Kevin Randle's Secret UFO Committee

Ufologist Kevin Randle thinks there’s a secret United State’s government committee in place that holds the secrets about UFOs:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com

MJ-12 may or not be that committee – many ufologists think that the Majic group and the MJ-12 documents are bogus.

Stanton Friedman does not think that.

Kevin Randle is agnostic.

But Mr. Randle does believe that a UFO committee is in situ and has been for some time, since 1947 perhaps, or no later than the early 1950s.

Mr. Randle, as you can see from his latest blog entry (click above), thinks that ufologists should seek out that committee.

It’s not UFOs that Mr. Randle wants to investigate, but that possible clandestine committee and the secrets it holds.

This is interesting….

Instead of unraveling the UFO enigma, Randle and some of his supporters (he has many) believe that once a sub rosa UFO group is unmasked, all the information it has will be forthcoming.

This is patent nonsense.

If there is a secret Unites States UFO group investigating, and has been for some time, the UFO phenomenon (or phenomena), would a smoking gun proof of that group’s existence bring about revelations held in abeyance for 60 years or so now?

The search for a secret committee is some kind of red-herring or distraction that cannot bring about a solution to the UFO riddle.

This is part of the Roswell syndrome: if ufologists can just get the military to open up about the “real Roswell truth” (that aliens crashed there in 1947), the flying saucer matter will finally be answered and ufologists can get on with heir lives.

(Of course, ufologists don’t want the UFO mystery solved; what would they do with their lives if that happened?)

Why is Mr. Randle calling for ufologists to be sidetracked by a scavenger hunt for some possible secret, government UFO group?

We, too, think that there’s a sublimate group in the U.S. government and/or military – the Navy for certain -- investigating UFOs. But we can’t imagine how proving that the committee exists will further or finalize the UFO mystery.

Will the committee throw up its hands and say, “You’ve got us, so here’s what we know about UFOs”?

We think that’s silly as hell.

No committee of government, or anyone other group or individual will yell out the Perry Mason denouement: We’re guilty! Here’s the goods.

Mr. Randle is a die-hard believer that Roswell can be decoded if someone can get their hands on all that the government gathered during that incident.

Now he thinks that cracking the whereabouts and whoabouts of a (maybe) secret UFO study group or investigation committee will provide a final answer to a conundrum that eludes everyone outside that secret group.

It’s crazy, and we’re wondering why a man as brilliant as Kevin Randle offers such a bizarre suggestion…..

Whither Stanton Friedman?

Stan Friedman appeared (again) on Larry King Friday night, July 18th, in a UFO (of course) segment with Seth Shostak, Bill Nye, and others.

Here’s Stan, holding up his latest book for the cameras and audience:



Stan wasn’t talking about his book, no one was. He was just getting some camera time.

Yes, Stan has made a living from the UFO mystery, and one of the few ufologists who have.

But Stan has become, more and more, a promoter of goods rather than a promoter of his ideas.

On the King show, Mr. Friedman made pronouncements that flying saucers – that area of the UFO phenomena he prefers – are from outer space and the evidence is overwhelming.

Yet, he didn’t provide, and never does on such shows, supply that evidence, nor even make an attempt to do so.

He pronounces, from on high, like Moses, that flying saucers are extraterrestrial and the data, the evidence, shows that.

Mr. Friedman doesn’t even trot out one sighting that makes his case, and the time allotted to him allows him to do so.

But Stan Friedman needs to sell books, and get booked, for UFO conferences, et cetera.

He needs to supplement his retirement funds apparently, and that has become his cause primare ever increasingly.

His goal may be self-serving and not evil, but it is bad for ufology, in that it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of those who want to see objectivity about the enigma and not be subjected to persons who are selling wares or themselves.

We like Stan, even adore him almost, but as the face of ufology – the flying saucer part – he is doing a disservice to the whole UFO panoply by appearing to be a guy who wants to support himself rather than get at the ultimate truth.

God bless you Stan Friedman, but please consider the image of ufology that your promotional appearances create….

Ufology needs a Blue Book mind-set (sort of)

While the United States Navy remains UFO oriented with an ongoing and above Top Secret program, the Air Force’s UFO program went underground after the Condon Report and the alleged demise of Project Blue Book.

(We assume that Blue Book didn’t get a different incarnation.)

So what can ufologists take from that beleaguered study?

The Air Force’s Blue Book methodology wasn’t flawed but the ultimate conclusions were skewered, for reasons of incompetence or purposeful disinformation, or any number of other reasons (such as an inability to make sense of the flying saucer/UFO sightings the project gathered information on).

Blue Book took, as you know, UFO data and evaluated it, coming to bizarre conclusions in many instances.

But even after trying to flummox followers of the “study,” there ended up being over seven hundred sightings that the Air Force couldn’t explain away, as the Keyhoe argot put it.



What “ufology” should do – and not with those old, hammered sightings – is gather data from current sightings, and evaluate that data.

No one is doing that.

Sure, MUFON and other UFO organizations are gathering data, scads of it, but no one, and we mean no one is evaluating, using scientific methodologies, any of that data.

Yes, there are extrapolations by a few ufologists (Rudiak, Sparks, Maccabee, et al.) but those extrapolations are discursive and incomplete, by a long shot.



Blue Book had the right idea; it just wasn’t carried out properly, for reasons cited above.

But the modus was right.

Collect data, collate it (as the robot scientist in the first “Alien” movie had it), and come to a consensus or something more concrete than a consensus.



Can ufologists or anyone in the UFO community do this? Yes, but do they have the will ans/or stamina to do so?

The new “Blue Book” project would be daunting, surely, but if the UFO mystery is to be solved, it will have to be undertaken.

Religion, UFOs, and Bunk

Michael Heiser engages in some very interesting debates at his UFO Religions site:

http://michaelsheiser.com/UFOReligions/

The thrusts are many but his usual and current nemesis is Monsignor Corrado Balducci.

Balducci, the Vatican’s premiere demonologist, thinks that UFO creatures, even those that allegedly abduct humans, are, perhaps, of a higher nature than us, and more spiritually evolved, thus denigrating the idea in some UFO quarters that abductors and UFO aliens are maligant and/or evil as one blog commentator has it:

Balducci the Individualist

There’s a problem with infusing, continually, religious elements in the UFO debate, and that problem is the mixture of theological myth with ufological myth: UFOs are a phenomenon (or phenomena as we contend) and not a tureen into which every cockeyed hypothesis should be poured.

Religion is itself an amalgam of hopeful theories about God, human life and morality, and an afterlife perhaps.

Ufology is a potpourri of screwed-up and, sometimes, unique conjecture, which doesn’t need one more set of variables based upon the idea that there’s a God (and demons) who have something to do with UFOs.

The only link between UFOs and God, or between ufology and theology, is that God is an unknown and UFOs are an unknown.

That’s it.

Michael Heiser is brilliant and his views follow suit.

He keeps the UFO/religion debate intellectual.

But let a few UFO fanatics or evangelical Christian/Islamic hooples get into the fray and all hell will break loose, and not the Hell of theologians, where the Devil can be accomodated.

Opening the UFO discussion to Christian fundamentalists is akin to Pandora opening her chest of evils, which have afflicted mankind for millennia.

But if you can’t help yourself, go to Michael Heiser’s blog and sites.

You will not be engulfed in nonsense, as is the case elsewhere in the UFO universe when religion gets added to the UFO mystery.

Why ufologists need UFOs to be extraterrestrial

We’ve raised some ire because of our suggestion a few months back that UFOs will only be explained when the UFO old-guard dies off, and a new breed of ufologist takes over.

http://ufoprovo.blogspot.com/2008/03/deaths-will-clean-ufo-palate.html

And a recent note from Chile --http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/2008/07/chile-dying-days-of-ufology.html -- bemoaned the death of that country’s ufology stalwarts.

But why are old-guard ufologists so antsy or anxious to indicate or prove that UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin?

Some of the questions that might be asked of alien visitors are these:

What is the life-span of your species?

How does your species procreate?



How does maintain your species remain healthy?

What medicines or medical techniques can you share with Earthlings (to prolong their lives or make them better)?



Is death inevitable or has your species overcome death (except by Roswellian “accidents”)?



Is there life after death?

Do you have a God?



And so on…

You see, the UFO old-guard doesn’t just want to clear up the UFO mystery; there’s a survival instinct at work nowadays among those who’ve reached senility and are knocking at death’s door.

The Halls. Friedmans, Randles, Schuesslers, Steigers, even Clarks et al. are near that time when they’ll be meeting the grim reaper, as we’ve already noted.



So, of course, they’d like to know the answers to the questions above, for a number of reasons but most of all because they have concern – personal concern! – for how alien beings might answer them.

Therefore, those ufologists zero in on the extraterrestrial hypothesis because it may help them through those final years of their Earthly lives.

It’s not scientific, but when has ufology been scientific?

Now the job is getting our hands on alien visitors and pumping them for the ultimate answers to life – not for their sakes, but for ours, especially the old dogs of ufology.

The Failure(s) of Ufology

For 60 years some persons have studied the flying saucer phenomenon, a few even making a career out of the thing called ufology.

In science many accomplishments have been achieved during the same 60 year period.

As examples, the following links touch upon a few of those accomplishments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_United_States

http://www.scidacreview.org/0602/pdf/science.pdf

http://www.er.doe.gov/accomplishments_awards/index.htm

Now what are the ufological accomplishments we might list?

There aren’t any.

The study of UFOs, the research and investigation(s) have produced nothing, nothing at all that provides an inkling as to what UFOs are or even if they truly exist in tangible form.

Ufology hasn’t even come up with a working hypothesis which might lead to some kind explanation for the UFO phenomena.

This is shameful, considering the effort(s) that have gone into the study and ruminations about the elusive but palpable objects or images that have appeared in all the skies of the Earth, supposedly in numbers that indicate a UFO pandemic.

Taking all the materials about flying saucers and UFOs which have appeared since 1947, it is pathetically surprising that no one has made a dent in the UFO enigma.

Methodologies have been suggested, but have never been instigated in any viable way.

And while reams of “explanations” have been proffered, none – not one – has come close to resolving even one aspect of the UFO riddle.

Data accumulation about flying saucers and/or UFOs is rife, and some persons have done yeoman work in gathering that data, along with anecdotal accounts of sightings, even so-called abductions of humans by UFO entities.

Where does the problem lie? In the mystery itself: UFOs just can’t be explained or understood by humankind?

Are ufologists ill-equipped to fathom the UFO mystery, inept as it were?

Is a scientific, academic discipline needed and ufologists haven’t come up with one?

Nick Redfern gives voice to ufology’s premiere statesman, Stanton Friedman at one of his blogs:

http://www.ufomystic.com/the-redfern-files/saucer-reality/

But Mr. Friedman offers nothing concrete, just conjecture; interesting conjecture perhaps but containing a litany of UFO clichés that no longer provoke even a smidgen of response from UFO devotees.

Mr. Friedman’s analyses are old-hat, and lead ufologists nowhere unfortunately.

Redfern, along with persons like Mac Tonnies and Greg Bishop, also offer suggestions about what UFOs might be or where they may come from, but their suggestions, while intriguing, lack Friedman’s cachet, and only resonate with desperate UFO hobbyists who would love any kind of solution to the thing (UFOs) that gnaws at their curiosity gene.

The ufological dance has to come to an end, or has to take a new tack.

Paul Kimball’s idea that today’s ufologists must build upon (stand on the shoulders of) the work of old-guard ufologists like Jerry Clark doesn’t work for us.

http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2008/06/jerome-clark-on-anomalous-phenomena.html

That is a prescription for further failure. As old-timer Richard Hall, a logician of sorts, might have it: If the premise is wrong, everything that follows will be wrong.

And the premises of ufologists have been wrong, otherwise the UFO mystery would have been solved by now, as science has solved some of the issues it deals with.

Perhaps, as we state again, the UFO phenomenon is unsolvable, essentially so, like the mystery that is God.



But since we think UFOs are phenomena [sic], it seems to us that some element – one or two – could be resolved, at least.

And that might leave the core UFO mystery open to some brilliant person or group of persons of an Einsteinian bend who will uncloak the damnable things which remain unidentified.

We can hope….