NO MORE UFOs!!

A view by Brian P James

Well, this is what sections of the British Press would have had the public believe, according to stories and features during the early part of the week of 23^rd April. This assertion over the fate of UFOs stemmed from a leading article (perhaps in more ways than one!) written by Simon de Bruxelles in The Times on 23^rd April. The story was also featured by the Daily Express and Daily Mail on 24^th April. The story also made the BBC’s youngster’s news programme Newsround on 23^rd April.

Simon de Bruxelles is not unknown amongst researchers as a debunker, but quite why The Times (supposedly the world-renowned bastion of hard news) chose to run the story as a newsworthy item is itself worthy of investigation – though I may be going down the route of conspiracy theory in making this suggestion. Perhaps de Bruxelles is a paid up member of CSICOP!

The whole leading article in The Times was derived from the news that the British Flying Saucer Bureau (BFSB) - perhaps Britain’s only UFO group that was set up with the permission of government - was being disbanded after nearly 50 years, and its founder – Dennis Plunkett, gave the reason for the group’s demise as the decline in UFO reports. While it is of course sad that one of the founder groups in this country should fall by the wayside, it must be said that the BFSB hardly reflected the national picture now. When I got to know Dennis Plunkett in 1997, it was clear that the BFSB had already reduced its research, and no longer published data – in reality the group wasn’t really an ongoing concern even then, and I mean nothing detrimental to Dennis and the rest of the group in saying this. So what has happened in the past 4 years? Dennis himself indicates that the group suffered a dearth of reports, and blames the Internet – but what this actually seems to indicate is that the BFSB hadn’t evolved to encompass the electronic age, and so was bypassed by the new reporting mediums of email and websites.

While it is true that the number of direct reports to national groups (BUFORA included) is far less than in the 1970s, it is also obvious that local groups receive a steady flow of reports, and not always from obvious sources. APRA was conceived to act as a local interest group in the Thames Valley area of the UK, but via its website it receives reports from countries as far afield as the USA, Australia, Japan and China! If this sort of trend is reflected across all local groups, then the task of establishing the full picture of UFO sightings in any one year is not so easy. In fact trying to gain snapshot of the full picture of UK sightings is a project that BUFORA is undertaking with other groups. It is quite obvious to anyone who chooses to consider the situation, that the assertion in The Times, and picked up by other sections of the media, is quite false!

As you may imagine, the statements by the press and media got more than a few groups and researchers annoyed! BUFORA Council were swift in sending press releases to the newsdesks of the major British national papers, as well as the BBC – and we still wait for feedback. Other groups and researchers were also swift to issue press releases and send letters to the press and media to counter the ‘anti-UFO spin’ that had been delivered. At the time of writing this article in the first week of May, not one of the media sources who ran the anti-UFO story have given any indication that they will publish the other side of the story– the reality of the UFO situation of you will. In a way this echoes the attempts by the BBC to debunk crop circles in their Countryfile programme in January 1999, as they equally would give no ‘right of reply’ to crop circle researchers who could demonstrate the ‘true picture’ of the phenomena.

In many ways the ‘sudden’ anti-UFO spin was strange, as in recent months and years, it has been difficult not to read articles stating that the possibilities of ET life were increasing all the time with the discoveries about conditions on planets and moons in our own solar system, to say nothing of the discovery of more and more extrasolar planets. There has also been something akin to a drip feed of articles in the popular press revolving around ancient and modern mysteries, increasing the public’s perception, and even expectation, that ‘The Big News’ was imminent. Somehow the revelation started off by The Times was definitely not The Big News…

However, and at the risk of being seen to be a ‘conspiratist’ again, might we wonder if the press stories and anti-UFO spin have been promoted to keep out attention from some UFO event that HAS occurred?

NOW REVERSE SPIN??

Less than two weeks after the national press broadcast the story about the BFSB, and it alleged consequences, thankfully at least one national paper chose to publish a counter argument to their sister daily paper.

On Sunday 6^th May, the Sunday Express gave a two-page spread to the imminent news conference by Dr Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project. Indeed as the article writer Beverley Glick comments - in any other field the witnesses that have contributed towards the Project (these include senior military officers and pilots from both the West and East, as well as decorated pilots and astronauts and reputable scientists) would be treated very seriously. However, because they have chosen to contribute to a project that set out to prove the existence of UFOS and the ET factor in explaining UFOs, it is clear that this same body of reputable and professional people will be ignored!

I am sure that all of you will know of Dr Steven Greer as the founder of the Center for the Study of Extaterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) – itself prompted by a significant CE3K in Britain’s crop circle country.

One of the contributors to the Disclosure Project is a former Division Chief o the US FAA’s accident investigation bureau. He relates of the significant 1986 Japan Airlines encounter with a UFO over Alaska – this event was recorded on radar, yet at the briefing organized the FAA Administrator, the CIA suppressed the case!

Greer comments that many of the military personnel who have contributed to the project have been decorated for their services to the defence of their country, and who have been entrusted with having their fingers on nuclear buttons, cannot be ignored or debunked just for talking about UFOs. One such contributor is the former British Chief of Defence Staff Lord Hill Norton. It should also be remembered that Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding, who was entrusted with Britain’s defence by the RAF during the Battle of Britain – one of the most key personnel in WW2, was firmly convinced that the flying saucers of his time were not of this Earth in origin. Although Bob Dean’s claims are sometimes viewed as controversial, he too indicated that as early as the 1960s that the West’s military concluded that there was a non-hostile extraterrestrial presence here.

Naturally Nick Pope is quoted in the article with his usual stance that despite the official line, it is clear that the UFO phenomena does represent a cause for defence concern – perhaps he has never heard of the results of the SHAPE analysis in the 1060s?

Steven Greer hopes that the Disclosure Project will promote “serious media interest“ and provide impetus for a full inquiry into the whole phenomena and its interaction with mankind. Greer makes one very valid observation “All I’m asking for is that we spend a fraction of the time on this that we did on Monica Lewinsky. If only one of these witness’s accounts are true, then it’s the biggest story in human history.”

One of the most pleasing comments in the article came from Glick herself, in which she acknowledges that despite the demise of the BFSB, there are still over 100 similar groups in the UK that are investigating and researching UFOs and possible ET’s.