Roswell UFO Festival

jmcharry writes "From the Washington Post: 'Attention, all aliens. Come on down. Because, seriously, this is your crowd. About 50,000 of your closest admirers are expected this weekend for the Roswell UFO Festival, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the nearby crash landing of a flying saucer — and, naturally, the ensuing government cover-up.'"

Comments

Re:American only belief?

[Joe The Dragon]

It may have to do with all of the covering up that is being done.

Cover up?

[iknownuttin]

The U.S. government, of course, has issued its share of reports debunking UFOs. Here in Roswell, those reports are generally seen as desperate attempts to whitewash the truth.

Wasn't there a ton of UFO sightings when the USAF was testing the F-117? As top secret that stealth aircraft was, the US Gov. eventually announced it.

And, whenever the US Gov. really wants to keep a secret - they can't - can you say Abu Ghraib or bombing in Cambodia, and wiretapping US citizens and violating the Fourth Amendment?

Sorry, I think between incompetence in Gov. and just decent people in the World (I guess I'm getting soft in my old age), any secrets won't stay secret very long.

Re:Cover up?

[TrekkieGod]

And, whenever the US Gov. really wants to keep a secret - they can't

Well, if an alien spacecraft really did crash in Roswell, they did a horrible job of keeping it a secret. For starters, they screwed up and the USAF initially announced they had recovered a flying saucer. Then they went back on the claim and said it was a weather balloon. Now we're all talking about it, multiple movies have been made...if you say "Roswell" to someone, they know what you're talking about. And that's from 1947, when it was a lot easier to destroy records than it is today.

I know, you still don't believe it happened. Neither do I (the US would have a serious technological advantage over everyone else. Where's my flying car?). And yet, when you hear about wiretapping of US citizens you do believe it. The difference is that one claim is reasonable and the other is not. When news escape of the wiretapping or of the Abu Ghraib incident, we believe it until the government can prove otherwise (and obviously they can't, because it's true). When we hear of captured aliens, we think it's bs, and it's the conspiracy theorist job to prove it did happen. Whoever has the burder of proof has a serious disadvantage in either situation.

Re:American only belief?

[Colin Smith]

I read on the Internet (so it must be true) that 50% of the Americans believe that there are aliens on the earth, 50% voted for Bush, sounds plausible to me.

I wonder why so many Americans? It's all explained in full here:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/credulous

Re:Army Lt. Walter Haut

[tb3]

Here ya go, the real story. Project Mogul was an Air Force project to detect nuclear tests by listening for them in the high atmosphere. It had the highest security classification, and when one of the balloons, along with it's plastic and tinfoil acoustic detectors, crashed near Roswell, the CIA decided that the UFO story provided a good cover.

So, technically, it wasn't a weather balloon. Oh and the egg-shaped saucer? That was a different test version of the acoustic detector. They experimented with a number of different shapes.

Re:American only belief?

[LuNa7ic]

(Or do all countries have conspiracies, but the US is better at finding them? Who knows.) Or worse at hiding them...

Re:Army Lt. Walter Haut

[Bombula]

Well, it's a shame that Roswell gets all the attention because it turns out there is a logical explanation for what happened. In thousands of other UFO sightings, no such explanation is available. The most compelling one to me is the black triangle incident with the Belgian Air Force, where the government has come right out and said that they have no terrestrial explanation for what all of their radar installations and two F16s witnessed, and that really leaves very few alternative explanations.

It's a shame the subject of UFOs is ridiculed instead of taken seriously, and of course that is due in large part to the goofball social community surrounding unexplained phenomena. This Roswell celebration is, sadly, a prime example. If instead we had five million people march on Washington and demand the truth, we might get some real disclosure.

UFOs not an "American only belief"

[Jeremy_Bee]

Not that I am defending the motives and beliefs of the "True Believers" that gather in Roswell for these kinds of things, but ... anyone familiar with the history of belief in UFO's, Flying Saucers and Alien saviours can tell you that UFO's are certainly not an "American Only" phenomenon.

If you check the data, only the belief in Alien Abductions and the whole "Grey aliens stole my baby" thing can truly be said to have originated in America or to be exclusive to American culture.

UFO *sightings* on the other hand, and the UFO phenomenon in general (regardless of whatever the cause turns out to be), are pretty much uniform over all cultures and take the same general form in each. Often a small amount of local cultural belief is overlaid on the data set, but the data itself is very homogeneous and consistent across cultures.

Re:Army Lt. Walter Haut

[Shihar]

The idea that the US government is capable of covering up UFOs, 9/11, or offing a JFK is laughable. The US absolutely terrible at keeping secrets that stick even a toe into controversy. Just Bush's presidency alone is a long series blown secrets. For better or for worse, American officials love to blow the whistle on anything that is sketchy, and the say what you will about the US press, but they love to expose secrets almost as much as they love Paris Hilton.

Personally, I have very little fear about what the US does in secret. US secrets get blown pretty much non-stop all the time. Not little secrets, but big ones. Wire taping, snagging foreign folks on the soil of allies then torturing (or sending them to be tortured elsewhere), the list is endless and spans pretty much every single US president in the past 50 years. In more then one or two people know about it (which is pretty much required in order to do anything useful), someone is going to go to the press.

The idea that the US could conceal the existence of aliens, launch 9/11 against itself, kill JFK, kill cold fusion, or any of the other silly conspiracy theories out there is laughable. For better or for worse, the US sucks at covering things up. What people forget is that the secret holders are still people, and that these people can easily pass information to the press. It takes just one human in the loop to decide that things are not right to have the entire secret blow open.