UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

It’s long been said that “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” How long? The quote is attributed to French playwright Charles-Guillaume Étienne in the early 1800s. The saying in French is “On n’est jamais servi si bien que par soi-même,” which translates literally to the more cumbersome “One is never served so well as by oneself.” Two hundred years later, the saying resonates stronger than ever, and now it’s becoming a driving force in the world of UFOs (see Tom DeLonge). Politico, the Washington DC-based political journal, recently began a website called POLITICO Space, a “weekly must-read briefing on the policies and personalities shaping the second space age.”

To launch POLITICO Space, Politico Defense Editor and Space writer Bryan Bender held an announcement panel discussion in mid-April. Joining him were fellow space Jaqueline Klimas, President and CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration Mary Lynne Dittmar and US Congressional Representatives Ami Bera (Democrat, California) and Randy Hultgren (Republican, Illinois). This was no space junket — Dittmar is an advisor President Trump on space policy and Bera and Hultgren are members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

When you’re doing things yourself, you don’t let the opportunity to question space heavyweights and policy makers pass you by, so Bryan Bender referred to the Pentagon UFO revelations of last December and hit them with both barrels of his photon torpedo launcher:

“You hear these reports. We have been hearing them for decades from many credible people. Other countries take it more seriously. They have government researchers who, in the open, not in secrecy, try to explain the unexplainable. Should we be doing more? Or is this just crazy sci-fi stuff that is a waste of time?”

Talk about a loaded question! It would have been easy to deflect it (after all – they’re politicians) and move to what they really want to talk about (campaign donations), but Representative Bera gave a straightforward and unexpected answer.

“I’ve actually talked to the chairman of the subcommittee, Brian Babin, as well as Lamar Smith, the chairman of the full committee. I said we ought to have a hearing on this, right? We ought to bring some folks in. Look, if you want to boost our C-SPAN ratings, a lot of people would be really interested. We don’t know what these phenomena are. Obviously, it’s important enough to allocate some funds and we ought to talk about what we can talk about.”

Bera said the magic word … “funds.” Spending money shows he’s serious. And he wants to put it on TV, which should get the president interested. Republican Hultgren agrees.

“It definitely piques interest. It gets people engaged.”

We’re already piqued and engaged — it’s time for Congress to catch up. Will government money really get allocated and spent on opening up secret files and getting new UFO research started? Will the discussions be held out in the open on C-SPAN? (Would they get more viewers on Netflix?)

Representatives Bera and Hultgren have committed and they name-dropped Brian Babin and Lamar Smith – both Republicans from Texas. Smith is retiring so Babin better get onboard. He doesn’t have to worry about the 2018 election because his only opponent is the Green Party candidate (which in Texas means he’s running unopposed). Will they follow through? Expect POLITICO to keep reminding them.

And a special thanks to POLITICO Space for reminding us once again:

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

In 2017, several news organizations revealed the existence of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a U.S. government funded investigation into unidentified flying objects from 2007 to 2012. This secret $22 million program, however, was not the first of its kind. In fact official government UFO studies began in the 1940s with Project Sign providing some of the most credible videos of aerial phenomenon to date. The 2017 revelation that the U.S. government was actively researching UFOs reignited world interest in UFOs and aliens. Let’s revisit five of the most believable UFO sightings of the 21st century.

1. The Lights Above the New Jersey Turnpike (2001)

It takes a lot for motorists to stop alongside a highway to look towards the sky, but on July 14, 2001, drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike did just that. For around 15 minutes just after midnight, they marveled at the sight of strange orange and yellow lights in a V formation over the Arthur Kill Waterway between Staten Island, New York, and Carteret, New Jersey. Cataret Police Department’s Lt. Daniel Tarrant was one of the witnesses, as well as other metro area residents from the Throgs Neck Bridge on Long Island and Fort Lee, New Jersey near the George Washington Bridge. Air traffic controllers initially denied that any airplanes, military jets or space flights could have caused the mysterious lights, but a group known as the New York Strange Phenomena Investigators (NY-SPI) claimed to receive FAA radar data that corroborated the UFO sightings of that night.

An image taken from a video released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program of a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets and an unknown object.

(Credit: U.S. Department of Defense via The New York Times/Redux)

2. The USS Nimitz Encounter (2004)

On November 14, 2004, the USS Princeton noted an unknown craft on radar 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. For two weeks, the crew had been tracking objects which appeared at 80,000 feet and plummeted to hover right above the Pacific Ocean. When two FA-18F fighter jets from the USS Nimitz arrived in the area, they first saw what appeared to be churning boiling water in an oval shape underneath the surface. Then, in a few moments, a white Tic Tac-like object appeared above the water. It had no visible markings to indicate an engine, wings, or windows, and infrared monitors did not reveal any exhaust. Commander David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight of Strike Fighter Squadron 41 attempted to intercept the craft, but it accelerated away, reappearing on radar 60 miles away—it moved three times the speed of sound and twice the speed of the fighter jets. This encounter was one of the stories reported along with the news of AATIP.

3. O’Hare International Airport Saucer (2006)

Flight 446 was getting ready to fly to North Carolina from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, when a United Airlines employee on the tarmac noticed a dark grey metallic craft hovering over gate C17. That day, November 7, 2006, a total of twelve United employees, and a few witnesses outside the airport, spotted the saucer-shaped craft around 4:15 p.m. The witnesses say it hovered for about 5 minutes before shooting upward where it broke a hole in the clouds, enough that the pilots and mechanics could see the blue sky. The news report became the most read story on Chicago Tribune’s website to that date and made international news. However, because the UFO was not seen on radar, the FAA called it a “weather phenomenon” and declined to investigate.

4. The Stephenville Sightings (2008)

The small town of Stephenville, Texas 100 miles southwest of Dallas, is mostly known for its dairy farms, but in the evening of January 8, 2008, dozens of its residents viewed something unique in the sky. Citizens reported seeing white lights above Highway 67, first in a single horizontal arc and then in vertical parallel lines. Local pilot Steve Allen estimated that the strobe lights “spanned about a mile long and a half mile wide” traveling about 3,000 miles per hour. No sound was reported. Witnesses believed the event was reminiscent of the Phoenix Lights sightings of 1997. While the U.S. Air Force revealed weeks later that F-16s were flying in the Brownwood Military Operating Areas (just southwest of Stephenville), many townspeople didn’t buy that explanation, believeing that what they saw was too technologically advanced for current human abilities.

5. East Coast GO FAST Video (2015)

Leaked in 2017 along with the news of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was a video that revealed an encounter between an F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unidentified flying vehicle. Seen along the East Coast on a Raytheon Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) Pod, the craft was similar to that spotted off San Diego in 2004: It was a fast-moving white oval about 45-feet-long without wings or exhaust plume. The pilots tracked the object at 25,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean as it flew away and simultaneously rotated on its axis. Whether the vehicle was a product of another country’s technology or alien airship remains a mystery.