THE UFO FILES
PETER BROOKESMITH surveys the latest fads and flaps from the world of ufological research
MORE ALPHABET SOUP
Okay, let’s get the rubbish du jour out of the way first. The AATIP (Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program)/BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies)/TTSAAS (To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science) stuff ( FT361:28 et seq), as if you hadn’t guessed. There’s still no sign of any verifiable connection between the FLIR-1 video TTSAAS has been promoting and the 2004 sighting by various F/A-18 pilots flying from the USS Nimitz. Six-plus months on, this has gotten old real fast, in American idiom. And we’ve seen no verifiable provenance for the other two videos either. Meanwhile, a 2009 letter to the deputy Secretary of Defense from thenSenator Harry Reid has surfaced. In it he pleads for the AATIP project to be expanded and classified, which might suggest to a cynic that even then the Pentagon wasn’t wholly enchanted by what it was doing. And sundry persons associated with BAASS and now with TTSAAS have popped up to tell us that they discovered UFOs and poltergeists are closely connected phenomena. Mmhmm. So is that what those videos are showing? Polty in the sky with diamonds? Do they hope this kind of eye-twirling will attract more investors to TTSAAS? Ol’ Phineas T Barnum must be kicking himself he never thought of anything like this.
In related news, the same sundry persons associated with BAASS and TTSAAS have been letting us have hints and glimpses of some of the mysterious UFO-related ‘crash débris’ for the storage of which that nice Mr Bigelow supposedly modified a building or two in Las Vegas (see the New York Times report at www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/ us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid. html). It turns out that the sample currently being hawked about is either the same odd magnesium-and-bismuth material (or a part of it) whose true and mundane nature Linda Moulton Howe has been suppressing all these years (see Flying Sorcery, FT345:30). The hawkers include Drs Hal Puthoff and Jaques Vallée, who really ought to know better.
Those interested in keeping abreast of this rolling circus should visit the Metabunk. org site, UFO UpDates’ Facebook page, and the blogs of Jason Colavito, Jack Brewer, Robert Sheaffer, and Keith Basterfield. Mr Colavito is particularly entertaining for his forays into pottymouthdom combined with despair and assiduous sleuthing. Much recommended.
Speaking of blogs: Curt Collins, who’s made a speciality of burrowing into the (in)famous Cash-Landrum affair, now has another one on the go called ‘The Saucers That Time Forgot’. Definitely worth a gander for stuff you’ve never heard of and stuff that should often make you laugh.
And while you’re hunting down these excellent sources on the Web, try saying the acronym TTSAAS out loud. But not in front of the children. What you hear may be a guide to the maturity of what passes for ufology today...
POPE FRANCIS TO THE RESCUE
It’s always good to know that Satan still keeps an eye on ufology and still stirs its pot (or pulls its chain) from time to time. The aforementioned Jason Colavito tells us that a character named Galal P Doss, who runs an Egyptian cosmetics firm but is also “a former Seventh-Day Adventist from Egypt with a track record of making bizarre prophecies, such as his failed prophecy that the pope to succeed Benedict XVI would be a demon pretending to be the resurrected John Paul II” now informs us that the prophecies of Revelation are coming to pass. One is thankful there is someone out there who can understand them without resort to scholarship. Doss is much possessed by what happens when the ‘fifth angel’ blows his trumpet (personally, I predict he will play a couple of choruses of ‘Kind of Blue’ – or maybe something pinched from Bix). Revelation tells us: “I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth”, which Doss reckons foretells “a celestial invasion of demons posing as ‘aliens’. The pain that these ‘aliens’ will inflict is likened in the Bible to the sting of a scorpion. The Scriptures state that people will want to die to escape the pain, but will be unable.” Aliens? Hell, no. Demons. In their agony, the people of the Earth turn to their one true leader, Pope Francis. He negotiates with the aliens, who apparently make the pain stop, provided Christians still keep the Sabbath on Sundays. To Doss, this proves the aliens are demons, for he is much obsessed with the Sabbath being kept on Saturdays. Well, some of us do, and we ain’t Christians. Others don’t even know what the term means. Yet others reserve Friday as their day of rest and prayer. Do we all get the scorpion treatment too? And will Southern Baptists and Irish Protestants bow to the Pope? As Colavito remarks: “It seems like a bit more effort than it’s worth.”