Eideard

Dick Cheney’s baby picture

The White House has responded to two petitions asking the US government to formally acknowledge that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose to any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings.

“The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race,” said Phil Larson from the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, on the WhiteHouse.gov website. “In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”

5,387 people had signed the petition for immediately disclosing the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings, and 12,078 signed the request for a formal acknowledgement from the White House that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race…

These petitions come from an Obama Administration initiative called ‘We the People’ which has White House staffers respond and consider taking action on any issue that receives at least 25,000 online signatures. Regarding these two petitions, the White House promised to respond if the petitions got 17,000 more signatures by Oct. 22.

Larson stressed that the facts show that there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth. He pointed out that even though many scientists have come to the conclusion that the odds of life somewhere else in the Universe are fairly high, the chance that any of them are making contact with humans are extremely small, given the distances involved…

Regarding any evidence for alien life, all anyone has now is “statistics and speculation,” said Larson. “The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.”

Whether or not this will appease or satisfy any conspiracy theorists or UFO believers is yet to be seen, but it is gratifying to see the White House respond in such a no-nonsense manner.

Well, sort of gratifying. They picked a couple of the easier petitions to answer.

Take a look at some of the tougher petitions – those actually demanding political change.

Australia’s military has lost its X-Files, detailing sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, across the country…

After a two-month search in response to a newspaper Freedom of Information (FOI) request, which forces government officials to release documents of public interest, Australia’s Department of Defence had been unable to locate the files, the Sydney Morning Herald said.

“The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost,” the department’s FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, told the paper. Defence officials could not be contacted by Reuters.

The only file Defence had been able to locate was a folder called: “Report on UFOs/Strange Occurrences and Phenomena in Woomera,” a military weapons testing range in the center of Australia’s vast outback, Carpenter said.

All other files had been lost or destroyed, which the Herald said could fuel conspiracy theories about their disappearance.

Do you really think so?

Practically anything goes at the American Academy of Religion’s annual conference, where scholars of dozens of religions convene annually to debate, relate and on occasion mate. Conversation ranges from the Talmud to tantra, from Platonism to Satanism…

What was almost impossible to find, at this orgy of intellectual curiosities, was discussion of the paranormal: ESP, premonitions, psychic powers, alien abduction and the like. This is a conference concerned with all sorts of supernatural and metaphysical claims. In panels, over coffee and during cocktail-hour quarrels, they talk of Moses at the burning bush, the virgin birth, Muhammad’s journey on a winged horse. So why nothing about, say, mental telepathy?

That is the question posed by Jeffrey J. Kripal, a professor of religion at Rice University in Houston and a renegade advocate for including the paranormal in religious studies. In his new book, “Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred”, he tries to convince serious religion scholars that they ought to study, say, ESP or alien abduction…

“There is resistance in the way our universities are set up, in the elite culture of higher education,” says Dr. Kripal, 48, who grew up in Nebraska and once planned to be a Benedictine monk. “Paranormal events completely violate the epistemologies around which we have formed our own knowledge…

In other words, it is one thing to study a miracle a thousand years old — that seems a safe question for the historian or the theologian. But what to do with people who say they were abducted by a U.F.O. last week?

Sitting here invested in nothing more or less than measurable, reproducible reality – the whole discussion is temporal. If some absurd concept, tale or hypothesis is old enough, found in sufficient dusty tomes inside sacrosanct walls – it’s believable. If it happened last week in Cincinnati, it’s just too easy to invalidate. Even for a True Believer.

RTFA. Have a good time.

All those theories about Wednesday’s mystery UFO sightings over Manhattan are about to go “pop.”

A Westchester elementary school believes the puzzling orbs floating over Chelsea were likely a bundle of balloons that escaped from an engagement party they held for a teacher.

“UFO? They’re crazy – those are our balloons!” said Angela Freeman, head of the Milestone School in Mount Vernon. “To me it was the most automatic thing. But it’s all over YouTube.”

A parent was bringing about 40 iridescent pearl balloons to the school for language arts teacher Andrea Craparo when the wind spent a bunch away around 1 p.m.

“They looked big and they were all together, so it looked like one UFO,” said fourth-grader Nia Foster, 9.

Awestruck gawkers began calling the NYPD and the FAA starting about an hour later when mysterious flying objects appeared over Manhattan…

Then there is author Stanley Fulham, a retired NORAD officer who recently published a book predicting the world’s major cities would be visited by UFOs on Oct. 13.

He did not return calls – and there was no word on his whereabouts.

Anyone look under his bed?

Aliens have landed, infiltrated British nuclear missile sites and deactivated the weapons, according to US military pilots.

The beings have repeated their efforts in the US and have been active since 1948, the men said, and accused the respective governments of trying to keep the information secret.

The unlikely claims were compiled by six former US airmen and another member of the military who interviewed or researched the evidence of 120 ex-military personnel.

The information they have collected suggests that aliens could have landed on Earth as recently as seven years ago. The men’s aim is to press the two governments to recognise the long-standing extra-terrestrial visits as fact…

One of the men, Capt Robert Salas, said: “The US Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it.”

He said said he witnessed such an event first-hand on March 16, 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana which housed Minuteman nuclear missiles…

Col Charles Halt said he saw a UFO at the former military base RAF Bentwaters, near Ipswich, 30 years ago, during which he saw beams of light fired into the base then heard on the military radio that aliens had landed inside the nuclear storage area.

He said: “I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practised methods of disinformation.”

Well! I think we should get right on this. Right after our governments complete their mutually self-assigned task of tidying up the world.

Wait. Maybe that’s the plan?

No one stays in Paris for the summer, anyway

Arès, near Bordeaux, southwestern France, has decided to try and attract Martians to its triangular “UFOport” with its very own fake Martian craft.

Made by a local artist, the man-made UFO “landed” on the strip yesterday and, it is hoped, will entice any hesitant extraterrestrials in search of a runway. A plaque reads: “Reserved for voyagers of the universe”.

The operation has been dubbed: “‘Allo Arès, ici UFO.” Arès built the pad in 1976 after a local airport electrician and UFO nut complained to local authorities that France had no alien craft strips.

The local mayor liked the idea and decreed that extraterrestrial visitors would be exempt from airport tax and could take part in any local boules or mud-skating competitions.

Mud-skaters are attached to the feet and used to stay on the surface of mudflats while looking for cockles – a local pastime in the seaside town, situated next to the Arcachon basin…

Other UFO-watchers took it seriously. “One American even complained that he held it against Ronald Reagan that he hadn’t followed suit,” Jean-Guy Perrière, the mayor, told Le Parisien.

I live just across La Cieneguilla valley from our local UFO landing strip. We never leave it unused, though. The county radio-controlled aircraft club uses it as their own.

Which is the real UFO?

Reports of “flying Toblerones” and objects travelling at 1,100 mph across the Scottish sky have been released by the Ministry of Defence.

The files detail how unidentified objects have been witnessed flying over a range of locations across Scotland.

The Scottish accounts are among the thousands of reports made of close encounters with UFOs across the UK which have been released in a joint project between the MoD and the National Archives.

I think flying chocolate bars is a terrific idea.

For more half a century paranoid fantasies about flying saucers, little green men and alien invasions were officially indulged by the existence of a department within the Ministry of Defence that investigated UFO sightings.

But after more than 11,000 sightings spawning countless conspiracy theories, the department has been scrapped. The UFO hotline is no more…

Are we alone in the universe? The MoD doesn’t care any more. When you ring the old hotline number, you get a terse recorded message: “Please note it is no longer MoD policy to record, respond to, or investigate UFO sightings,” it says.

The U.S. government isn’t much better. Not since Project Bluebook days – and I think that was designed to keep an eye on complainers.

Your only choices, nowadays, are local law enforcement – when they finished chuckling at you, try one of the fanboys.

UFO enthusiasts are claiming damage to a Lincolnshire wind farm turbine was caused by a mystery aircraft.

The turbine at Conisholme lost one 66ft (20m) blade and another was badly damaged in the early hours of Sunday.

County councillor for the area Robert Palmer said he had seen a “round, white light that seemed to be hovering”. Ecotricity, which owns the site, said while investigations continued they were not ruling anything out – but the extent of damage was “unique”…

Mr Palmer said: “I actually saw a white light – a round, white light that seemed to be hovering…

The Ministry of Defence said it was not looking into the incident.

Ecotricity said it would have taken an impact with something at least as heavy as a cow to break off the blade.

Meanwhile, in an exclusive, the Guardian has solved the origin of the mysterious moving lights.

The Guardian News & Media director of digital content, Emily Bell, would like to make it clear that her family had no part in damaging any of those 65ft multimillion-pound turbine blades – but she can help explain those “massive balls of light with tentacles going right down to the ground”, as one onlooker described them to the Sun.

Those mysterious lights were actually fireworks Emily’s brother Tim had bought at the local garden centre for the 80th birthday party of dad Peter Bell. “It was a medium-sized fireworks display with absolutely no ballistics, and the fireworks were mostly dropping over my parents’ house. But we were laughing that we could have broken the wind turbine,” jested Emily.

Har!

Elvis could get a second chance at life, Bat Boy may yet outwit government scientists and politicians’ chances of adopting alien babies just improved. That is because the offbeat tabloid Weekly World News, which stopped printing last year, has been sold and the new owner has revived it online and might start printing it again.

“I had always been a fan in college,” said Neil McGinness, whose new company, Bat Boy, announced this month that it had bought the publication from American Media. “And I grew up in Cleveland at a time when Dennis Kucinich was the mayor, so I believed that UFO’s and many other things were possible.”

McGinness ran the entertainment and comedy division at IMG Media, was an executive at National Lampoon and handled marketing at Broadway Video, founded by Lorne Michaels, the producer of “Saturday Night Live.”

McGinness plans to sell advertising online, license characters featured in The News – he is talking to toy companies – and develop movie deals based on the publication’s content.

“Our view is the dominance of special-effects movies at the box office, and the popularity of ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’ on prime-time television, shows that the fringe culture is more relevant than ever,” McGinness said. “And The Weekly World News embraces that fringe culture.”

Fringe culture rocks. Well, some of it. And what better occasion to revive something that smacks of wackiness and counter-culture than the probable next-gen Camelot on the Potomac?