01 - Signs of the Times


"I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth."

President Harry Truman, April 4, 1950 White House press conference.

"For the next two or three days the saucers passed over the base daily. Sometimes they appeared in groups of four, other times as many as sixteen. They could outmaneuver and outflank us seemingly at will. They moved at varying speeds - sometimes very fast, sometimes slow - and other times they would come to a dead stop as we zoomed past underneath."

Astronaut Gordon Cooper, describing his first direct encounters with UFO's while serving as a military pilot in Germany. (from Leap of Faith, Gordon Cooper’s autobiography, p. 91)

“It was a four-foot human shaped figure with arms, bizarre-looking four-fingered hands… and an oversized incandescent lightbulb-shaped head… pale gray skin...But the eye sockets themselves were oversized and almond shaped and pointed down to its tiny nose, which didn’t protrude from the skull.”

Eisenhower White House National Security Council staff member Col. Philip J. Corso describing dead aliens he saw in glass containers en route from Roswell, NM to Wright Field in Ohio. From Corso’s 1997 book The Day After Roswell, p. 32.

"These (gray aliens) were living, breathing creatures, just as mortal as you and I. They had feelings, they had families. They had a cultural society. The one thing they didn't have was hate, hostility. They had anger, from what I observed - and I don't know how to explain it better than stating - it was an intellectual anger. They could not... comprehend how a species such as us, that had such great potential to do such wonderful and marvelous things, could do such horrible and nightmarish things to one another."
Master Sgt. Clifford Stone, ret., who testified that he encountered "gray" aliens while working in a US Army unit that retrieved crashed extraterrestrial vehicles. (from Stone’s cassette Insider: In His Own Words, Global View Communications 2001).

"I suspect that we have, indeed, been contacted - perhaps even visited - by extraterrestrial beings, and the US government, in collusion with the other national powers of the earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public."
former CIA official Victor Marchetti quoted in "How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon," Second Look, vol. 1, no. 7. Washington, D.C. 1979.

Imagine the following. You go to a science museum and proceed to the hall of ancient civilizations.

There, you walk among scenes of primitive life: crude shelters, fires, and handicraft. As you bend close to look at semi-apes with small skulls and big jawbones, a powerful stench overwhelms you. Suddenly, it hits you - this is no ordinary museum. When you approach the displays they turn into life, transporting you to the actual scene of such events: the smoke, the fears and passions of a cruel but beautiful landscape.

How would you feel?

Your experience would be similar to what aliens might feel when visiting the planet Earth, with one exception. Some aliens could be expected to have advanced
to a level that’s many times beyond the difference between you and the semi-apes in the museum.

How could aliens be more advanced than laser surgery, semiconductors and jet flight? Wouldn't they at least sympathize with our literature, our legal institutions and our charity?

They probably would, yet some might be pained to see humans make the same mistakes that they, themselves, made thousands, if not billions of years earlier. They might want to hint at a better way of life. No doubt, some would want to help us evolve more peaceably.

Other less-advanced aliens might try to take advantage of our backwardness in order to expand their sphere of influence and have access to our vicinity's resources. In some cases that would go against the larger off-world grain, but if the offending aliens were formidable intruders from another galaxy, for example, there might be little that Earth's neighbors could do to turn them back. The dangers of conflict would be too severe. Instead, neighboring aliens might try to educate us to be more responsible for both the larger universe and ourselves.

They might find us a stubborn breed, prone to superstition and a reluctance to explain Bronze Age religious concepts scientifically. On the other hand, an alien visitor might be impressed by the intellectual movements of our last 30 to 40 years.

For example,

1. feminist thinking that distinguishes between biological gender and exaggerated popular ideas about gender

2. a global movement to recognize both the rights and human resources of native peoples

3. a deepening awareness of our finite global ecology

4. a delayed but important popularization of the concepts and logic of quantum physics

Although most people haven't fully assimilated the fundamental weirdness of quantum physics, we use computers that are based on such phenomena daily.

No doubt, one further trend in human thought would stand out sharply. A large number of the world's peoples have been exposed to, if not deeply influenced by, portrayals of extraterrestrial life. Unlike the world of fifty years ago, most people now recognize that large-headed figures with almond-shaped eyes represent a certain kind of alien. High tech companies run ad campaigns comparing their innovations to the otherworldly, and the all-time list of top-grossing movies is thick with films about extraterrestrials.

The alien theme runs much deeper. According to recent opinion polls, 40-80 percent of people in the United States think the government is hiding certain facts about aliens. Forty percent is 124 million people (roughly the number who voted in the 2002 US election). About one-third of those polled think that humans have actually made contact with aliens.

Believe it or not, other nations’ news outlets regularly feature footage of UFO's moving across their skies. For example, millions have seen large formations of non-human objects passing behind clouds on Mexico’s version of “60 Minutes,” anchored by Jaime Maussan.

Defense ministry commissions in both France and Britain recently published reports concluding that their governments should prepare for the high "probability" that aliens visit the earth and that downed alien technology has found its way into a secret “black budget” structure in the United States. Ten years ago Russia's highest-ranking military officer announced that his government regularly observes alien craft and has possession of downed alien technology.

Chinese officials speak openly about the subject, as have officials in numerous other nations. In fact, what were once known as UFO's are increasingly described by generic type or as ETV’s: extra-terrestrial vehicles.

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