White House Responds to ET/UFO Petitions 232
An anonymous reader writes "The White House has responded to two more We the People petitions. These new inquiries ask the government to acknowledge formally that aliens have visited Earth. The response from Phil Larson of the White House Office of Science and Technology is: 'The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.'" I'm glad that's cleared up. Now our government can get back to important work like developing caffeinated jerky.
yeah... (Score:2)
Re:yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
More logically the phrase "no evidence" versus the more commonly expected "no knowledge". So perhaps no recovered alien vessels and no captured aliens versus no knowledge of unknown space vessels, presumably not operated by humans.
Of course one need only look at the reply for marijuana versus say this story http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2008/jul/23/significance_us_govt_cannabinoid [stopthedrugwar.org] which leads you to http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6630507.html [patentstorm.us]. So the US Department of Health has a patent on what the US Government in turn denies is of any value.
Then of course who could forget wikileaks and embassy cables, basically the US government lying all over the place, again and again and again.
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" Then of course who could forget wikileaks and embassy cables, basically the US government lying all over the place, again and again and again."
Really, take this acid test, write down everything you say about your place of employment for a year and then send it to your boss, your boss's boss, and shove it all the way up the chain of command. Information wants to be free, y'now.
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Seriously. Even if the government was withholding information, some silly on-line petition isn't going to chance anything.
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Of course that's no more true than it's ever been, but it's a brilliant show.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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"Immediately disclose the government's knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings"
What kind of moron write a petition implying he undoubtedly KNOW THAT THE US GOV. had communication with extraterrestrial beings, no one can take a moron like that seriously.
Re:yeah... (Score:4, Funny)
By craftily wording their inquiry as though it were merely a risible question about aliens, our petitioner has forced Them to reveal that there is "no credible evidence" to suggest that the US Government has communicated with extraterrestrial beings, such as the so-called 'astronauts' who participated in the moon landing hoax, or 'space probes' that allegedly disprove the Hollow Earth theory!
WAKE UP, EARTHLINGS! (Score:2)
No, no. What this proves is that the aliens (or possibly the Illuminati - but trust me, I have proof) are so much in control of our government that they have taken all the evidence out of our government's hands. WHEN ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING TO WAKE UP AND SEE THE TRUTH?! They Live was a documentary!
Air Force Caffeine Department (Score:3, Interesting)
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A drug is a drug. Why are they using a shitty stimulant like caffeine. Why not use amphetamine it works much better?
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Because caffeine is such a shitty dirty buzz. No stimulant is good but amphetamine is a much better choice than caffeine. Ive taken both and caffeine sucks.
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People start getting nuts when they use any stimulant inplace of rest.
Don't blame Phil (Score:2)
Jerky (Score:2)
Mmmmmmm, Jerky.
As the world collapses around us... (Score:2)
People are bothering the White House with this type of bullshit and Congress is voting to reaffirm our national motto. Can we just call a do-over and kick everybody out of office and start over?
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You misunderstand the function of the government. If we wanted an "efficient" government we would have 100x the laws we currently have. The government would be able to pass new funding resolutions, new laws, new regulations on the content of food, etc., etc., etc. and they woudl be able to do this very very quickly. Hundreds of news laws each week.
Instead, what we have is a system that is designed to provide gridlock, obstructionism and anything but efficiency. The very notion of a bicameral debating so
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If an European party wins with less than 50%, it still has to negotiate with one or more parties of the opposition to pass new legislation. Sometimes they form a coalition, but that doesn't always happen, and even in that case there can be internal negotiations (after all, they're different parties with different platforms).
In fact, that's why we (Portugal) had elections before the expected date: the government resigned because they were unable to get their "legislation package" approved.
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Who said anything about letting those people vote?
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In reverse order...
Can we just call a do-over and kick everybody out of office and start over?
Well, duh, yes, of course you can. It's called an election. You don't have to vote the incumbents in, you know.
However -
People are bothering the White House with this type of bullshit
Sounds like you are targeting the wrong group of people and what you really want is to kick the entire country out of voting privileges and start over.
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Elections stopped working years ago. It's time for an Article V convention.
Re:As the world collapses around us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, go vote on some more important petitions:
Meta-petition [whitehouse.gov]
99declaration.org [whitehouse.gov]
Snarky petition [whitehouse.gov]
E-Parasite [whitehouse.gov]
Marijuana petition Part II. [whitehouse.gov]
Reverse marijuana petition [whitehouse.gov]
YAMP [whitehouse.gov]
I like this one. Bet it doesn't last long. [whitehouse.gov]
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It's a fake email address so I am not all that concerned (and not exactly what you were trying to prove). I actually voted against the people who are currently representing me in Congress - can't help how my neighbors vote.
And while the principles of OWS have a sound basis - their methods are horribly flawed.
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Total government control is not the problem - Total Corporate control is and that is a much tougher battle to fight. It's hard to say - don't support evil corporations - because unless you plan on living on a farm and growing everything you eat and wear it is almost impossible to not give your money to some evil corporation.
This is an issue that crosses party lines but our current government is so polarized and dysfunctional that nothing is getting done to fix it. The worst part is I have no chance of winn
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Total government control is not the problem - Total Corporate control is
There's very little difference at this point.
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You are talking about direct attacks - I am talking about indirect attacks. How many people do you think were ultimately killed by the effects of smoking?
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You are talking about direct attacks - I am talking about indirect attacks. How many people do you think were ultimately killed by the effects of smoking?
I'm talking about using force to kill people. You're talking about voluntary activities that happen to shorten someone's life. They're not even remotely similar.
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Except that those "voluntary" activities were encouraged using ad campaigns aimed at children and sold products intentionally designed to enhance addiction.
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Except that those "voluntary" activities were encouraged using ad campaigns aimed at children and sold products intentionally designed to enhance addiction.
They remain voluntary activities despite your "scare quotes". When Phillip Morris sticks a gun to your head and forces you to smoke cigarettes for forty years, then you'll have a case. Until then, you're just blowing smoke.
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Dear Citizens! (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, just in the spirit of openness, we voluntarily announce that neither we, nor the British royal family, are Pod People, or Reptoids from Delta Reticulon Minus. If you have any further requests for information or policy change that we can easily dismiss as being outside the window of political consideration, please let us know.
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In fact, just in the spirit of openness, we voluntarily announce that neither we, nor the British royal family, are Pod People, or Reptoids from Delta Reticulon Minus.
Of course the British royal family are none of those. They're werewolves.
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Area 51 Syndrome (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Area 51 Syndrome (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if there is no alien in area 51 they still have new technology, missile and stuffs that you don't have to see.
If I don't want you to come at my house to see inside It must be because I have a trapped alien in it.
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... and did it come in peace?
Well, originally, yes.
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Re:Area 51 Syndrome (Score:4, Informative)
I watched a (UK TV) documentary by a defence journalist [google.co.uk] a year or so back, where he suggested that the whole UFO business dating back to Roswell was a dis-information campaign by the USAF to disguise their new product testing - now Area 51. I thought he made his case well.
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Pretty much. Area 51 is a government run airport that they use to test various new systems and even new aircraft. I seem to remember something I read about the stealth planes being tested there before the programs were acknowledged. I'm sure they still use Area 51 to test all the new secret whiz bangs and gizmos they put on the planes. Being an airport in a remote area away from prying eyes makes it pretty good for that kind of work.
I'm pretty sure that if there are alien space craft anywhere here, they
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Hanger 18 in Arizona? Probably not, that state is very anti alien.
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You are far too modest. Those capabilities are in fact well outside anything that can exist in the physics of our universe.
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It wouldn't do a bit of good. Even if the U.S. government declassified every object and scrap of paper from Roswell and Area 51, and showed that there was zero evidence of alien visitation, the conspiracy theorists would just claim that the "real" evidence was still hidden or had been destroyed.
Trying to prove to a conspiracy theorist that aliens aren't visitin
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Even if they had tours etc. the conspiracy theorists would just say they moved them somewhere else and cleaned it up after the fact. You can't satisfy these people.
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Unless US govt declassify the area, permit tours, photos, etc. but until then Area 51 remains a good place for conspiracies, movie plots, whatever.
Then the conspiracy theorists would say it's been scrubbed clean and everything moved to an more secret facility. In fact, why are they trying so hard to prove it didn't happen if it didn't happen? That's why you have to ignore them, because the more evidence you give that it didn't happen the greater the proof it's a cover-up. Just forcing the government to acknowledge they're there and pose questions that "need" answering is like lighting a flare. I particularly remember the crop circles, that the same nu
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Nobody denies Area 51 exists. It's famous for reasons other than the alien business; it's usually known in the Air Force as Groom Lake or Dreamland, and it's where they test all the new and experimental aircraft.
The F-117 was flying there for ten years or so before the Air Force actually admitted its existence. They never denied that they had things they weren't telling us about, though.
According to polls (Score:5, Insightful)
14% of Americans think they've seen a UFO. An additional 20% haven't seen one, but believe they exist.
Somewhere around 10% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.
This says something about the United States, although I'm not sure exactly what.
I wonder how much is snark (Score:3)
Because I've certainly seen a UFO. I mean, it was probably just a plane or a helicopter and sometimes just a refraction of insects in the light from my glasses, but I seens thems, I'm sure.
Re:According to polls (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, according to polls (Score:4, Funny)
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However, these aren't made up:
1/3 of Americans believe in UFOs [usatoday.com]
Congressional approval rating [pollingreport.com]
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Let me translate it to American for you...
78.32% of Americans believe any made up numbers
You see, some other countries use a comma for a decimal point...
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78,32% of Americans believe any made up numbers.
So is it 78 Americans, or 32% of Americans?
Neither. It's 78,32 which is a made up number from a fairy tale land.
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Re:According to polls (Score:5, Insightful)
90% believe in a god, 55% believe they are protected by guardian angels, 54% believe in psychic abilities, 41% believe in demonic/devil possession.
People believe in a lot of really dumb things.
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90% believe in a god, 55% believe they are protected by guardian angels, 54% believe in psychic abilities, 41% believe in demonic/devil possession.
People believe in a lot of really dumb things.
I believe I'll have another beer...
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People in the U.S. are very cynical when it comes to believing UFO claims. We have by far the greatest number of non-believers.
I believe Mexico and Russia are at the other end of the spectrum. Very few people in either of those countries doubt that aliens are the cause of most UFO outbreaks.
I think public perception in the US is changing, though. For example, the former governor of Arizona has admitted that he did cover up what he knew about the 1997 Phoenix lights [wikipedia.org], and has now revealed that he and his
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Ignorance and idiocy is a worldwide occurrence. In the US our neighbors seem to prefer believing in religious bullshit and in Russia and Mexico I guess it is alien bullshit. It just means we have to work harder on all fronts to fight this type of stuff and not encourage it.
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The thing about UFOs is that the first word is "unidentified". If you don't know what an object is, and you see it in the sky, you have no way of knowing how big it is or how far away it is, or how fast it is moving. Lacking this information leads to further uncertainties as to the identity of the object.
I've seen objects in the night sky that I couldn't identify. I'm sure most people who watch the sky have. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't be able to identify them i I had more information.
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It says its easier to imagine on the billions of little chemical interactions required to give rise to complex life forms, could and have occurred some place else, or that God an omnipotent being exits and created a second group of intelligent beings take your pick. After all that you have to imagine those people were able to solve the seemingly impossible challenges of physics get from where they are across the vast cosmos to come here.
You know what now that I think on it a little bit that is all way more
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Almost everyone has seen a UFO, which is to say they have seen something in the sky they could not identify. That is all that UFO means. That doesn't mean that most of those people believe they have seen an extraterrestrial space ship. We really need a different word.
Skepticism (Score:2)
I saw a UFO while staring at the sky one day several years ago. That is to say, I saw something, and I don't know what it was. Given apparent distance, size, and motion characteristics, I can't match it to any known technology, physical effect, or biological creature. In fact, its behavior was unreal enough to make me doubt it was anything mundane. That doesn't prove that it's otherwise, and any suspicions I have that it could have been something alien are just that, suspicions.
Skepticism can coexist wi
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UFOs aren't really that interesting in the general sense. Even a meteor that shows up is counted as a UFO until it's identified. (As such, there's preally tons of UFOs). In fact, in the dullest sense, there's probably UFO "events" on a daily basis until NORAD gets a plane in the air and actually sees what it is.
Now, extraterrestrials, that's more interesting than UFOs (which aren often just manmade flying v
Evidence for life (Score:2, Interesting)
"The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet"
The U.S. government does have some evidence life exists on Mars. There are the fossils in the Martian meteorites, and the controversial results of the Viking life detection experiments plus our understanding of how quickly life appeared on Earth and its ability to adapt to conditions like Mars currently has, by living in the rocks.
While I won't claim there is enough evidence yet to concluded that there is life on Mars, there is mor
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I think they were just being frank.
Or Phil, in this case.
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[rolleyes]
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It's close enough. I doubt the petitioners were interested in possible bacterial life on Mars anyway.
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Wouldn't fossils mean that life "existed" and not necessarily that life continues to exist?
I think they also were talking more specifically about intelligent life.
Mitchael and Webb said it best. (Score:2)
The idea the government would keep aliens secret is incredibly stupid. Their reasons were:
a. Keeping secrets is fun.
b. To avoid having the government get blamed for something they are not responsible for - by doing something bad that would actually make them responsible.
c. It's the sort of thing that governments generally do.
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Obvious troll is obvious.
NASA? (Score:2)
has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet
I think we spent huge piles of tax dollars in order to get all excited that there was evidence of both water and bateria on Mars?
If the White House can't get basic facts strait about recent and very public scientific develops, why should we take the rest of their response seriously. Its not like this is Slashdot we are talking about here with its lack of editing, these are professional publicity people who don't make mistakes and obvious omissions.
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Or put another way, if they can't even get their basic facts straight, how in the world can they keep up a multi-year, multi-party, lie involving hundreds, if not thousands of people?
Wouldn't that be amazing? (Score:3)
After hand-waiving away the cannabis legalization and the software patent petitions, it would have been amazing to see the White House answers this one candidly. "After seeing such public pressure on the matter over decades, this administration has decided to come clean with the Martians and our contacts with them."
You want proof there are no ETs on earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
You want proof there are no ETs on earth?
Look at the defense budget.
Now look at NASAs budget.
NASA's budget is tiny in comparison. Clearly the US sees other countries as much bigger threat than the anal-probers from outta space. Either that or they feel that a little humiliation for the drunk rednecks that spot them is acceptable.
If we had discovered aliens do you really think we'd be slashing science spending and space exploration costs?
Do you really think the US would be the only country to know about them and that all 200+ nations on earth are collaborating together to keep us in the dark.
It is ludicrous. The one way you know that aliens have been found and secretly being kept away from the public is when the government starts putting higher priority on space funding and NASA's budget starts rocketing upwards instead of getting cut further and further each year.
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Watching too much TV (Score:4, Insightful)
To sum up TFA:
1. Aliens are almost certainly real. Those who refuse to believe in the likely existence of extraterrestrial life either refuse to acknowledge or cannot comprehend the vastness of space and (especially) the vastness of time.
2. UFOs are absolutely real. There are lots of instances where people legitimately see objects in the sky that they cannot identify/classify.
3. UFOs are absolutely not aliens. Those who believe that aliens have visited earth either refuse to acknowledge or cannot comprehend the vastness of space and (especially) the vastness of time.
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You missed a key point from the MSNBC article.
Larson stressed that the facts show there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth. He pointed out that even though many scientists have come to the conclusion that the odds of life somewhere else in the universe are fairly high, the chance that any of them are making contact with humans are extremely small, given the distances involved.
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1. Lots of credible estimates out there. Wikipedia (which is never wrong, of course) provides an estimate for the observable universe of about 3 to 100 × 10^22 stars (30 sextillion to a septillion stars) organized in more than 80 billion galaxies [wikipedia.org]. If you make an assumption on the average number of habitable planets per star (our solar system has one, for example), you have a rough guess.
2. There is one known planet with life (earth), so the odds for life orbiting any particular star at any point in tim
Interesting Petitions on the Site (Score:2)
No, we haven't had any contact... and here's why (Score:2)
There are folks who think the technology of microwave ovens was given to us by aliens. But then, esp. in the US, we have the worst math and science ed among the general populace of any industrialized nation.
The reason I know there's been no contact is that there have been *zero* amazing breakthroughs in the last century. We can look at every bit of original research that led to all technological advances.
Had we actually had contact with aliens, even if they didn't give us technology, there would have been s
O RLY? (Score:2)
Honestly, they're lying from the get go on this. Haven't we established without a doubt that there is life outside of Earth in our own solar system, in the very least, with one celled organisms?
All they had to do was say "no evidence of intelligent life" and they would be good to go.
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Have we ? I thought there was still plenty of doubt.
Oblig. What do they want with Earth? Post (Score:2)
Seriously, if there were aliens so advanced they invented rapid interstellar travel technology, what could they possibly want with Earth? Maybe just to observe us to document our evolution and culture? Sort of alien anthropologists/zoologists?
There's seriously nothing of value on earth, resource wise, which they shouldn't be able to collect a billion other places in the Universe. No, they don't want slave labor - high technology manufacturing, even here on earth, is far better than slave labor, and we are p
I have definitive proof... (Score:2)
I know that the answer to the UFO question is that we, as a country, have never had any real contact with aliens in America.
There is no possible way that a government as inefficient, inept and corrupt as ours could have kept alien encounters secret for nigh on 60 years. Records get hacked. People talk. Politicians use secrets to leverage each other. Opportunists leak information and sell out what they know. People make death bed confessions. There is absolutely no way that something as significant as
Very clever public relations (Score:2)
All they have to do is pick the wackiest petitions to respond to. They issue polite rejections or denials of the petitions. From there they make petitioners all look like wacka-dos. From their they can issue rejections of reasonable petitions that refer to serious issues with the same tone that implies insanity of the petitioners.
That one is easy (Score:2)
Because we elect new figureheads who appoint new staffers largely picked from within or by corporations (lobbyists,) duh!
Naturally the temp guys who get in are going to be given access to everything and the civil servants will cooperate 110%.... except for that 1 time when the head of the CIA said there was a "need to know" or something of that sort to a President's information request; resulting in him being fired (along with an army worth of CIA agents) and then appointed somebody out of the loop... about
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Maybe they're the kind of water that works in the 100 MPG carburetor the government is hiding too...