Thursday 4 January 2018

Top U.S. Counties for UFO Sightings

By Cheryl Costa

There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States. It’s hard to pin down the exact number, however, because at the state level there seems to be a process of ongoing consolidation of county services in various regions. In terms of national UFO sighting reports, I thought it would be fun to see which counties had the most sightings, based on reports from 2001 to 2015.
First, California has the most sighting reports at 15,835 during the sample period. Los Angeles County, with a population of about 10 million, has the most sightings, with 3,212.
People always tell me that they think the volume of UFO sighting reports is strictly driven by the size of the population base. When our book UFO Sightings Desk Reference was released last year, many people remarked, “Of course California has the most UFO sightings. They have the biggest population.”
Second place is Maricopa County, Ariz., with 2,523 UFO reports. Note the vast difference in county population bases. Maricopa County has 78 percent of the UFO reports that Los Angeles County does, but Maricopa has only 40 percent of the population compared to Los Angeles County.
Cook County, Ill. (third place), logged 1,431 sightings; San Diego, Calif. (fourth), had 1,393; and King County, Wash. (fifth), had 1,393. These three counties are within the 1,400 range, yet the populations are vastly different: Cook County at 5.2 million, San Diego at 3.3 million and King County with 2.1 million.
Orange County, Calif., sits in sixth place with 1,271 sightings, followed by Riverside County, Calif. (seventh); Clark County, Nev. (eighth); San Bernardino County (ninth); and Harris County, Texas (10th). Riverside and Clark both had 958 sightings, San Bernardino had 836 and Harris had 792. Yet while Riverside, Clark and San Bernardino had county populations averaging 2.2 million, Harris, the lowest of the four in terms of sightings, had a population of about 4.5 million.
Horry County, S.C. (11th place) had 629; Multnomah County, Ore. (12) with 621; Miami-Dade County, Fla. (13) with 619; and Broward County, Fla. (14) hosting 590. Yet the population range is eye-opening: Horry County only has a population of about 309,000 and Multnomah County has 790,000, yet Miami-Dade County has 2.6 million and Broward County has 1.89 million.
I agree that population is a contributing factor to high UFO sighting numbers, yet there is something else that seems to drive the bigger sighting volumes in lower population areas. One concept that has been suggested is the notion that certain locations have had notable sightings in the past.
Los Angeles County has had UFO sighting reports since the 1880s and, of course, they had the unprecedented Battle of Los Angeles on Feb. 25, 1942. And Maricopa County was the location for the March 13, 1997, “Phoenix Lights” mass UFO sighting.
Is there a generational conditioning at play here? Are people simply looking up more than in other areas of the country because something amazing happened in the past? Perhaps somebody in the behavioral sciences can study this phenomenon.

Unknown - A Rogue Planet Podcast

https://rogueplanet.tv/shows/unknown-a-ufo-podcast/

This podcast has been added to the Blog Side Wall.


Linda Moulton Howe Live 1/03/2018!

By Linda Moulton Howe



UFO Investigations: The Science And The Will To Believe


To close the door on 2017, the strangest year I can remember, there's nothing more appropriate than the revelation in December from the U.S. government that it, indeed, had an office dedicated to the investigation of UFO-related phenomena.
It's enough to make X-Files and conspiracy-theory fans rejoice.
Tucked in the fifth floor of the Pentagon, in a remote area known as C Ring, since 2007 the military intelligence officer Luis Elizondo headed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Although details of the program remain enshrouded in military secrecy, some of its projects have been made public by Elizondo and his associates.
Some $22 million was slated for the office, which officially closed its doors after funding ended in 2012 though, according to Elizondo, the effort continues. The funding was obtained at the request of Nevada's then-Sen. Harry Reid. Elizondo told The New York Times that he continued to meet with military and intelligence officers until his resignation this past October. Most of the funds went to billionaire entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, according to the Times report, who owns the Las Vegas-based aerospace company contracted by the Defense Department to analyze reports of sightings and even materials said to be of alien origin.
Among the reports studied were sightings of high-speed flying objects that showed no signs of a propulsion mechanism or others that were able to hover, as if by magic. A striking one is the video shot in 2004 near San Diego by two Navy F/A-18F jets showing an oval-shaped flying object the size of a conventional aircraft.
Reports of UFOs are not new, of course, starting with the famous Roswell incident of July 1947, where supposedly a "flying disk" crashed in the desert to much sensational news, including the capture of the dead (or living?) alien pilots that were then whisked to the equally mysterious Area 51, an Air Force base of shadowy reputation. You can watch a video of the whole incident from the Roswell Museum website. According to the official military version, though, it was simply a weather balloon.
That same year, the Air Force started a program to investigate what amounted to more than 12,000 sightings or reports of encounters with UFOs. Under the name Project Blue Book, the studies concluded that the majority of sightings were stars, clouds or conventional spy aircraft reflecting the sun or moon. Some 701 events remained unexplained by the program's end in 1969.
But then in 2007, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program launched, where officers analyzed metal alloys that supposedly came from unidentified flying craft, interviewed pilots that saw UFOs, and even examined people who claimed to have suffered symptoms from sighting or, more dramatically, from being kidnapped by aliens. According to the Times article, "A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that 'what was considered science fiction is now science fact,' and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered."
Could fiction be more dramatic than this?
It is no wonder that the military and the general public are interested. After all, if, indeed, alien beings not only exist but came here to visit us, we better know their intentions, whether pacific or invasive. No kidding. But most people add another dimension to the whole question: We want to know if we are alone in the galaxy or if we have company out there, something we've discussed here. Either option would be deeply transforming for society as a whole.
Scientists would also love to know. The possibility of extraterrestrial life is one of the central questions of our time, one that we are closer than ever to answering, given our progress in discovering potentially habitable exoplanets. However, precisely due to its importance, we must have great care as we analyze videos or narratives of supposed encounters with extraterrestrial spacecraft. After all, it is easy to let our desire to believe in something cloud our judgment. As fans of the X-Files remember, the poster on agent Fox Mulder's office said, under a photo of a flying saucer, "I Want to Believe."
That's why people must see scientists not as boring people who want to destroy their dreams with rational arguments, but as people who really want to know the truth without being fooled by a deeply ingrained belief. Science's methodology, although not perfect, is the best antidote we have to a very human propensity: to turn something we want to believe in into a reality.
The fact is that, up to now, we have no convincing evidence whatsoever that ETs have been here, piloting their superadvanced spacecraft. To the many biochemical barriers for life to take hold on a planet and to persist until it might become intelligent to the point of developing technologies capable of interstellar travel, we must add the improbable fact that they found us and decided to come all the way here. Given the possible explanations for the sightings — from atmospheric and cosmic phenomena to an ordinary aircraft or a secret one reflecting sunlight at odd angles — the best are surely not alien spacecraft.
This rational argument doesn't take away from the fascination we all have with UFOs. We must keep looking and taking reports seriously. After all — if we don't look, we won't find. However, we want to be sure that what we see is real, and not the fruit of our will to believe.

3 UFO Sightings From Professional Pilots That Defy Explanation

By Matthew Loffhagen

The vast majority of UFO reports can be very easily explained away. Even many reports that conspiracy theorists insist have no logical explanation are easily dismissed as the work of pranksters or drunks.

Then, there are the other reports. The small yet not insignificant number of accounts that come from military professionals, astronauts, and scientific experts.

These reports are numerous enough (and trustworthy enough) that the US government has been cataloging them, and with good reason—there are things out there that we can't explain, and it's only through reading these accounts that we can begin to try to figure out the mysteries surrounding them.

We've put together a list three of the most intriguing UFO sightings of all time. These aren't just unverified reports by country bumpkins; these are firsthand accounts from seasoned professional pilots that no one can explain to this day.

These aren't definitive proof that aliens exist and are visiting Earth, but they do hint that there might be more going on in the night's skies than we realize.

1) The White "Tic-Tac" UFO

The first on this list is a commonly cited example of a credible UFO report—an account, recorded on video, from a pair of Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets from 2004 in San Diego, which spotted "a whole fleet" of mysterious flying artifacts that managed speeds that have never been seen before.



One of the pilots who witnessed the crafts, Commander David Fravor, later told The Washington Post that he saw "a white Tic Tac, about the same size as a Hornet, 40 feet long with no wings, just hanging close to the water".

Fravor went on to say:

Opening quote
"As I get closer, as my nose is starting to pull back up, it accelerates and it's gone. Faster than I'd ever seen anything in my life. We turn around, say let's go see what's in the water and there's nothing. Just blue water."
Closing quote


Not entirely dissimilar reports have come from other, similar experts.

2) The Unexplainable Blue Lights

An airline pilot flying between Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, reports having seen blue lights in the sky that looked entirely unlike anything he'd ever seen flying before.

Said the pilot:

Opening quote
"The two lights were approximately an inch apart in the windscreen and the size of normal stars. One of the 'stars' just dimmed out over about a 10-second time span followed by the other one dimming out completely in about 10 seconds also. We were flying in crystal-clear skies and were not flying though any clouds whatsoever. These two lights were not following the typical west-to-east orbital path as most satellites do and were just sitting there kind of like ships hiding in plain sight.
Closing quote


3) The Mysterious Orange Balls of Light

Experts don't always spot these kinds of things while in the air. In 2013, a retired airline pilot, military pilot, and astronaut spotted a series of unusual orange balls of light in the sky that defied all explanation. He and his family attempted to film it with their phone cameras, but alas, the iPhones of the day weren't able to get a good picture of the black night sky.

According to the pilot:

Opening quote
"When I looked up into the sky, I saw a fairly large, orange, glowing orb moving rapidly overhead [at] right about 90 degrees of elevation. They moved much faster than orbital satellites (International Space Station, for example) or airplanes, but much slower than meteors and did not change brightness as a meteor would upon entering the atmosphere. I have no explanation for what we saw."
Closing quote


So, then, case closed, right? If these professional pilots have all spotted weird lights in the sky, that's proof that aliens have been visiting Earth with their advanced technology!

Well, not necessarily.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson is eager to point out, just because the US government is investigating aliens, it doesn't mean that there really are aliens to investigate. This is a case of the old zebra analogy at play: sometimes, when we hear galloping hoofs, we like to hope that we'll see something exotic like a zebra, when the more logical explanation is that the approaching animal is a more mundane, commonplace horse.

There are plenty of possible sources for mysterious glowing lights, from secret military tests to bizarre weather patterns, and, more commonly in the modern era, unmanned drones in various shapes and sizes. Until we actually find some incontrovertible proof for the existence of alien spaceships, it's worth assuming that all UFOs are more terrestrial in origin.

It may be boring, but it's unfortunately the truth: the simplest explanation is almost certainly the most logical one; and that generally doesn't involve flying saucers.

A UFO encounter for the ages (don’t worry, nothing happened, go back to sleep)

By Jon Rappoport
In my work as a reporter over the past 35 years, I’ve studied how major media cover stories. One of their consistent blunders:
Failure to follow up.
But it isn’t really a blunder.
There is a boundary, and reporters aren’t allowed to cross it.
Therefore, it looks like these reporters are inherently stupid. They don’t ask the right questions. They back away from a story just when it becomes vital.
Well, many of them are stupid—but it’s often a trained response. Over time, they learn to act as if they’re clueless; and then, after years, they are.
What is this boundary? It’s the line beyond which “important people” would be damaged and exposed, if the reporter followed his instincts and pressed forward.
Important people, important institutions are like giants standing on slippery mud. Give them a push, and they fall. Start digging around in the mud, and they fall.
Official reality falls.
The underlying dictum of the press is: Official reality must never fall.
Here is a stunning example of a day when it did—a UFO encounter for the ages.
On March 18, 2001, Jeff Rense (rense.com) published an article by Frank Altomonte, headlined: “SIX ‘SAUCER-SHAPED’ UFOS AND FACE-TO-FACE ET CONTACT IN LA IN 1957.”
Altomonte dug up a November 6, 1957, article from the LA Times. Not just any article. Page one, under a huge black banner headline at the top of the page: MYSTERY AIR OBJECTS SEEN IN SKY OVER LA.
Read these 1957 quotes, and remember, this is the LA Times, the most important newspaper in Los Angeles, and one of the leading papers in the US—during a time when print journalism was still the main source of information for the public.
“They (USAF personnel) spotted six ‘saucer shaped flying objects’ at an altitude of about 7000 feet at the base of a cloud bank about 3:50 p.m.”
“Those unidentified flying objects first reported over Texas and Gulf of Mexico arrived over Southern California yesterday.”
“Personnel at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station reported unidentified objects in sight almost continuously between 6:05 and 7:25 p.m.”
“Lt. Richard Spencer, a flying officer, saw the object from the ground. ‘It was not a star and it was not an airplane’, he said. He admitted, however, that it appeared to be ‘starlike,’ and added that it glowed in varying colors, changing from bright to dim and back again.”
“Airport Tower Operator Louis D. Mitchell and a sentry on duty, Hospitalman Charles Kreiger, also observed the object. Almost all observers were agreed that the object moved slowly — almost imperceptibly, across the sky. Most were agreed that the direction of travel was north or northwest.”
“Lending credence to the reports was the fact that…Air Force weather observers, including the commanding officer of the unit, acknowledged sighting unidentified phenomena over Long Beach Municipal Airport.”
“They spotted six ‘saucer shaped flying objects’ at an altitude of about 7000 feet at the base of a cloud bank about 3:50 p.m.”
“Maj. Louis F. Baker, commanding officer of the weather observation post, who sighted the objects with his assistants Airmen Joseph Abramavage and William Nieland said: ‘They were circular and shiny like spun aluminum changing course instantaneously without loss of speed like planes in a dogfight,’ Maj. Baker said. He said the objects were larger than a twin engine C-46 aircraft and were in sight for about a minute and a half.”
“The objects also were observed by 10 military personnel waiting to board an airplane at the airport, the spotters reported. Maj. Baker said he rejected the theory that the objects were sheet ice in a cumulonimbus cloud because of their regular circular shape.”
“An electronics executive, Merlin G. Perkins, 1102 N. Wright St., Santa Ana, said he observed an object though binoculars for almost a half hour as it moved slowly overhead finally fading away into the reflected light above the Santa Ana business district. It appeared to be round and it winked slowly from dim to bright, with a reddish glow, Perkins said.”
The November 6, 1957, LA Times also ran a short piece from the Associated Press, dated a day earlier. AP is, of course, one of the two or three largest news wire services in the world.
“New Orleans, Nov 5 (AP) — The Coast Guard cutter Sebago sighted an unidentified flying object over the Gulf of Mexico at 5:21 a.m. today. The object, seen for about three seconds, resembled a brilliant planet moving at tremendous speed.”
There is much more to Altomonte’s article, but you’re getting the picture.
As far as the LA Times was concerned, back in 1957, what happened next? What did they do?
Nothing.
No follow-up.
One of the most significant events in modern times occurs over the skies of Los Angeles, with multiple professional observers (and private citizens also quoted), so you would assume an EXTENSIVE INVESTIGATION would be launched.
“OK, boys, this is when you earn your paychecks. You’re supposed to be relentless reporters. I’m your boss, and this is when I earn my paycheck, too. I’m setting you loose. I don’t care how long it takes. Find out what the hell this is. Break down doors. Go up against the Pentagon and the CIA. The Times will back you up. Is it people from another planet? Is it our own secret craft, with onboard technology no one has ever heard of? Is it Nazis, Russians? We’re going to chase this until the cows come home. And by cows, I mean you. Come home with the true story. We’re not going to let go. You’ll never cover another story like this in your lives…”
But no.
That didn’t happen.
The massive follow-up that should have launched from the Times, like rockets, was squelched.
Looking at the LA Times archives, for the day AFTER the boggling UFO story, I find two major headlines. The first is above the masthead: “Halimi beats Macias for Title.” The second: “Rocket Artillery Unveiled by Russ[ians].”
Here today, gone tomorrow.
Ten years later, many people in Los Angeles would barely remember the UFO encounter. Well, the LA Times hadn’t kept the story alive.
“Say Bob, do you recall that thing where a whole lot of UFOs flew over the city? Did it really happen? Maybe I just had a dream about it. Strange…”
And thus, official reality is preserved.
A hole ISN’T punched in the literal and figurative sky. Instead, citizens go about their business and their lives.
“Hi, I’m an amnesiac.”
“Me too.”
Collective reality is often maintained through omission. A shocking event occurs, an event which, if pursued and investigated, would change the course of history. The press is forced to cover the event…which then sinks below the waves. By design.
If you assembled, say, a hundred such shocking occurrences end to end, and you watched them bob in the water and then disappear from view, the residue—what is left over—would be official reality.
The event I cite most often in these pages occurred on July 26, 2000. That was the day the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, published a review by Dr. Barbara Starfield, a respected and revered public health expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. The review was titled: “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?”
Dr. Starfield concluded that the U.S. medical system kills 225,000 people a year. In a follow-up interview I did with her, she said this was a conservative estimate.
Extrapolate: Every decade, the U.S. medical system (through FDA approved, correctly prescribed medicines, and mistreatment in hospitals) kills 2.25 MILLION Americans. Let that sink in.
When Dr. Starfield’s review was published in the year 2000, a flurry of mainstream press articles appeared. Then: nothing.
No follow-up. No investigation. No relentless probing by the mainstream press. The story died.
As if it never happened. The “it” being Dr. Starfield’s report and the fact of 2.25 million medically caused deaths per decade.
Gone.
Archived in a never-never undersea library of vague memories.
Indeed, I once spoke with a physician about the Starfield Report and he said, “Was that a real review? Was it actually published? I think I heard something about it.”
I said, “You mean it might have been a dream you had? Just a dream?”
You’ve heard the term “alternative reality?” Well, that’s the one eight billion people on Earth are living in. Now.
The actual reality has been submerged by the eyes, ears, and mouth of the public: the major media News.