I pop into reddit’s ufo community from time to time and it’s fell-for-it-again the subreddit. If I had a dollar for every guy that pops up and says “oh yeah I know alllll the secrets but oops tee hee can’t tell you!” I’d be a rich man.

I think the only real way we’re going to get disclosure is through a country like China or Russia.

  • TankieTanuki [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    Ah, I gotcha.

    I believe the bulk of the case information is sourced from MUFON, an organization with which the co-auther (Marden) is affiliated.

    Description of MUFON from chapter 1

    The closure of Project Blue Book left the responsibility for investigating UFO reports to civilian UFO organizations that systematically collect and investigate UFO sighting reports.

    The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena have long since closed. This leaves the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), which has a computerized case management system that collects and investigates UFO reports from around the world. To date thousands of reports have been systematically collected and investigated by trained MUFON volunteers. Each month, MUFON issues a statistical report of UFO sightings from around the world. Monthly reports range from 600 or so, upwards to 1,000. In September 2015, 985 reports were registered on MUFON’s case management system: 769 were observed in the United States, 61 in the United Kingdom, and 53 in Canada. The remainder was divided among 49 countries with at least one UFO being reported in each. Of the objects sighted, 296 were reported to have been less than 500 feet away from the witness. One hundred forty-two of these were an estimated distance of less than 100 feet away from the witness. There were 50 landings, hoverings, and takeoffs, and one nonhuman entity was reported to have been observed. In any given month, a significant 10 to 13 percent of the objects sighted are estimated at less than 100 feet from the witness.

    These are not distant lights in the sky. Yet this information reaches only a small segment of our population. The failure by mainstream media outlets, to report accurate UFO information is a multifaceted problem.

    Direct, recorded testimony of Cash and Landrum’s account is readily available. Their injuries were documented in photographs, local newspapers, medical records, and their public court filing.

    I totally understand, comrade, I used to feel the exact same way.

    I’d argue that the principal reason for that perception is due to a decades-long campaign of relentless social programming. IMO the book is at its best when making this case through its investigation of several unscrupulous, high-status, and high-profile academics with ties to the national security state, namely, Donald Menzel, Philip Klass, and Edward Condon.

    Leftist anti-imperialists are acutely aware of two principles: 1) Americans are the most propagandized people in history, and 2) No one is immune to propaganda. Any comrade who truly internalizes these axioms is willing to critically examine things they once dismissed as lunacy.

    I share your aversion to faith-based reasoning. My first career was in the natural sciences, as was the book’s co-author (Friedman). Frankly, the only reason I picked up the book was because I was challenged to do so by someone who seemed otherwise level-headed. If you have an interest, as I do, in testing your pre-existing beliefs with new information then I’d politely extend the same challenge you to.

    • fannin [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Definitely looks like radiation sickness. I’d be happier with a lot more background on where and when and under what circumstances these photos were taken but it’s clear something happened. I’d still not be inclined to take their own account at face value and I’m definitely sure MUFON is not a disinterested party. I think accounts like these share the same problem with miracle accounts. Whether or not they actually happened, I just don’t know of any epistomologically sound way to differentiate between the two. I just have an extreme mistrust of peoples’ accounts when they involve something breaking the laws of physics, be it a UFO or a faith healer (and a lot of this has a lot to do with the fact I’m a former evangelical christian who was told lie after lie after lie about the latter).