Something's Happening Here

 Where were we? Well, we were talking about the UN alien-ambassador story which was announced, then denied, then "debunked," then the subject of a legal complaint against the would-be debunkers.The story seems to have kicked up a hornet's nest behind the scenes, with claims and and counterclaims and denials, giving the distinct impression- to me, at least- that someone's been telling tales out of school. 

It all seems to have died down a bit, though the bookies seem to the think that odds are good on some kind of contact in 2010. And if you can't trust a bookmaker, who can you trust?

This story doesn't seem to have died down - if anything, it's picking up. Longtime UFOlogists are familiar with reports of aliens monitoring nuclear facilities- peaceful or otherwise- so it's not surprising to them. What is surprising is how this story- which arose from a press conference called by retired Air Force officers - seems to have struck a nerve. 

Is it because we are an inherently militaristic culture and these men are the closest things to a priesthood that we have? Or is there something more immediate going on here?

  The timing certainly struck me because we just saw the same kind of event discussed at the press confernece happen over the summer; UFOs were seen - and caught in TV news footage- over a massive wildfire at the Idaho National Labs, a very sensitive nuclear facility. 

Was this the trigger that broke this story open? We've also seen Leslie Kean's UFO book garner a lot of serious attention (albeit along with the usual kneejerk ridicule). So it seems there's something stirring here, but at the same time you can feel the reluctance, the hesitation as the media struggles with its automatic need to ridicule whenever the subject is raised (see that Guardian piece above)

 

The thing is that we've been through all of this before and it usually tends to fizzle out. Things get quiet, heat up and generate a lot of excitement and then fizzle out again. Rinse and repeat. Whatever else this phenomenon is, it's certainly elusive. But a lot of researchers have speculated on a gradual disclosure process- Timothy Good has stated that he was told that the process is ongoing but is going to be extremely gradual and cautious. If that's true it would certainly jibe with what's going on this year.

 

And there have been a lot of strange stories popping up that don't fit the usual patterns- the lack of response to UFO speculation on recent satellite imagery is particularly puzzling. But things got considerably more compelling with the discovery of what we hopeless geeks call and "M-class planet" in the Gliese 581 solar system, which the media has nicknamed "Goldilocks," since the conditions are just right for life. We've heard all sorts of reports of gas giants and super Earths, but this is the first twin we've spotted. But wait, there's more...

Odds of Life on Newfound Earth-Size Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says An Earth-size planet has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold — comfortable enough for life to exist, researchers announced today (Sept. 29). If confirmed, the exoplanet, named Gliese 581g*, would be the first Earth-like world found residing in a star's habitable zone — a region where a planet's temperature could sustain liquid water on its surface

Granted, this puppy is a long way away- 120 trillion miles, to be exact- but scientists are already trying to figure ways to study it more closely, maybe even communicate with its inhabitants. But as the Fates would have it, it turns out they may have already been trying to communicate with us:

An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged. Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it. A member of the Australian chapter of SETI, the organisation that looks for communication from distant planets, Dr Bhathal had been sweeping the skies when he discovered a 'suspicious' signal from an area of the galaxy that holds the newly-discovered Gliese 581g. The remarkable coincidence adds another layer of mystery to the announcement last night that scientists had discovered another planet in the system: Gliese 581g - the most Earth-like planet ever found.

That, my friends, is more than a coincidence. I'd say it's even more than Synchronicity. It could well be the reason they looked in that direction in the first place (just like the Stanford remote viewers allegedly spotted the structures at Cydonia years before the Viking mission) but are spinning it all as a big coincidence. 

  This could in fact be part of that slo-mo disclosure process that Good talked about. Get people used to the idea of a twin Earth (speaking of which: FRINGE!), gauge the reaction and then take it all to the next level. If so, I'd offer that the gradual process could well get a lot un-gradual and snowball over the next few months. 

  Either way, I can't repeat this enough- keep your antenna up and keep your ears to the ground. Having spent several decades watching the Establishment ridicule and harass UFO researchers - and pee all over the very idea itself - I can't help but wonder what's at work here. It's more than a bit dissonant to see all of this UFO stuff taking seriously in the media these days. As Mike Clelland said in our first podcast, the UFO phenomenon has been a fascinating modern mythos to explore- what happens if it's suddenly demythologized? 

But it will be the sensitives who'll intuit what's coming down the pike first, and those are the people who I'll be looking to for clues. For my part, I've sensed that there seemed to be an expectation among the elite classes (see here and here), starting with the election (here). It was all very nebulous and hard to pin down, but it certainly hasn't been contradicted by recent events. Not at all.

  PS: I thought that Newsweek cover looked familiar... PPS: An interesting story on using alien tech to save the US economy. UPDATE: Man, I'm getting severe 90s flashbacks with this story on the Stuxnet worm. There are so many old school memes being dredged up I feel like I'm on AOL, browsing through alt.conspiracy again. 

But this is on a mainstream computing site, not SOTT:

Who, or maybe WHAT, is behind the Stuxnet worm?

The infamous Stuxnet worm is surrounded by cloak and dagger reports and conspiracy theories worthy of a movie plot. However, it's time to break out the tinfoil hats as some people question if nuclear systems have been attacked by an extraterrestrial cyber-worm. Wait, it gets even more bizarre than alien written worms because psychic spies are in on it too.

The "some people" are not named in the piece. Then the remote viewers come into it, fresh out of nowhere, but with an up to date transhumanist spin:

The American Chronicle wrote, "Sources to STARstream Research have reported that U.S. government intelligence agencies targeted Iranian underground nuclear facilities using 'psychic spies' -- a method left over from the cold war, when the Defense Intelligence Agency collected psychic intelligence against the Soviet Union."

Furthermore, the article talks of a Department of Defense report. "Questions of interest to the members of the intelligence community include discovering ways of reading the human mind (artificial telepathy), improving human cognitive performance, remote control of mental states, and machine-mind interfaces."

There's no reason to believe this bug is anything but the product of some perfectly terrestrial intelligence contractors. And this isn't much in and of itself- just some journo hypothesizing on what is most likely a dangerous and exotic but otherwise conventional bit of malware. If this is meant to be some kind of disinfo feed, it's a very clumsy one (the writer is all over the place with the conjecture and argues herself to a standstill).

But it helped feed into my 90s nostalgia- which seems to hit hardest on Fridays for some strange reason- and for that I'm grateful.

UPDATE: Sheesh, did I just say AoL? They've gotten a lot more interesting since they split from TimeWarner (and since Facebook essentially stole their 90s thunder). Picking up the memory lane vibe, they interview Rev. Barry Dowling, of all people:

"If UFOs are some type of intelligent power from another world, they may have been around for millions of years and may have been involved in the development of the biblical religion, and I do believe that is the case," said the Rev. Barry Downing, a retired Presbyterian minister. The Rev. Barry Downing, a retired Presbyterian minister, believes Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, with accounts of encounters going all the way back to biblical times. 

In his 1968 book, "The Bible and Flying Saucers" (Marlowe), Downing suggests that extraterrestrials in technologically advanced spaceships played a major part in events depicted in the Bible. "You can go through the Bible and look for signs of things that hover in the sky and seem to be intelligently controlled and interact with the biblical people," Downing told AOL News.

Things must really be changing behind the scenes, since this kind of talk had been relegated to the far corners of the Internet, at least in the Bush years.  Of course the story is in the "Weird News" ghetto and it may all switch back after the elections, but it all of this 90s nostalgia makes me want to pull out my old Porno for Pyros records.