Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS NEARLY 13 YEARS AND 4 MONTH.
ON /30/09/2024 MORE THAN 2.230.520
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
30-07-2019
Amerikaans congreslid ‘bezorgd’ over UFO-meldingen van straaljagerpiloten. Wat weet het leger over deze objecten?
Amerikaans congreslid ‘bezorgd’ over UFO-meldingen van straaljagerpiloten. Wat weet het leger over deze objecten?
Het Amerikaanse congreslid Mark Walker zei vrijdag tegen Fox News dat hij ‘bezorgd’ is over UFO-waarnemingen die recentelijk zijn gedaan door gevechtspiloten. Sommigen hebben gespeculeerd dat de objecten buitenaards zijn.
“We maken ons hier zorgen over,” zei Walker in het programma Tucker Carlson Tonight.
“We zitten met vragen,” vervolgde hij. “Die hebben vooral te maken met de nieuwe radarsystemen die we installeren in sommige van onze nieuwe straaljagers die deze dingen detecteren.”
Bewijs
Eerder deze maand schreef Walker een brief aan marinechef Richard Spencer waarin hij om meer informatie over UFO’s vroeg.
Hij vroeg ook of de marine de meldingen van onbekende vliegende objecten nog steeds bijhoudt en daar onderzoek naar doet.
Walker vroeg Spencer daarnaast of onderzoekers ‘fysiek of andersoortig bewijs hadden gevonden’.
Onduidelijk
Het Pentagon bevestigde het bestaan van een UFO-programma in 2017, maar het is onduidelijk of dat programma nog loopt.
De New York Times schreef onlangs dat marinepiloten ‘vreemde objecten’ zagen in de lucht ‘zonder motor of uitlaat’ die hypersonische snelheden bereikten.
Carlson zei dat er theorieën moeten zijn over deze objecten. “Wat is de meest waarschijnlijke theorie?” vroeg hij aan Walker.
“We weten het niet zeker,” antwoordde het congreslid.
Half a century ago, the first humans stepped foot on Earth’s lonely natural satellite. Achieved over the course of several days and manned by three intrepid astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins—the lunar landing of Apollo 11 was the culmination of a project more than a decade in the making, and which involved more than 400,000 participants.
After fifty years, we are still seeing the influence of Apollo 11, which historian Arthur Schlesinger called the single greatest achievement of the 20th century. But what are the longer lasting implications of the 1969 moon landing?
I recently spoke with Rod Pyle, editor in chief of Ad Astra, the official publication of the National Space Society and author of First on the Moon: The Apollo 11 50th Anniversary Experience(for which Buzz Aldrin wrote the introduction). According to Pyle, understanding the longer-lasting influence of Apollo 11 requires a look back at the mindset behind United States leadership more than half a century ago.
“Apollo was a geopolitical program,” Pyle says, “but it was really designed to make a point: which was ‘We’re better than the Soviets. We have better scientists, we have better technicians, we have better engineering and better education, better systems of government.’ It achieved that handily and trounced them as a lunar effort, and they were trying and weren’t able to do it with people. So, it achieved that goal.”
However, Pyle also says that the speed at which Americans were able to put astronauts on the moon in 1969 placed some limitations on the usefulness of Apollo-era innovations for future projects.
“The problem was, it was done so quickly, and with such finesse, and was so purpose driven that although there were plans to use the Apollo hardware for other things, it was kind of a closed-end system. By 1972, we were done with the lunar missions. They had enough hardware left for three more: Apollo 18 through 20, [and] Nixon cancelled that shortly after the Apollo 11 flight.”
That isn’t to say that there weren’t still many applications for Apollo-era innovations, as well as those which came later under similar influence. “We had Skylab,” Pyle notes, “[and we had] the Space Station, and that was a legacy; we had the first cooperative flights between the U.S. and the Soviet Union with Apollo/Soyuz in 1975, and then it slowed down.
“We started working on the shuttle, which is a whole different approach,” Pyle also said. “It was supposed to be reusable—and it kind of was—it was suppose to be cheaper, and it kind of wasn’t. It wasn’t as safe as Apollo.”
However, it could be argued that in addition to being the single greatest achievement of the 20th century, the Apollo moon landings may have also been the most inspirational, in terms of the future of space exploration; whether directly or indirectly.
“I think the legacy of Apollo, besides the philosophical achievement, the sense of adventure, and so forth, is a couple of things,” Pyle told me. “Even pessimistic projections about the money spent say that there’s anywhere from between five dollars and twenty-one dollars returned for every dollar invested in Apollo. And that’s just talking in money terms. That kind of program—a space program—is one of the few things in which government money is all pumped back into American labor; there’s no outsourcing. It’s all happening in the U.S., with U.S. workers, so that’s a benefit.
“They’re developing technologies that have benefited us to this day; everything from computing, to medical—kidney dialysis, artificial joints—anti-scratch coating on the lenses of your glasses, the dust buster was a design descended from the vacuum they designed to vacuum inside the lunar module! So all kinds of spin-offs and benefits—including our cell phones, by the way—that have persisted through the years.”
But above all, Apollo 11 continues to inspire us.
“If I go up to the Jet Propulsion Lab, where I work from time to time, and I sit at a table in the cafeteria and [ask the employees], ‘what got you into this kind of work?’ Some people are gonna say Star Trek, some are gonna say Star Wars… but they all say the Apollo Program. ‘I wasn’t even alive then,’ in many cases they’ll say. ‘The Apollo Program really inspired me to do this’.”
The Eagle landing module, photographed by Michael Collins from Columbia.
I also asked Pyle about future missions to the moon, as well as our eventual journeys to Mars, and what we might be able to predict about the future of space travel based on our experience with the Apollo program.
“If we [look at] this planned return to the moon that Vice President Pence announced a few months ago, that hardware looks a lot like Apollo because it’s gotta do the same thing. So we’re not talking about winged space shuttles and things like that, we’re talking about a conical capsule—a blunt-body capsule just like the Apollo capsule, but a little bigger (that’s the Orion)—we’re talking about the Space Launch System (SLS), and possibly using the Falcon Heavy and one of Jeff Bezos’ rockets (which are all heavily derivative of the Saturn V). We’re talking about moon suits that are derivative from what was built for Apollo, and we’re talking about a lunar lander: the best candidate so far is Jeff Bezos’ Blue Moon lander which he’s been working on for a few years, which derives a lot of its technology core from the [Apollo] lunar module.
“So between us and the Soviet Union, we did a ton of the heavy lifting, and the picking of the low-hanging fruit back in the 1960s, and now we’ve come full circle and we’re revisiting all that technology, to try and get back beyond Earth orbit, back to the moon, land on that south polar region where we know there’s big deposits of water ice, and see if we can use that water ice to stay there, and go beyond. Because where you’ve got water, you’ve got drinkable water, you can make breathable oxygen, and critically you can make rocket fuel out of it—you can make hydrogen and oxygen rocket fuel.
“And with that, because you’re already out of the gravity well of the Earth, the solar system is your backyard! So that kind of is the big goal right now, and it all stems directly from the Apollo missions.”
In essence, the legacy of the Apollo missions remains veryrelevant today, and in likelihood, they will remain so for decades to come. Even with the passing of half a century, the achievements of the Apollo 11 lunar landing continue to shape the way we study space… and help to sharpen our sights for future avenues toward exploration of the cosmos.
Matty Roberts of Bakersfield, California claims he is the creator of the satirical Facebook page that has called on people to storm Area 51 in rural Nevada on Sept. 20, 2019. Since the page posted on June 27, 1.6 million people have RSVPed the invasion, while another 1.2 million are “interested.” Roberts posted “If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.” The mystery surrounding the crash landing of a reported UFO near Roswell, New Mexico has turned the small town into an international destination. While Area 51 is no different. People travel just 83 miles north of Las Vegas on the extraterrestrial highway to the outskirts of the USAF testing facility in droves.
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- As a young 2nd Lieutenant, police officer / Security Policeman (SP) in the US Air Force, I was quietly advised by my fellow commissioned officers that should I ever actually fire my weapon while on duty, at either someone or something, I could pretty much kiss my Air Force career good bye.
There were the stories about Security Police in the missile fields of Montana and North Dakota using deadly force that was authorized to defend and protect nuclear weapons, only to suffer under the Uniform Code of Military Justice after the fact.
Now if Security Policemen had lost a nuke on their watch because they did not fire their weapons, those poor bastards would still be in prison.
My big Air Force/AF is really easy about applying the concept of deadly-force-authorized, to defend non-living assets, but they get most distressed when some young Air Force cop takes the leadership up on their prearranged instructions and actually makes the decision to shoot at bad guys.
There is an alleged “war story” about an AF cop / SP responding to a bar fight in Osan, Korea one night. This SP found himself alone in an alley with about 10-12 very drunk off-duty Army and Air Force members. Drinking was a way of life for the US military stationed in Korea. They were discussing the merits and tactics of beating the crap out of the cop. He knew it was going to be a painful reality. In those days an Air Force cop only carried a 38 special revolver, 18 extra rounds of ammo and a set of handcuffs.
There was no pepper spray or a non-lethal night-stick. Of course Tasers were not even around back in the day. The young SP officer was going to get his butt beat most severely. That, is when he decided he had a revolver on his hip for a reason and pulled it out. The SP even put an extra six rounds of ammo in his left hand. Figuring once he started firing, he was going to win real quick or they all would charge him en masse and he needed to reload for the “Last Stand at Osan.”
Do you know what the first thing that come out of the mouth of one of those drunk idiots was, “Hey, you’re not allow to use that gun?” The drunk was advised he was going to be the first one shot. The drunk laughed but seemed to slip away into the steamy hot Korea summer night, leaving one less target of opportunity for the cornered SP.
Surprisingly there was an inebriated pilot standing in the crowd, egging his fellow drunks on to attack the SP. When the SP told him he was going to enjoy shooting him in the kneecap and making sure he never passed a flight physical again, the drunk pilot did not think that was funny. At some point the drunks realized the Air Force cop, with his back literally to the wall and no avenue of escape was really going to shoot some of them, so the crowd drifted away.
The next day the cop was order to go see some Lt. Colonel (flying type) who owned the drunk pilot and explain who the hell the SP thought he was threatening to shoot one of his pilots’ just for having a good time out on the town. Attempts were made to explain the situation, but it was not working. Then, the now sober pilot comes in and the Lt. Colonel advised the SP he owed the pilot an apology. There was concern beforehand this was going to happen and preparations were made.
A spent 38 special shell case was handed to the pilot. The cop advised him he was lucky he had not been on the receiving end of that round of ammo. The two pilots just stood there as the cop left and nothing was heard again about that drunken night at Osan.
Now if our SP had actually pulled the trigger that night in Osan there is a pretty good chance he would have never been able to stay in the Air Force long enough to collect his retirement check. Even if legally he was in the right, they could have gotten rid of him. He would have received bad evaluations, never got promoted and been forced to leave early in his career.
Incidents like the once-upon-a-time tale of a drunken night at Osan, Korea happens on occasion around the world with Air Force cops and unruly Airmen. In most cases a shot is never fired and the incident does not make it to international cable news.
And then there is Groom Lake.
So, these alien-hunting civilians want to swarm the Air Force classified location at Groom Lake, which is north of Las Vegas in the Nevada desert. This base is also the “famous” Area 51.
Please keep in mind the US government owns a very large chunk of the state of Nevada, to include the land that the Nevada Test and Training Range is on. If the Feds say you cannot be on their land they mean it and they back it up with guns. Groom Lake is on Federal land.
My last assignment in the Air Force prior to retiring as an AF cop from active duty was at Nellis Air Force Base, in Las Vegas. Nellis AFB, was the support base for the Groom Lake operation. We had unclassified maps that had Groom Lake on them. There was no secret where Area 51 was located. Even with my increased security clearances I was never officially told what was going on at Groom Lake and to tell you the truth I did not want to know.
The unofficial rumors had the physical security of Groom Lake structured in three rings of defense. Inside the wire of Groom Lake there were allegedly Air Force, Security Policemen guarding the cantonment area. Outside the wire was the second ring of protection that was performed by contract private security. Then the first line of defense was another ring of contract security. This information is all alleged and for me hearsay. I do not know if it was true back then or how they are doing security now.
What I do understand is if these ground raiders actually show up, some Air Force careers are going to be ruined over what will happen. The Air Force does not even have to shoot any of the raiders. All the Air Force has to do is fail to have medical support, water stations and port-a-johns set up for the raiders. All it will take for international news to cry foul is a poor heat prostrated raider laying in the desert sand crying for his mommy.
Now if deadly force is actually used that day, the world will be in mourning for the misunderstood raiders who only wanted to find those pesky aliens.
As their blood is soaking into the sand the phone calls will go out for the heads of the Air Force cops who dared to defend Area 51 the way they were instructed and trained to react. Cop leadership will be called to senior pilot leadership offices and threatened with the ruination of their military careers and prison time.
There will be video footage out there forever of the injured as they try to retrograde back to Las Vegas and of course the politicians demanding answers. Years later the paper/money trail will finally come out as to what foreign hostile powers and what domestic terrorists were contributing money and support to the raider’s cause.
A suggestion to my fellow Air Force Security Forces cops, who will be on duty that day, be prepared to survive literally and politically. At the time of the writing of this column there were already 1.2 million people who have declared their intent to attack Groom Lake. If Groom Lake is swarmed with even a fraction of the 1.2 million alleged raiders there will be no stopping them and if they get to you personally, you are their target.
They will not all be Americans out for a good time in the desert. The foreign operatives will be the ones looking for blood to embarrass the US government. They will just be dressed like all the rest of the raiders.
The talking heads on the cable news channels are all laughing at the idea of raiders attacking Groom Lake. I see none of this as funny. When that Airman cop has his back against the wall at Groom Lake and challenged by screaming raiders the way the drunks threatened that SP those many years ago one night in Osan, the reaction to use deadly force will arise. Now if the three rings of security is how they conduct business at Groom Lake, and if the raiders successfully breach the first two rings to then confront actual Air Force cops, there will already have been a lot of shooting.
There is a history of individuals being killed trying to force their way into Groom Lake, but again that too is hearsay.
It is not funny. If the Federal government has established such elaborate interlocking security to protect Groom Lake they are taking this serious, deadly serious.
So, the question to the raiders is, “do you feel lucky”? To the Air Force cops who will be on duty that day, watch your back and your fellow cops’ back but do not expect your big Air Force to side-you when this is all over. You might have an empty 5.56 shell case in your hand as you ask for a lawyer. Sad but true.
Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:
Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force, was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School. A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI. His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training. He believes “evil hates organization.” vanharl@aol.com
What the Hell Is Going on With UFO's - UFO Encounters, USA Military Wants Answers
What the Hell Is Going on With UFO's - UFO Encounters, USA Military Wants Answers
UFO’s are going mainstream. Are UFO’s real, are UFO’s special government operations, what is area 51 hidding?
So many questions and now some answers are being reported by mainstream media, it’s not just conspiracy any more.
Listen to Tucker Carlson discuss recent military encounters with UFO’s. Tucker asks,”why have we all been lied to for so long?”
Are there Aliens at area 51? These questions and many more will be answered in the two powerful videos below.
Members of Congress and their staffs were given classified briefings on unidentified flying objects by the U.S. Navy with a focus on the potential threats to humans, a Navy spokesperson said Thursday.
The Pentagon has provided a classified briefing to members of Congress about reported encounters by US navy pilots and unidentified aircraft, some of which were said to have no visible engines and could reach hypersonic speeds.
The Navy in April revised its rules on how military pilots report encounters with unidentified aircraft. Rather than dismissing the observations, the Navy now acknowledges there have been sightings of unauthorized and unidentified aircraft entering military-controlled ranges and airspace in recent years, Gradisher previously told Politico.
The question remains, “why the cover-up, how could this have been kept quiet for 60 to 80 years?
Why are they disclosing this information now? What purpose does it serve for them?
In 2004, two F/A-18F Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz were flying 100 miles off the coast of San Diego when a nearby Navy guided missile carrier, the USS Princeton, alerted them to two unknown objects, which the jets later flew to investigate: a larger underwater object that was “much larger than a submarine,” and a second “wingless, white” and “oblong” object that hovered 50 feet above the water and moved erratically. Here’s the infrared video of the encounter:
In 2018, a second video was released that showed another Navy run-in with a puzzling, fast-moving object. The video was taken in 2015 off the East Coast by a F/A-18F fighter jet using the aircraft’s onboard Raytheon AN/ASQ- 228 Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) Pod.
For all the myths and legends, what’s true is that Area 51 is real and still very active.
There may not be aliens or a moon landing movie set inside those fences, but something is going on and only a select few are privy to what’s happening further down that closely-monitored wind-swept Nevada road.
“The forbidden aspect of Area 51 is what makes people want to know what’s there,” says aerospace historian and author Peter Merlin who’s been researching Area 51 for more than three decades.
You know that the “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” event was started as a joke … right? And you know that it now has a life of its own, is proceeding as jokingly planned for September 20th and has inspired other storming events … right? And you’re not surprised that a beer company, a fast food chain, a music festival organizer and more are lining up to cash in on the event … right? What else could possibly happen? How about an actual UFO showing up to entice even more people to sign up? How about a local sheriff’s office panicking about how to handle a traffic jam on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere? Welcome to the latest edition of “Storm Area 51, What Next?”
2019 UFO sighting near Area 51
That’s the headline on a video uploaded to YouTube on July 23rd by “FilmGuy,” who has this to say about the “UFO” (you can watch the video here):
“Here in Rachel, Nevada. Got this footage on my motion sensor camera. Unbelievable, not sure if it’s a jet or some aircraft I haven’t seen before. Pretty cool nonetheless.”
Pretty cool? We’ll give you cool. Unbelievable? It’s Area 51 (allegedly – there’s no sign or any other indicator, so we have to take his word for it) so not really. Motion sensor camera? That’s worth some pondering. If it’s activated by motion, why was it already recording for a few seconds BEFORE the UFO appeared on the right-hand side before quickly zipping left and disappearing? How wide of an angle and deep of a range do these motion-detectors have? And why did FilmGuy pick this particular spot to set it up? Was he expecting wildlife and got a UFO instead? Then there’s the object itself. It definitely looks like a disc of some sort, even under magnification. However, that roar in the background implies either a non-stealth jet or an old-technology flying saucer. Unbelievable or not believable? This one definitely needs more data … or an admission by a company that it’s a promo for their new “Storm Area 51 Drone.”
Storm Area 51 in your very own authentic steam locomotive!
“Someone is going to get hurt and people may go to jail. It’s not anything to joke about.”
With the only hotel in Rachel, the Little A’le’Inn, already booked to capacity, and the Alien Research Center, a gift shop along Extraterrestrial Highway about 40 miles outside Area 51, already full in its dry camping area, Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee is worried about how his tiny staff of 26 sworn officers, including the jailers, will handle even 500 people lookin’ for a stormin’ and either drunk or angry because the free beer ran out. Even out in the middle of the desert, Sheriff Lee told the Las Vegas Sun that there are parking concerns, traffic control issues and trespassing problems.
“I think this started out as a joke but there may be enough people taking it seriously and it could be a problem.”
If a mere 500 “could be a problem,” what if it’s 2 million? A million? A Woodstockish 500,000?
Among the Great Lakes of North America is the majestic Lake Ontario, which while having the smallest surface area among its four brethren is still a mighty large lake, sprawled out over 7,340 sq. miles and possessing 712 miles of shoreline. With such a large lake, one might wonder if there are any mysteries to be had here, and indeed there are. One of the most interesting of these is the lake monster that has long been reported from Lake Ontario’s depths, and while not nearly as well known as some other lake monsters of the world such as Champ or Nessie, it still has managed to capture the imagination.
Tales of something very large and mysterious in Lake Ontario’s waters go back centuries, all the way back to the original inhabitants of this land, the Seneca tribe, who told of a water dragon lurking here that they called the Gaasyendietha, and the area’s Algonquin and Iroquois people had very similar legends. Yet far from just Native myths, when European explorers and settlers began trickling into the region they too began to make sightings of some massive creature in the lake, with one of the first of these being noted in the journal of French explorer Jacques Cartier, describing a monstrous “finned snake” that moved “like a caterpillar” before diving down beneath the waves to disappear. The French explorer Pierre Radisson also made note of gigantic snakes living in the lake.
Lake Ontario
In the 1800s there were quite a few sightings of the creature in Lake Ontario, starting in 1805, when four fishermen near the area of Kingston, on the eastern shore, saw what they took to be an overturned rowboat bobbing about out on the lake. This “rowboat” then began ominously moving towards them, and as it grew closer they could see that this was just a part of a much larger, serpentine creature with huge eyes that they estimated as being an absurd 150 feet in length, as big around as a barrel, and with a mouth “frightfully large and aspect terrible.” Kingston would go on to become ground zero for all manner of other such reports, and gathered quite a reputation as being a favorite haunt for the mysterious monster.
In July of 1817, a ship was in the area when the crew spotted a dark-colored snake-like monster measuring 40 feet long and 1 foot in diameter about 3 miles offshore. In the August 14, 1829 edition of the Kingston Gazette and Religious Advocate there was also the account of a group of children playing by the waterside when they saw a serpent in the water around 30 feet in length, described in the article as “a hideous water snake, or serpent, of prodigious dimensions.” In 1833 the steamer Polyphemus also came across the beast in Kingston Harbor with the crew saying it was 175 feet in length. The captain, Abijah Kellogg, would claim that it looked almost like an earthworm, with no discernible face, and that it was making its way up the St. Lawrence River. The creature popped up again in 1842, at Gull Beach, in Kingston, where it startled two boys at the water’s edge. When they told their rather what they had seen he came running with a rifle, and even fired at the 40 foot long, brownish serpent. Sightings continued all around Lake Ontario at the time, and there was a curious account printed in the Galveston Daily News, September 5, 1867, the entirety of which reads:
Another report of the appearance of the great snake or water monster in Lake Ontario has reached us. We have it from reliable citizens who reside on the Lake shore in Parma [New York], ten miles or so west of the mouth of the Genesee, that on Thursday last [possibly August 29] , just as sunset, this monster was seen in the water close to shore. A drove of cattle went to drink, whereupon the huge monster raised his head above the water and approached the shore, intending no doubt to take an evening meal of fresh beef. The noise made by the animal as he came into shallow water frightened the cattle and they ran back from the beach in great fright. Half an hour later the same drove of cattle sought to drink at a place fifty rods west of the spot where they first went and were again driven away by the monster. The occurrence drew to the beach several persons residing not far distant and caused a sensation. It won’t answer for anybody to go into that neighborhood and say that there is not a monster in the lake. Too many have seen the animal to doubt its existence.
Sightings would continue on into later years. On June 25, 1872, witnesses in Olcott, New York, supposedly saw the monster actually spectacularly leap far out of the water while making a strange bellowing noise. Two fishermen also saw it in 1877 in Burlington Bay, described as looking like a log with a mouth like a crocodile. In 1881 the creature returned to Kingston, this time being seen by the passengers and crew of the steamship Gyspy, this time describing it as having a tail and small legs. In August of 1882 it was seen near Fort York, Toronto, and witnesses said it was bluish grey in color and covered in prominent bristles. On this occasion it was reportedly to be leisurely floating about basking in the sun, but when it realized it was being watched it apparently grunted and quickly slipped back down into the depths.
In 1888 some sailors saw the thing in the channel between Wolfe and Simcoe Islands, and in 1892 there was a harrowing report from a couple who claimed to have actually been attacked by “a huge serpent with eyes like balls of fire” during a fishing trip to Brackey’s Bay, only managing to escape by beating it over the head with their fishing poles. Perhaps one of the most dramatic reports was printed in the September 5, 1897 edition of the Buffalo Morning Express and Illustrated Buffalo Express, in which it was reported that the creature had actually been captured on hook and line after putting up a seven day battle just off from Tompkins Point. The paper describes the outlandish creature as follows:
Rope were pro cured and the monster was hauled upon the shore. The leviathan was the queerest thing ever teen’ along Lake Ontario. It measured from end of nose to tip of tail seventeen feet, four and a halt Inches, while In width it measured six feet, four Inches.The body was encased In a shell that was very soft and pliable. When hauled upon the platform scales upon which coal is weighed It tipped the beam at 443 pounds. By pulling upon the hook, which was securely fastened in the lower jaw of the monster, the head was drawn out about three feet, displaying a most wonderful sight .As the head was drawn out farther and farther, the jaws would open wider and wider and the eyes would protrude dots and more. When the bead was drawn- out U full length the eyes protruded sins inches and, being seven inches In diameter, made an extremely ugly sight, The tail was about four feet in length- and was feather shaped. About two thirds back on the body was a hump about 18 inches high, which when brushed off with an old broom, shone like polished brass. On either side of the body of the monster were six fins or flippers, each 32 inches long and armed with claws seven inches in length. Sightseers have driven from a distance of ten miles to see the monster. Dr. Dee Borough has had it skinned and will bare it mounted.
Whether this ever really happened or not, it is the last we here of this particular specimen, and no mention of any mounted specimen is made after that. Was this real, and if so what happened to that body? Who knows? Unfortunately, this could very well be just a hoax report from an era when newspaper reports were often exaggerated or even straight up made up, and there were certainly hoaxes of the Lake Ontario Monster that would pop up. Sightings nevertheless continued. In 1931 two doctors were out boating on the lake when they saw a 230-foot-long serpent with “one eye in the middle of his head as well two antler-like horns.” 1934 a group of boaters claimed to have collided with the monster at Cartwright Bay, near Kingston, and although they claimed that this had killed it the body was never found. Even more recently still is a sighting made in 1968 by a local in New York who said it was an eel-like creature 20 feet long and had a mane, and in 1970 it was spotted by an employee of the Ministry of Natural Resources at the shores of Prince Edward County. The most recent account I can find is from a Reddit commenter called “jvantorre,” who says he saw it in 2011 in Toronto Harbor, explaining:
Hi me and my friends were at a concert last night September 5th 2011 at the Toronto docks. Out I’n the water we seen a creature describing all of these descriptions. It was black maybe 2 ft wide and only slithered York the surface never jumped but came up enough to expose it’s large fin. I seen it three times I’n roughly 30 min and my friend seen it twice. Before we had to go into the concert. At first we thought there might be a possibility of fresh water dolphins but no sightings have been recorded.
It is hard to say exactly what the mysterious lake monster of Ontario could be. There are species of eel in the lake, but they get nowhere near the sizes reported. Lake sturgeon are also known in the lake, but they are very rare nowadays, and also don’t get as large as the accounts, although they do get pretty big. Could this be something else entirely? Perhaps something that long ago got trapped in the lake? There’s no way to really know, and sightings in more modern times have dropped of substantially, leaving the mystery of the Lake Ontario monster a strange oddity.
As we saw in my previous articles on Russia and Majestic 12, there is strong, available evidence that suggests the Russians were behind the notorious Majestic 12 documents of the 1980s and of 2017. At the same time that ufologists were salivating over the Majestic 12 papers in the eighties, the Russians were working to convince Americans that the U.S. government had secretly created the AIDS virus, Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Or, HIV. The purpose? To use the virus as the definitive doomsday weapon. In reality, the whole thing was nothing but extremely tacky Russian propaganda and disinformation. It’s a strange and controversy-filled story that, in a very odd way, has a link to a second set of Majestic 12 documents; they surfaced in the 1990s. This second set would provoke even more controversy than the original ones ever could. The U.S. Department of State provides the following on the Russian AIDS plot:
“When the AIDS disease was first recognized in the early 1980s, its origins were a mystery. A deadly new disease had suddenly appeared, with no obvious explanation of what had caused it. In such a situation, false rumors and misinformation naturally arose, and Soviet disinformation specialists exploited this situation as well as the musings of conspiracy theorists to help shape their brief but highly effective disinformation campaign on this issue. In March 1992, then-Russian intelligence chief and later Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov admitted that the disinformation service of the Soviet KGB had concocted the false story that the AIDS virus had been created in a U.S. military laboratory as a biological weapon.”
All of which brings us to those 1990s-era Majestic 12 files. They too were almost certainly created by the Russians. They started as a trickle in the early 1990s and by the mid-1990s had turned into a veritable tidal wave. The number of Majestic 12 papers provided to Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera in the 1980s amounted to a handful or two. The ones revealed by Heather Wade in 2017 were not much more in number. The material that a man named Timothy Cooper – of Big Bear Lake, California – obtained from shady sources in the 1990s ran to not just dozens of pages, but hundreds of pages. Although Cooper quit Ufology years ago, the files sent to him are still talked about in Ufology. Cooper soon hooked up with the father-son UFO research team of Dr. Robert Wood and Ryan Wood. In the early 2000s, I was hired by the Woods to research the Cooper files, to the extent that in 2002 I spent a week going through all of Cooper’s files, which Cooper had then recently sold to Bob Wood. I have used the following quote before, but it helps to explain how I came to know so much about not just Cooper’s Majestic 12 files, but also the means by which he got the documents, the circumstances, and much more – including certain things that are still not in the public domain. Okay, back to the quote; here it is:
“…in the early days of 2002, Bob [Wood] hired me to spend a week in an Orange County, California-based motel-room, surrounded by all of the thousands upon thousands of pages of Cooper’s voluminous collection of the cosmic sort. The plan was for me to catalog all of the material, to compile each and every piece of it into chronological order, and to summarize the content of each document, every letter, and every Freedom of Information request that Cooper had submitted to government agencies – which is precisely what I did. It was a week in which I most definitely earned my loot. It was also a week that paralleled the infamous story told by Hunter S. Thompson in his classic gonzo saga, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Whereas Thompson was hunkered down with his whisky, margaritas and shrimp cocktails, for me it was cases of cold beer and club sandwiches.”
According to Cooper, he had several old-timer sources who had spent their careers working in the fields of counter-intelligence, psychological warfare, and disinformation. The most prominent ones were Thomas Cantwheel and Cantwheel’s daughter, Salina. Allegedly, of course. The reality is that they may not even have been Americans. By now, you can surely guess where they really came from. It was as a result of having pretty much unique access to all (and I do mean all) of Cooper’s files during that week in 2002 that I began to make a Russian connection to all of this. Without a doubt, the most controversial of all of the documents that were fed to Cooper by Cantwheel and Salina, is one titled Majestic Twelve Project, 1st Annual Report. Its subtitle makes the subject of the document clear: A Review of the President’s Special Panel to Investigate the Capture of Unidentified Planform Space Vehicles by U.S. Armed Forces and Agencies.
Oddly, the document lacks a date; however, it does not refer to any events or incidents that post-date 1951, which suggests it was written in that year. Or, it was written to make us think it was created in 1951. Cooper’s notes – the ones that I had access to in 2002 – show that he received the Report in three sections, rather than as one unified document. The cover-page turned up in Cooper’s Big Bear Lake mailbox on January 19, 1994. It was almost a year later – specifically on December 30, 1994 – when Cooper obtained the Table of Contents. And, the rest of the document was provided to him on February 22, 1995. The writer of the 1st Annual Report stated:
“BW [Biological Warfare] programs in U.S. and U.K. are in field test stages. Discovery of new virus and bacteria agents so lethal, that serums derived by genetic research, can launch medical science into unheard of fields of biology. The samples extracted from bodies found in New Mexico, have yielded new strains of a retro-virus not totally understood, but, give promise of the ultimate BW weapon. The danger lies in the spread of airborne and bloodborne outbreaks of diseases in large populations, with no medical cures available. Current research in U.S. and U.K., can be accelerated when studies are complete. Understanding the human makeup through EBE [“Extraterrestrial Biological Entity,” allegedly a term used by MJ12 to describe aliens] research will bring a varied wealth of information in how cells replicate themselves and may help in developing new drugs and markets. Healthcare industries are considered the best source of R&D for DoD programs.”
In “Annex A” of the report there’s this, which is equally controversial: “The Panel was concerned over the contamination of several SED personnel upon coming in contact with debris near the power plant. One technician was overcome and collapsed when he attempted the removal of a body. Another medical technician went into a coma four hours after placing a body in a rubber body-bag. All four were rushed to Los Alamos for observation. All four later died of seizures and profuse bleeding. All four were wearing protective suits when they came into contact with body fluids from the occupants. Autopsies on the four dead SED technicians are not conclusive. It is believed that the four may have suffered from some form of toxin or a highly contagious disease. Tissue samples are currently being kept at Fort Detrick, Md. In the opinion of the senior AEC medical officer, current medical equipment and supplies are wholly inadequate in dealing with a large scale outbreak of the alien virus.”
Now, let us take another look at certain, important threads that are contained in the 1st Annual Report. The Majestic 12 papers refer to a “new virus,” “a retro-virus not totally understood,” “bloodborne outbreaks of diseases,” “the ultimate BW [Biological Warfare] weapon,” “a highly contagious disease,” and the connection between “Healthcare industries” and “DoD [Department of Defense] programs.” Mirroring the above, it’s a fact that HIV is a retro-virus. It’s also a blood-borne virus. And, as the Department of State reported, the Russians were spreading a rumor that, “…the AIDS virus had been created in a U.S. military laboratory as a biological weapon.” The additional rumor was that shadowy elements of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry were in on the conspiracy. For those who hang onto this document as being real, it should be noted that (A) Fort Detrick was actually still named Camp Detrick when the document was supposedly written; and (B) the term “retro-virus” was not in use until the 1970s, which was decades after the report is alleged to have been put together.
In light of all these unsavory and undeniable parallels, it’s very easy to see how some people – of an extremely conspiratorial and deranged mind – might come to believe that the discovery of such a dangerous alien virus, in 1947, and the recovery of a crashed UFO in New Mexico, led to the creation of HIV. It’s a fact that of all the Majestic 12-themed papers that were provided to Cooper, it’s this one – more than any other – that provoked so much controversy. And, admittedly, the document is filled with suggestive threads that fit neatly within the parameters of the bogus AIDS conspiracy theory. I have concluded that this was the goal of the creators of the 1stAnnual Report.
Now, we come to the matter of that curious name of Timothy Cooper’s primary informant, “Thomas Cantwheel.” It’s important to note that “Cantwheel” is not a real name. And it never has been a real name, either. It is, however, very similar to a genuine name. That of “Cantwell.” There may have been a very specific reason as to why “Cantwheel” chose that particular name when dealing with Cooper and with regards to a deadly virus with AIDS-like aspects attached to it. It might have been designed – as a less than subtle pointer – to have Cooper come to the conclusion that AIDS had been created by the U.S. Government. It just so happens that there is a Dr. AlanCantwell. His AIDS-themed books include Queer Blood and AIDS and the Doctors of Death.
So, what do we have here? Well, we have tales of a highly dangerous retrovirus, of a Cantwell vs. a Cantwheel, of tainted blood, of big business in cahoots with the Pentagon. And, of a mysterious couple of informants who were never really identified and who vanished into the ether (or who went back to Moscow…) after handing over controversial files to a UFO researcher – Cooper – who thought he was getting the real deal. Put all of that together and what we have is a heady brew of controversial proportions. Not only that, Dr. Alan Cantwell concluded that Fort Detrick played a role in all of this – a facility that appears in Timothy Cooper’s Majestic 12/Cantwheel papers, too, in relation to research into a deadly alien virus, as you will recall.
So, what do we have here? I suggest that we have a very strange and highly alternative attempt, in the 1990s, to resurrect Russia’s “America created AIDS” disinformation program of the previous decade. But, this time (when The X-Files was extremely popular and the adventures of Mulder and Scully were reigniting U.S. public interest in UFOs) by carefully using crashed UFOs, dead aliens, and an extraterrestrial virus as the key components to the plot. All fabricated and completely bogus. Indeed, no-one should believe or conclude there is a real connection between HIV and extraterrestrials. It’s as ridiculous as it is offensive. For those who created the document, the problem was that Cooper chose to quit Ufology and sold all of his files to Bob Wood. And, when it came to the “viral” angle of all this, Cooper chose not to bite anyway. At least, as far as I could tell from his files, that is. Cooper may not even have appreciated the significance of the various, glaring threads, as well as that Cantwheel-Cantwell issue, which was strategically placed right in front of his eyes. Also, most of the UFO research community didn’t buy into the Cooper material. Thus, the result was that the UFOs-Aliens-U.S. Government-AIDS operation stalled and finally died. Let’s hope that it stays that way.
As I see it, all of this provides us with even more clues that suggest Russia created Majestic 12 – both the fictional group and the equally fictional documents.
The number of crop circles is rising around the world, with France seeing a high volume of this in 2019. In addition, the complexity of these crop circles keeps improving as the aliens/pranksters get better at making them and keeping them concealed until they’re done despite the increasing prevalence of drones. One thing you don’t hear very often at these sites are chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” That’s mostly because the U.S. has so very few of them. Another reason might be that our alien/pranksters are just plain bad at plane geometry. That was proven once again this week in Alabama, where five people were arrested as they were creating what has to be the world’s worst crop circle. It shouldn’t even be called a “circle” but there’s no category in this field (pun intended) for crop blobs. Talk about embarrassing. (You can see the ‘circle’ here.)
“I think they may have actually made the pattern, came out of the field, and then re-entered the field, and made a second trip. So, it was a little bit of an adventure for them, it wasn’t just a quick thing.”
Wrong tool for the job
Sheriff Jonathon Horton of the Etowah County Sheriff’s Office told WSFA 12 News that a neighbor of the owner of the crumpled cornfield saw a suspicious vehicle on a security camera video (Big Brother even watches cornfields) and notified the authorities (after also posting it on social media) and it wasn’t long before Brandon Allen Whitlock, Noah Michael Brown, Rex Dakota Brown, Jeni Beth Vaughn, and Stephanie Marie Helm were arrested and charged with totally embarrassing everyone in Etowah County. Also, they were charged with 3rd degree criminal mischief, a felony. The estimated damage to the field was put at $7,500 – that’s a lot of corn.
5 arrested after damaging cornfield
(Source: Etowah County Sheriff’s Office)
What’s sad is that if you were going to pick a place in Alabama to fool the public or send a message to fellow aliens, Etowah County would be the perfect place. Located in northeast Alabama, it’s the state’s smallest county by area but one of the most densely populated. It also is home to Alabama’s most famous cryptid – the White Thang. Reported often in the dense woods of the county, the White Thang is a white Bigfoot-like humanoid creature, usually said to be over 7 feet tall and covered with white fur or hair. It reportedly has a unique howl, stands on two legs but moves extremely fast on all fours and has a foul odor.
Not a circle
Etowah County has also had its share of UFO sightings. While some may be attributed to the Goodyear blimp hangar at the local tire plant, there have been others with a few allegedly attracting military jets. The country also has legends of a river monster and giants, not to mention plenty of ghosts, according to Mark Goodson’s book Haunted Etowah Country, Alabama. But no crop circles.
Don’t look for Goodson to be revising his book for this one either. It’s an embarrassment to Alabama, White Thang and any aliens in the area.
We can’t be good at everything, but how hard are crop circles? After all … France!
For the past several months, I’ve been conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries around the world in an effort to paint a clearer picture of global UFOlogy today.
This week, our global UFO trek takes us to South Africa, and to Gert Jordaan of UFORSA (UFO South Africa), an organisation specialising in data collection founded by Gert in September 2011 following an apparent increase in UFO sightings in his country and a heightened public interest in the phenomenon.
Gert Jordaan of UFO South Africa (UFORSA).
RG: Who have been the defining figures in South African UFOlogy over the past 70 years, and why?
GJ: One of the most notable figures concerning the UFO phenomena in South Africa is Elizabeth Klarer. She was a contactee and claimed to have been contacted by extraterrestrials between 1954 and 1963. She was also one of the first people on record to claim to have had a sexual encounter with an extraterrestrial. She also claimed to have visited a planet in the system of Alpha Centuri, where she believed she was impregnated and bore a son who remained on the alien planet. Klarer was even referenced in a 2008 song by South African singer Jim Neversink, called ‘Even Elizabeth Klarer.’
Photo of an alleged UFO taken by South African contactee Elizabeth Klarer in July 1956.
RG: What is the most compelling UFO case you have personally investigated?
GJ: A mass sighting on 12 December, 2012. We received numerous reports from different people that saw the same object in the Cape-Town area (between 11 and 12 December). It was seen as far as the Northern Cape and Namibia. We received approximately 100 reports of the same UFO.
RG: What is the South African government’s official stance on UFOs? When was the last time it issued a statement on the subject?
GJ: At this stage, we have no idea what the South African government’s stance is towards on UFOs. They have not indicated any interest in the UFO phenomenon.
The Union Buildings of the South African government.
RG: Does the South African Department of Defence have an official UFO investigations unit?
GJ: Not that we know of. And if the South African government does not have such a unit, we would gladly accept an invitation if they chose to work with us.
RG: Has the South African government shown more or less transparency on the UFO subject than the US government?
GJ: We believe the South African government would be more transparent with the UFO subject than the US government. At this time, we have not seen any indication from the South African government that implicates them with any UFO studies at all.
RG: Tell us a bit about your organisation, UFORSA. How many members do you have, and what kind of activities do you engage in? How many smaller South African UFO groups are you aware of, if any?
GJ: UFORSA began as a hobby for me. The official website came online sometime in 2011 to give people in South Africa a platform to submit sightings. Before UFORSA was SAUFOR, an independent person who operated a website. SAUFOR came to an end soon after we stepped in. We are only two people running the UFORSA website to this day. I am the founder of UFORSA and I have a website manager. We collect UFO data and provide commentary to the media if they enquire about a specific case. We manage the platform/website for people to engage socially and to submit sightings (which they can anonymously if they wish).
RG: What are the most active regions of South Africa for UFO sighting reports?
GJ: Three major areas in South Africa can be considered hotspots. First is the Western Cape. A huge open province scattered with small towns and great views of the stars. Secondly is Gauteng, a small province packed with towns and businesses and with many eyes on the skies. Lastly is KwaZulu-Natal, home to the famous Elizabeth Klarer, and a great place for a holiday for most South Africans (we receive a lot of sightings from this region during those holidays).
Drakensberg National Park in KwaZulu Natal Province, South Africa.
RG: Have you personally had any UFO sightings?
GJ: I have witnessed a few strange objects in the past, and one quite recently. It was just after the new year January 2019. It was almost midnight and I was watching some TV in the dark. I heard a noise outside and peeked through my sliding door (during the day, I can see the whole of False Bay from Table mountain to the Hottentots Holland mountains with an amazing sea view). I saw a flare-like object FAR in the distance. First I thought it could be a boat signalling for rescue. As the flare came down, it stopped just above the horizon and started moving towards the right and slowly disappeared.
RG: How long have you been involved in the UFO subject; roughly how many cases have you personally investigated; and what conclusions, if any, have you drawn about the underlying nature of UFO phenomena?
GJ: My interest in UFO phenomena started way before UFORSA in 2011. I had read so many books about astronomy, and I wanted to know what the UFO situation looked like in South Africa. So I founded UFORSA. I mainly collect UFO data. I cannot conduct many personal investigations due to funding issues. But it would be a dream come true to travel the country and the world to investigate the phenomena. The conclusion I have drawn through my personal experience and through my analysis of the data is that the rapid evolution in technology in our world can lead to fake reports and sightings. Not just by people playing pranks, but through misidentifications of top secret military craft that are being produced and tested. Most sightings can be explained. Almost all of them. But there are a microscopic amount that drive our curiosity. We cannot explain all things in the universe, but we often catch glimpses of the unexplained.
RG: How can South African UFOlogy, and UFOlogy in general, better itself?
GJ: The thing I want people to understand is that not every UFO sighting will be little green men in a saucer, visiting us from afar to enlighten us. UFOlogy needs to show people that any sighting can be diligently investigated and an acceptable conclusion can usually be reached. Many South Africans are still a bit close-minded. Although a small section of the populous do exhibit an interest in UFOs. I see UFOlogy as a base point from which branch out into different areas of scientific study, such as astrobiology or engineering, for example.
Mysterious Stone Sculpture found in North Carolina
Mysterious Stone Sculpture found in North Carolina
A strange stone sculpture has North Carolina archaeologists stumped.
“It’s actually the first time we’ve ever encountered it and that’s why we don’t know much about it because we’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Mary Beth Fitts, Assistant State Archaeologist with the Office of State Archaeology
A stone sculpture was found by a man named Tom Giddens who lives in Newton Grove and it wasn’t until a worker out plowing his field hit it that he discovered the mysterious artifact reports cbs17.
“The plow hit the stone and the person picked it up and put it to the edge of the field and then Mr. Giddens as he was walking by flipped the stone over and saw there was a face in the stone,” Fitts said.
Fitts created a 3D model of the stone sculpture and put it out on social media, in the hopes that someone somewhere would know something about the artifact’s origins.
“It really is mysterious. We don’t know what time period it’s from. It could be a piece of folk art or it could’ve been made a long time ago. It’s made of sandstone and that’s a pretty soft stone so you don’t need special tools to carve sandstone so that means if really could’ve been carved anytime in history.”
Glowing UFO Over Cambridge, UK Caught On Video, July 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Glowing UFO Over Cambridge, UK Caught On Video, July 2019, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 21, 2019 Location of sighting: Cambridge, UK I love this sighting because everything about it falls into place well and screams legit. The person who recorded it usually films planes and wildlife so he has an eye for detail. He has a great camera with an incredible zoom on it. So when he noticed this UFO in the sky, it didn't stand a chance at escaping. This UFO has the fuzzy outer area which most do due to the alien propulsion system. Absolute proof that aliens are watching Cambridge. Scott C. Waring
Eyewitness states:
I used a Panasonic 4k 2160p Camcorders ( 25x Optical Zoom 1500x digital zoom good enough to spot a bee on a chimney hundreds of metres away! ) Absolutely Insane shape shifting UFO seen Cambridge England.
I was using an online version of Google Earth map and found this alien base that has been dragging itself along the ocean floor for thousand or millions of years. The object is 15.3km across and the roads its making near it are also 15.3km across. The object appears to have been abandoned, so it could be from millions of years ago. There are road like structures all across our oceans as you see in the video below. I believe that this alien object is responsible for some of those and other alien structures may have helped it. These look like space ships that were used below the oceans, moving from place to place mining or exploring the bottom of our oceans. I bet this alien craft is retrievable and salvageable. The alien technology inside could save humanity and transport us to the stars. Scott C. Waring
UFO Shoots Past Motion Sensor Camera Near Area 51, Military Secret Project, Video, UFO Sighting News.
UFO Shoots Past Motion Sensor Camera Near Area 51, Military Secret Project, Video, UFO Sighting News.
Date of sighting: July 2019 Location of sighting: Racheal, Nevada, USA This UFO was recorded this week by a person who used a motion sensor camera. After six hours of footage the camera caught this amazing craft shooting past. The really compelling evidence is the sound. If you put the Youtube video into slow motion, you easily see its a perfect metal disk. I hear the UFO shooting past at jet like speeds. The sound is just like that of a jet, but clearly the object is a metallic disk. So perhaps the sound is merely the noise of the UFO pushing aside the wind as it shoots across. Clearly another top secret Area 51 project. Imagine a fleet of these American craft flying over other countries. Puts the fear into those who see them. Scott C. Waring Eyewitness states:
Here in Rachel, Nevada. Got this footage on my motion sensor camera. Unbelievable, not sure if it's a jet or some aircraft I haven't seen before. Pretty cool nonetheless.
An Indian spacecraft is carrying the first reflectors to be left on the moon since the Apollo era.
The reflectors, which are part of the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-2 mission that launched earlier this week, represent the next step in an experiment that began in 1969.
Fifty years (and a few days) ago, the Apollo 11 astronauts left the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment on the moon. The experiment contained a tray of 100 small prisms that scientists on Earth would shoot with laser beams. Astronauts on Apollo 14 and 15 followed suit, leaving more of these prisms, known as retroreflectors, on the moon. Incredibly, decades later, these reflectors remain active experiments.
The Next Generation Lunar Reflector retroreflector (left) next to its Apollo-era predecessor (right).
(Image credit: Doug Currie)
ISRO launched a tiny new retroreflector to the moon's south pole on board Chandrayaan-2's Vikram lander. It weighs only 1 ounce (about 22 grams) and can be seen from lunar orbit, but not from Earth, Simone Dell'Agnello, an Executive Technologist at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics - Frascati National Labs in Italy, told Space.com in an email.
The new reflector is "a 'microreflector' device, similar to the one delivered by INFN of Italy (through the Italian Space Agency, ASI) to NASA-JPL and deployed on the InSight Mars lander (and to be deployed by the Mars 2020 rover of NASA and by the ExoMars 2020 rover of ESA)," she said.
Dell'Agnello is leading the research team on the Vikram microreflector and is a co-investigator working on the upcoming Next Generation Lunar Reflector (NGLR) for NASA's Artemis program. The "next-gen retroreflectors are much more compact and lighter than Apollo's meter-size arrays deployed by Apollo 11, 14 and 15 astronauts," Dell'Agnello added.
Doug Currie, a senior research scientist and professor at the University of Maryland who was a key member of the team that designed the original Apollo reflectors, told Space.com that Virkam's microreflector will not be observed by lunar laser stations on Earth. Instead, lasers fired from a satellite will bounce off this small reflector, telling scientists the distance between the satellite and the microreflector on the lunar surface.
The microreflector is "designed to be measured by Martian and lunar orbiters equipped with lasers (like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Global Surveyor and any future such spacecrafts)," Dell'Agnello said.
More moon laser targets
By firing lasers at existing reflectors on the moon, scientists on Earth observe the time it takes for the laser to return and can then study the distance between the moon and Earth. This helps scientists measure and analyze the moon's orbit, rotation, orientation and relationship with Earth.
So far, the laser reflector experiments Apollo astronauts left on the moon have not only improved scientists' understanding of how the moon moves and how far we are from it, but also helped to provide evidence that the moon has a liquid core.
However, while these decades-old experiments continue to function and provide scientists with accurate and useful data, the reflectors will soon be getting an upgrade. Enter the NGLR, a next generation laser experiment led by Currie and Dell'Agnello.
NGLR works similarly to its reflector predecessors, bouncing back lasers fired from Earth. With improved reflectors and a greater number of reflectors over a larger area on the moon, the team hopes that it will be much more accurate than the Apollo reflectors, according to a statement from the University of Maryland.
The experiments and demonstrations "will help the agency send astronauts to the Moon by 2024 as a way to prepare to send humans to Mars for the first time," NASA officials said in a statement.
"Our Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector is a 21st-century version of the instruments currently on the moon," Currie said in the statement. "Each placement of a Next Generation lunar laser ranging array will greatly enhance the scientific and navigational capabilities of retroreflector network. These additions improve the mapping and navigation capabilities important for NASA's plans to return to the moon and by 2028 establish a sustained human presence."
The reflectors will help scientists to investigate other areas of science as well. For example, scientists will use the reflectors to conduct new tests regarding general relativity and related theories, which may help to reveal more about dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up almost 27% of the universe, Currie said.
"Plus," Dell’Agnello added, "laser retroreflectors will serve surface geodesy, lunar cartography, exploration, ISRU and various forms of future lunar (and/or martian) commerce that will need surface metric measurements. Applications that already happened on Earth since the dawn of urbanization."
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the NGLR as a "microreflector." The microreflector is on Vikram, the NGLR is a separate reflector that will be part of a future mission.
Seth Shostak Storming Area 51 on September 20? Here's why you're unlikely to find aliens hiding in the desert
Seth Shostak Storming Area 51 on September 20? Here's why you're unlikely to find aliens hiding in the desert
The search for extraterrestrial life has long been a fixture of American pop culture — but lately, it seems like the conspiracy theorists have been getting a little bit louder.
An alien-like statue welcomes guests to the Little A'le' Inn restaurant and gift shop on July 22, 2019, in Rachel, Nevada.David Becker / Getty Images
The idea for this effort was birthed on Facebook, and it was clearly intended as a joke. But so was Johnny Carson’s 1973 claim that the U.S. was running out of toilet paper — an offhand attempt at humor that triggered a real shortage. So joke or no, the hordes might really show up at the closely guarded federal facility, a poor decision according to authorities. BookMaker, an Internet betting site, is already weighing the odds of a tsunami of citizens storming the chain-links and, if they do, the chances that they’ll find any aliens mothballed inside.
It’s all good fun (unless, perhaps, you’re in charge of security for the Air Force.) But should you go?
It’s all good fun (unless, perhaps, you’re in charge of security for the Air Force.) But should you go? And, really, is there any reason to believe that extraterrestrials are stacked up at Area 51?
The search for extraterrestrial life has long been a fixture of American pop culture, immortalized in television shows like “The X-Files” and movies such as “E.T.,” “Independence Day” and “Arrival” among many others. These examples speak to a widespread sentiment that has long bubbled beneath the surface. But lately, it seems like the conspiracy theorists have been getting a little bit louder. The media has devoted a lot of space to speculation about various space objects, for example, with reporters and scientists alike wondering if, for example, the mysterious object 'Oumuamuawas an asteroid, a comet — “or an alien spaceship.”
Which brings us back to Area 51. The Air Force says a citizen assault would be “dangerous” — a description perfectly chosen to encourage those who believe that what goes on at this hush-hush base is both suspect and probably malevolent. Signs posted around Area 51 somberly note that trespassing will be dealt with harshly, and that deadly force is authorized — as if you’d care whether or not it’s authorized when they winch your body out of the sagebrush.
Of course, secret things do go on at Area 51 — the testing of new military aircraft, for instance. The Air Force is not keen on people taking photos. So trying to scale the Area 51’s ramparts is about as advisable as storming Fort Knox. And even if camo-clad guards aren’t enough to dissuade you, there’s always the desert itself. Daytime temperatures, even in late September, hover around a sweaty 90 degrees. Refreshments will be hard to find, and the expected crush of people will more or less guarantee you’ll be sleeping in your car or under a creosote bush.
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OK, but maybe you’re thinking that revealing humanity’s contact with aliens would be worth the discomfort. Which, indeed, it would. And internet jests aside, a lot of people in the so-called UFO community seem convinced that the federal government really keeps evidence of extraterrestrial visitors — dead or alive — somewhere. Surveys show that one-third of the American public is convinced that aliens are visiting Earth, and a majority say that the government keeps information about these beings secret.
However, crashed saucers or broken bodies aren’t on display at the Smithsonian or Roswell’s UFO Museum. This lack of obvious evidence encourages true believers to claim that federal authorities are the only people with the technological capabilities to gather alien artifacts. And of all the places they could squirrel away this evidence, they’ve chosen southern Nevada.
Frankly, this is a poor argument. Wayfaring aliens are unlike new missiles or Mach 3 fighter jets. Alien spacecraft would, one presumes, be routinely noticed by many of the billions of people who are not employed by the U.S. military, nearly all of whom have cellphones with cameras. Sure, the recently released videos made by some Navy pilots are suggestively mysterious. But they’re also ambiguous. And what about the around 100,000 commercial flights that take off every day, apparently without the slightest concern with — or notice of — extraterrestrial craft? Does the International Airline Pilots Association offer training on how to deal with aliens in our airspace?
It beggars belief to think that the many, many employees and contractors who’ve worked at Area 51 in the seven decades since the celebrated Roswell incident have been capable of keeping news of stockpiled aliens under wraps.
Perhaps most importantly, however, is the fact that humans are weak and susceptible to all sorts of pressure and enticements. It beggars belief to think that the many, many employees and contractors who’ve worked at Area 51 in the seven decades since the celebrated Roswell incident have been capable of keeping news of stockpiled aliens under wraps, despite the fact that it would be the biggest story ever. The oft-repeated argument that secrecy is necessary in order to avoid panicking the populace doesn’t wash. Folks already believe E.T. is here, and they still go to the office every morning.
If nothing else, the suggested blitz of Area 51 demonstrates Nevada’s continuing success in cornering the alien market. In 1996, state officials christened route 375 as the Extraterrestrial Highway. This 100-mile stretch of straightaway, which parallels the northern border of Area 51, might have qualified as the world’s most boring two-hour drive if it weren’t for the fact that some people have seen strange objects in the sky while en route.
It’s also noteworthy that the Nevada Commission on Tourism, which promoted the highway rebranding, didn’t point to the fact that, three years earlier, state Sen. Richard Bryan had introduced an amendment to cancel the NASA project to search for radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. But then again, those aliens would have been light-years away and of little benefit to the Nevada economy.
As for Area 51, the truth may not be out there. But some high-speed aircraft and a lot of prickly pear probably are.
The magnetic North Pole is hurtling towards Siberia so quickly scientists have had to release new data a year ahead of schedule to keep navigation systems working properly
World Magnetic Model (WMM) gives compasses the means to navigate north
WMM provides a five year forecast of changes to the Earth’s magnetic field
The North Pole is moving so rapidly that current estimates weren’t accurate
Monday’s update showed the magnetic north is leaving the Canadian Arctic towards Siberia at a speed of around 34 miles (55km) per year
Earth’s magnetic North Pole has been wildly shifting towards Russia so quickly that scientists have been forced to publish an update on its actual location a year early.
The World Magnetic Model (WMM) enables compasses to point north and is used in navigation systems. Its latest update revealed the North Magnetic Pole is wandering about 34 miles a year. It crossed the international dateline in 2017 and is leaving the Canadian Arctic on its way to Siberia.
This is causing a navigational nightmare for compasses in smartphones, boats and for airport navigators as well as in some consumer electronics, and WMM was forced to update a year early in order to keep it accurate.
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Earth’s north magnetic pole has been drifting so fast in the last few decades that scientists say that past estimates are no longer accurate enough for precise navigation. The World Magnetic Model was updated on Monday, showing it is wandering about 34 miles (55 km) a year
WMM provides a five year forecast of changes to the Earth’s magnetic field. The US and UK tend to update the location of the North Magnetic Pole every five years in December, but this update came early because of the pole’s faster movement.
It had been hoped that the updated model could be released even earlier, last month, but it was held up by the recent shutdown in the US government, which oversees the project along with the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Turbulence in in the planet’s core, where the motion generates an electric field, has caused the field to change in systems described as ‘akin to weather’.
Airplanes and boats also rely on magnetic north, usually as backup navigation, said University of Colorado geophysicist Dr Arnaud Chulliat, lead author of the WMM.
The military depends on where magnetic north is for navigation and parachute drops, while NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and US Forest Service also use it. GPS is not affected because it’s satellite-based.
Airport runway names are also based on their direction toward magnetic north and their names change when the poles moved.
For example, the airport in Fairbanks, Alaska, renamed a runway 1L-19R to 2L-20R in 2009.
Since 1831 when it was first measured in the Canadian Arctic it has moved about 1400 miles (2300 km) towards Siberia.
The magnetic north pole is located at the white star and the individual lines in red and blue show the magentic field lines of Earth. These are used in navigation systems by boats and for airport navigators as well as in some consumer electronics
Its speed jumped from about 9 mph (15 kph) to 34 mph (55 kph) since 2000.
The reason is turbulence in Earth’s liquid outer core. There is a hot liquid ocean of iron and nickel in the planet’s core where the motion generates an electric field, said University of Maryland geophysicist Dr Daniel Lathrop.
Dr Lathrop, who who wasn’t part of the team monitoring the magnetic north pole said: ‘It has changes akin to weather. We might just call it magnetic weather.’
WHY ARE THE EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELDS MOVING?
The problem lies partly with the moving pole and partly with other shifts deep within the planet.
Liquid churning in Earth’s core generates most of the magnetic field, which varies over time as the deep flows change.
In 2016, for instance, part of the magnetic field temporarily accelerated deep under northern South America and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellites such as the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission tracked the shift.
The magnetic south pole is moving far slower than the north.
In general Earth’s magnetic field is getting weaker, leading scientists to say that it will eventually flip, where north and south pole changes polarity, like a bar magnet flipping over.
It has happened numerous times in Earth’s past, but not in the last 780,000 years.
‘It’s not a question of if it’s going to reverse, the question is when it’s going to reverse,’ Dr Lathrop said.
When it reverses, it won’t be like a coin flip, but take 1,000 or more years, experts said.
Dr Lathrop sees a flip coming sooner rather than later because of the weakened magnetic field and an area over the South Atlantic has already reversed beneath Earth’s surface.
That could bother some birds that use magnetic fields to navigate. And an overall weakening of the magnetic field isn’t good for people and especially satellites and astronauts.
The magnetic field shields Earth from some dangerous radiation, Dr Lathrop said.
Scientists in recent years have predicted that Earth’s magnetic field could be gearing up to ‘flip’ – a shift in which the magnetic south pole would become magnetic north, and vice versa. Earth’s magnetic field is illustrated above
WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO EARTH IF ITS POLES FLIPPED?
The Earth’s magnetic field is in a permanent state of change.
Magnetic north drifts around and every few hundred thousand years the polarity flips so a compass would point south instead of north.
The strength of the magnetic field also constantly changes and currently it is showing signs of significant weakening.
Life has existed on the Earth for billions of years, during which there have been many reversals.
There is no obvious correlation between animal extinctions and those reversals. Likewise, reversal patterns do not have any correlation with human development and evolution.
It appears that some animals, such as whales and some birds use Earth’s magnetic field for migration and direction finding.
Since geomagnetic reversal takes a number of thousands of years, they could well adapt to the changing magnetic environment or develop different methods of navigation.
Radiation at ground level would increase, however, with some estimates suggesting that overall exposure to cosmic radiation would double causing more deaths from cancer. ‘But only slightly,’ said Professor Richard Holme.
‘And much less than lying on the beach in Florida for a day. So if it happened, the protection method would probably be to wear a big floppy hat.’
The movement of the Earth’s magnetic poles are shown in this animation at 10-year intervals from 1970 to 2020. The red and blue lines sjpw the difference between magnetic north and true north depending on where you are standing. On the green line, a compass would point to true north.
Credit: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
Electric grid collapse from severe solar storms is a major risk. As the magnetic field continues to weaken, scientists are highlighting the importance off-the grid energy systems using renewable energy sources to protect the Earth against a black out.
‘The very highly charged particles can have a deleterious effect on the satellites and astronauts,’ added Dr Mona Kessel, a Magnetosphere discipline scientist at Nasa.
In one area, there is evidence that a flip is already occurring. ‘The increasing strength of the South Atlantic anomaly, an area of weak field over Brazil, is already a problem,’ said Professor Richard Holme.
The Earth’s climate could also change. A recent Danish study has found that the earth’s weather has been significantly affected by the planet’s magnetic field.
They claimed that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.
Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.
We Need More Non-Binary Characters Who Aren’t Aliens, Robots, or Monsters
We Need More Non-Binary Characters Who Aren’t Aliens, Robots, or Monsters
Most characters who aren’t male or female also aren’t human. Where does that leave those of us who are?
There’s a running joke in NBC’s The Good Place about Janet, the neighborhood’s anthropomorphized operational mainframe. Every time one of the other characters calls her a “girl” or a “woman,” she cheerfully corrects them, “I’m not a girl.”
The point is that Janet is a manufactured database and not a person. But bound up in this idea is a more complicated one: that Janet, not being a human at all, is also specifically not a girl. She is a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence, and while she presents in a feminine manner she doesn’t identify as female — or even have a sense of binary gender identity. She’s a non-binary character on a major network sitcom whose gender identity, or lack thereof, does not define her — a feat which should be in and of itself a kind of revolution.
The flip side, though, is also embodied in the joke: Janet isn’t a girl because she’s not a person. Where non-binary characters appear in literature and culture, they are more often than not robots, or aliens, or monsters. They are not so often, as I am, human beings.
Where non-binary characters appear in literature and culture, they are more often than not robots, or aliens, or monsters.
I came out as non-binary in a series of stages, over the course of a number of years. It was a hard identity to put a name to, to come to understand. I’m still not completely out, and I tend to hide my gender in situations where I’ve been made to feel like it’s an inconvenience — with professors who make no space in their classrooms for considerations like pronouns, with family members for whom explaining the concept would fall on ultimately uncomprehending ears, with my housemates in the all-female campus housing in which I live.
No queer identity ever comes with a singular “coming out,” and every time I meet a new person I fall into a routine of social calculus to decide whether or not it’s worthwhile to explain my identity. Will I see this person again? Will they attack me, if I tell them? Will they respect my pronouns, if told? Will they invalidate my identity if I reveal it to them at a later date, or take offense that I didn’t tell them earlier? I have a body that is read as female, no matter what I do, and sometimes the process of explaining that I’m not a woman isn’t practical in the moment.
I don’t like that my social identity boils down to some kind of cost-benefit analysis, but society’s understanding — or lack thereof — of non-binary gender forces me to think of it that way. Social interactions are structured with this mental math at the forefront. When faced with someone new, people instinctually calculate the answer to a rote question which will influence almost everything about the way they will interact with this person: are they a boy or a girl?
There is no room, in this question, for the answer to be “no.”
The first time I realized I was non-binary, I was listening to a recording of Andrea Gibson’s poem “Swingset,” which opens with exactly this question: Are you a boy or a girl?
In the poem, Gibson never answers the question: they can’t, or perhaps they don’t need to. The normalization of their non-binary gender, the understanding that there is a third answer — a non-answer, in its own way — to this question, revolutionized me.
There is a recent trend in speculative fiction towards the inclusion of characters with non-binary genders, or characters who use non-binary pronouns (they/them/their, xe/xem/xyr, etc). Every time I see a singular they in one of the science fiction or fantasy novels I’ve picked up to read in my vanishingly small spare time, my heart skips a beat in joy and disbelief.
And yet, nearly every time a character in speculative fiction uses non-binary pronouns, it is also a signifier of something other than just gender; it is a signal to the reader that there is something other about the character in question, something which sets them apart from the other characters, and from the reader, too. It is a shortcut to remind the reader that, whoever this character is, they are emphatically not human.
It is a shortcut to remind the reader that, whoever this character is, they are emphatically not human.
For example: in Victoria Schwab’s Our Dark Duet (2017), the second book in her Monsters of Verity series, Schwab introduces a character who uses they/them pronouns. The character, Soro, is a Sunai — a monster of vengeance that consumes the souls of criminals. Their non-binary gender does not go unremarked upon in the book, which might normalize it the way any other character’s gender is unremarkable. Instead, this happens:
[When] he’d worked up the courage to ask whether Soro considered themself male or female, [they] had stared at him for a long moment before answering.
“I’m a Sunai.”
There are no non-binary humans in Our Dark Duet.
This scene should be significant — here, in a novel that isn’t about gender, a character is calling attention to the aching lacuna left by the binary question, “are you a boy or a girl?” They are finding an alternative answer. When Soro answers, I’m a Sunai, they are finding a new way to answer the question.
I’ve answered the question this way, too. A young child at my place of work once asked me: are you a boy or a girl? I panicked and answered: I’m a librarian. Can I help you find something?
But Soro’s answer actually becomes significant for a different reason. Their answer, I’m a Sunai, emphasizes above all else that which makes them inhuman, their monstrous identity. Because the other characters in Our Dark Duet are decidedly and unremarkably delineated as either male or female, Soro’s gender identity — or, more accurately, their refusal of gender — becomes a feature of their monstrosity. The answer comes not from a lack of identification with “male” or “female,” but from a lack of identification with humanity as a whole. It becomes synonymous with being an Other, just another way they are unfathomably different from those around them.
The answer comes not from a lack of identification with “male” or “female,” but from a lack of identification with humanity as a whole.
Our Dark Duet isn’t the only work of speculative fiction which does this. In fact, unlike in the lived experience of the non-binary people they represent, in speculative fiction characters who are neither a boy nor a girl are almost always something else. They are almost always something inhuman.
In Becky Chambers’ novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet(2014) there is a genderfluid alien species known as the Aandrisk, who cyclically fluctuate among three genders: a male-aligned gender, a female-aligned gender, and a neutral gender identified with neo-pronouns.
There are, also, no notable genderfluid, non-binary, or transgender human characters in the novel.
The sequel to Planet — A Closed and Common Orbit (2016) — tells the story of an artificial intelligence named Sidra, who struggles with fitting into a body that does not fit her, and searches for ways and means of making that body into a place in which she can feel at home. Because of Sidra’s struggle, themes of embodiment run throughout the novel, and each character struggles with it in one way or another. An Aandrisk character named Tak plays a major role, with his/xyr/her gender fluidity never underplayed but treated as absolutely normal, which seems to cement the themes of gender identity squarely at the forefront of the novel. His/xyr/her ability to change his/xyr/her body in accordance with the gender-of-the-day is something Sidra envies.
And yet: it is only an alien character who deals openly with gender identity.
Tak and Sidra are joined by two human characters: Pepper, who was cloned to work in a manufacturing plant and escaped at a young age; and Blue, who was disowned by his wealthy ruling-class family for his persistent lisp. Every character in Orbit struggles, in their own way, with turning their body into a habitable home. To parallel Sidra’s narrative, as she struggles with the discomfort of not fitting into the body she was given, it would have been more than fitting for either Pepper or Blue to be non-binary or transgender. Blue, in particular, has a veiled past that isn’t revealed until late in the novel; until I reached the point where I realized that it was for his speech impediment that his family disowned him, I was certain he was trans.
But when only an alien’s relationship with their body involves a deviation from concepts of binary gender, the exclusion says more than the inclusion does.
It feels lazy, in a way. As if an author is checking off a diversity box for “character uses alternate pronouns,” but can’t be bothered to stretch their mind enough to imagine an actual human who might identify that way.
It feels lazy, and it feels — quite literally — alienating.
When only an alien’s relationship with their body involves a deviation from concepts of binary gender, the exclusion says more than the inclusion does.
Often, like in the case of Soro or Janet, non-binary identity becomes a specific indicator that a character is not human, a distinct marker that sets them apart from humanity where their appearance might not. Other times, as with Tak and the Aandrisk, non-binary identity is meant to signify just how different — how alien — another culture is to humans. Non-binary identity becomes a shorthand for whatever it is that sets a character or group of characters apart from humans.
The problem here is that the non-binary people like me who want to see themselves represented and validated in the fiction they read, who might benefit most from seeing a character with alternate pronouns in their escapist media — are human. And most of the time, we’re faced with a daily barrage of people questioning the legitimacy of our gender identity.
It doesn’t help anyone to say that aliens, robots, and monsters may have non-binary identities, but to imply by exclusion that humans do not.
When the only non-binary characters in media are aliens, robots, and monsters, we tacitly assert that the non-binary people in our lives are unnatural, that there is something inherently inhuman about their existence.
When the only non-binary characters in media are aliens, robots, and monsters, we tacitly assert that the non-binary people in our lives are unnatural.
Gibson’s poem “Swingset” is, among so many other things, about the experience of being human. Their kindergarten students, wide-eyed and curious, batter them with a litany of questions which always ends with the innocent inquiry: Can I have a push on the swing? — the only answer provided to the unanswerable question presented in the poem’s first line.
The poem, as I replayed the video obsessively for weeks when I was seventeen, showed me a reality in which I did not have to be a boy or a girl, in which I could be something else and still be myself.
“Swingset” meant something to me, in my teenage struggle with my gender identity, because I could see myself in it. The non-answer to the unanswerable question gave me permission to accept that my gender was allowed to be unanswerable, too.
When this question is answered, and the answer is, “I’m a monster,” or “I’m an alien,” that permission gets lost in the shuffle.
There is speculative fiction that gets it right sometimes. But I can count on one hand the stories I have found lately that include gender non-conforming characters who are humans.
The ones that do, for me, are revolutionary.
Take, for instance, the podcast Friends at the Table. Their science fiction series COUNTER/weight includes, yes, robot characters who use they/them pronouns, and yes, an entire nearly-human alien race whose concept of gender is completely dissimilar from our own. But it also includes several non-binary human characters, such as the genius roboticist Cene Sixheart, and the Divine Candidate Kobus.
The message this sends is different: it shows us a future where humanity has eclipsed its obsession with binary concepts of gender, where non-binary gender is as much of a norm for humanity as it might be for an alien species that never developed the concepts of “male” and “female” to begin with. It shows that there is nothing inherently alien, monstrous, or unnatural — “inhuman” — about an identity that doesn’t fall in line with the gender binary.
It shows that there is nothing inherently alien, monstrous, or unnatural — “inhuman” — about an identity that doesn’t fall in line with the gender binary.
It shows, in the same way that “Swingset” does, that non-binary people are just as human as anyone else. It erases the equation between non-binary and alien, blurs the strict separation that aligns binary gender with humanity and non-binary gender with everything else. It gives us space to see ourselves, whoever we may be, exactly as we are.
It is vital to be conscious of the dangerous patterns that can emerge from a kind of representation that isn’t aware of its own history, or the implications it makes when it is not written with care. Otherwise, we end up reaffirming a system which continues to alienate non-binary gender and those who identify with it.
I love non-binary monsters. I love non-binary aliens, and non-binary robots. I love space operas and paranormal romances and anything “inhuman” that I come across. But sometimes there are days when — exhausted by the social calculus of navigating a world that does not make space for me, that does not take me for what I am — I need my fiction to remind me that I am human, too.
“A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him.” — Samuel 17
For those not up on their biblical measurements, “six cubits and a span” is 9 feet 9 inches or 2.97 meters (some say this is was a transcription error because other texts list Goliath’s height as four cubits and a span – a still giant 6 feet 9 inches or 2.06 meters). For those not up on their biblical geography, Gath or Gat was a Philistine city-state mentioned often in the Hebrew bible and thought to be buried under the archaeological mound (tell) known as Tell es-Safi, a former Palestinian village located inside Tel Zafit National Park 35 kilometers (22 mi) northwest of Hebron. For those not up on their biblical history, you should still be familiar with the story of young David slaying the giant Goliath. An archeological team has recently discovered an ancient settlement under the remains of Gath with structures so large that they may be the reason behind the legendary giant stature of Goliath.
“The discovery suggests that Gath was at the peak of its power much earlier than previously thought, putting its heyday around the time when the city features heavily in the biblical narrative as a fierce rival of the early Israelites as well as the hometown of Goliath and other outsized biblical warriors.”
Bar-Ilan University professor and head of the Gath Archeological Project Aren Maeir tells Haaretz that recent digs just a meter below Gath have uncovered the older settlement that matches the time period of the biblical Gath. The differences between the older Gath and what was built over it are obvious.
“Over the summer’s digging campaign, which ended last week, archaeologists decided to investigate the foundations of large terraces located in Gath’s lower city, which was only inhabited during the Iron Age. The dig revealed that those terraces were resting on massive fortifications and larger buildings made of huge stone boulders and fired bricks – a method that makes them stronger than traditional sun-dried mud bricks. In some areas these walls are four meters thick or more, and the pottery associated with them dates to the early Iron Age, to the 11th century B.C.E. or possibly earlier. No comparably colossal structures are known in the rest of the Levant from this period – or even from the later incarnation of Philistine Gath.”
Gath has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times, so the discovery of an older version is not much of a surprise. However, the size of the structures is a big one, and it may be why the Philistines were believed to have giant warriors.
“When people see remains of very impressive architecture and say, ‘Wow, how could someone have built that?’ one of the explanations they sometimes offer is ‘This must have been done by giants of the past’.”
Before you wonder how an experienced archeologist like Maeir could have missed doing the obvious, he says:
“There are no skeletons of people who are taller than NBA centers.”
It’s just a theory, but it’s the best we have in lieu of the actual skeleton of Goliath or the rest of his team. Maeir plans to continue digging in hopes of determining why there was such a difference in architectures between the two Gaths. He’s obviously excited about what he might find:
“But one thing is certain, we are slowly awakening a sleeping giant.”
A couple of days ago I wrote an article here at Mysterious Universe titled “The Russians were behind the Majestic 12 documents.” The article was focused on a very controversial set of Majestic 12 papers that surfaced in 2017 from Heather Wade. As I noted in my article, there are very good reasons for concluding that the Russians were behind these documents. In fact, there are several angles in the documents that are very much pro-Russian. Take a careful look and you’ll see. It should be noted though that the documents provided to Heather Wade were just the latest set of Majestic 12 papers. As many of you will know, there were two additional significant, and earlier, collections of such Majestic 12 papers. One was the collection of papers that the team of Bill Moore and Jaime Shandera received in the early-to-mid-1980s and that appeared in 1987, in Timothy Good’s book, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up. For those who may not know, Majestic 12 is alleged to be a highly classified group created in the late 1940s and buried deeply within the U.S. Government. So the story goes, the Majestic 12 team sits on some of the most secret of all UFO cases – such as the notorious Roswell affair of July 1947.
As for those 1980s-era Majestic 12 documents, can we make a case that the Russians were behind them, too? Yes, we can. In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It is now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It can be read at the CIA’s website. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper, which is focused on the 1970s-1980s. Haines wrote: “During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.”
The Soviets, then, were camouflaging their secret rocket tests by spreading false and fantastic tales of UFOs. Haines also noted something that is absolutely key to the story that this article tells and particularly so with regard to the Majestic 12 papers: “Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft),the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings[italics mine].”
This final point from Haines is the most important one of all. It is indeed a fact that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, “the Soviets and the KGB,” as Haines words it, approached a number of UFO researchers who also just happened to work on classified U.S. Department of Defense programs, including the Stealth projects. The goal of the Russians was to dangle sensational UFO-themed documentation in the faces of those same UFO researchers with U.S. government ties. And, in return – the Russians hoped – they would get something significant in return from the Americans they were secretly trying to “turn.” The reality of the situation, though, was that those Americans working in government and who might have been tempted to take up the Russian offer were fed nothing but faked UFO documents (guess which ones?). As for the Russians, we may never know to what extent they succeeded in getting their hands on highly classified materials of a Stealth-based nature. It’s important to note that Moore and Shandera were not caught up in this Russian plot in any way at all. Their copies of the documents – mailed to Shandera in December 1984 – came from a completely different source, one within U.S. intelligence and who was concerned about who had created the documents. There is, however, very little doubt that the Majestic 12 documents of the 1980s were Russian creations. You don’t think so? Well, keep the following in mind:
In 1988, the FBI launched an investigation into the Majestic 12 documents. Such were the twists and turns in the story, even the FBI came away baffled. If the FBI learned anything further about Majestic 12 in the post-1988 period, then that information has not surfaced under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. We do know something of deep interest though, thanks to a man named Richard L. Huff. He served as Bureau Co-Director within the Office of Information and Privacy. In correspondence, Huff informed me of the existence of an FBI “Main File” on Majestic 12, which is now in what is termed “closed status.” The title of the file is not something along the lines of “Potentially leaked documents” or “Questionable documents,” as one might imagine, given the strange story that is detailed in this article. Rather, the file title is nothing less than – wait for it – “Espionage.” While we’re admittedly forced to speculate, that one, eye-opening word alone strongly suggests that the Majestic 12 saga really did revolve around those very same components that appear in this article: spies, counterintelligence operations, the words of Gerald K. Haines, and the interference of the Russians. And espionage.
In the third installment of this series of “The Russians created Majestic 12” articles, we’ll take a look at another batch of “leaked” Majestic 12 documents. They surfaced in the 1990s and were provided – under clandestine circumstances – to a man named Timothy Cooper.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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