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UFO Petition

UFO researchers Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel have created an official White House petition asking the government to “Investigate Unidentified Aerial Phenomena as Reported by Citizens, Police, Astronauts, Pilots and the Military“:

Searching for microbes on Mars and radio signals from space is not enough. We must explain Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAP, right here on Earth.

For six decades worldwide, credible witnesses (including Presidents Carter and Reagan) have consistently described objects with flight capabilities beyond our technology. UAP are often verified by radar and even seen at nuclear sites by military officers.

Given the national security implications, the United States should conduct an independent investigation. This inquiry must transparently review the key unsolved UAP reports with access to classified documents. It must have the power to call witnesses and grant immunity.

The findings should be publicly presented.

I have to say though that I don’t see a petition doing much to further UFO research, and right now is probably not the best timing given all the other ‘real-world’ things that people would like to see from government at the moment (maybe an ‘Occupy Roswell’ would be more hip?). But certainly go add your name to the list if you agree with the petition – they’re looking for 25,000 signatures before the end of December.

Update: Richard Dolan explains the petition (thanks RPJ):

Editor
  1. Rich
    Dolan on Youtube, explaining the goals of the petition.

    It must also be said that Stephen Bassett, the one behind the 1st ‘We the People’ petition, has launched a 2nd one, this one a bit more specific:

    We petition the Obama administration to:

    Demand a full congressional investigation of UFO/ET Disclosure efforts by the Clinton OSTP – the Rockefeller Initiative.

    In response to the Disclosure Petition I, the OSTP stated, “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race.”

    If true, what was the OSTP investigating from March 1993 to October 1996 in concert with billionaire and Clinton friend, Laurance Rockefeller?

    Those who knew of and have not spoken publicly of this initiative include: Bill Clinton, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Obama transition co-chair John Podesta, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta, Dr. John Gibbons, Albert Gore and Governor Bill Richardson.

    If you want to support this other petition (hey, it will take as much of your life as Richard’s, meaning a couple of minutes) click here.

  2. I always like a real answer,
    I always like a real answer, so from that side this is good.

    What makes me smile though is the ‘Given the national security implications’ bit.

    Usually National Security isn’t the same as personal and public knowledge.

    Sure, we’d want our governments to know, but then we’d just petition them to take a closer look.

    Some of those best UAP’s might well be classified experimental projects into who knows what, and they want a presumably public transparent inquiry into what may well be the US’s most top secret projects.

    It just strikes me as a little similar to asking military intelligence to release all data on mysterious cyber events because you want to look at the most unexplained events for signs of the internet becoming a conscious being, or aliens launching attacks or whatever.

    It’s all arguable from certain position, but National Security is ideally about protecting us and revealing your hand to terrorists or other lovely nations isn’t usually compatible with this. So is this petition really in the best interests of National Security? I don’t know, but I can think of situations where getting a government to reveal it’s secrets isn’t in the interest of the people (and I can think of one’s where it is).

    Who knows.

    The petition’s only in the 1800’s at the moment though. More people voted to bring back the Wispa chocolate bar here in the UK – though we did win and Cadbury’s started making it again. So I say good luck to them, but it isn’t necessarily in the interests of National Security – more personal intrigue I think.

    1. National Security
      Back here in Mexico one of the most prominent UFO researchers, Enrique Kolbeck, is an air traffic controller. His job has made him aware that some UFOs frequent areas that intersect aerial routes, and given the functionality of ground radars —static objects are automatically dismissed by the system’s computers— sometimes they are not picked up until the airplane literally runs into one of those things. His position is that UFOs represent a danger for commercial airplanes —debatable IMO, since we should assume a technology capable of creating an object that can negate the law of gravity should also have the means to avoid a collision with our ‘primitive’ transports— but nevertheless, this helps illustrate how one could make a case that investigation UFOs is in the interest of National Security —since keeping air passengers safe falls well within the domain of Homeland Security.

      There are also other points you can raise. For instance, the idea that a UFO could be mistaken as an enemy aircraft —maybe if you spot an unregistered ‘traffic’ on radar heading to downtown New York, the first thing that would come into mind of the controllers would be that it is a terrorist attack.

      I sympathize with your skepticism. For the record I signed both the petitions (again). At this point I’m uncertain they’ll be able to reach the 25000-signature goal, and even if they do, I’m not holding my breath they will achieve something more than the last one.

      I signed the petitions for my own peace of mind. To counter my usual cynical attitude. So when the day comes and someone asks me if I did anything to change the course of the cover-up, I can answer with a straight face 🙂

      1. There are already television
        There are already television shows in the History type channels flogging a wet dream of fighting aliens with current force strength and winning. The new Al Queda could well be some false flagged “alien” army which is in actuality our own highest tech war machinery masquerading as alien. It is obvious what they want now – perpetual war at all cost. The minute the Feds are forced to reveal is the minute they will be starting to spin it for the benefit of the military/industrial complex and totalitarian world government.

        1. Another
          Your comment certainly raises another problem with these of petitions for Disclosure: assuming the government were to acknowledge a non-human presence out there, some people would object (justifiably) about the validity of such claims. If they lied to us in the past, what guarantees do we have that they are not lying to us now?

          I only see a Disclosure movement gaining steam the same way Rich & Bryce elaborated in their book: as a consequence of a massive & undeniable demonstration by them.

          BUT…

          I’m the kind of person that wonders: does the UFO phenomenon require our predisposition to its reality in order to facilitate its manifestation?

          In other words, if more people are willing to believe in aliens, does that cause a rise in UFO sightings?

          It’s an open question to me… for now 😉

      2. Hi RPJ,
        I really only

        Hi RPJ,

        I really only mean’t that what the public would want was public disclosure and that this isn’t necessarily in line with national security. I definitely understand why governments might want to investigate these phenomena secretly.

        Any situation where a government knows something and is keeping it secret is frustrating, but often it is in the national interest. We wouldn’t have won the second world war if there had been full public disclosure for example. Much intelligence and counter intelligence relies on the enemy not knowing you know.

        Putting the argument in terms of aliens makes it awkward. As ever without knowing what is going on we are left in the dark and unable to make an informed choice. Knowing that it is necessary to keep the public that way hardly makes it feel better, but it wouldn’t have with World War 2 intelligence either.

        However, this article is expended beyond that and using the more nebulous UAP tag and it’s this bit i’m referring to, not that government should investigate and release information about aliens.

        Though the petition is clearly aimed at UFO’s and aliens it asks something very different. It wants an inquiry into the best and most unexplained aerial phenomena. That may well catch aliens in the process, but it’s also likely to catch our own governments up to things. It’s a request to investigate our own militaries and for them to reveal their own experiments and hardware that may also catch aliens.

        Its from that angle that it isn’t necessarily in the interests of national security.

        1. WWII
          Every time the argument is made that governments need to keep things secret, the WWII card is played.

          That was 70 years ago. That was before MK-Ultra. That was before Watergate. That was before Abu Ghraib. That was before Guantanamo.

          When a government is given a carte blanche to keep things secret from the citizens, it is inevitable that this tremendous power will be abused. Having won the WWII is no good excuse… IMHO.

          You have to understand that Rich & Bryce are wording the petition in such an “ambiguous” manner because of the biased way the first petition was made.

          The first petition was very concrete in their assumption that the US has secret information about extraterrestrials. Many researchers, including Leslie Kean, have pointed out why this was not the right approach.

          I joked with my friend Micah Hanks that the ‘We the People’ petitions are like Aladdin’s genie: if you are not careful with how you word the wish, expect to be horribly disappointed.

          *Rubs the lamp*

          *Genie pops out*
          “What is your wish?”

          I’m tired of my old nagging wife. I wish I had a younger one

          Granted!

          *Genie waves hands, and turns you 30 years older*

          That’s why these guys are using the UAP approach. UFOs have been ridiculed and demonized for decades. Personally, I think the semantic twist is moot, but there are others who prefer it this way because it implies you’re not (necessarily) talking about metallic flying saucers hailing from the Andromeda galaxy. When you are talking of UAPs, you leave the room open for all kinds of possibilities about the origin and intentions of UFOs.

          1. Perhaps, though in my case it
            Perhaps, though in my case it was because I’d just finished watching Band of Brothers plus was thinking about Enigma as a model for encryption. Watching a program about the Normandy landings and remembering back to the misinformation and counter-intelligence required to pull the event off; well, that is why it was on my mind. I guess there are many modern examples that are equally valid that we will find out about once freedom of information allows.

            Either way it’s an emotive subject. It feels like government should not keep anything from the public, but at the same time sometimes they need to.

            I’m not sure how I could apply that to aliens of course, but on the outside your never in a position to know and thats the point from that side of it. As you say though the other side is well attested by all the coverups that are not important for national security and are about protecting reputations or not admitting guilt.

            Clearly if governments know something they are not in a hurry to release it.

          2. WWII and Deception
            You might get a kick out of this article:

            A Monster Hoax?

            Hungerford quoted the following from Maskelyne in her report, which concerns a truly alternative psychological warfare operation that was initiated during the hostilities with the Nazis:

            “Our men…were able to use illusions of an amusing nature in the Italian mountains, especially when operating in small groups as advance patrols scouting out the way for our general moves forward. In one area, in particular, they used a device which was little more than a gigantic scarecrow, about twelve feet high, and able to stagger forward under its own power and emit frightful flashes and bangs. This thing scared several Italian Sicilian villages appearing in the dawn thumping its deafening way down their streets with great electric blue sparks jumping from it; and the inhabitants, who were mostly illiterate peasants, simply took to their heels for the next village, swearing that the Devil was marching ahead of the invading English.”

          3. Lol. Thats funny It reminds
            Lol. Thats funny It reminds me of the Catholic defenders of women accused of witchcraft during the numerous trials across Europe and the US. Witchcraft was impossible to them so they faught it, but at the same time if you had a brain disorder you were at risk of being forced to undergo exorcisms. Supernaturalism can be easy to manipulate and often it’s the last thing you want to be on the receiving end of – perhaps made worse because karma can be raised into something people fear and discriminate around.

            Anyway. It reminds me of the magicians Churchill employed to create recommendations for deception and trickery against the Nazis. They recommended simple things which were implemented, such as laying out strings of lights to look like roads, factories and harbours to attract night-time bombers.

  3. If it happens it will be
    If it happens it will be because something forced someone’s hand -maybe the ET hand gets forced by impending nuclear war for example and they have to pop out and intervene directly in nuclear exchanges though they could perhaps do this discretely. Some people think they may already have averted a nuclear exchange, and you are right – no one believes much of anything the government says anymore, so it doesn’t matter what they say. They abandoned us, so we will abandon them.

    1. Cuba

      Some people think they may already have averted a nuclear exchange

      When one considers how close we came during the Cuban missile crisis, it’s easy to fantasize that there was something behind the curtain that averted the disaster.

      And yes, I enjoyed X-Men 1st Class tremendously 😉

      1. The most interesting thing to
        The most interesting thing to me about this thread is the tacit assumption that governments can be our allies in finding out the truth, but the modern fascist state is no place to look for any such thing. It is like asking for approval from a sociopath.

        1. Attitude
          Your attitude helps me illustrate to daydreamer the dangers of extending governments a blank check about the things they can keep secret from the public under the mantle of National Security for so many decades.

          What I mean is that your cynicism is understandable 😉

        2. from the Eating-Isomorphisms-Dept.
          [quote=emlong]The most interesting thing to me about this thread is the tacit assumption that governments can be our allies in finding out the truth, but the modern fascist state is no place to look for any such thing. It is like asking for approval from a sociopath.[/quote]

          I think governments *can* be. Just like some people *can* be decent human beings. Just like some activists *can* be helpful. Etc etc.

          But good call with the assumption-finding :3

  4. US Govt has hard evidence of UFOs
    [quote]”I know other astronauts share my feelings…. And we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs.” – Apollo astronaut Col. Gordon Cooper[/quote]

    Cooper is in a position to know, he was involved in providing the government with ‘hard evidence’. When working at Edwards AFB in 1951, Cooper was filming F-86 fighter jets when a metallic saucer-shaped UFO landed nearby. The event was caught on film, sent by Top Secret courier, and never seen again; but you can be sure someone in Washington viewed that film.

    http://youtu.be/o_fKcTk5xDY

    If UFO encounters reported by Americans with outstanding reputations didn’t attract the interest of Washington, then surely encounters overseas would have. In terms of national security, Iranian pilot Yaddi Nazeri’s UFO encounter in 1976 must have registered on the Pentagon’s radar.

    http://youtu.be/ib9XDoeO_1w

    So who to believe? Cooper was a straight-shooter who said what he thought. Buzz Aldrin is another no-bullshit Apollo astronaut who’s talked about his UFO experiences in recent years.

    There’s very convincing testimony that the US government knows more about UFOs than it will ever admit; but there’s also very convincing arguments that they don’t know any more than we do. Edgar Mitchell, another Apollo astronaut who insists UFOs are real, is also on record stating that the government doesn’t know anything about UFOs. This is the crux of the UFO enigma, and unfortunately the waters are so muddied (deliberately and unintentionally), we may never get to the truth. Unless… well, seeing is believing.

    After watching James Fox’s excellent I Know What I Saw documentary, I’m convinced that there are individuals and groups within the United States tangled ball of string who know more about UFOs than we do.

    1. Seeing is believing

      There’s very convincing testimony that the US government knows more about UFOs than it will ever admit; but there’s also very convincing arguments that they don’t know any more than we do. Edgar Mitchell, another Apollo astronaut who insists UFOs are real, is also on record stating that the government doesn’t know anything about UFOs. This is the crux of the UFO enigma, and unfortunately the waters are so muddied (deliberately and unintentionally), we may never get to the truth. Unless… well, seeing is believing.

      This.

  5. allies
    Governments can be our allies… but it rather depends on the “our”. These govenments are always working in the interests of some of the people, it’s just that most of us are never even close to the people they are working in the interests of.

    I don’t know if various governments are hiding knowledge of extraterrestrial life from us. Trouble is that the one thing governments tend to be incredibly successful with is convincing most people that they are working in our interests or that if they are not there is nothing we can do about it.

    If it ever were to emerge that such things had been deliberately concealed from us, we would nearly all be quick to accept that they did so at least with the best of intentions.

    1. Best of our intentions
      I’m convinced that all those people in high places hiding something or the other from the citizens are doing it with the noblest of intentions.

      Even the things that are more morally questionable are rationalized to be performed “for the greater good”.

      You guys should read “Pedro y el Capitán” by Mario Benedetti. The captain is torturing Pedro —the usual stuff: beatings, electrical shocks applied to the testicles, the works— because he’s convinced it must be done for the greater good. Pedro defeats him by never confessing anything, thus rendering the inhumane brutality moot, and keeping the Captain a monster instead of a patriot.

      1. Here is how US government is
        Here is how US government is “functioning” right now.

        http://theulstermanreport.com/2011/12/05/white-house-insider-america-cant-survive-barack-obama/

        It is just a holding action trying to keep the world economy from unraveling and civil unrest from getting way out of hand. From governments in this predicament everything is a deception and a ruse mostly. Smoke and mirrors. Forget about a petition for anything. All they are thinking about right now is surviving.

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