Sovereignty and the UFO

reply to post by RussHaywood


but doesn't it to be a fact that all these occurrences need at least lead to some real open scientific research on universities, without ridiculing or total dismissing it? I mean look at the news data thats coming out lately about all those habitable planets and stuff, I guess It will not take long anymore and the sovereignty will be a fact, and they have to open faculty for studying these subjects, Its way out of modern thinking. And they don,t want to rewrite all that has known that we as humans have discovered.If Columbus hadn't proved the earth was round we were still thinking it was flat...

reply to post by 0bserver1


Yeah, great point! I would think the science community would be all over studying UFOs. How exciting is even the idea, right?!?

I think the UFOs may be communicating an simple message: "we are here, you can't control us, and there is sooo muuuch that you don't know; but we respect your Human Space." To respect us means they likely can't be too forceful with their proof. And because there's no clear proof, Academia will have a very hard time using empirical human controls. And if pseudo-science is the death of an Academic, then so too is the study of UFOs.


Sure, in proving the world is round, we could do some math and buy a boat. But to prove a UFO, means UFOs need to submit to human measures and controls--which they do not. And I think this is part of our lesson....

Originally posted by Nicorette

It's a good article, fair to the subject matter and definitely worth reading, despite the dense, boring and unfriendly writing style typical of such academic prose.

The idea that even serious, scientifically minded people can't take UFOs seriously because it is upsetting to their anthropocentric world view is very persuasive.

Nicorette, it certainly is mate -as TeaAndStrumpets points out in this post, the article also brings up some important points about irrational scepticism as oppose to true scepticism.

I don't know if you've seen it but there's another article below concerning the UFO subject that has been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal and it also makes some good points about UFO denial, precision propaganda and media-government collusion.

'History of Government Management of UFO Perceptions through Film and Television'

A major new article on the subject on government manipulation of UFO-themed media products is accessible from today as an advance publication for the Spring 2011 issue of 49th Parallel - a journal of North American Studies jointly run through the UK universities of Birmingham and Nottingham.

This is one of only a small handful of articles dealing with UFOs and entertainment-media-control ever to have been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and is all the more unusual in that it treats UFOs not as a mere cultural abstraction, but as a real, physical phenomenon of considerable concern to officialdom..

link

Cheers.

Researcher Brad Sparks reviews Dr. Wendt and Dr. Duvall’s paper 'Sovereignty and the UFO' and makes some great points about National Security, securitization and government UFO documents:

“Important PolySci Paper On Government ‘UFO Taboo’

They conclude that the "UFO taboo", as they call it, is due to fears by governments that the UFO, as a 'possible' not necessarily proven manifestation of ET visitation, is a threat to their sovereignty, to their power and control. Even though the authors say one would think that governments would be interested in at least investigating UFOs, as a possible national security threat, they do not. They say the modern state does not want to even investigate UFOs since even the admission of the possibility of UFO reality can diminish their power and control over their people.

They say that science follows along in the footsteps of the modern state in perpetuating the UFO taboo because the UFO threatens our anthropocentrism, our uniqueness in the universe. Thus scientific anthropocentrism undergirds the political controls that initiated and continue to enforce the UFO taboo.

A down to earth way to put their thesis is that governments are run by small-minded, rigid bureaucrats who cannot tolerate new ideas, and are too limited in their imagination to allow for "other realities.."

This is a serious intellectual effort and a very worthy contribution to political science and UFO studies both. It is a welcome relief from the usual vitriolic debunker treatments. It is written in a collegial academic style without rancor. They make very well nuanced arguments.

On securitization and government UFO documents.

After all the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) ordeals and even lawsuits to pry loose government UFO documents, and uncover the facts about USAF, CIA and British MoD investigations of UFOs, how can one seriously contend there is no "securitization" of the UFO subject by governments?

Many documents are now being disclosed for the first time only after a half century of unwarranted secrecy. There are approximately 225,000 pages of USAF UFO documents languishing in the National Archives and never yet fully studied by researchers since their public release in 1976.

I have reviewed 100,000's of pages of AF and CIA documents on UFOs and other subjects, and interviewed about 100 CIA Directors, Deputy Directors, and officials in AFIN, NSA, DIA, and other agencies, down to intelligence analyst level. Both the AF and the CIA have "actually looked for UFOs", contrary to Wendt and Duvall, and they "found" them.

link

Good article from Billy Cox about Wendt and Duvall's paper, academic ignorance of the UFO subject and a three-hour panel discussion concerning 'UFOs: Encounters by Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials.'

A Crack In The Wall


Hate to keep working a plowed field, but today we need to revisit the seminal “Sovereignty and the UFO” essay in the journal of Political Theory. That's because of what's happening tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

The "Sovereignty" piece, penned by political scientists Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall in 2008, laid out a theory for why America’s higher-learning institutions were incapable of entertaining serious debates on The Great Taboo. The disconnect was more political than scientific, and the result, they argued, was intellectual poverty on a broad scale.

“If academics’ first responsibility is to tell the truth,” they declared, “then the truth is that after sixty years of modern UFOs, human beings still have no idea what they are, and are not even trying to find out. That should surprise and disturb us all, and cast doubt on the structure of rule that requires and sustains it.”

At American University, international relations professor Patrick Jackson, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education at the School of International Service, is not only familiar with the Wendt/Duvall piece, he sympathizes with major portions of it. “Science is the excitement of not knowing. I’d like to think we want our students to think more broadly than to simply reproduce in some form or fashion the same old idea they’ve heard all their lives,” says Jackson. “I mean, what is tenure if not to explore what Nietzche called untimely thoughts?”

Accordingly, on Wednesday, Jackson has volunteered to sub for PBS science reporter Miles O’Brien (scheduling conflict) and moderate AU’s three-hour panel discussion “UFOs: Encounters by Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials.” This is a free public event extending from an honors colloquium taught by cinema professor John Weiskopf. The lineup includes USAF veteran Charles Halt (the Bentwaters incident), retired NASA scientist Richard Haines (National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena founder), Roswell investigator Thomas Carey, and New York Times bestselling author Leslie Kean (UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record)..


Link

I read the whole darn thing.
It was very well done and certainly points to a gaping hole
in our academic studies( or lack there of )in UFO studies.

Nothing in my opinion points more to the phenomena being real
than the zero effort applied by institutions since the Condon report.
Which is now a known sham.

Scientists study how many feathers are on a golden cheek warbler but
because of a state sanctioned taboo regarding the UFO phenomena, it is nothing more
than the lower classes overactive imagination .
What a waste.

Very dense read, but worth it. Not looking forward to it, but I know I'll have to read it at least twice more to boil it all down in a way that can be summarized in a more friendly fashion.

I had already come to many of the same realizations myself, but the explicit effects of UFO reality on sovereignty and even an examination of what sovereignty is and how it manifests were something I had not really delved into.

I think it's easy to intuit the potential impacts that ET visitation might have on Terran tribalism and other Earthly institutions, but this paper really brings those considerations into sharper focus.

I think one important element of the paper to recognize is that ignorance about UFOs is necessary to preserve sovereignty. The threats to sovereignty are not just related to the explicit threat posited by direct contact with a vastly more intelligent and powerful civilization, but, rather, even knowledge of a completely benign ET civilization with proven intent to not interfere with Earthly affairs might shake the foundations of Earthly power.

Wouldn't tribal, racial, ethnic, and nationalistic divisions seem trivial once we recognize the position of humanity in the broader universe? If sovereignty is based on people surrendering some of their personal power in exchange for establishment of an authority that protects societal norms, as well as protecting us from the "Other", what happens when our norms come into question and our authorities have no power to protect us from vastly superior "Others"?

At best, we all surrender to a greater Planetary, or even Galactic, sovereignty and humanity is united as it struggles to find it's place in a newly revealed universe and realities we had previously been blind to.

At worst, as old tribal boundaries start to crumble, humanity itself falls into a state of global civil war, between those that accept and embrace a shared Terran identity under the umbrella of a greater Planetary/Galactic sovereignty and those who refuse to let go of old divisions and accept the new laws and norms of either a unified human society, or that of a greater galactic society that might expect us to adapt to their norms and accept their laws.

Of course, given our aptitude for self delusion and denial, maybe we'd just shrug and maintain the status quo, after a period of debate and worry. Perhaps, short of invasion or assimilation, we'd just pretend not to notice the Emperor has no Clothes and continue to accept current systems of sovereignty and the petty things that divide us.

a reply to: karl 12

There are probably several facets to it, but really, what advantage does the government have in coming forward with the information? Everything is ok right now, the people who are interested in the subject know they exist, and everyone else is perfectly fine living ignorantly of them.

Now there are those who think everyone needs to know ! and right now!, but really, whats the harm in letting those people remain unfulfilled...

From the sovereignty perspective, no one really wants the to see the evening news anchor ending with, "good night, hope you dont abducted, nothing anyone can do about it...", its the truth, but again, nothing we can do about it when we are thousands of years behind them in technology, maybe millions.

Awesome, in-depth analysis of a controversial yet profoundly important topic long neglected, with intent, by academia.

As a professor myself, it is refreshing to see my colleagues occasionally dip their toes into the forbidden ocean and tempt fate (i.e., their careers, reputations, funding, etc.) in a very gutsy move. Maybe they're close to retirement (in '08? - still there today '14?) and consequently were willing to take the risk. Not me. I have a few years left in tenure and at my institution something like this would land me squarely on the 'black list', at best. Sad, but true.

Imagine what we could discover is more scholars attacked this subject with equal vigor and diligence. As you all likely suspect, however, the government's own internal intellectual community has probably done a great deal of investigation, analysis, and perceptual study on this, probably for years. Epistemic sharing of such 'sovereign' bodies is verboten, however, and thus, you and I, for the immediate future, will, unfortunately be left ignorant.

*sigh*

Maybe we can expect enlightenment to descend only from above. It's not coming from below anytime soon...