Jennings Special - Embarrassing
Even For Prime Time
By Shelley Thomson - sthomson@spinn.net - 26 February 2005
Even for primetime TV this was embarrassing.
I've had the benefit of going to UFO conferences, talking directly
to witnesses and researchers (including Seth Shostak) and seeing
actual footage from around the world. The Russian military footage
was particularly impressive. It was all made public during glasnost.
(A couple of years later the CIA had it sewn up again, but the horse
was out of the barn.)
UFO observations have gone far beyond fuzzy night lights. There
is wonderful, very detailed footage under all lighting conditions.
I wondered at first why they chose to use shoddy animations instead
of the real thing.
--Then I realized that if they had shown the real footage they'd
have had to acknowledge its sources, thereby sending hordes of citizens
to the internet to look up UFOs, exactly what they didn't want.
Unless I missed it, there was virtually no reference to the huge
body of non-visual evidence. This includes radar and magnetometer
data, radio signals, microwave emissions, audio recordings, etc.
Quite often these instrumental observations coincide with visual
sightings by trained, trustworthy people.
If viewers want to know what they're missing, rent a George Knapp
documentary on UFOs, visit the Project Hessdalen website, and read
the UFO files on rense.com . Rent a copy of "Masters of the
Stars." Spend a little time with a search engine and get the
last photo sent back by the Russian Phobos II probe.
Then think again about the heavily spun garden fertilizer Peter
Jennings presented.
I've talked with Seth Shostak about UFOs. He's an ideologue. It
is very misleading to present him as a scientist. Despite his academic
qualifications he is not not able, or not willing to treat the subject
of intelligent life beyond Earth objectively.
Here's a little SETI [Searchfor Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence]
factoid most people don't know. While SETI still had government
funding I was on an email list populated by radio astronomers, both
amateur and professional. How one can tell whether a given signal
is evidence of intelligence is a really difficult question and there
were fascinating discussions about it.
It developed that at the time SETI was defunded there were, depending
on which set of criteria you used, between 38 and 60+ signals that
qualified as intelligent. Pressure built up in the organization:
"Shouldn't we make the phone call [to the White House]?"
"When can we schedule our press conference?" People muttered
darkly about phoning their Senators.
Surprise, surprise. All of a sudden, without warning, Congress axed
the program. A private company picked up the funding. Seth Shostak
works for the new SETI. Nothing more was heard about the intelligent
signals, and I guarantee that things will stay that way.
Suppressing this knowledge is a crime against science and a crime
against all human beings.
It's being done not for our protection but because powerful ve$ted
intere$ts want it that way. |
