The Real British X-Files 239
blakeharris snips from a site called The X-Journals: "Nick Pope used to work for the British Ministry of Defense and for 3 years headed up their UFO project. His remit was to investigate UFO sightings reported to the British government, looking for evidence of any potential threat, or anything judged to be of any 'defence significance.'" Some very interesting anecdotes in here, as well as some background on how certain files about these sightings came to be preserved in the first place.
British English (Score:4, Informative)
Britain definitely does not have a Ministry of Defense and we also don't have a TV License either.
You can find the documents here (Score:4, Informative)
The third batch are at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos/ [nationalarchives.gov.uk] and then there's a link on the right two the first two batches.
It's fairly interesting that as with the US documents there's no smoking guns here but there are a lot of 'yeah that was experimental or military but we couldn't admit it at the time' and the rest is 'we have no idea what that was.' So either they're playing a meta-game here or there really is nothing but 'man that unidentified thing sure was... unidentified.' I think it's unlikely that two such incompetent entities could do such a brilliant job of covering up something as huge as decades (or millenia) long alien visitations, but this won't prove it either way.
Re:British English (Score:4, Informative)
And I'll add "My Bad" if you actually do have TV licenses over there, and were being sarcastic.
We do, it's used to (mostly) fund the BBC. I think it provides decent value for what we get, but it does seem wrong that even those who don't watch the BBC or use any of there services still have to pay it if they want to own a TV in the UK.
Careful on using "deliberately" (Score:5, Informative)
QUOTE:What this meant was that prior to 1967, few UFO files had survived this process and with a few exceptions, UFO files from the Fifties and early Sixties had been destroyed.There was nothing sinister about this and such decisions were made all the time on a wide range of subjects
emphasis mine. Furthermore the reading of your post make it sound as if there was something to read that it is intentionnaly kept from eye as something sinister. but the conclusion of the author is different :
QUOTE: I am always reluctant to use the word disclosure, because in ufology the word is often associated with the work of Dr Steven Greer, whose Disclosure Project has become something resembling a political campaign (as has Exopolitics) aimed at ending the UFO cover-up in which many conspiracy theorists believe. But I do use the word (with a small d and not a capital letter!) because in a very real sense, disclosure is precisely what the MoD is doing in relation to documents and files. Much has already been released and there's more to come. These are exciting times.
Emphasis mine. You sound more like thos conspiracy theorist he speaks of in his conclusion than somebody open to all possibilities, including the very highly probable possibility that there is indeed NOTHING really important to be disclosed, except data for a sociologic/psychologic study.
Re:British English (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Careful on using "deliberately" (Score:3, Informative)
There was nothing sinister about this and such decisions were made all the time on a wide range of subjects
There's nothing sinister going on! Nothing sinister is happening, whatsoever. Nothing is happening, and it still isn't sinister! Let me give you a free clue: when records are being destroyed to prevent the citizenry from reading them, something sinister IS going on. Maybe it's just an appalling amount of waste, but still.
Nick Pope Books: Operation Thunderchild (Score:4, Informative)
Nick Pope has written two science fiction books about alien contact, Operation Thunderchild and Operation Lightning Strike.
I've read Operation Thunderchild and enjoyed it a lot. It is set in Britain, which is nice for us because so much of the other material is set in the US and copies from itself so much that one film is like another. It also deals quite well with the whole difficulty that governments have in working out what's happening from lots of confused reports, deciding how to tackle the problem, understanding the intent of the ufos and when and what to tell the population.
I like it because the humans have a hard time and I think that's likely.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't bother (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry this is me just being pedantic but this is a major pet peeve of mine.
Do they know what people saw in all of those instances? No they don't and that makes it a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object). Does it make it alien? I don't know. It could be alien it could be something completely human made. I'm open to whatever the evidence suggests.
UFO != alien
Now back to our normally non-ranty programming.