Alleged NASA Cover-Up

As is always the case in matters concerning comets and NASA, on the other side of the conspiracy isle we have
the following rebuttal (typical and transparent, I might add) concerning a NASA cover-up, appearing on the www.space.com website:

[quoting excerpts]

Alleged NASA Cover-Up
Of Menacing “NEAT” Comet Threat Is Pure Bunk, Experts Say

by Robert Roy Britt

Senior Science Writer, 2/28/03

Internet accounts of a comet, supposedly bigger than Jupiter and possibly bearing down on Earth, have concerned citizens e-mailing astronomers and journalists worldwide asking if the end is finally nigh. True to form, the rumors also include allegations of a cover-up by NASA.

Scientists say there is absolutely no danger and call the suggestions of coverup false and even silly.

The inaccurate portrayals on various Internet sites range from suggestions that the comet’s electromagnetic field will drastically alter Earth’s weather in coming days to even wilder notions that it is not a comet but instead the long missing and hypothetical “Planet X”. In some accounts the object is destined to fulfill dire biblical prophecy.

Comets are chunks of ice and rock that form in the outer reaches of the solar system and orbit the Sun. When they approach the inner solar system, on elongated loops, solar energy boils material away. This gas and dust shines with reflected sunlight, creating the telltale heads and tails that make popular viewing targets out of the icy visitors. The accusations of cover-up result, in part, from a few alleged missing images, or images that NASA tampered with, in the series snapped over a few days by SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory).

 

COMET NEAT This is the median of 43 images of 50 seconds each, captured in the time period from 17:32:01 UT to 18:17:56 UT on 1/31/03 by Soren V. Andersen, David Lange, Martin Sorensen, Kristian Mandrup, and Michael Jensen. Image size = 1.2 degrees; the comet has an angular size more than twice the full Moon. (Above image is from the www.amtsgym-sdbg.dk/as/Neat website, with thanks to the observatory at EUC Syd and AGS - Sonderborg.)

Plait called the tampering suggestion silly. Plait said the idea that NEAT is as big as a planet is just plain wrong.

“The actual comet itself, the chunk of rock and ice, is only a few miles across” he said.

 

“What we see in the [SOHO] images is the cloud of gas surrounding the nucleus, evaporated off the surface by the heat of the Sun. That cloud is huge, but the comet itself is tiny.”

Doomsday aficionados might also recall that a chance alignment of planets in the year 2000 had been cited as a moment that would bring great gravitational calamity to Earth. Nothing happened, just as reputable scientists had predicted.

Plait predicts the same non-occurrence of the present prognostications.

“I wonder what those conspiracy theorists will say a week or two from now, when nothing has happened” Plait said. “Will they say NASA covered up the destruction of the Earth?”

[end quoting]

Continuing with facets of the Comet NEAT “controversy”, this next information comes to us from the aoreport.com website:

[quoting]

Furor Over Doomsday Comet
On The Internet (Updated 2/26/03)

Is this comet real or is it a machine? Is NASA telling us the truth or is there a cover-up? Could all of the furor be the product of overactive imaginations or “conspiracy nut-cases”?

• Signs in the heavens?
• Confusion reigns over solar-comet behavior & the after-effects
• Strange things are happening out by the Sun, and those events may be creating a bizarre set of circumstances here on Earth

SOHO researchers allege coverup by NASA with 7 missing pictures from spacecraft removed from website.

NASA also accused of tampering with and/or faking SOHO pictures to mislead independent researchers and the public.

Then there was the incident involving a forum discussion website that was discussing the latest coverup information and current picture controversy which was suddenly hacked down and out of existence from the Internet for a critical time.

The Comet NEAT Is Big:

• Sun Diameter              = 870,000 miles
• Comet NEAT Diameter = 348,000 miles
• Length of NEAT’s tail   = 5,220,000 miles
• Jupiter Diameter          = 88,782 miles (That Makes The Comet 4 Times Bigger than Jupiter!)

This is a HUGE Comet—not one peep out of the media over this. Nothing from the science community to speak of either.

(Note: Comet size referred to is size of coma—actual comet approximate size of Mercury.)

[end quoting]

Obviously a great deal of effort was directed toward keeping this comet out of the public eye.

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Nostradamus

In an article by Jack Manuelian, author of Nostradamus: Predictions Of WWIII, titled “Is The Prophesied Comet Here?” we read:

[quoting]

The prophetic quatrain no.62, century no.2 of Nostradamus is a reflection of our nowadays. It states:

“Mabus then shortly will die, there will come a horrible devastation of people and animals. Then suddenly the vengeance will be seen when the comet runs. For a hundred hands (500 days as each hand has 5 fingers) there is going to be widespread thirst and hunger.”

Some have interpreted “Mabus” as a reference to Saddam (Hussein) since reading the word Saddam on reverse sounds like the anagramic word Mabus. Hence, the prophet could be saying that when Saddam is murdered by our President Bush during the planned war upon Iraq, we should look up in the sky for the visitation of the comet—and what a vengeance that would be! God help us!

[end quoting]

Another interpretation of the same quatrain comes from John Hogue, well-known author on Nostradamus. The following article comes from his TheHogueProphecy.com website and appears in his February 3 publication:

[quoting]

Nostradamus’ famous “Mabus” prophecy is about to be fulfilled

A translation in English reads:

“Mabus will soon die, then will come, A horrible undoing of people and animals, At once will see vengeance, One-hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.”

Nostradamus wrote two prophecies concerning the advent, destruction, and 27-year war of the third of three antichrists. He hid the name of the first antichrist under the anagram “Napaulon Roy” (Napoleon King); the second he called “Hister” (Hitler); the third is either code named “Mabus” (C2-Q62), or he is addressed as the “Third Antichrist” of Century 8 Quatrain 77. For now, I will give you brief interpretive conclusions about the Mabus/Third Antichrist prophecies.

Two finalists compete for the title of “Mabus”. By following the laws of anagram you turn the “M” and “a” in “Mabus” upside down and they become “g. W.” The “h” then is left silent in Latinized French, thus “bus” becomes “bus(h).” “Mabus” therefore becomes G.W. Bus(h).

As I have been saying for over 15 years now, you can also get Saddam (Hussein) out of “Mabus” by using the anagram game of reverse lettering. Put Mabus into lower case letters: “mabus”. Reverse them and you get “subam”. Reverse any letter that makes another letter and you get “sudam”. The laws of anagram allow for doubling one letter, so you can get “suddam”. You are allowed one vowel’s replacement with another, so you can replace “u” with “a” to spell “saddam”. I have shared my belief on the record for nine years (and counting) that Nostradamus’ Third Antichrist is none other than Saddam Hussein. However, as events catch up with augury, an interpreter must be open minded to the ever clearer understanding that often comes when the light of future events foreseen draw near to the present.

No matter how repugnant this revelation may be to myself and to other Americans, I cannot rule out the growing prescient evidence that the Third Antichrist may be the American president G.W. Bush, rather than Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. It is also necessary to confront the ugly possibility that Nostradamus has once again mistaken his symbols and made a composite out of two adversarial leaders. In other words, Mabus is a composite of Bush and Saddam Hussein. They are the two-faced catalysts for the Third World War.

The events of the next few months will judge my interpretation of the Mabus prophecy true or false. If my understanding of Nostradamus is correct, then the United States will invade Iraq. Saddam Hussein will be killed in one of his bunkers by a missile or by a coup. If he is “Mabus” then he “soon dies”. He therefore is one of the first casualties of this new war.

 

His death is not the beginning of the end of troubles, but the end of the beginning of a 27-year war of terror. A number of Nostradamus’ prophecies imply that this war’s final stages could see nuclear exchanges between old adversaries of the Cold War era, Russia and America, as well as a nuclear exchange between America and China—all taking place sometime no later than the end of the 2020s. In other words, a rush to war will hasten the death of Mabus, and his death brings this terrible apocalypse upon humanity. Nostradamus in Century 8, Quatrain 77 says:

“The Third Antichrist very soon annihilated. Twenty-seven years his bloody war will last. The heretics are dead, captives exiled, blood-soaked human bodies, and a reddened, icy hail covering the Earth.”

The Third Antichrist—this man named Mabus—is the first to go down. Whether this first casualty of war turns out to be the president of America or of Iraq—or both—the war of Mabus is just beginning. It is a war motivated by “heretic” religious views. Its catalyst harbors extreme fundamentalist and apocalyptic religious views, be they Christian (in the case of Bush) or Islamic (in the case of Saddam Hussein).

Islamic terrorists are already the “captives, exiled” filling U.S. POW camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The final line could be a horrific description of the human wreckage one might behold if the death of the American president or the Iraqi president should inspire a catastrophic retaliatory revenge attack (“a great undoing [or destruction] of people and animals”).

Nostradamus, in other quatrains, hints of “new plagues” unleashed across the Earth from this war. Perhaps the red stain upon corpses and the icy hail are a 16th century man’s attempt to describe those killed by a rain of chemical and biological weapons.

Perhaps “Mabus soon dies” in the next few weeks, after “the comet” passes.

[end quoting]

John Hogue wrote this before the passing of Comet NEAT, so in this writing he was interpreting the comet as the Space Shuttle Columbia. He also is interpreting descriptions of Nostradamus as being necessarily war-related.

If I understand the possible impact that another passing comet could have (which you’ll read about later in this article), Nostradamus’s descriptions may be war related, or they may also be connected to Earth changes brought on by celestial events.

In addition to the above, there has been a recent “controversy” over informing the public in the event of the discovery of a Near Earth Object. Let’s take a moment to see what the flap is over:

[quoting]

Asteroids And Secrecy: If End Is Nigh, Do You Want To Know ?
by Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer, 2/24/03

Suppose a giant asteroid is heading toward Earth right now. Impact is certain. The consequences are expected to be globally devastating, with the human race among the casualties. The chances of doing anything about it are zero, the government decides.

Would you want to know?

Or would you prefer the Feds keep the information secret and spare you and your neighbors a bunch of pointless worrying?

In essence, the question concerns whether you’d prefer to die in ignorant bliss, or if you’d like some options. The alternatives might include dying in a panic, calmly making peace with your Maker, finally taking the kids to Disneyland or—who knows?—making a last-ditch effort to fight odds your elected leaders say are wholly against you.

For several reasons that will become apparent as you read on, the question is largely moot.

But that didn’t stop it from coming up at a major science gathering earlier this month and generating a global round of conspiracy headlines. According to some articles, the U.S. Government has been advised to withhold information of a catastrophic impact, were one ever found to be imminent. The Times of London put this headline above its story: Don’t Tell Public Of Doomsday Asteroid.

 

The media accounts centered around the words of one graduate student (the press variously and erroneously called him a scientist, a researcher, and a government adviser). Geoffrey Sommer spoke as part of a seven-person panel Feb. 13 at an impact hazard symposium during a meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held in Denver.

 

Controversial Words

Here are the widely quoted words, from an AAAS press release, attributed to Sommer (much to his surprise, he said later):

“When a problem arises with high uncertainty, there is an opportunity to spin the problem to avoid global panic. If you can’t do anything about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all. If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the populace is bliss.”

Those words were taken “severely out of context” and “inaccurately described my position” according to Sommer, who says he was not advocating a position but rather discussing choices involving information disclosure that policymakers would face. Yet the press release was sent out with, effectively, an AAAS stamp of approval, and for several days, all Sommer could do was watch as the comments generated ire among readers and some frustration on the part of scientists.

However misconstrued, the quote seemed to stem logically enough from a case study that was part of Sommer’s doctoral dissertation at the Rand Graduate School, operated by the Rand Corporation (the media inaccurately placed him as an employee of the Rand Corporation working for the government). The dissertation’s topic:

Low-Probability, High-Consequence Threats And How Policymakers Might Evaluate Them.

Whatever the circumstances, Sommer received some vitriolic responses to his words, which many saw as downright wrongheaded and arrogant at worst, pessimistic at best.

“Inconceivable”

Late last week, Sommer explained his true stance to space.com. First, the reaction of scientists—most of whom were somewhat confused about what Sommer was actually trying to say—shows how passionately they detest secrecy.

Across the board, experts in asteroid search efforts and death-by-space-rock risk assessment, collectively known as the Near Earth Object (NEO) community, contest whether secrecy could ever be warranted, let alone possible.
 

The Panic Myth

At the heart of Sommer’s case is how people would respond to the knowledge of looming cataclysm.
Lee Clarke, who advocates asteroid mitigation planning, spoke at the AAAS asteroid symposium, too. The Rutgers University sociologist studies big-time catastrophes and the supposed public panic that comes with them. He says the whole concept that everyone freaks out is largely a myth.

“We have five decades of research on all kinds of disasters—earthquakes, tornadoes, airplane crashes, etc.—and people rarely lose control” Clarke said. “Policy-makers have yet to accept this. People are quite capable of following plans, even in the face of extreme calamities, but such plans must be there.”

A scheme for survival would require good international communication and ought to be discussed in the United Nations, so that poorer countries are not left out of any world blueprint for notification and mobilization, Clarke said.

 “Earth’s history is filled with unanticipated catastrophes and their disastrous consequences. With appropriate planning, the human toll could be lessened.”

Clarke figures the worst thing governments could do is lose public trust by withholding information. But he points out that secrecy might appeal to some public officials.

“Keeping secret something potentially very dangerous is an idea that would resonate very well with the current administration in Washington” Clarke said. “It would probably resonate with most high-level decision makers.”

[end quoting]

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