The latest issue of the Mensa Bulletin (October) evidently has fallen into the trap - set earlier in the May House Intel hearings on UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) - that "there's nothing non-terrestrial to see there". This was in the Bulletin's popular 'Supplementally' (p. 12) section which references a piece in Science News, e.g.
Why
some scientists want serious research into UFOs (sciencenews.org)
Wherein Scott Bray, the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, insisted:
"Nothing in the database or
studied by a task force set up to investigate the sightings would suggest it’s
anything non-terrestrial in origin.”
And then one reads (ibid.)
"Both Bray and Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, identified “insufficient data” as a barrier to understanding what the unidentified phenomena are. "
But this totally controverts the collected data as well as visual sightings by trained Navy and Air Force pilots. Bray also believes many of these are "narrative based" meaning they represent reports of prior incidents from people only now coming forward. But that doesn't minimize the import, it just means the military needs to further de-stigmatize such reporting, as it is not in our national interest.
What most caught my attention in the Science News piece cited by Mensa 'Supplementally' contributor John Blinke, was how the military reports contradicted other statements made by Scott Bray at the House Intel hearing, e.g., when he admitted:
“We've seen an increasing number of unauthorized and or unidentified aircraft or objects over military control training areas and training ranges and other designated airspace. Reports of sightings are frequent and continuous."
Well, if that doesn't get the attention of the brass and get them to stop playing "dodge the aliens" I really don't know what would. But the inherent refusal remains because certain politicians, nincompoops like Marco Rubio mainly, remain convinced these are "foreign" craft intruding on our air space. This bollocks recently recycled in a NY Times piece ('Many military UFO reports are foreign spying, airborne trash') by Julian E. Barnes, which confirms the lack of intelligence and perception such as displayed in the GOP "Red wave" nonsense forecasts for our midterm elections. (Which only Michael Moore and a few others, like former Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe, appear to have seen through.)
Prosaic UAP beliefs - such as the "foreign spy" baloney - that only imbeciles could maintain, betrays what is actually going on. This is given what these craft (NOT mistaken sightings or "trash") have repeatedly displayed, e.g. in this Navy pilots video:
Which makes it even harder to think Mensa's brain trust fell for this crappola too. But they - or at least Blinke - did, as when he actually wrote in his 'Supplementally' piece:
"Military sightings are less helpful than you might think because the Air Force is justifiably secretive about its tech. And pilots are busy with other things when sightings occur."
Huh? So, if 20 Russian Tu-95 Bear H bombers entered Alaskan airspace Navy or Air Force pilots would be "too busy with other things" to notice? That is the takeaway whether Blinke meant it or not. And it shouldn't require my pointing it out to see that it's total balderdash, it doesn't pass the most remote smell test for plausibility. Again, if these pilots would be "too busy" to notice UAP doing the things visible in the Nazy pilots' video they'd also be too busy to notice Russian Tu-95 bombers in our airspace.
The nonsense about the Air Force being "secretive about its tech" also rings a false bell. What tech? Aircraft sensors, radar? Cameras? You mean to tell me the "tech" is so secretive the AF can't disclose there are conditions that might arise when it can fool pilots into seeing things - UAP for instance - that aren't really there? Then I'd say we have a whole other order of issues to worry about.
But for my money, all the high end dodging and extraordinary resort to prosaic bafflegab merely confirms the thesis of Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall published in the journal Political Theory some 14 years ago:
Sovereignty and the UFO - Alexander Wendt, Raymond Duvall, 2008
This work detailed the aversion of the human political and military hierarchy to accepting the truth of UAP/ UFOs as extraterrestrial realities.
The core basis of Wendt's and Duvall's thesis is simple: the phenomenon of the UFO as real tends to be rejected ab initio because it's opposed to the human concept of state sovereignty and superiority. In other words, it violates a persistent anthropocentric viewpoint endemic in Homo Sapiens. This was explained further by Prof. Daniel W. Dresner in an article appearing in The Denver Post, from June 2, 2019, i.e.
'UFOs have
never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is
assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not
known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. The
puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric
sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to
anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision.
The UFO can be known only by not asking what it is.
"UFO exception to anthropocentrism", in other words, presumes an entity regarded as a serious exception to human superiority. Hence, the real reason UFOs have been dismissed or treated as unworthy of serious human attention is because of their existential challenge to a species that either fancies itself: a) the sole advanced species in the cosmos and occupying one singular habitable planet, or b) If any aliens might exist they are profoundly inferior to humans and would never be able to create craft to get here.
At least Ronald Moultrie - the Pentagon's top intelligence official - was forthright when he said (at the same House UAP Intel hearing):
"We also understand that there has been a cultural stigma surrounding UAP. Our goal is to eliminate the stigma by fully incorporating our operators and mission personnel into a standardized data gathering process."
Adding that the Pentagon wants to establish an office "to speed up the identification of previously unknown or unidentified objects". The Science News article itself cites two astrobiologists: Jacob Haqq Misra and Ravi Kooparavu who are quoted in turn:
Kopparapu: I
think the scientific study of UAP should not be stigmatized. There should be
open discussions, comments and constructive criticisms that can help further
the study of UAP.
Haqq Misra: As
scientists, what we should do is study things that we don’t understand.
Indeed. And while we're at it, and there's this huge hue and cry for "more scientific research" into the UAP phenomenon, maybe some genius - or at least more alert journalist - could dig up solar physicist Peter Sturrock's 2000 work: The UFO Enigma: A new Review of the Physical Evidence,
The book is an outgrowth of the findings of a scientific panel formed to provide an evidentiary consensus for what would constitute: a) acceptable physical evidence for UFOs - especially in train with the extra terrestrial hypothesis, and b) how that evidence might be obtained. None of the panel members were lightweights, and most had serious backgrounds in either astrophysics or plasma physics. Let's also note that ultimately Carl Sagan himself came around to the validity of the Extraterrestrial hypothesis, e.g.
https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76926
See Also:
Government UFO Report Won't Rule Out Visitors from Space | BU Today | Boston University
Excerpt:
"The UFO sightings dating back into the ’50s and ’60s were never technology that we were able to see later on from a foreign power. That never materialized later into a foreign nation having a capability like that."
And:
And:
Physics Today Book Reviewer Kate Dorsch Is As Clueless About UFOs As Neil DeGrasse Tyson
And:
Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere - a Case Study
And:
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