrous races"

(WHAT COLUMBUS 'SAW' IN 1492, by Bernard Cohen, Sci American, Dec 1992, pg 103).

"When Columbus reached the New World, he inquired again and again about the presence of humanoid monsters. Perhaps his informants did not understand what he was asking, or perhaps they attempted to please him by telling him what he seemingly wanted to hear. Columbus recounts in his letter, that he received information about people with tails, people having no hair and women living and fighting on an island devoid of men, for example. The tales to which Columbus paid attention, and the manner in which he interpreted them, undoubtedly reflected both his expectations and his hopes"

(Ibid, pg 103-104)

Despite the complete lack of any physically demonstrable evidence whatsoever, even after Columbus came home empty-handed in regards to humanoid monsters, fairytales of their existence continued well into the rest of the 15th century, "References to monsters were very still much in evidence in 15th-century scholarly books such as d'Ailly's IMAGO MUNDI and the HISTORIA RERUM UBIQUE GESTARUM of Aeneas Sylvius" (Ibid, pg 103).

The fact is that what is happening today is no different than what happened 500 years ago when Columbus first came to America and expected to see humanoid monsters -- many people claimed to have seen humanoid monsters, large numbers of highly respected scholarly works wrote about them, and there was absolutely not a single shred of demonstrable evidence of their existence. In hindsight we can see for a fact that they were all simply deluding themselves! This is exactly the phenomenon we are seeing today -- many people claiming to see flying saucers peopled by little gray humanoid monsters, large numbers of scholarly works are written about them, yet there is absolutely not a single shred of demonstrable evidence of their existence. So the claim that all these multitudes of people coming forth to say they saw a little gray men wouldn't be doing it if there weren't some truth behind the phenomenon, is demonstrably false!

Imagine if PROJECT BLUE BOOK or the CONDON committee had been around in Columbus' day to investigate the matter of humanoid monster 'sightings'. How many of those physically and completely undemonstrable sightings of humanoid monsters would be considered 'unexplained' versus 'inconclusive'? Obviously sightings given by Columbus would be cast in the 'unexplained' category while sightings given by John Doe just down the street would be cast in the 'inconclusive' category. Now imagine still yet, just how many modern day pro-UFO researchers, would still be able to draw ' valid conclusions' anyway, regarding the existence of humanoid monsters. I don't believe there would have been any difference because obviously the psychology of humans hasn't changed enough in the last 500 years to have made any difference.

There is a whole 'New World' waiting out there in space for us to explore and we have read all the books about them and therefore many of us have blindly chosen to believe it to be populated with numerous humanoid monsters not too unsimiliar to the old type of monsters of Columbus' day. You can't see them, there is no direct physical evidence whatsoever that they are there, but the tales to which you pay attention to, "and the manner in which you interpret them, undoubtedly reflect both your expectations and your hopes"

Now let's take a look at a synopsis of some other typical hysterias and how they compare with the UFO sighting/abduction syndrome:

1. Grande hysteria :
   1. Very suggestible,
   2. From time to time, under the stress of emotional excitement, have attacks of amnesia that last from two days to several weeks
   3. While in this state, they will wander about, visit relatives, contract debts, and so on, all with missing time.
2. Negative hallucinations :
   1. Suddenly oblivious to certain things around them.
3. Pseudologia phantastica :
   1. The development of fantasies during the attack, such as visions of star dwellers.
   2. Many cases are known in the literature of fits of pathological lying, accompanied by various hysteriform complaints
4. Hysterical lethargy :
   1. Superficial respiration
   2. Lowering of the pulse
   3. Corpse-like pallor of the face
   4. Peculiar feelings of dying and thoughts of death
5. Psychogenesis :
   1. Outbreaks of wild emotionalism
   2. Psychotic delusions
   3. Often, but not always accompanied by vasomotor derangements.

That sounds exactly like every UFO abduction I've ever read...

6. UFO phenomenon :
   1. A massively popular delusion that ETs are visiting or abducting humans, characterized by psychotic and various nervous symptoms such as 'missing time', star-dwellers paralyzing the subject, self-inflicted injuries, sudden changes in behavior, etc, etc.

In order for people to believe ETs are visiting us they first have to pretend that ET is visiting us, but in order to believe there are no visiting ETs requires simple, objective observation of reality as it actually is instead of what you wish it were. Just look around for yourself -- there are absolutely no ETs anywhere around to be heard, seen, smelled, tasted, or felt. Now compare the characteristics of things which don't exist to that of UFOs or ETs:

1. You cannot hear things that don't exist,
2. You cannot see things that don't exist,
3. You cannot smell things that don't exist,
4. You cannot taste things that don't exist, and
5. You cannot feel things that don't exist.

Now here are the characteristics of UFOs and ETs:

1. You cannot demonstrate what UFOs or ETs sound like,
2. You cannot demonstrate what UFOs or ETs look like,
3. You cannot demonstrate what UFOs or ETs smell like,
4. You cannot demonstrate what UFOs or ETs taste like, and
5. You cannot demonstrate what UFOs or ETs feel like.

Notice any difference? Neither do I. The assertion of the existence of UFOs and ETs has all the characteristics of things that don't exist and not of things that do exist. Believers seem to ignore the obvious blatant fact that there is absolutely no legitimate physical evidence presently in existence, that scientifically or rationally verifies the existence of an ET presence, therefore all claims of the 'existence' of an ET presence can only have been built upon blindly taking people at their word, instead of taking the more proper and valid route of actually studying an actual physical object -- or at least try and confirm that an actual physical object ever existed.

If you standby and watch a murder take place, a murder you could have stopped and/or prevented at anytime, then you are just as guilty of murder as the person who actually committed the murder. Likewise, to allow irrational and illogical ideas go by unchallenged makes one guilty of the same immoral exploitation that those irrational and illogical ideas are used for. It is a fact that no one can talk to the dead, no one can tell the future, no one can past life regress, and ETs are not visiting us -- these are all examples of New Age gimmicks used to exploit people, not help them, because conning people into believing in these things is giving people a false hope. Their resources would be better spent elsewhere. And conning people into believing in these things is the antithesis of evolution because it promotes illogical and irrational behavior instead of teaching people to use their brains for what they naturally should be used for -- to think.

People's behavior is always the result of their beliefs, that is their philosophies of life, because what people believe to be real about the world around them affects how they are going to react to it. This problem is compounded by the fact that human behavior is seldom rational or logical because the unconscious mind, which is driven by those philosophies, isn't troubled about what is reasonable or logical, for it, anything that works is 'real'. This is why the psychology of people who believe in things that don't exist is important to try and understand, especially when you realize that the vast majority of beliefs harm people rather then help them. For example, during the time of the Crusades and the Inquisitions, Christians everywhere believed that it would be morally insane to calmly stand by while thousands of unbelieving people in the world were being sent to Hell at their deathbeds, so any act -- torture, maiming, burning alive, mass murder -- anything was a justifiable act if it meant having the person confess a belief in God before they died so they could go to Heaven instead of Hell. These holy Crusaders imagined God being very pleased with their actions since they were sending so many thousands of people His way to be with Him in Heaven, imagining themselves as saving the world from the Devil, never realizing the truth that they were being immoral barbarians.

This is a battle, a battle for your mind, a place where rational forces have to rally against irrational forces on a daily basis. As psychology and history have taught us, it is never wise to let irrational ideas go unchallenged for harbouring irrational ideas is not the most mentally healthy thing to do. I am doing the proper thing by challenging the irrational UFO/ET ideas with rational ones. The psychology we possess allows us to become paranoid, irrational, illogical, and deluded and the UFO fad provides more evidence of that. There should be no more room for fantasy in their thinking -- not with the potential consequences of continuing to be unable to distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy for the rest of peoples lives.

Psychologically speaking, people take truth to mean 'any idea that someone believes'. They believe that believing in an idea makes it true, but truths often have little or nothing to do with facts. Facts are parts of the real world, independent of what people think or believe, independent of whether or not people know they exist, independent of whether they are accepted or not, believed or not, even liked or not. Confusing truth with fact is a common cause of clinical emotional distress.

Now I don't see a problem with people running around pretending that ET is visiting us, what I see as a problem is when people run around confusing their make-believe fantasy that ET is visiting us with actual reality, and then react to that fantasy as though it really were a fact. I can understand why people would believe in the UFO fad, because most people aren't intelligent enough to distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy. Other's just like to be where the excitement is and join the crowd. What I can't understand is why some people would be so greedy and uncaring that they would tell any nimwit whatever it is that they want to hear, just because it will bring them money -- and that's disgusting.

Tell me dear reader, is your trust something you blindly give away or is it something that must be earned? I never trust anyone until they've earned my trust because it would not be logical or intelligent to *assume* anyone is trustworthy until they prove otherwise. In fact, the scientific method is based on *never* trusting anyone on testimony alone -- it just wouldn't work. The Committee on Science and Astronautics is no exception to this rule and just because they concluded that the USAF directly deceived the public isn't proof that the US Air Force did, in fact, deceive the public. It is merely an unfounded accusation. If this committee truthfully wanted to prove that the USAF was deceiving anyone, they should have come up with direct evidence to that effect, ie -- copies of insinuating documents or confessions of inside informants to uncover a trail of evidence or so on. Just because a committee feels UFOs are real doesn't prove that the USAF knows they are real and, by illogical extension, therefore the USAF must be lying about what they do know. So again I ask, what actual evidence did the committee base their conclusion on? Their authority or their demonstrable facts? Their authority! They were saying, 'Trust us because we belong on this prestigious committee and not because we have any actual facts'. Well I don't buy it; I'm not that gullible. I want facts, not statements of authority.

I believe, not by blind faith but by logical extension of known facts, that intelligent life exists all throughout the universe. That any of this intelligent life is visiting us, is a big joke. I don't care if Albert Einstein believes in the existence of invisible pink elephants, that doesn't prove that invisible pink elephants actually exist, will it? I want facts, not Albert Einstein's comments on what he believes or 'calculates' about the existence of invisible pink elephants. Same goes for anyone else you care to list in favor of your beliefs: Dr J Allan Hynek, Dr Carl Sagan, Prof James E McDonald, Dr Robert Hall, Dr James A Harder, or Dr Donald Menzel -- these are all ordinary humans who are just telling you what you want to hear, not presenting us with any actual facts we can take home with us.

I have based my conclusions, not on what I trust or don't trust, but on a logical deduction of known facts. Everything I have listed in this FAQ is factually indisputable. There absolutely is no smoking gun, there is nothing more than reports of UFOs and not any collection of artefacts for objective examination, and the FOIA is silent on the issue of ETs. I offered my comments as a way to reach those people who have difficulty reasoning due to the conditioning of Hollywood. It is a way out for them; a way to show them that there is another more rational way of seeing things. Some people will believe regardless of any facts or lack thereof. To those people, UFOs is a religion or a way to meet cool chicks or a nice way to supplement your income when you can't find sufficient employment related to your doctorate degree. I'm not into that scene.

Once upon a time, it used to be that UFO stories mainly were about 'lights' but they have recently graduated to sexual assaults and medical exams where the abductees are tagged with implants. If a civilization technologically advanced enough to be able to traverse light-years of space were interested in our genetic material, surely they could just land on a spermbank at 3AM or take some skin scrapings or saliva samples...anything besides rape and the associated risk of getting a sexually transmitted disease even ET never heard of yet. People were sexually assaulted by incubi and sucubi for hundreds and hundreds of years before ET came along, so apparently the story is still the same, only the names of the innocent have changed.

There is a phenomenon going on here, but it has nothing to do with physical reality, but imaginary reality. Physically real phenomenon do not appear and disappear without ever leaving a trace -- by definition of the word physical, that's impossible. So these people are either lying, deluded, or stupid because there is no truth in anything they say in regards to physicalness of this phenomenon.

If you look and compare all the stories people have to say about the paranormal, the stories are very contradictory and inconsistent. If someone wants to claim that behind all that BS is a real story, how can they separate the fact from the fantasy if they have nothing but only the stories to base any claims they make? The whole paranormal phenomenon is useless noise from a scientific point of view (except maybe for the psychology of fads).

If UFOs or ghosts are real in any sense of the word other than imaginary, then just like all real objects, they should interact with their environment in some predictable way: If you can see a ghost, then should be able to clearly record the photons that reach your eyes with a camera or video recorder. If a UFO 'lands', then it should leave evidence of a landing. Of course, if they are only purely imaginary, then we would expect that even when there is a 'sighting' of a ghost or UFO, it wouldn't leave any evidence of any type of interaction with actual reality...hmm, I just described every ghost and UFO story to date.

In THE DEMON HAUNTED WORLD, Carl Sagan notes that if you pick up any typical UFO magazine and flip through the pages looking at the advertisements, you will find lots of ads -- not just for UFO books or UFO videos and so on -- but numerous non-UFO related things like charm kits to place spells on people you would like to influence, crystals which will cure you of anything, ninja videos that teach invisibility and invulnerability skills, and so on. I see two common threads running throughout all these ads: The general sense of power- or helplessness that UFO believers must continually feel and the most extreme kind of credulity. And since we know that advertising executives live or die on the basis of how well they know their audience, we are pretty much guaranteed that they know their audience quite well.

My goal isn't to save the world from their inner demons, my goal is to offer a helping hand to those who are willing to accept it. It does not matter to me what happens with the UFO community as a whole, all the matters to me is that I was there to offer hope and reason to those few individuals who were looking for hope and reason at a time that they needed it most, and I have been very successful in that regard. So there is no reason for me to pack up and leave and it hasn't been a losing battle for me. Those few individuals and the future few individuals makes it all worthwhile.

Dear Art Bell,

You fought the good fight, you stood your ground...or did you?

Hasn't your philosophy has always been, "...let them tell their own story the way they want to tell it...and assume the audience is a group of adults who can judge the difference between truth and BS"? That's quite an assumption and one I find that isn't based on direct observation. I find most adults can't tell the difference between truth and BS, hence the reason they believe in anything from a make believe God to perpetual motion machines.

So you didn't fight the good fight, you just stood there and let people do whatever they felt like doing. You claim that you are "more of a skeptic than most skeptics are", but you never did consistently demonstrate any skepticism -- that was against your "let 'em tell it their way" philosophy. You were like a reed blowing in the wind, and if the wind blew this way or that way, you went with the flow without question. So you never stood your ground either, because you never made it clear where you really stood. Who knows what you really believed in or not. You may not have done anything to encourage the Heaven's Gate suicide, but neither did you do anything to avert it -- which you could have easily done from your position of high respect.

Art, I believe in all your years on the air you have harmed more people than you have helped. I think it is a wonderful thing that you allowed a forum on the air where people weren't told what to think and how to think and when to think -- people were just allowed to do their own thinking, but (you knew that was coming, didn't you?) it was an unbalanced approach. Presenting people with a decision to make between truth and BS but then not teaching them how to tell the difference, only gives people an excuse to sink deeper into their irrationality. Any irrational idea left unchallenged by facts and logic will grow and grow until nothing can stop it. What do you think led to the Crusades and the Inquisitions? Those nimwits thought that it would be immoral to let unbelieving people die and then go fry in Hell, so any act -- torture, maiming, burning at the stake -- any act was justifiable if it forced people to confess on Jesus and then immediately die and go to heaven before they could change their minds. I presume that they imagined they were doing God such a great favor by sending so many people His way...why they were saving the world for God in their minds!

...and all because no one had the guts to challenge their irrational beliefs. It all started innocently enough, but then one thought led to another and soon they were justifying all kinds of immoral and barbaric actions. Of course, they only appear to us as immoral and barbaric in hindsight. Why didn't you have guests like the author of SATAN SILENCE? Something like that would let people know what happens when they entertain ideas that they can't back up with rock solid facts and logic, ideas that are never challenged by rational thinking.

You never taught people how to tell the difference between truth and BS, hence your audience never learned to tell the difference. Who knows how many Heaven's Gate-like people out there in your audience who have gullibly succumbed to some irrational belief and are now preparing to do something irrational about something that doesn't exist or never happened. What you did was a great thing and it went against the same ol' thing that everybody else was doing, but you never balanced it out with some practical and lifesaving instruction.

"Those who understand history are condemned to watch other idiots repeat it"                                              (Peter Lamborn Wilson)

I submit that there is no such thing as real manufactured UFO type crafts for several validatable and logical reasons:

1. There is no such thing as human made 'UFO type crafts' -- although there are such things as saucer shaped crafts, they are extremely few in number and every single one was a complete failure.
2. No 'hands-on' credible individual(s) are available to support the claim that humans are behind UFO technology, ie -- there are no valid witnesses to the effect that they have helped build UFOs.
3. No direct demonstrable hard evidence is available to support the claim that humans are behind UFO technology, ie -- there are no valid witnesses or photos of UFOs with American flags or "Made in the USA" tags draped or stamped on them.
4. In order for the 'UFOs are human technology' claim to work, you must deny any and all ET testimonies and observations. Note the false attribution that, "The blame that is attributed to visiting aliens...". The fact is that visiting aliens are not being "blamed" but certain people are simply reporting their honest OBSERVATIONS and not "blaming" anyone or anything. This is a case of picking and choosing your facts just so it will make your 'theory' work -- and that is an intellectually dishonest and unscientific thing to do. Real scientists never discard facts or readjust facts or reinterpret facts just so their theories will work -- not if they value their reputation or credibility.
5. And then there is the issue of human competence. Humans have never demonstrated the creativity, innovation, or ingenuity to develop and hide any UFO technology for 53 years. That is laughable. For example, it does not surprise me that the CIA might try remote viewing as an intelligence tool, any more than it surprises me that the US Armed Forces paid thousands of dollars for a screwdriver. But a screwdriver is not worth thousands of dollars, is it? If UFO technology was available to humans, why haven't they ever used it? Take for example, the Gulf War. No technology was available to take the place of the incompetent Patriot missiles, surely that would have been a perfect time to use our UFO technology, but we didn't. What are they waiting for? The next world war?

Promises have been made that if the public switches to the belief that UFOs are human technology that, "much more ground will be gained towards your goal of getting to the truths of ET visitation," but before I would consider any extraordinary claim like that, I would first ask to see a guarantee of proof -- and there is absolutely nothing to back up the claim that UFOs are human technology other then the appeal to a "Believe me when I say...". Instead of blindly believing, let us see the demonstrable proof of how much verifiably closer anyone has gotten to the 'truth' with this 'theory' already. According to the library, no one has gotten close to the truth at all, hence the reason someone would ask for the support of as many believers as possible before their belief could then allegedly give results. Obviously, there is no logical or rational reason to accept the claim that UFOs are human technology, it is just an appeal to yet another sub-religion of UFOlogy.

The only ones playing games here are the people that make claims and ask you to 'Believe me when I say...' by blind faith instead of by critical thinking. The only ones playing games here are the people who cannot demonstrate any hard facts to back up their claims. The only ones playing games are the people that deny certain facts just so it will make their pet theory work.

This is a copy of my response to Stanton Friedman's UFO "challenge". Read and enjoy...