Say what you want be we are screwed!!!

[Brazoo]

Research for yourself these few things...
HAARP
project Bluebeam
Leonid Elenin
Research and keep an open mind. You might be surprised at what you learn.

Lonnie - here's the thing. You could use the argument "keep and open mind" with anything you believe that someone else doesn't believe. As an argument t's really a non-starter. If I'm willing to believe EVERYTHING without scrutiny or evidence then my mind is not open - I'm just naive. I'm not saying you're naive - in fact I'm positive there are plenty of ideas that YOU don't believe in. Are you being closed-minded? Or are you using your capacity to weigh evidence and decided on which point of view is more reasonable to you?

My mind IS "open". I think it's totally logical to think that alien beings exist - I myself believe that totally - but my belief is based on what we know about our universe.

The existing evidence - that I'm aware of - that people have witnessed alien ships, isn't compelling enough for me to form an opinion that goes against the well established evidence that more natural explanations are more rational.

A light in the sky or UFO - explainable or not - requires us to look for the most reasonable explanations before inventing new explanations that are unestablished, unprovable and often propelled by modern popular culture and current mythology.

Believe me - I've spent WAY too many hours reading articles, threads, books and watching videos and TV shows trying to prove that alien beings have visited Earth. As well as all kinds of other sources trying to prove other kinds of magic and supernatural and paranormal phenomena. I'm really into this stuff - but it's taken up a huge chunk of my life already - and with every new thing I find there's lots of recycling old ideas again and again.

I love this stuff, and I love discussing it, but every time I sit through a 22 minute show with eerie music and dumb reenactments (and with 4 minutes of actual information) I get closer to flinging myself under a bus.

If you would be so kind as to summarize some of the main points or link me directly to the most compelling evidence I'd be incredibly happy to discuss it though!

[Brazoo]

Anyone familiar with The Pale Blue Dot photograph?

Pale Blue Dot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can't even see friggin' Earth...and that's from within our very own Solar System with our Sun's light...lol.

Come on now.

The irony to me is that that unbelievably humbling photo is also one of the greatest achievements of mankind.

[darklord1967]

We are "nada", and yet we managed the accomplishment of acquiring the very photographs that you use to illustrate your point. Evidently, even Brazoo and I agree on at least that single point:

The irony to me is that that unbelievably humbling photo is also one of the greatest achievements of mankind.

Everything in the known universe, no matter how large, no matter how massive, becomes a barely perceptible speck (from a particular perspective) if you get far enough away from it. That does NOT make it insignificant.

At the risk of showing my STAR WARS geek-dom one too many times, I quote Yoda the Jedi Master when I say that "size matters NOT".

As far as science and discovery goes, SIZE has never been a measure for the importance or validity of a specimen.

Heck, size is not even a measure of importance or validity in the toy collecting community! Some of the most "valuable", expensive, and sought-after items in the toy collecting world are the oldest and teeny-tiniest ones.

What I am trying to impress upon you, Hector, is the idea that it is NOT our galactic size which gives us (or any species) our value. To an enlightened, intelligent, scientifically-based civilization, size is irrelevant during study and discovery. It is likely as irrelevant there as it is to scientists here on Earth who spent decades and an enormous amount of resources just to learn about and catalog microscopic organisms, atoms, amoebas, viruses and the like.

It is SCIENCE that probably most directly understands the principal that SIZE is no measure of importance. In fact, some of the deadliest viruses capable of wiping out a significant portion of the animal population of this planet are microscopic.

Think about that: You can be forever destroyed by something that is several hundred million times smaller than you.

I'm done.

[thunderbolt]

This time I like your BANG!!!

And don't worry, it will be on a Swasscast that will get bumped for "greateness"

[Brazoo]

Okay, curiosity got the better of me and I just wanted to get an idea of the basics:

HAARP - (I actually had heard of this one) this is the research facility in the Arctic that the military and the University of Alaska have set up for various tests involving the ionosphere. The conspiracy theorists blame all kinds of things on it - like earthquakes and other natural disasters.

"Project Bluebeam" is supposedly a NASA grand conspiracy involving the "New World Order" and the antichrist? Is that accurate?

Leonid Elenin - we've discussed. This is the name of the guy who discovered the meteorite that's supposedly going to destroy earth. There's a conspiracy theory brewing because people think the name is fake and is encrypted with doomsday meanings. And people ALWAYS think NASA is covering things up.

By the way - why not make up a name with no meaning if you're using it as a cover? Or is it more likely that once people become suspicious of a detail like this they're going to mine it for ANY meaning they can find no matter what? (Bob Smith, 'oh no, it's an anagram for thi bombs! We're all doomed!!!!) You can find meaning in anything if you look hard enough.

Anyway - I'm going to suggest that it's very hard for me to research and discuss 3 completely separate grand conspiracy theories that I'm not really too familiar with. (Are any of these even connected to aliens?) If you want to add clarity, or give us the most compelling arguments for these things I'll be interested in this further.

Please remember, there are hundreds of thousands of grand conspiracy theories floating around - and they all share similar traits. They all lead to this impossibly well organized group of people who are competent enough to control almost everything that happens involving their particular cause - but just sloppy enough to let little things that show they're evil (like un-encryptable names, or numbers that add up to 666 or whatever...) slip out.

The answer is always "to the people who know how to look, the proof is clear!", but the evidence is never "clear", it's all just based on general mistrust and data mining for anything that seems remotely suspicious. For argument's sake let's say "Leonid Elenin" is a pseudonym, so from that you get to 'NASA conspiracy to cover up the end of the world'? That, my friend, is an ENORMOUS leap - and the only way it doesn't seem that way is if you already start with the premiss that NASA is involved in evil grand conspiracies. How is that "keeping and open mind"?

The other problem with the whole concept of grand conspiracy theories is that they require an impossibly large amount of people to commit to incredibly evil acts and keep perfectly quiet about it. This doesn't happen. Look at the most famous cases of ESTABLISHED conspiracies - even ones that involve very few people (like Watergate) - still can get out, so how is that possible? People are not good at keeping their mouths shut and when a conspiracy involves more people that includes more mouths as well. Even if there IS a conspiracy, then how is it that ALL these people are so scarred of talking, but people online are able to chit-chat about it constantly? Sure, there's the odd guy who claims he's being followed or threatened. But where's the incredible arm of fear that is supposedly horrifying enough to shut up hundreds (or in some cases thousands) of compliant members of the conspiracy?

Believing the premiss of these grand conspiracy theories requires us to believe that the people orchestrating the conspiracies are all-powerful and superhumanly competent - yet completely incompetent at the same time. That big contradiction in what's being claimed is one that I can't get past logically.

[Brazoo]

I just want to quickly say that I think it's important that we separate the grand conspiracy theories (involving aliens or not) from the UFO and alien evidence that darklord is talking about.

I think what darklord is talking about is somewhat separate from the main topic of this thread, and I don't think the two deserve to be painted with the same brush (so to speak).

I personally give a lot more credence to the theories darklord is siting - for one thing it's not dependent on fear mongering, which I respect. I also think there's a more genuine scientific curiosity in what he's talking about then the general mistrust of government, science and media that is inherent in grand conspiracy theorizing.

Anyway - I do want to discuss that stuff separately, but darklord raise A LOT of points, and I will have to come back to that discussion a bit later!

[Brazoo]

Darklord -

Okay, so there's TONS of different subjects being raised so the only way I know how to tackle the whole thing is kinda by trying to separate them into categories that I think make sense. I don't mean to dictate the way the ideas you're presenting go together - it's just an attempt on my part to make the whole subject more manageable to discuss. If I'm not understanding or presenting your arguments well - then please feel free to correct me!

I have gone on record here in the mego museum forums as being a believer in the probability of extraterrestrial visitation to this planet, and NASA/ government cover-up of evidence supporting this.

No one has ever been able to adequately explain to me why it is that some NASA photos of the surface of our moon and photos of the surface of the planet Mars are actually CLASSIFIED by NASA and not shown to the public. If there is nothing to hide, why not let the public see ALL imagery / videos taken from these space missions? After all, those images are OURS, the American taxpayers'. We pay for it!

Most Americans are ignorant of the fact that NASA's constitution requires it to co-operate with agencies directly concerned with national defense and specifically obliges it to "... withhold from the public information classified to protect national security...".

Since you started with bringing up the idea that NASA and the US Government (or possibly other governments) have been covering up evidence supporting alien visitation I'll start here.

I don't understand what the motive the US government would have for covering up alien evidence, and I'm even less convinced that NASA would participate in that kind of cover-up.

Government:
The US government has often been accused of creating or heightening fear in the public to increase spending on military and weapons technologies. It's also been accused of covering-up alien evidence to quell the public's fear.

What I find with these cover-up and conspiracy theories is that the characterization of "the government" sways both ways depending on which version is going to lend credence to the topic on the table. On one hand, the government is creating fear to strengthen the industrial military complex, and on the other hand they're covering things up to prevent widespread panic.

Personally, I think governments (all democratic governments) by their nature require the public they serve to think their service is a necessity, and often use different modes of fear to different degrees to strengthen their arguments. It can be as simple as "vote for me, because THAT guy will cause unemployment to rise", but it can also be "You need us because WE believe in homeland security and military defense".

ALL of the genuine and established conspiracies that have come to light in mainstream accepted history follow the narrative of governments trying to keep power, or trying to strengthen power. (I won't go into specifics, because that's bound to be political - but you can imagine that I'm talking about the big ones that have come to light like Watergate for example.)

For me that contradicts the opinion that governments corrupt enough to conspire and cover things up are worried about public fear and I have a really hard time coming around to believing theories that start with that premiss. It's far easier for me to picture a government that would use alien threat to expand it's military funding then it is to picture one that is chiefly concerned with preventing fear.


NASA:
NASA has no current space program in development. There have been massive layoffs and this is a huge blow to it's already depleted budgets. A large part of NASA's experimental research is geared towards finding and looking for mechanisms for life to live on other planets. All the research so far is interesting, but it also seems really preliminary - which makes no sense to me if they have actual evidence of alien life. So I really don't believe that the motive of covering up alien evidence exists there at all and I don't understand the programs direction if they are.

Security:
In government and government agencies like NASA I think it's reasonable to accept that there are going to be certain projects and documents that are going to be classified for security reasons. It's just part of their job to do that.

Of course keeping some things secret will ALWAYS lead to people speculating on what's being hidden - that's just human nature.

Sure NASA is owned by the citizens of the US - but as a service to the people they have to maintain security as well. For example, NASA is not going to release blueprints for experimental technology it's developing to the public, because releasing their work to the public could actually be a disservice to the public it serves. NASA is developing technologies to patent - not spending millions of dollars to give new technology away.

Just because things are going to be kept secret, doesn't mean we have to leap to conclusions that can't be verified.

This is going to be a reoccurring theme, because the cornerstone of my belief system is that an unknown fact is - at best - something that can be speculated upon, but we CAN'T draw conclusions from an unknown. An unknown is just that - unknown until further evidence.

I'm not sure about the specific photos and video you're speaking about, so I don't have anyway to specifically address that, but I will say that absence of evidence maybe intriguing - and TOTALLY worth discussing and speculating on - but absence of evidence is not evidence.

[babycyclops]

What I find with these cover-up and conspiracy theories is that the characterization of "the government" sways both ways depending on which version is going to lend credence to the topic on the table. On one hand, the government is creating fear to straighten the industrial military complex, and on the other hand they're covering things up to prevent widespread panic.

Well said, Brazoo.


On a related topic, but more out of interest.....


From the book: I could tell you but then you would have to be destroyed by me- Emblems from the Pentagon's black world
Author: Trevor Paglen

[Hector]

And don't worry, it will be on a Swasscast that will get bumped for "greateness"

[Hector]

I'm done.

No...you'll be back...

[Hector]

You make some good points, Darklord...as always...well written.

Some things I agree with you...and some I don't...that's all...

[torgospizza]

http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/wp-cont..._Serve_Man.jpg

That's an awesome patch--seriously, I love it--but I think it's a joke. Here's some info on it. I grew up near Whiteman AFB, and we saw UFOs quite a bit in the 80s that we found out later were B-2 Spirits.

[babycyclops]

That's an awesome patch--seriously, I love it--but I think it's a joke. Here's some info on it. I grew up near Whiteman AFB, and we saw UFOs quite a bit in the 80s that we found out later were B-2 Spirits.

Hey, I realise it's a joke. The book I found it in provides the same background info on the patch as the link you provided.
It is an awesome patch, though

EDIT: Just a clarification. As far as I know, this is a real patch for a real aviation unit. The joke is the imagery and words on the patch.

[darklord1967]

You make some good points, Darklord...as always...well written.

Some things I agree with you...and some I don't...that's all...

Fair enough, Hector. I expected nothing less. And thanks a million for the gentlemanly props.


Ah... CRUD!!! Hector was right. I'm NOT done...

Darklord -

Okay, so there's TONS of different subjects being raised so the only way I know how to tackle the whole thing is kinda by trying to separate them into categories that I think make sense. I don't mean to dictate the way the ideas you're presenting go together - it's just an attempt on my part to make the whole subject more manageable to discuss. If I'm not understanding or presenting your arguments well - then please feel free to correct me!





Since you started with bringing up the idea that NASA and the US Government (or possibly other governments) have been covering up evidence supporting alien visitation I'll start here.

I don't understand what the motive the US government would have for covering up alien evidence, and I'm even less convinced that NASA would participate in that kind of cover-up.

Government:
The US government has often been accused of creating or heightening fear in the public to increase spending on military and weapons technologies. It's also been accused of covering-up alien evidence to quell the public's fear.

What I find with these cover-up and conspiracy theories is that the characterization of "the government" sways both ways depending on which version is going to lend credence to the topic on the table. On one hand, the government is creating fear to strengthen the industrial military complex, and on the other hand they're covering things up to prevent widespread panic.

Personally, I think governments (all democratic governments) by their nature require the public they serve to think their service is a necessity, and often use different modes of fear to different degrees to strengthen their arguments. It can be as simple as "vote for me, because THAT guy will cause unemployment to rise", but it can also be "You need us because WE believe in homeland security and military defense".

ALL of the genuine and established conspiracies that have come to light in mainstream accepted history follow the narrative of governments trying to keep power, or trying to strengthen power. (I won't go into specifics, because that's bound to be political - but you can imagine that I'm talking about the big ones that have come to light like Watergate for example.)

For me that contradicts the opinion that governments corrupt enough to conspire and cover things up are worried about public fear and I have a really hard time coming around to believing theories that start with that premiss. It's far easier for me to picture a government that would use alien threat to expand it's military funding then it is to picture one that is chiefly concerned with preventing fear.


NASA:
NASA has no current space program in development. There have been massive layoffs and this is a huge blow to it's already depleted budgets. A large part of NASA's experimental research is geared towards finding and looking for mechanisms for life to live on other planets. All the research so far is interesting, but it also seems really preliminary - which makes no sense to me if they have actual evidence of alien life. So I really don't believe that the motive of covering up alien evidence exists there at all and I don't understand the programs direction if they are.

Security:
In government and government agencies like NASA I think it's reasonable to accept that there are going to be certain projects and documents that are going to be classified for security reasons. It's just part of their job to do that.

Of course keeping some things secret will ALWAYS lead to people speculating on what's being hidden - that's just human nature.

Sure NASA is owned by the citizens of the US - but as a service to the people they have to maintain security as well. For example, NASA is not going to release blueprints for experimental technology it's developing to the public, because releasing their work to the public could actually be a disservice to the public it serves. NASA is developing technologies to patent - not spending millions of dollars to give new technology away.

Just because things are going to be kept secret, doesn't mean we have to leap to conclusions that can't be verified.

This is going to be a reoccurring theme, because the cornerstone of my belief system is that an unknown fact is - at best - something that can be speculated upon, but we CAN'T draw conclusions from an unknown. An unknown is just that - unknown until further evidence.

I'm not sure about the specific photos and video you're speaking about, so I don't have anyway to specifically address that, but I will say that absence of evidence maybe intriguing - and TOTALLY worth discussing and speculating on - but absence of evidence is not evidence.

BRazoo, there are some incredibly thought-provoking, and articulately-expressed viewpoints expressed here that I feel the need to address. Unfortunately it will have to wait until tomorrow. Please stay tuned...

[Hector]

Ah... CRUD!!! Hector was right. I'm NOT done...

Trust me...it was an easy call...