Mr. Hill outlines a lot but mainly cites the President’s failure to move on much of anything. I would concur, maybe even go so far as to agree with this article from the TomDispatch that Obama’s first term is really no different from Bush’s third term.

Regardless of the perception that most people have of the US government, the truth is that my home nation has turned away from Republic or Democracy and has embraced Corpratocracy, a system that flourishes under the environment described by Steven Hill in the Guardian,

But it must be recognised that it’s not just Obama’s shortcomings that are causing the problem. The very structure of the American political system is at the heart of these failures. For example, thwarting Obama on a regular basis is an unrepresentative senate where “minority rule” prevails and undermines what a majority of the country may want. With two senators elected per state, regardless of population, California with more than 35 million people has the same number of senators as Wyoming with just half a million residents. This constitutional arrangement greatly favours low population states, many of which tend to be conservative, producing what one political analyst has called “a weighted vote for small-town whites in pickup trucks with gun racks.”

In addition, the senate’s use of that arcane rule known as the “filibuster” means you need 60 out of 100 votes to stop unlimited debate on a bill and move to a vote. A mere 41 senators, representing as little as 20% of the nation’s population, can stymie the other 80%. Given a vastly unrepresentative senate wielding its anti-majoritarian filibuster, it is hardly surprising that minority rule in the senate consistently undermines majority rule, whether on healthcare, financial industry reform, environmental legislation and many other policies.

Pile on to that an uncompetitive, winner-take-all electoral system, marinated in money and special interest influence, and the sclerotic US political scene is deeply troubling. None of these anti-democratic structural features are going away any time soon. Unless Barack Obama is able to demonstrate a better level of political skill than he has shown so far, everyone needs to fasten their seatbelts. The world is about to enter a challenging phase where the US – the undisputed leader of the free world for the past 60 years – is going to rapidly cede its place at the head of the line. It appears that the wheels may be coming off the world’s post-war leader, and not even Barack Obama can stop it happening.

I’m trying to be optimistic but I don’t see any positive outcomes from growing American public frustration with the system. Someone that comes along with a solution to this gridlock could easily be a demagogue or a noble soul. However, history seems to favor the tyrant. With the military power of the United States, that could be a dangerous nation. Speculation aside, it is going to be a rough decade for the falling empire of the red, white and blue. A decade I don’t necessarily want to be associated with.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: global policy, politics, united states

This book blew my mind. It was the first truly scientific approach to the issue, free of pseudoscience and physics vocabulary masquerading as intellect. Originally published in 1979, Messengers of Deception describes the social impacts of the UFO movement and reveals a serious issue with the common belief in UFOs that will have serious implications for global policy.

Vallee became interested in UFOs primarily during 1961 as he witnessed French astronomers destroying tape which included UFO footage because the scientists didn’t want their credentials questioned. What true scientist destroys evidence that doesn’t fit into the overarching paradigm? (Presumably many) Observing this feat led Dr. Vallee to America in search of the people associated with the strange objects commonly becoming associated with abduction experiences and alien intelligences.

The turning point in Vallee’s research was when he met a retired intelligence agent who wanted to be known as “Major Murphy”. Murphy stated from his intelligence days that 95% of the information for any story is free but mostly unimportant, what is needed is the “other 5 percent… but will [you] have to pay a much higher price to get it”. Essentially saying that the commonly viewed phenomena are what “it” (people or intelligences) wants you to see. The real way to get to the truth was by examining what didn’t fit in. The bizarre pieces. The cults and the “contactees”.

95% of the information for any story is free but mostly unimportant, what is needed is the “other 5 percent… but [you] will have to pay a much higher price to get it”.

So why question that UFOs aren’t alien spacecraft in the first place? The first reason to challenge common assumptions is due to the landings themselves. Vallee states that the sheer number of landings are quantitatively impossible. In his files, Dr. Vallee has 2,000 cases of reported landings over 20 years. Since most sightings are between 6pm and 6am, with a peak at 10:30pm, there must many objects that aren’t witnessed. The frequency of sightings drastically decrease after midnight because people go to bed. If the rate at which saucers were spotted was extrapolated out to include those additional hours that’s 30,000 landings. Most independent studies have said that only 1 out of every 10 cases gets reported, giving us 300,000 landings in 20 years! But once again, most of the landings are in remote areas. If humans were evenly distributed about the planet there could easily be as many 3 million landings over a 20 year period. Absolutely preposterous. Why is this important? Firstly, it would seem that we would begin to notice something that happened 3 million times over 20 years but even less obvious is the fact that the UFOs can not be merely random visitors; they must stage their appearance, they must select their witnesses. This is only one piece of evidence in the case made within Messengers of Deception.

Eventually after Vallee reviews the method by which the cults form, spread and disseminate information it becomes apparent that the US federal government and other covert groups are involved if not responsible. Maybe they are searching for answers as well?

In summary, it becomes clear that someone or some group is manipulating social beliefs in UFOs internationally. The pieces of the UFO experience should be dissected into physical, psychological and social. But most importantly, it is the social beliefs of the UFO contactees which could potentially be tapped to quickly bring about social change in a global economic catastrophe. The human wish to be saved from above has always been prevalent and perhaps even more pertinent now than in 1979! The six consequences of the UFO phenomena determined by Vallee are that it widens the gap between scientists and the public, undermines the belief that humans are masters of their own destiny, promotes political unification of the planet, can easily become a new global religion, extraterrestrial intervention is an attractive faith, UFO cults believe in totalitarian systems.

Essentially sociologists poorly understand how new religions form and this could be the start of a new religion unlike any other… with sinister (or benevolent but mostly sinister) consequences. As stated by Dr. Vallee, the scientific proof for UFOs does not matter once enough people believe in them. Perhaps we have already reached that point.

This book was particularly resonant for me because I just read Dr. Rick Strassman’s DMT: The Spirit Molecule which detailed Dr. Strassman’s clinical trials where he injected the DMT compound into humans causing participants to undergo UFO abduction like experiences. But oddly enough, DMT is present within all of us and in all of our tissue. Perhaps the physical portion of the UFO triggers this chemical?

Quite interestingly in an aside, one theory Dr. Vallee proposes for the nature of reality is more like a computer. Where events occurr often because they are mentally referenced, like using the keyword for a google search. I’ve always been plagued by synchronicities and this is the most practical explanation I’ve ever heard for these occasionalisms. And as a direct example, I read about Dr. Vallee’s improbably moment when he arrived at this theory in downtown LA, the very place it happened to him. Even stranger, I started reading Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy the next day on the plane back to Charlotte and when I read a paragraph about the unnecessary excess in American society, McKibben referenced SkyMall… at the precise moment when the flight attendant was on the PA! She even said SkyMall at the moment I read the word! Crazy… perhaps like Vallee states, we are just becoming superstitious.

I’ve witnessed three UFOs myself, all quite convincing and with other people alongside to see the same odd phenomena. UFOs exist but Dr. Vallee provides a compelling case that the commonly accepted public myth of extraterrestrial benefactors may result from a leap of faith encouraged by agents within our own society.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: abduction experiences, alien spacecraft, cults, global policy, intellect, jacques vallee, messengers of deception, sightings, social impacts, truth, ufo phenomena