The Masks are Falling

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about an evening spent watching the Al Gore global warming film An Inconvenient Truth sponsored by the local branch of Attac, a French association active in questions of globalization. Last week was an evening with another group, the monthly Repas UFOlogique in Toulouse. I have been attending these meetings fairly regularly for almost two years, but not because of any particular interest in UFOs. Once you look at the data and see that a small percentage of the sightings cannot be explained by any known technology, and you study the reports that have come down through the ages of strange phenomena reported in the skies, you come to understand that our reality is a lot weirder than they teach us in school or in the mainstream media. After that, to chase after some nuts and bolts craft that might be peopled with god knows what, well, no thanks.

But there are open and friendly people there each month, and it's a chance to get away from the computer for an evening....

So the subject of the evening was the recent opening of the files of Le groupe d'études et d'informations sur les phénomènes aérospatiaux non identifiés [Geipan], a working group within the French research network called the CNES. The files the group are putting on-line are the reports from the Gendarmerie made by individuals who have seen something curious in the skies. None of the information was ever classified. They amount to police reports of unexplained sightings. In other words, nothing special: no declassified documents from the government, the military, or the French intelligence agencies.

However, there has been a certain amount of press about the publication of this material on the web, and so this evening there was a journalist from the Depêche du Midi, the local paper, coming to cover the Repas UFOlogique and the presentation by a member of Geipan. Before the presentation started, the journalist moved from table to table (the meetings are held in a restaurant, which is why they are the 'Repas' UFOlogique) asking the participants about their interest in UFOs.

When she got to my table, the other person present began to say that he wasn't interested in UFOs more than that. He was interested, however, in the reasons the governments of the world lie about UFOs and why they refuse to publish their classified info on the subject. If there is nothing there, if UFOs are nothing more than swamp gas or sightings of Venus, then what do they have to hide? He then brought up the subject of 9/11, pointing out that once again the government had lied, and that it was an inside job.

The journalist then turned to me. I said I agreed. I was there because I am an editor at Les Editions Pilule Rouge, and we publish books that attempt to bridge the gap between science and the mysterious. I concurred that it was the way governments treated the question that was intriguing, once one admitted that there was 'something' there. I said that the study of history shows that myth and legend is replete with appearances by creatures who appear to have a mastery of space and time, beings that we label gods or fairies. My working hypothesis was that UFOs were manifestations of these beings, not ETs from other plantes. History also shows that these beings don't have our best interests at heart... and that led to more talk on 9/11 and the coming cyclic catastrophe...

Well, the poor journalist was having her head spun six ways to Sunday by then, but she continued to ask questions, and, wanting to be helpful, I continued to answer them.

Then, the organizer of the evening came running over to the table in a fit. She grabbed the journalist and said, "This is suppose to be a story about the meeting tonight, not about conspiracy theories. I don't want you to report anything that he (pointing to me) has been saying." And the two of them moved away.

Whoa!

Talk about the mask falling. The organizer, who until then had been extremely friendly with me for as long as I had been going to the meetings, showed another side. I was simply answering the questions I was asked, and WHAM!

Then the conference started. The speaker knew his stuff and took a scientific approach. When members of the audience said, "Yes, but given what we know, these unexplained sightings have to be extra-terrestrial...", he said that, no, all forms of human technology haven't been ruled out. There are top secret programmes that have billions of dollars of financing that could produce such technology. The true believers in the crowd didn't want to hear that. As the speaker said, "When you say 'we don't know of any human technology like this, therefore it must be ET', you lose me at the 'therefore'. That is where science confronts conviction".

And he is correct. That is where science does meet conviction, but it also shows that science has blinders because there is a lot of info that can be used to support the non-human working hypothesis from history, as Laura has shown in The Secret History of the World.

After the conference was finished, the organizer came over to me and explained that if I wanted to get any publicity, I could phone the newspaper myself and arrange an interview. By then I was so disgusted with the entire evening that I muttered under my breath, "Whatever...", the first time I have ever descended to valley-girl speak....

On the sidewalk after the restaurant closed, the discussion continued. I was talking with a regular participant, and we were discussing the way things seem to be speeding up and the world is becoming more openly polarized between those who want to believe their subjective interpretation of the world, which amounts to believing an illusion, or, to be more blunt, the lie, and those who are working to see the world as it is. The masks are starting to fall as quickly as the meteorites.

The evening was an excellent example.