Thursday, March 26, 2009

UFO Pragmatism: Killing The Messenger

You used to laugh about everyone who was hanging out…Now you don’t talk so loud…Now you don’t feel so proud, after having to be scrounging your next meal…
- Dylan


[Chuck Wade Roswell Artifact Update: His material is in the hands of of a company which will prove one way or the other whether it is of earthly origins. The results, no matter what they show, will be presented on my blog UFO Media Matters.]

What’s the number one reason UFOs are a topic on TV all over the globe now?
Is it because of Stanton Friedman? “Bad Astronomy”? MUFON? Richard Dolan? Edgar Mitchell? The “UFO Hunters” show?

The number one reason UFOs are still a topic of news and TV shows is --God love ‘em-- is the UFO witnesses. The UFO witnesses have the power to move us with their courage and their vulnerability
The witnesses have always been the catalyst, the focus of interest in the UFO subject.

Recently, a pilot with decades of experience reported seeing two-mile-long UFOs, and a second commercial aircraft confirmed this astounding sighting. What happened was everyone sat up, the media saw ratings and covered it, and of course, the debunkers trotted out their standard lines and debunked it.

So if that’s what debunkers said about professional pilots, what would happen if a farmer out in his field reported these two-mile-long objects-- maybe even took a cell phone picture of them? Do you think there is a possibility that this person, especially if he received air time, would be attacked inside our UFO research community? Would it be too much of a stretch to say the person’s social and professional status might be brought up, maybe derided, even by our own community?

And there is another matter we need to look at when our ufology community starts to put witnesses in their cross-hairs; the lack of witness empathy.

I think I understand why some UFO researchers who have had their own UFO experiences seem to attack the more sensational strange cases with the same stance and language used by debunkers.

I just have to believe that the researchers’ sightings were quite mundane --maybe like a light that didn’t behave itself, or a craft sighted far away.

I just can’t believe those researchers who find it impossible to imagine certain cases could be true from diverse and strange witness encounters ... have had profound encounters themselves.
I believe unless you personally have the kind of UFO experience that literally rips the fabric of your own belief system, your empathy for more bizarre UFO experiences will, understandably, be lacking.

Unfortunately this attitude has harmed many honest UFO experiencers.

My own case, although a close encounter in nature, was not so bizarre. Stay with me on this. Yes, it was two flying saucers, but they were symbols of something I could understand --superior technology, maybe, something I could get my head around in science. I came into the UFO scene with that mindset.

But when I read a report on Peter Davenport’s NUFORC about some forest rangers seeing a elk being levitated into the craft and the craft actually becoming larger as the animal went inside, I had to come to the conclusion that they were either lying or… I had to rethink what future technology could possible do. Thank God, if you allow yourself to, you can grow.

I just spoke with an individual involved with people I respect in the UFO community but, he said something that made me wonder how much he knew about the history of UFOs and the witnesses who see them. We were talking about the Billy Meiers case.
He was saying he proved, using Photoshop, that Meiers faked a photo. I told he could not claim without the negatives. He replied.

“Billy said the negatives were stolen…how convenient”.

I thought, only a person who had limited knowledge of the history of UFOs in the modern era would assume Meiers was lying.
In my post “UFO Missing Evidence” Parts One and Two, I show how a great deal of UFO evidence has been missing, stolen outright, or the originals “never returned”.
http://ufomedia.blogspot.com/2008/07/missing-ufo-evidence-part-one.html

http://ufomedia.blogspot.com/2008/07/missing-ufo-evidence-part-two.html

Then there’s another consideration: couldn’t ETs steal evidence, too?

Just recently MUFON had a article in their monthly journal pointing out how in Police Officer Lenny Zamora’s famous UFO landing report, (which included small humanoid occupants) photos taken almost right after the event were given to Project Blue Book and were never returned. Project Bluebook’s official explanation that entered into UFO history claimed the photos were foggy from radiation and therefore, no good. But if this is true, those photos are important evidence.

At Gilliland Ranch, debunkers have an evidence problem: too much evidence in the hands of too many witnesses --thousands.

But it does get sticky: part of this locale’s UFO phenomena seems to include telepathic connection. Even this extraordinary phenom is not so rare in the history of ufology and witness experience. Another frequent phenom is the transformation of an individual witness into a kind of guru --like James Gilliland-- who is imparting messages claiming ETs are spiritually advanced.

Gilliland was at first dismissed by the Pragmatic Certainty crowd as being a hoaxer or a New Age nut. But Gilliland’s dismissal by both UFO researchers and debunkers as a hoaxer is pretty damn meaningless now that thousands of human visitors to his ranch over the last few years have themselves seen --and documented with still and video images-- the impossible. Now Gilliland’s attackers have faded away and are hunting better pickin’s.

Gilliland has been recorded predicting specific times when the UFO craft will appear. They often do. No matter what you believe about him, he has shown us the beef.

Now that Gilliland can no longer be whipping boy for debunkers and UFO skeptics crying HOAX, the naysayers and witness suppression factions are working overtime to destroy or impinge the character of anyone who comes forward with a sensational UFO report. This is a type of mind control in itself.

UFO researchers claim that this is a service. That if they prove a particular incident could be faked, then it was faked. Why?

Does the human person not count in this? Most witnesses are not getting paid, don’t want their names out there, and maybe the most revealing characteristic the debunkers would have us ignore is that nearly all witnesses seem frightened.

Sadly, out of the gate, these issues are discounted by well-meaning people on the non-ending quest for validity in the scientific world.

One tip…don’t hold your breath for validity among scientists.

I decided to design a test. I highlighted a case on YouTube that no one could prove one way or the other as a certain fake, reason being, the video was not good. The researcher was at a TV station and was allowed to record the incident off a TV screen. If you read some of the comments the debunkers and those who believe and have an experience treat this witness basically the same. They also assume authority, telling us in absolute language how it was done and what it is…according to them.



These are You Tube comments on my channel from what I call The Certainty Crowd:

“This is faked, 1st object appears crossing the yard. Seems to bounce off ground twice. resembles baseball bat. 2nd Object appears 6 minutes later two sticks hinged at the top representing legs. Takes the exact same path as the first object”

4 minutes is set up time for the next dummy. There is definatly 2 dummies (beings) being used here. Pay attention to the route that (angle) the dummies move with relation to the digital readout of the clock. This is definatley faked. I'm not saying the owner of the house did it, somebody was probably playing a trick on him, maybe the next door neighbors. Knowing that he would freak out and call somebody

“Poor quality video. It's a security camera, they are known for lack of quality. What I am talking about is the angle of movement (which is 4 minutes apart) is EXACTLY THE SAME. The digital readout of the clock reads 12: 42: ^ 48 for the first being and 12: 46: ^ 48 for the second being. THE ^ character denotes the position where both being pass the readout of the clock. It is theoretically imposible for two beings to walk the exact same path 4 minutes apart.”


In the second YouTube I posted, you can see that most of the debunking rhetoric was way off base. My reason for doing this was not to prove this particular record of this particular incident was real, rather, it was to prove that this Certainty Principle Crowd are not only full of hot air, they also reflect a tone devoid of compassion.



I ask, has there been credible reports by good witnesses on the following:
UFO craft?
Small creatures associated with these craft?
Abductions?
Mental Contact?


One of three ET photos taken by 8 year old child the parents would no longer cooperate:




Why do we keep actively or passively investing in the culture of UFO witness devaluation? If you believe some or even most of the above elements reported in many UFO reports are possibly true, why automatically assume your objective is to prove the witness wrong?

If you believe rigid thinking doesn’t influence outcome, go to a court of law any day and watch hired scientists --hired guns with charts, graphs, CVs and PhDs-- duke out the evidence on both sides of the question.



Why is it that for sixty years, all of these videos and photographs are suspect, and the witnesses who shot them held in contempt, even though no clear motive for fakery was found except in the rarest handful of cases?

I address these issues because you can see the clash of egos all around us. I think we all have to look at how our egos help and hurt the UFO research community.

I really believe that we have a duty to promote the integrity of most of the witnesses who come forward. They are not Hoaxers.

I know science is what drives us forward, but what I see being practiced today relates not to science, but to a rigid prejudice among researchers, and to a strange need among our own ufology community to control not only the message about UFOs, but to control which messenger is accorded credibility.

Read some of the follow-ups on these cases, do the homework.
Researchers ask yourself some crucial follow up questions before:
1. What it is about a certain case that closes my mind to the possibility it is real?
2 .Do I automatically, because of the nature of the witness report, social status or race begin with the attitude “this is a hoax”
3. Do I try and prove my own hypothesis wrong.
4. Do I attack the witness in a public forum before I have all the facts in.

In the most sensational cases, if we dig we find out that once the notoriety dies down, the witnesses who were so salaciously debunked --the Hills and Travis Watsons out there-- their actions do not in any way reflect the profile of a hoaxer. Many times their, life after the experience, reflects seclusion and bitterness at some of us.

DVD Clip Faces Of ETs
(International UFO Congress; Maussan Presenter)



Joseph Capp
UFO Media Matters
Non-Commercial Blog

19 comments:

  1. Excellent post,just excellent.You made some very valid points.I totally agree.

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  2. Thank You so much for your responce it felt right when I wrote it.

    This shoot, and ask questions later, attitude is extremely insensitive. The attitude of we must prove these sensational cases wrong so we can gain credibility has not worked in sixty years.
    Just now, a person claiming to be an O'Hare witnesses put a up a cell phone clip of the "craft" on You Tube Anonymously.

    Instead of trying to engage this person to come forward he was attacked by a MUFON Director. I don't know if this person is a fake but I can tell you one thing I understand why he/she doesn't want to come forward. One of the arguments made by this MUFON director was how it was shot at an "impossible angles...did he ever think it may have been shot from a cockpit? In fact that is what it looks like.

    Reading these Knee jerk reaction in a public forum by these UFO researchers so the can appear objective is getting tiresome to me... it is shot sighted to say the least and can distort good careers at it's worst.

    And yet you will hear thems shout how this helps UFOs credibility.

    It's now been over Sixty Years of research on this subject by the "skeptical Objective UFO researchers has these researchers gained credibility from the mainstream... do they hold any power....
    The people who really lose money and power are the Witnesses who step into the limelight...people like Edgar Michael and Gorden Cooper.
    The only credibility given to this subject, has been and always will be through the credible UFO experiencer, however, what they see is not any different than what the farmer, the bike repair person or the 7-11 clerk sees and reports. All of these courageous UFO witnesses have one thing in common thought they have very few friends sadly to say on both side of the isle

    Joe Capp
    UFO Media Matters

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  3. Joe,

    We disagree with your assessments about UFO witnesses, as you know, and have dealt with this at our UFO Iconoclasts and Provocateurs
    blogs:

    http://ufocon.blogspot.com

    http://ufoprovo.blogspot.com

    But you are a wonderful, although wrong, advocate for all those maligned UFO witnesses.

    RR

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  4. Yes we have, but I have never been intentionally dishonest and you were with that Trent Photo fiasco. They were witnesses who had no axes to grind.. and are smart enough to have known that, unless you have never taken any psychology courses. but you knew they were easy targets. Sir you are dishonest, although even dishonest people can some times do things good things, when push comes to shove your type will always revert back on dishonesty to win an argument.
    Joe Capp
    UFO Media Matters

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  5. May I add my own voice to this debate I personally think that the points raised in this article are a light of common sense in the Ufology phenomenon I totally agree with you Joe and may I add my own personal thanks to you for your support of the witnesses
    flyboysg1

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  6. JC:

    The Trent photo?

    Yu mean the so-called "missing" Trent photo which was passed on to us, and which we still believe has some connection to the Trent hoax.

    RR

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  7. Joesph,

    In a short essay I compared my own preparedness toward the paranormal to the comedy of Buster Keaton, the art of the improvised, acting non plussed when I discover my zipper is open.

    We all try to maintain our orientation toward the world as others have defined it when this nice neat and orderly universe is cracked, broken and suddenly chaotic because the world paradigm keeps running on autopilot..."Oh, that orange elephant? Its the exception that must be explained by the other 99% of reports that were hoaxes, frauds and dementia. We do know it happens but we do not know how, therefore it is not a valid observation because it cannot be measured...therefore it does not exist"

    I had a video posted where a psychiatrist in commenting on paranormal events considered this "a weak rationalization."

    He observed that he did not know how a particular horse won a race but he knew that it did, and he did not know how a patient arrived in his office but he knew he was there by talking to him.

    So if we say these witnesses observations do not exist because we cannot explain them, or we cannot measure them, therefore they are all frauds, etc...What if we ran intelligence operations in the same manner, or psychiatric treatment, or the observation of black holes?

    Great post.

    Best Wishes
    Bruce

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  8. Joseph,

    This weekend, we'll be making history regarding UFO witnesses. Here's the relevant paragraph from our press release today:

    --------------

    On this week’s episode, airing Sunday evening, March 29, 2009, The Paracast, widely recognized as “the gold standard of paranormal radio,” features exclusive reports on UFO sightings direct from veteran military witnesses.

    Longtime UFO and Nuclear site researcher Robert Hastings has worked with The Paracast to bring two new military witnesses forward to describe – for the very first time publicly – their experiences with UFOs sighted over sensitive nuclear missile launch sites. Bruce Fenstermacher was a Minuteman III combat crew commander at FE Warren Air Force Base in 1976 when his experience occurred, while Patrick McDonough was a Chief of Party for the Field Survey Team of the 1381st Geodetic Survey Squadron, and was at Malmstrom AFB when his encounter — a sighting of a UFO at very close range, along with two other witnesses — occurred in 1966. More details surrounding both witnesses will be available at the Paracast forums on Sunday, March 29, 2009, when the episode airs. Also joining the show will be Captain Robert Salas, who will be discussing his well-known encounter at Malmstrom AFB in 1967, where a UFO apparently disabled the targeting computers on multiple Minuteman ICBMs while he was a Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander at the facility. Robert Hastings rounds out the panel as a special guest co-host for the episode.

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  9. Dear RRR Group,
    That makes you a hypocrite. You did exactly what you accuse true UFO believers of doing. You accepted a photograph and put it out there as possible evidence without any proof that it was real. You accepted this photo and ran with it at a time when it is so easy to do this, that even a moderate level user of Photoshop could accomplish that photo. So you attack the Trents who were well like in their community, believe me I am sure the debunkers of the day were working overtime just like you some 30+ years later to find some dirt on this family and public with it. It makes you a true believer and not objective.
    So I ask people out there on the other side of this issue, those with a sense of fair play, is this the type of emotional science you want put out there as an augment against the UFO question. Is that how you are going to protect the gullible and convert the believer.
    What was so bad about what you did was how it was directed at ...the bottom line here is the only under dog in this issue is and was the Trents... and I am proud i wrote to you about your tactics... it was one of my better moments.
    I also think deep down you a good guy but you are just too paranoid about people and don't have the faintest idea of why when you see a UFO you life is changed. I'm also sorry you don't have neighbors like I have, you might have trusted more.

    Joe Capp
    UFO Media Matters
    Non-Commercial Blog

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  10. Dear Bruce,
    Excellent Point, why UfO witnesses who may claim a very strange encounter must be liars in their book saddens me. Some of the people who report this look as if they are as far away from being a hoaxer as possible. They don't fit the profile before during and after.
    But deep down we all know what the main problem is.. and the fear... is if just one of these witnesses is proved right the debunkers theme and game is over.
    I wish more in dept investigation was done on the ground on these sensational cases.... I know of one and I will post about the evidence because he was also trashed.
    Thanks Bruce
    Joe Capp
    UFO Media Matters
    Non-Commercial Blog

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  11. Dear David,
    Anyone who come forward with their name and serial number up front and can help verify what thousands have witnessed and reported is very good news for me. This is the best chance we have had in decades.Obama seems to really believe what he is doing. Open government sound like a dream...we can make it happen.
    Unlike what most of the people think I believe there are good people in the government who care and just don't know what side of the issue to support. I hope they support the people side they are what America is about. In time to stop the persecution of people because of that they see, and find out what these craft are really about. Thank you and thank Patrick for his service than and now.

    Joseph Capp
    UFO Media Matters
    Non-Commercial Blog

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  12. Tahnk You.
    It time all UfO researcher stop shooting the innocent by-stander. We evenutally find the hoaxer, but I believe it is better for a few hoaxers to get away with it than one honest witness attacked.
    Joe Capp
    Non-Commercial Blog
    UFO Media Matters

    ReplyDelete
  13. Dear Ruth,
    Thank you, a compliment is always welcome here. The Muffuns sound great also.
    Joe Capp
    UFO Media Matters
    Non-Commercial Blog

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  14. Why do we keep actively or passively investing in the culture of UFO witness devaluation?

    For the very same reason that 'we' disbelieve anyone who reports anything that is likely to put a dent in 'our' very limited comfort zones.

    Just ask anyone who's tried to report incest, rape, harassment, stalking, domestic violence, abuse as a child...and then institutional corruption, fraud, workplace bullying, racism, homophobia and so on ad nauseum. Literally ad nauseum for many whistleblowers and victims of crime and abuse.


    'No, that doesn't happen here. You must have imagined it' is the overwhelming kneejerk reaction.

    This is why human beings are such a cancer on the earth. Egos, selfishness, NIMBYism, the inherent self-orientated callousness of the human species.

    One can only hope that our ET brethren do come and wipe this species off the face of this planet.

    Excellent points. You've revealed some key motivations in your exploration here.

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  15. So, are the UFOs benevolent or malevolent? For those of you who believe in UFOs and have not yet thought about this, it is worth your while to do so now in the light of the following points. These points have been presented earlier and seem to point to the fact that the UFOs are not at all spacecrafts from other planets but that they are, as a matter of fact, evil spirits that can appear as humanoids and try to delude the mankind.

    http://koti.phnet.fi/elohim/What_Ufo%27s_are

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  16. ufomedia.blogspot.com; You saved my day again.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Dear Anonymous,
    Thanks, you just made my day.

    Joe
    UFOMM

    ReplyDelete
  18. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  19. What necessary phrase... super, remarkable idea

    ReplyDelete