Erstwhile Urban Wanderer

July 28, 2008 – Discussion of alien visitation, its probability, its relationship to god, and the fallibility of human perception. Also a philosophical discussion about belief systems and honest devotion to truth above all.

By Dave Eriqat

It was back around the year 2000, and one night I was gazing out the window of my San Francisco apartment, admiring the city lights, when I observed a mysterious, perfectly spherical, orange-white, glowing orb moving, or rather floating, directly toward me. My apartment was high on a hill and overlooked both the city and San Francisco Bay. When I first noticed the orb it was over the bay, but it traveled deceptively quickly: one minute it was over the bay and the next it was seemingly about to crash into my apartment! Its shape and silent, graceful, floating motion was like nothing I had ever seen. My heart was pounding and my mind was racing through the catalog of aircraft patterns housed in my brain, but there was nothing in there that matched the glowing orb. This glowing orb was definitely something new, and even its close approach didn’t help me identify it.

When it looked as though it could come no closer without crashing, it abruptly turned to my left, toward the city, revealing itself to be an ordinary blimp festooned with thousands of small lightbulbs. Seen from the front it presented a perfectly spherical orb, but seen from the side it was clearly an elliptical blimp. My thrill dissipating into disappointment, I sat down and allowed my heart return to its normal pulse rate.

UFO Over San Francisco, March 26, 2004

I found the above photograph on a site called UFO Evidence, which hosts a treasure trove of UFO photographs. I selected this particular photograph because it closely depicts what I saw. The view of the city in this photograph is similar to the view from my apartment, although my apartment was higher up the hill and my view was less obstructed by buildings. And while this photograph is nowhere near as clear as what I saw – I honestly feared the blimp was going to crash into my building, it was so close – the oblong shape seen here is not unlike the elliptical profile of the blimp I saw. And the color is the same as that of the blimp I saw, as near as I can recall.

Am I A UFO Buff?

Now, you might be thinking that I’m “into” UFOs, but I am not. I find UFOs intriguing, but let’s remember that these are unidentified flying objects. It’s difficult to get terribly worked up about something that’s unidentified. Unfortunately, many people today make the semantic mistake of equating the acronym, “UFO,” with “alien spacecraft.” I firmly believe that people see UFOs, that is, unidentified objects, but I’m more than a little skeptical that people have ever seen alien spacecraft or alien beings here on planet Earth.

I’ve wanted to share my thoughts on this subject for a while. Now that there seems to be a spate of recent UFO sightings and a supposed admission by a former U.S. astronaut that there is some kind of alien coverup, it seems like an opportune time to share my thoughts. Just by coincidence I also happened to finish reading a book titled Flying Saucers, composed of psychiatrist Carl Jung’s notes from the 1940s and 1950s about UFOs. (Another famous psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, could probably offer a titillating interpretation of alien abduction stories and the concomitant anal probing.)

Do I utterly dismiss the idea that alien visitation is possible? Absolutely not! In fact, on many nights I can be found outside, arms raised to the heavens, imploring aliens to abduct me and take me away from this planet and its moronic humans! Just kidding, I’m not that nuts … not yet. I do believe that there are literally millions of planets in the universe harboring life, some less advanced than humans, some more advanced. I believe the universe is some 15 billion years old and that the Earth is about a third as old, so it seems likely to me that there are lots of life forms out there that are far more advanced than we are. I just don’t happen to believe that they are visiting our planet, and not because I don’t want to believe it – for I can think of nothing I’d rather experience in life than meeting an alien from another world – but because I have never seen a single shred of physical evidence that aliens are visiting our planet.

Although I believe there are millions of planets harboring life, those planets are spread throughout the universe among billions of galaxies. People who claim to have seen alien beings describe life forms that sound as though they are no more than a few hundred thousands more evolved than us. A few hundred thousand years, however, is the blink of an eye compared to the age of the universe. In other words, the beings people claim to have seen are quite close to us in evolutionary terms. So my reluctance to believe in alien visitation is based on the seemingly infinitesimal probability that there exists a planet harboring life forms only slightly more evolved than us (in terms of the age of the universe) and close enough to make travel to Earth practical. Of course, my assumption about the difficulty of traveling vast distances through the universe is based on my understanding that one cannot travel faster than the speed of light. That popular notion may well be wrong – some popular scientific beliefs have eventually turned out to be wrong – however, for the time being that’s the knowledge I have to work with. Some alien visitation proponents claim that aliens know how to travel faster than the speed of light, perhaps by “bending” the universe or some such thing. Well, I’m open-minded enough to be persuaded that they can do this, but I need to see some proof! Another question I have is why aliens would go to all the trouble and expense to come here and then not reveal themselves or their purpose. I could perhaps understand their exercising caution during their first encounter with us, but they’ve supposedly been visiting our planet regularly for over sixty years! Surely that’s long enough to exercise caution. Where in the annals of our own history do we see human explorers maintaining such degrees of stealth and caution when encountering new peoples?

I consider myself to be a scientist at heart, even if not by credentials. The unbiased pursuit of the truth should be the goal of every genuine scientist. A true scientist should not fear disabusing himself of a once cherished hypothesis. A hypothesis that’s honestly based on the facts and observations available at one point in time should be discarded without hesitation or shame should the collective facts change. At the present time, I see no evidence that aliens are visiting the planet. Sure, there are many claims by people that aliens are visiting the planet, but without physical evidence to back up those claims, the claims are little more than hearsay. Let me be clear, should physical evidence of alien visitation emerge, I will change my position in a heartbeat. I would honestly welcome such proof! I share astronomer Carl Sagan’s attitude, expressed in his book titled The Demon-Haunted World (page 73):

I don’t think anyone could be more interested than I am in whether we’re being visited. It would save me so much time and effort to be able to study extraterrestrial life directly and nearby, rather that at best indirectly and at great distance. Even if the aliens are short, dour, and sexually obsessed – if they’re here, I want to know about them.

I admit that the photos I saw at UFO Evidence are intriguing, but they do not constitute physical evidence. And unfortunately, many of the photos are too blurry to see much of anything and none of them show anything that could conclusively be called an alien spacecraft. (Why are there never any closeup photographs of alien spacecraft?) Some of the photographs show objects that could be unusual aircraft (such as military stealth planes) viewed from unusual angles, for example, from the back and underneath.

Compelling though they may be, photographs are not physical evidence; they are at best proxies for physical evidence. Physical evidence is something physical, such as something one could hold in their hand or examine under a microscope. Physical evidence is something that anyone could examine and from which likely derive the same conclusion as any other person. Circumstantial evidence, such as blurry photographs and hazy recollections of experiences, needs to be “interpreted” in order to draw a conclusion and that process of interpretation is subject to the psychological biases of the interpreter.

Photographs are also notoriously easy to fake, especially today, what with digital photography and computers. I know, I know, all the people who submitted these photographs claim that they are not retouched in any way, but where’s the proof that they have not been tampered with? At one time crop circles were widely believed to be constructed by aliens, but today the vast majority of crop circles are acknowledged to be the work of terrestrial human beings. As to physical evidence, where is there a museum where I can go see a piece of an alien spacecraft or an alien skeleton in a display case?

Some people claim that aliens have formed a special pact with the U.S. Government and shared their technology with the U.S. Government. Where’s the proof? Prove to me that military stealth airplanes are based on alien technology. Prove to me that the U.S. possesses other weapons derived from alien technology. Prove to me that “Area 51” houses alien spacecraft and is anything more than just a secret military base. And why have aliens singled out the U.S. for their beneficence? If, on the contrary, alien visitation is a worldwide phenomenon and aliens are in contact with many governments, not just the U.S. Government, then how is it that the thousands of people involved, people who are scattered all over the globe, people who work for different governments and harbor different loyalties, have been able to maintain such secrecy and suppress the evidence so thoroughly for some sixty years? Consider other major secrets that the “authorities” have tried to maintain for shorter periods of time. Were they successful?

Alternative Explanations For UFOs

Carl Jung’s essential point in his aforementioned book seems to be that some UFO sightings are like hallucinations, projections of the subconscious mind. At times of acute anxiety or emotional tension, the subconscious mind will create vivid, realistic images in order to express itself.

According to Jung, the circular shapes often ascribed to alien spacecraft are ancient, primitive ones, probably innate to our psyches. The same circular shapes and ethereal qualities attributed to alien spacecraft also appear in paintings inspired by artists’ dreams, lending support to Jung’s hypothesis that some UFO sightings are projections from our subconscious, just like dreams.

I think Jung is onto something. Most people don’t appreciate how much psychology alters our perception. People assume that if they’ve seen something with their own eyes, then the image stored in their minds is infallible. However, studies of peoples’ observational skills in various situations have shown this to be false. Different people seeing the same thing can have markedly different recollections of it.

Another plausible explanation for UFOs is the transformation of perfectly normal phenomena, such as flashes of light, reflections, planets, or aircraft into UFOs. For instance, some of the photographs of UFOs that I have seen look as if they could simply be odd-looking aircraft (such as military stealth planes) viewed from unusual angles. Under the right circumstances, if the viewer’s mind is predisposed to seeing UFOs, ordinary phenomena can look like something otherworldly. Consider my experience with the glowing blimp. What if I had not been able to observe the blimp long enough to see it change course and fully reveal its shape? What if I had seen that blimp head-on while driving on a windy mountain road and had to prematurely return my attention to the road? I might never have identified that UFO as a blimp and it might have been recorded as an authentic UFO sighting.

Deception Versus Perception

I am aware that there are lots of photographs of UFOs, which would seem to undermine the theory that some UFOs are mental projections, but consider my comments about photographs above. Also consider that while the number of people who have seen UFOs probably measures in the millions, the number of published photographs of UFOs measures in the thousands. That means that on the order of only one person in a thousand who has seen a UFO has gone to the trouble of taking a photograph of the UFO and publishing it. Does anyone disagree that the ratio of unscrupulous individuals among us is far greater than one in a thousand, and perhaps even greater than one in a hundred? In other words, it is not outside the realm of possibility that every single photograph of UFOs ever published is a fake, although I’m not asserting that to be the case. In addition, it’s helpful to bear in mind that some people who publish such photographs are motivated by dreams of profit or fame, which increases the likelihood of their publishing a fake. Thus, these photographs are not statistically random samples, but are published by a self-selected, minuscule minority of the population who may have ulterior motives for publishing them.

I experienced a rather instructive lesson recently regarding the purported capabilities of cell phones, which I think has some bearing on the subject of UFO photographs. Several weeks ago I read an article in which its authors claimed to have cooked an egg by placing it between two cell phones that were in communication with each other for one hour. Being something of an engineer and being familiar with the way cell phones work, I was a little skeptical about this claim. But since I’m not particularly interested in cell phones and seldom use them, I didn’t pursue an investigation of these claims and simply filed the information away in my mind under the category of “possibly true.” A couple of weeks later I saw several videos demonstrating cell phones apparently popping corn. Again, I was skeptical because cell phones don’t communicate directly with each other, so placing anything in between two cell phones that are connected together in a call shouldn’t do any more than placing something beside a cell phone. Nevertheless, I could not deny what I saw with my own eyes! I saw the corn popping, evidently due to the radio emissions from the cell phones. So I sent an e-mail containing a link to those videos to my friends and family and advised them to minimize their use of cell phones.

Well, I’m embarrassed to admit that I got burned. A few weeks after I sent out my warning I ran across an article on snopes.com explaining how the corn popping videos were a “marketing” ploy. The lesson here is that there are people out there who perpetrate convincing hoaxes that can fool even skeptics like me, and it’s very, very difficult to dismiss what you have seen with your own eyes, regardless of whether it’s authentic or a hoax, and especially if you are receptive to seeing that particular phenomenon. In my case, the article about the egg being cooked between two cell phones had, without my realizing it, predisposed me to being susceptible to the subsequent hoax involving the popping corn. In addition, back in the early 1990s I read an article by a cell phone engineer who said that the radio emissions from cell phones were, in fact, dangerous, and he discontinued using them! So I followed suit and stopped using mine too. Of course, the cell phones back then had roughly the same dimensions as bricks and were analog and had to transmit a signal ten times as far as today’s petite digital cell phones. Nevertheless, that warning has always been firmly lodged in my subconscious and I didn’t get another cell phone until years later when low-power digital ones came out. So that story, combined with the egg-cooking story left my mind highly receptive to the corn popping hoax. To my credit, I swallowed my humiliation and sent out another e-mail to my friends and family recanting my warning and telling them that it was likely a hoax. But the point I’m trying to make is that past experiences or convincing tales can leave a person’s mind receptive to “seeing” what is, in fact, not real.

My Hypothesis

Based on Jung’s ideas I formed a hypothesis that if he were correct that anxiety or emotional tension were partly to blame for UFO sightings, then there ought to be a correlation between between social or political crises and the number of UFO sightings. It was difficult to locate good information about the frequency of UFO sightings over the years, but I finally found some data at an excellent web site called The National UFO Reporting Center, which I plotted below.

UFO sightings per month in the U.S., 1945-2008 (source: http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxevent.html)

Since this web site is called The National UFO Reporting Center, and since the vast majority of the reports in the data set appear to emanate from the U.S., I’ve indicated that the data depicted in the chart applies to the U.S. only. It shows the number of UFO sightings per month from 1945 to 2008.

One curious and prominent pattern in the data is that the number of UFO reports surges in two particular months of each year: June and July. You can observe this peculiarity in the highly periodic spikes in the chart above. Some might dismiss this peculiarity by asserting that people in the U.S. spend more time outdoors during the months of June and July and that’s why they are more likely to observe UFOs then. Perhaps that is the case, however, there are many other nice months to be outdoors, so why is there a pronounced surge in sightings during these two months in particular? This peculiarity in the data demonstrates how human behavior or perception has a significant impact on the frequency of UFO sightings. It’s unlikely that aliens have been visiting our planet more frequently every single June and July for the past sixty years, so these spikes must have something to do with us humans, either in our sightings of UFOs or our reporting of them. One can’t help but wonder, therefore, in what other ways does human behavior or perception influence UFO sightings.

Since my hypothesis is that UFO sightings ought to increase during times of societal anxiety, does the above data support my hypothesis? Since this data is almost entirely from the U.S., we should examine whether there’s a correlation between the data and events in the U.S. The data shows a barely perceptible bulge in UFO sightings following World War II until about 1960. Could the comparatively small rash of UFO reports during this period be related to the hysterical fear of Communism that prevailed, or perhaps to lingering anxiety about the recently ended World War II and whether it was the “last” one? (After all, WWI was supposed to be the “last” one, and then just twenty years later a bigger war came along. So people had ample cause to be apprehensive about future wars.) There is a slight bulge in UFO sightings in the latter half of the 1960s. Could that be due to terrifying and shocking events that occurred a few years earlier, such as the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of JFK? We can discern a significant bulge in UFO sightings in the mid- to late-1970s. Could that bulge be due to anxiety over the Vietnam War which ended in 1975? Or to anxiety over the economic and energy crises of the time? Or to imaginations stimulated by several U.S. missions to the moon between the late 1960s and the early 1970s? We see a lull in UFO sightings between roughly 1980 and 1995, one of the more socio-politically stable and superficially prosperous eras in U.S. history. Interestingly, since about 1995 UFO sightings have skyrocketed, suggesting that perhaps the Internet has played a substantial role in the reporting of UFOs. I suggest that today’s spate of UFO sightings in America is due to the increasing unease Americans are feeling about the economy, energy prices, food prices and prospects for future wars.

While the data I’ve examined here does not conclusively prove my hypothesis (though it does offer some support to it), it does not undermine my hypothesis either.

Alien Visitation And God

I used to have gentle debates with a dear friend about alien visitation. I maintained an open mind, listened to my friend’s arguments, purchased and read some of the books he recommended, but I was never persuaded to his point of view. Our debates often ended with me asking, “Where’s the physical evidence?”

During one such debate my friend said that the lack of physical evidence is proof that there’s a conspiracy to cover up such evidence, and that the existence of this conspiracy proves that there is something to cover up, namely, alien visitation. I told my friend that his argument was circular, at which point he got a little frustrated with me and said I just have to have faith that aliens are visiting the planet in order to see that there is a conspiracy to cover up that fact. I agree with that assertion! If I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that aliens were visiting the planet and yet there was utterly no physical evidence of such, then there would indeed have to exist an ongoing conspiracy to cover up that evidence.

What really struck me was my friend’s use of the word faith and its importance as a cornerstone of his argument. His use of that word suddenly caused me to observe that belief in alien visitation and belief in god were extremely similar: both entities emanate from the heavens, both are omnipotent (at least compared to us) and wield seemingly supernatural powers, both can defy the laws of physics (as we understand them), both are enigmatic and largely invisible, and both have been credited with creating human life on this planet.

Just as with alien visitation, though, I see no evidence whatsoever for the existence of god. And it’s not from failing to look for such evidence. I have looked for evidence of both, but all I have to show for my efforts is conjecture, anecdotes, hearsay, blurry photographs and admonitions to have faith.

I harbor not the least bit of antipathy toward others’ belief in god nor their practice of religion (as long as they don’t foist their beliefs on me). Due to the lack of evidence, I simply don’t believe that god exists. Yet, were someone to present me with unassailable physical evidence for the existence of god, I’d change my point of view faster than they could snap their fingers, and it would not bother me in the least to do so. If the facts change, then a genuine devotion to the truth demands that I change my point of view.

A decade after my debate with my friend in which he said I must have faith in alien visitation, we had another discussion, this time about god and Christianity. During that latter discussion my friend did not manage to persuade me that god exists, but he did largely convince me that he believes that god exists and that Christianity is the world’s true religion! Only later did I realize that my friend had unwittingly confirmed my observation from long ago that belief in alien visitation and belief in god ought to be comfortable bedfellows.

As a final comment, it appears to me that belief in both god and alien visitation creates a conundrum. According to some religions, man is created in god’s image and man is unique in all the universe. If that’s so, then where do aliens fit into this schema? Did god create the aliens too? If so, then maybe aliens, not man, were created in god’s image. If god did not create aliens, but man alone, then who created aliens, another god? If so, then the god that created man is not omnipotent, as is commonly claimed.

Conclusion

I don’t want people to think I’m ridiculing them for believing in alien visitation or god. I am not! I have no predisposition to believing one way or the other, no agenda other than knowing the truth, no argument to prove, no antipathy toward the beliefs of others. As far as I’m concerned, people are free to believe whatever they want as long as they don’t impose their beliefs on me. If kept within that single constraint I think such beliefs are harmless and may be comforting to those who harbor them. I respect others’ beliefs and promise to always be open-minded enough to listen to their rational arguments in support of their beliefs. Who knows? Maybe someday someone will provide me the concrete proof I demand and I’ll be forced to change my mind.

My only interest is to rationally, logically and scientifically examine the evidence and draw conclusions based on the evidence that exists today. Should the body of evidence change in the future, then I’ll reexamine my conclusions. Based on that methodology, I do not believe that aliens are visiting planet Earth. I do, however, enjoy seeing stuff about UFOs and wondering, “What if…”

Update – 6 February 2009

According to this recent article, a researcher estimates that there may be 40,000 planets hospitable to intelligent life in our galaxy alone! Although this is more of a back-of-the-envelope calculation than a robust scientific estimate, it is nevertheless titillating, especially if one multiplies that estimate by millions, if not billions of galaxies!

July 18, 2008 – A firsthand, ground level preview of the future: empty office parks, shopping malls and housing subdivisions.

By Dave Eriqat

I’ve never been much into shopping malls. Actually, I hate the places: the haunting Stepford Wives music, the weird, unnatural lighting, the hordes of zombie-like shoppers, store after store selling the same useless crap. I mean, do we really need a hundred stores selling clothing and shoes and sunglasses? I only go to shopping malls when I need something that can best be found there, like yesterday. I have a bunch of watches that have dead batteries. So I finally got motivated to replace some of the batteries and make the watches usable again. Not possessing the required tools to remove the backs from these watches, I decided to go to a shopping mall to look for a store that could perform this servicing.

I’m not a frequenter of shopping malls, but what I saw yesterday was shocking and unprecedented. In a mall that I estimated had around 100-150 shops, there were around eight prominent retail spaces, including one huge anchor space that were vacant. In addition, almost all of the obnoxious cell phone kiosks the obstruct one’s passage through the mall were empty and available for lease.

The vacancies alone were surprising, but what was shocking and even a bit troubling was the dearth of shoppers. I’ve never seen that before at any mall. You could literally hear a pin drop on the mall’s marble flooring, and even the music was turned down in acknowledgment of the quietness of the place. It was eerie, reminiscent of post-apocalyptic movie sets in films such as The Omega Man, or perhaps even more fittingly, Dawn of the Dead. I really love this latter film, which is set in a shopping mall. In one scene, one of the characters in the film says of the zombies trying to claw their way into the mall, “They don’t really know why they come here. Something in their distant memory draws them here,” or something like that. That comment always stuck with me as an apt description of real life shoppers in today’s malls. About the only people in the mall were teenagers, probably killing time in the comfortable air conditioned space. I doubt they were actually buying much of anything.

The individual retail stores were quiescent and pretty much empty, the solitary, sedentary clerks barely bothering to look up from their books as I walked past their stores. I went into an antique store and walked around for twenty minutes – I was the only shopper the entire time I was there. Before leaving the store I had a pleasant, unhurried chat with the proprietor, who went back to reading his book when I left. I felt really sorry for that guy, who I assumed was the owner of the store. How disheartening it must be to own a business like that and have no customers, and there’s nothing you can do about it because your customers are up against insurmountable forces and quite unable to spend money in your shop.

I’ve observed this creeping depression for years. Years ago, driving through the formerly industrious parts of San Diego, I noticed office park after office park with “For Lease” signs in front. Many months later I noticed the same phenomenon occurring with strip malls. Now major shopping malls. What’s striking about the shrinking retail portion of the economy is that our experts tell us that the U.S. economy is 70% dependent on retail!

If things are this bad now, what’s going to happen over the next couple of years? I imagine that entire shopping malls will simply shut and lock their doors.

July 9, 2008 – America is at a critical fork in the road: one path leads to tyranny and ruin, the other leads to freedom and prosperity. Guess which path America has embarked on.

By Dave Eriqat

Occasionally in life we encounter critical junctures, proverbial forks in the road. In the course of my life I’ve encountered a few such personal junctures and, thankfully, I’ve usually taken what in retrospect I concluded was the “correct” fork. I don’t make excessive use of hyperbole, nor do I tend to place much faith in a single leader as a savior. Nevertheless, having read Ron Paul’s recent book, The Revolution, I can say without hyperbole that America has no idea what a mistake it has made in not choosing Ron Paul to be its president. Never before in my life have I felt that the choice of president mattered as much as it does today, that this is/was America’s last chance. (Nor have I ever before donated money to any politician’s political campaign – I did donate to Ron’s campaign.) Instead of choosing the fork in the road that leads to freedom and prosperity, America has taken the fork to ruin and slavery; it had its chance and blew it.

While I don’t think Ron Paul could single-handedly cure all the nation’s ills, he could at least have guided this nation back onto the right path, a path that subsequent presidents would hopefully have followed as well once Americans got a fresh whiff of genuine freedom. People who are pinning their hopes on Obama as our savior are doomed to be as disappointed as those who placed their hopes on electing a Democratic Congress in 2006. Obama, McCain, Hillary: they represent the status quo. Ron Paul represented real “change,” which everyone seems to covet so much. (Coincidentally, as I was writing this I ran across a blog entry from Ron himself, titled “Real Change.”)

But Ron Paul represented so much more than “change.” He represented a restoration of the principles under which the United States was founded, principles enshrined in our Constitution, principles that could recreate conditions that would usher in a renaissance of freedom, respect, vitality and prosperity. While reading his book I found myself alternately laughing out loud at his common sense observations and nodding in agreement at his astute recognition of how far we’ve strayed from the Constitution.

I have often wondered how the “Founding Fathers” would react upon seeing modern day America. I can only imagine they’d be pulling their hair out and screaming, “No, No, No! You’ve got it all wrong! This is not what we intended at all! This is what we sought to prevent!” Ron Paul understands this; few Americans seem to.

I think the founders made two flawed assumptions:

• That the populace would remain educated. The common people back then were better educated about history, politics and economics than today’s people, and I suppose the founders mistakenly assumed it would always be that way.

• That the populace would remain vigilant. Again, the people back then, having suffered subjugation under England and having fought hard for their freedom, were more vigilant in protecting their rights than today’s apathetic people who seem astonishingly ignorant of what’s going on under the auspices of their own government.

Without those two qualities in the people the Constitution cannot be defended. I think the founders also underestimated how relentlessly power-mad politicians and special interests would seek to undermine the Constitution. They should have written the Constitution in more unequivocal language, less vulnerable to “interpretation” by the courts.

Needless to say, I can’t recommend Ron Paul’s book, The Revolution, highly enough. It’s lucid, fluid, a refreshing introduction to Constitutional principles, American history and economics. For example, in one of the final chapters – an important chapter that discusses how our money is created – Ron writes of the Federal Reserve (this made me laugh out loud):

Where does the Fed get the money to buy the bonds? It creates it out of thin air, simply writing checks on itself and giving them to banks. If that sounds fishy, then you understand it just fine.

Ron Paul has a better grasp of economics and the Constitution than many university professors. Among the most useful few pages in his book are those that describe how monetary inflation – and yes, Ron understands the difference between monetary inflation and price inflation – benefits the elites who control our money supply. All Americans would benefit from understanding this monetary scam, especially in light of their steadily declining standard of living, the causes of which seem to be so elusive to most people. Although Ron alludes to restoring a gold standard to our currency, we shouldn’t even need to “restore” such a standard. The Constitution seems clear enough:

Section 10
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emits Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

According to the Constitution money may only consist of gold and silver, and certainly not Federal Reserve Notes. So why is there even a debate about this? As Ron points out – as have many others – the dollar has lost 95% of its value in the 95 years since the Federal Reserve was established (an amusing numerical coincidence). Had we remained on a gold standard instead, our money would have lost no value at all.

Ron does not confine himself to a discussion of monetary policy. He also eruditely discusses civil liberties, our failed health care system, the drug war, and our failed foreign policy that is helping to bankrupt our nation while producing nothing but unwelcome “blowback.”

It saddens me that the few people I know who rejected Ron Paul did so for the most picayune of reasons – he’s religious, he doesn’t support abortion – while completely overlooking the big picture, which is our nation’s dire condition. I’m not religious and I do support a woman’s right to use her own judgment in deciding what’s best for herself. Nevertheless, I was not threatened by Ron’s personal feelings about these matters because I strongly doubted that he would attempt to impose his personal views on others, especially given his appreciation for the Constitution. Unfortunately, this sort of picky mentality pervades politics in America (especially among the myriad lobbyists), which is why we’re in such trouble. Everybody is focused on self-serving minutiae while the country slides into hell.

Perhaps another reason people dismissed Ron Paul is that he challenged the status quo. People want to believe that everything in this country is just perfect, which is far from the truth. Acknowledging that the country is in serious trouble would demand that people get off their corpulent butts and do something about it: study the issues, elect qualified candidates, examine their own lifestyles, make an effort to respect others and their rights. In other words, acknowledging our nation’s problems would have demanded expending effort to fix those problems. It’s so much easier for couch people to just lay back and permit their anxious minds to be massaged by the television; or watch fireworks shows, reassuring themselves that all is well.

So what have we lost by rejecting Ron Paul? Imagine the following that might have been:

• No federal income tax. Think how much extra money you’d have. One-third of the hours I used to work were for the federal government. Think about that: for one-third of my time I was basically a slave to the government. And I never felt as if I got anything in return. That’s why I decided to “retire” and start living off my savings.

• A strong currency. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve always yammer about a “strong dollar policy” while doing everything they can to dilute the value of the dollar (in order to help their elite banker pals). They can only get away with this because the dollar isn’t backed by anything tangible, such as gold, but can be created out of thin air on a whim. But if the U.S. Government resumed its role as the issuer of money and that money was backed by something solid, like gold, the currency would remain strong. Price inflation might become a thing of the past. Money might actually become a store of value again.

• Low cost health care. By restoring health care to a true free market and eliminating the middlemen – the insurance companies and the governments – health care costs would plummet. Low cost health clinics could be popping up all over in strip malls. A visit to a doctor might cost $35 and he or she would spend as much time with you as needed, instead of feeling pressured to attend to as many “revenue bodies” as possible. Competition might even bring back house calls by doctors. Think I’m full of it? Look at medical procedures that aren’t covered by “insurance.” The costs of Lasik eye surgery, liposuction, and laser hair removal have plummeted thanks to competition and innovation. I believe the costs for all other medical services would plummet too if given a chance. But as it is today patients have no incentive to shop around for low cost medical services and doctors have no incentive to be competitively priced, all because there are middlemen – insurance companies or governments – paying the bills and drawing salaries of their own.

• No more drug war. The U.S. Government spends tens of billions of dollars every year fighting a futile war against innocuous drug use. Besides the wasted money, the violence and persecution that flows from prosecution of the drug war is many times worse than any harm caused by drug use. Ending the drug war would halve the number of people in prison and similarly reduce the cost to society for operating those prisons. It’s always struck me as bizarre that the drug war incarcerates taxpaying petty drug users, reducing tax revenue while simultaneously increasing expenses!

• Renewed privacy. No more government surveillance of us ordinary Americans. The government spends much more effort spying on us ordinary Americans than it does spying on terrorists or criminals. Most people have no idea how comprehensive this spying is. The government keeps track of our spending habits, our banking records, our medical histories, our communications, our travel histories, our reading materials, and even our religious and political persuasion. And the volume of information that the government is vacuuming up about us is exploding upward! No good can come of this.

• Renewed freedom. Freedom to travel without government permission. Freedom to educate your children the way you want instead of having their curriculum dictated by politicians in Washington. Freedom of speech without having to look over your shoulder or fear a “ride on the taser.” Freedom from oppressive and costly regulations.

• A restored international image. Our nation’s international reputation has been sullied by our unfair, heavy-handed, exploitative and selfish policies toward other nations. I daresay America is more hated today than ever in its history. Is it any wonder?

I certainly don’t think Ron Paul was perfect. However, he stood head and shoulders above any candidate for president that I can recall. While I like Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich too, I don’t think they came close to harboring Ron Paul’s commitment to the Constitution, which is something this country desperately needs right now.

I wish every single American would read Ron Paul’s book. Who knows, maybe if enough people read this book before the election in November we can still elect Ron Paul to the presidency. Now, I wonder how one writes in a name on an electronic voting machine …

July 5, 2008 – The U.S. is determined to control the world oil supply, protect Israel and its expansionary goals, and stymie Russia and China. The growing threat of unprecedented economic collapse is further impetus for such a war.

By Dave Eriqat

Why The United States Will Attack Iran in 2006 2008

I wrote the piece below over two years ago. In fact, I’ve been anticipating an attack on Iran since 2005. Several times it seemed as if an attack was imminent. A couple of times it seemed as if an attack was scuttled at the last minute. For example, last summer when some nuclear missiles went for a joyride over the U.S., I sensed that it was part of a larger plan, possibly to attack Iran. Once the fiasco was exposed, thankfully, by genuine patriots in the U.S. military, I think the attack was scuttled.

Since writing this in 2006 I have seen nothing to make me breathe a sigh of relief that the likelihood of an attack is diminishing. On the contrary, I think the deteriorating political climate for the President, the Republican party, the neocons and their agenda, combined with the fact that time is running out for them makes them even more desperate and dangerous. Even more worrisome is that Americans have lost their stomach for war and aren’t as afraid of terrorists as they were several years ago. Today they’re more afraid of inflation and losing their homes. With all the open talk about another “terrorist” attack being likely, I’m extremely worried that just such a thing might occur and be used as a justification for an attack on Iran.

What is most surprising to me is how slowly things have changed in the last two years, for the worse. I expected things to change more rapidly, but instead it’s like I’m watching events unfold in slow motion. The U.S. economy has deteriorated slowly, but to such an alarming degree that even the mainstream media is now discussing today’s economy in the context of the Great Depression. The U.S. dollar has lost significantly more value and several countries, notably Iran, have stopped accepting it as payment for oil. The rhetoric against Iran has slowly become more hyperbolic. More Congressional action has been taken to “reign in” Iran. Other countries, such as France, have capitulated and now support attacking Iran. Humanitarian conditions in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, notably Palestine, have steadily worsened, fueling animosity toward the U.S. The oil price has risen slowly but relentlessly, I think having now crossed a breaking point for the economy. Inflation has clandestinely spread and festered and is starting to burst the seams of the world economy. All of these factors have increased the likelihood of an attack on Iran.

I don’t really know why I’m recycling this post because I don’t think it will make one iota of difference. If the powers-that-be intend to attack Iran there’s nothing I or even a million protesting Americans can do to stop it. I guess I’m just relieving myself of the weight of these fears.

Aside from the needless horror of tens of thousands of dead innocent civilians – the blood of whom will be on the hands of all Americans because we put our leaders in power – an attack on Iran will be a military and economic blunder of epic proportions. In addition, I fear it will accelerate our already careening ride into the depths of a totalitarian nightmare, perhaps a global one, at that.

I reread this piece and can find nothing worthy of change. I still believe everything I wrote two years ago. The only thing I might add is that it appears that Venezuela is increasingly in the sights of the U.S. Government. Funny, that. North Korea was a founding member of the “Axis of Evil” and has detonated a nuclear bomb, yet the U.S. doesn’t seem to be concerned about North Korea. Of course, North Korea has no oil. Iran, on the other hand, which according to the U.S. Government’s own intelligence agencies is not even trying to build a nuclear bomb, is public enemy number one. Of course, Iran has lots of oil and natural gas. And Venezuela, which also just happens to have a lot of oil, is increasingly demonized by the U.S. Government as well. So I suppose in a few years, once the U.S. is securely entangled in another quagmire, this time in Iran, we’ll be debating the merits of attacking Venezuela.

Why The United States Will Attack Iran in 2006

There’s been a lot of speculation about whether or not the United States will attack Iran. Roughly equal numbers of people believe the U.S. will and will not attack. Disregarding the public blustering from both governments, I believe the U.S. will attack Iran in 2006. Here’s why.

The master plan of the United States is to control the oil in the Middle East. Only two countries stood in the way of that plan: Iraq and Iran. Iraq has been neutralized and will remain impotent for the next decade because of civil war. Iran alone now stands in the way of the U.S. master plan. But before proceeding with this line of argument, let’s take a side trip.

Iraq is clearly a disaster from a humanitarian perspective, as well as on the military front. Iraq is also becoming a political disaster for Republicans in the U.S. Not only do Republicans face losing control of Congress, but with President Bush’s approval ratings in the toilet, Republicans may well lose the White House too. The lesson of the staged 9/11 and the ensuing war in Iraq is clear: Americans will rally around the president and his party during distressing times. What could be more opportune for this president and his party than another staged 9/11-like event, followed by another war of retaliation, this time against Iran?

I don’t believe another fake 9/11 is actually necessary for the president to launch another war in the Middle East. Just when I was beginning to think that the precipitously declining support – down to about one third of the public – for the war in Iraq was an indication that Americans were wising up, recent polls suggest that more than half of Americans support a new war against Iran! How can they favor starting a new war even as their support for the last one is declining? I was baffled by this inconsistency until I realized that the declining support for the war in Iraq is not a rejection of war, but a rejection of losing wars. Americans are perfectly fond of war as long as they’re winning. In any case, there seems to be ample support from the American public for a new war against Iran. Another fake 9/11 attack is not necessary, though it may occur anyway in order to further the totalitarian ambitions of the government.

Withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq is out of the question. Such an action would be tantamount to an admission of defeat by this administration, an admission that will never be forthcoming. Besides, the U.S. expended great effort and resources to go into Iraq and build permanent military bases there. It is simply not going to leave for at least a few decades. Maintaining the status quo in Iraq is also untenable, as the voices calling for withdrawal intensify with each passing day. That leaves only one avenue of action to this administration: escalation.

A new war against Iran would divert attention from Iraq and firm up public support for the president and his party, as will be evidenced by renewed passion for red-white-and-blue and yellow magnetic ribbons.

Another good reason for a war against Iran is to divert attention from the economy. It’s obvious now that the U.S. housing bubble is deflating. It may continue to deflate gradually or it might snowball with spectacular consequences, it’s anybody’s guess. How it plays out is largely subject to people’s perceptions. People are still fairly optimistic about the economy, so perhaps that’s why the housing bubble is deflating slowly right now. But that could change. In any event, with the housing bubble being the driving force behind consumer spending of late, and with consumer spending driving the economy, as the housing bubble deflates, consumer spending will go down. An imminent decline in consumer spending, coupled with other indicators, such as converging bond yields, hint at a recession late this year. A new war would be a great diversion from economic woes and afford the government a chance to pump “liquidity” into the economy. The U.S. Government recently discontinued reporting the broadest measure of the money supply, M3, perhaps in order to hide future liquidity injections.

Getting back to the master plan. Many have pointed out that attacking Iran does not stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. They argue that attacking Iran would cause Iran to retaliate by stoking the insurgency in Iraq and threatening oil shipments through the Persian Gulf. The implication is that the U.S. will not risk the lives of its soldiers in Iraq or risk soaring oil prices, all for the sake of imposing its political will on Iran. They argue that not even this administration is that irrational.

These people are missing the point, however. The single-minded goal of the United States in the Middle East is control of the oil, regardless of the cost. Let’s examine the potential costs more closely. Would the U.S. endanger its soldiers in Iraq? Absolutely. Just look at Pearl Harbor during World War II. The U.S. Government unquestionably knew the Japanese were going to attack and deliberately let it happen. The U.S. Government probably even abetted the attack by clearing an unobstructed flight path for the Japanese attackers. So would they sacrifice a few thousand more soldiers in Iraq? Sure. What if Iran manages to slow or stop the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf? Again, that could work to the advantage of the U.S., as I will explain below. In the meantime, who would benefit from reduced global oil supplies? Oil companies. As oil has gone up in price during the last few years, the profits of oil companies have skyrocketed into the tens of billions of dollars per year, for each company. We also witnessed this administration look the other way when energy companies rapaciously exploited California’s nascent “deregulated” electricity market, so we know where its allegiance lies.

Another “rational” argument against attacking Iran is that the U.S., by virtue of its constrained manpower, can only feasibly attack Iran by air, which would not be very effective if limited to “military” targets. This is true, but it misses the point. The initial air assault against Iran would be merely the first step in what the U.S. probably hopes will become a larger war. Why? Because the only way the United States can successfully neutralize Iran is by dropping a couple of nuclear bombs on its civilian population, forcing Iran to surrender unconditionally.

Even the U.S. will not dare to unilaterally break sixty years of nuclear taboo and drop a nuclear bomb on an Iranian city. However, it probably can get away with using “tactical nuclear bunker buster” bombs against ostensibly military targets. The world will be outraged, of course. But after a few months of media spin, the U.S. will probably quell the opprobrium.

In the meantime, Iran will foment Shiite insurrection in Iraq, resulting in a dramatic increase in casualties among American soldiers. Iran can also sink a few U.S. warships and oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, and indeed slow or stop the flow of oil through the gulf. Of course, the U.S. will spin this Iranian retaliation as a reckless and fanatical escalation of the war. Americans, angry at seeing their soldiers killed and their warships sunk, will rally even more fervently around their president. The U.S. Government will point to the world’s growing economic problems ensuing from the shortage of oil as evidence that Iran needs to be stopped, whatever the cost. The world’s industrialized nations that are so dependent on oil will publicly renounce taking harsher action against Iran while privately hoping that the U.S. does whatever it takes to get the oil flowing again.

Then, without warning, the U.S. will drop a couple of nuclear bombs on a couple of medium sized cities in Iran, just like it did in Japan sixty years ago. The justifications will be the same as before: to bring a speedy end to the war. Of course, the world will be outraged, but its reaction will be muted because the U.S. will have already broken the nuclear taboo when it used the “bunker busters,” and besides, what can the world really do about it? Iran will surrender, and the U.S. will be fully in control of the Middle East and two of its most important sources of oil: Iraq and Iran.

The U.S. can then withdraw its soldiers in Iraq into its new massive, city-sized military bases and wait out the civil war, while keeping a close eye on the oil. The U.S. will be a pariah nation, but so what. It will control the bulk of the world’s oil.

July 4, 2008 – Continuing analysis to answer the question “What are chemtrails?” Discusses a document about the so-called Shield Project, which purports to explain away chemtrails as a beneficial program to save the planet.

By Dave Eriqat

A couple of weeks ago I ran across a remarkable document, titled Chemtrails – spraying in our sky, which discusses something called the Shield Project. After first reading it I was astonished and even relieved because it seemed to answer all of the most common questions raised about chemtrails, including:

• Why chemtrail spraying seems to be a closely guarded secret.

• Why barium and aluminum are employed.

• Why other deleterious chemical compounds are being used.

• Why some people claim to have identified polymer fibers in the chemtrail “fallout.”

• Why chemtrail spraying is often done before a storm.

• Why there is no chemtrail spraying over the middle of the ocean.

According to this document, the Shield Project is meant to mitigate global warming until such time as a permanent solution can be devised. In other words, global warming is a crisis of such urgency that it impels an emergency program to cool the planet as quickly as possible and shield it from UV radiation. Otherwise, we face massive species extinction within twenty to fifty years (as of 2003, meaning our doom is now fifteen to forty-five years away). This document implies that the ultimate solution is to rebuild the ozone layer, which has been depleted by industrialization. The barium and aluminum metals saturating the atmosphere not only shield the planet from heat and UV radiation, but when electrically excited produce new ozone high in the atmosphere.

Persuasive as this document was when I read it, after a few days of mulling it over I began to get a little suspicious. The first glaring concern I have with this document is that the unidentified insider who leaked this information, nicknamed Deep Shield, turned up dead the following year, in 2004, so there is no way to corroborate the information he supposedly divulged. That’s a mighty convenient way to preclude further investigation, to claim the person harboring the information is dead. If this person is dead, why hasn’t anybody else in his organization been moved to take his place as a leaker of information? Was he the sole individual in the entire organization to believe that the rest of us ought to know what’s going on? The Shield Project is supposedly a huge, worldwide program, presumably involving tens of thousands of people, yet only one person out of all those thousands has seen fit to divulge such information? In the last five years? It challenges the imagination.

A second problem I have with this document is its inconsistent rationale for chemtrail spraying. On the one hand the document suggests that global warming is caused by CO₂, but on the other hand it suggests that it’s caused by too much UV radiation. Those two causes are quite different and would seem to require different strategies to rectify them. Oddly enough, while the document states that the Shield Project is intended to mitigate global warming and suggests that CO₂ is a cause of the problem, it also says that governments have basically thrown up their hands in despair when it comes to reducing CO₂ production! In other words, the governments behind the Shield Project, while fighting to reduce CO₂ in the atmosphere (barium compounds supposedly absorb CO₂), have given up trying to reduce the production of CO₂ here on Earth, which does make their chemtrail spraying efforts seem a bit pointless. It’s like taking a drug to treat the symptoms of a disease without addressing the underlying cause of the disease. At best, all one can hope to do in such a circumstance is hold the disease at bay, but not actually cure it.

The governments have apparently also given up on the idea of chemtrail spraying over the middle of the oceans because they have limited resources. There’s another convenient explanation, this time for why chemtrail spraying occurs primarily over human populations. If the governments have a limited budget and cannot afford to spray over the entire surface of the Earth, then why spray over human-populated regions at all? Why not spray over the oceans or deserts instead and minimize the harm to humans?

Another problem is the explanation for the extreme secrecy surrounding chemtrails. Are you ready for this? The situation we face is so dire that civilization cannot cope with the knowledge of it and would go crazy if it knew the truth. Boy, is that a tired old explanation, or what? The same reasoning has been used to explain why the governments of the world are conspiring to keep a lid on the topic of alien visitation. Yet these same people, who are so concerned about civilization losing its collective mind, don’t seem bothered to acknowledge that the chemicals in chemtrails may cause severe illness or death to two billion people! Wiping out a third of the human population is deemed an acceptable cost compared to the alternative, which is the extinction of 89% of all animal species on the planet.

I suppose the thing I find most suspicious about this document is that it answers the concerns people have about chemtrails too thoroughly and precisely. If I were a government agent tasked with producing a piece of disinformation to neutralize public interest in chemtrails, this is the document I would have produced. Every concern is neatly explained away, slight inconsistencies notwithstanding.

Frankly, this document raises more questions than it answers. What impact is the growing evidence against global warming and the growing scientific criticism of the theory having on the Shield Project? Is the Shield Project going full speed ahead in spite of these criticisms? Is the Shield Project producing positive results? If so, why aren’t the governments behind it trumpeting their success and asking the public for more funds so that they can spray more of the planet and thus accelerate their cure? If the project is succeeding, then surely it’s safe to inform the public now. In fact, publicly explaining the problem and demonstrating that the solution appears to be working might secure the public’s cooperation in reducing CO₂ production. Is the project failing? If so, then why is chemtrail spraying continuing? They’ve been spraying chemtrails for five years since this document was published. Surely that’s enough time to ascertain whether or not the Shield Project is succeeding.

I know nothing about this fellow, G. Brian Holmes. He may be a decent fellow or he may be one of the myriad hoaxsters that litter the Internet. This document sounds authentic, but then so do many Internet hoaxes. Let’s say, however, for the sake of argument that he’s on the level and that he didn’t simply make up this e-mail correspondence out of thin air (he admits to making up the questions). How do we know that his inside source, Deep Shield, was not deliberately disseminating disinformation? We do not. There is absolutely no way to corroborate this information, nor has it apparently been reinforced by anybody else in the five years since this information was made public. Therefore, it should be viewed with great skepticism.

I’ll stick to my earlier analysis, which you can read in What Are Chemtrails?

See Also

• What Are Chemtrails?

• What Are Chemtrails? – Part III

• Chemtrail Activity Over Hickman, Kentucky

• http://www.youtube.com/v/WSyoxwkC2Bc&hl=en&fs=1

• http://www.youtube.com/v/gUJKcMwaKIU&hl=en&fs=1